Infosmack

Windows Server 8 is right around the corner, is it for real? That is the question. In this episode, Rick Vanover hosts Jeffrey Snover, a Distinguished Engineer from Microsoft and David Davis from TrainSignal. This show scratches the surface of Windows Server 8, there are so many new features with the next release of this server operating system. But, are all of them good? Some recommendations may have system administrators turning their heads. And why is there so much PowerShell involved with Windows Server 8? Are you ready for Windows Server Core? We’ll see

On this weeks show the crew have a hack at defining what makes something “Enterprise”. And to be honest, when the show ends its far from mission accomplished, leaving the door wide open for more shows on the topic in the future. If you think you have the definition nailed, get in touch with us @infosmack. This weeks guests are both Infosmack virgins, so it was great to have them on the show – Enrico Signoretti – @esignoretti Phil Jaenke – @rootwyrm Some of the things covered on the show included – VMAX, XIV, 3PAR, Windows Server…… performance, resiliency, availability, scalability…… As always, your show hosts are - Rick Vanover – @rickvanover Nigel Poulton – @nigelpoulton Enjoy the show

This weeks show see's the return of Smackdown, the industry's best, well errr..... only, enterprise tech quiz show! Recording the show was both a blast and a disaster.  Technical difficulties stopped Chris Harney from joining the show.  Unforeseen circumstances stopped quiz fiend Chris Evans from joining.  Skype went mental on us and we had to drop two calls, and finally Ricks recording software failed half way through! Technical difficulties aside, we had laugh, and one of us nearly fell asleep (we'll give a big shout out to anyone who catches Greg Schultz's audible yawn). Questions covered topics from Supercomputing, through storage, and even including the Apple ][. This weeks guests were - Team Hackers:  Devang Panchigar and Greg Schultz Team Grey Beards: Ray Lucchesi and Howard Marks Referee: Megan Mescher Thanks go out to the guys for being on the show and putting up with both the technical difficulties as well as the ridiculous questions. Have fun

In this weeks show we see a new standard set when it comes to geeky intros. The show starts out with the good ship HMS Fibre Channel being engaged The Borg, only this time the Borg is Ethernet. Once again Ricks acting skills make us wonder if he would be better off in Hollywood! This week Nigel and Rick tackle the religious subject of storage protocols, covering all things from FCP, FCoE, iSCSI, SMB, NFS and even a mention of apparently boutique protocol AoE. Use cases, pro’s and cons as well as technical specifics are discussed. This weeks expert guests are Stephen Foskett and Elias Khnaser, two guys with a ton of storage experience

In this episode of the Infosmack Deep Dive podcast, hosts Nigel Poulton and Rick Vanover are joined by Ray Lucchesi and Greg Schulz. If there is anything about the storage industry that Ray and Greg don’t know, then its not worth knowing.  These guys are like walking talking Wikipedias of the storage world, and Nigel and Rick burrow into their vast brains. In this shows the guys talk about pretty much anything they want, getting pretty technical at times.  Some topics include – Commodity vs Custom Intel vs ASIC’s and FPGA’s Ethernet vs Infiniband Linux vs Windows NFS vs SMB A fair amount of time is spent talking about storage startup Kaminario and how they have built a high performance DRAM and NAND flash based storage array out of essentially commodity hardware (they don’t design of fab any hardware of their own). They also talk about differences between storage and memory and whether we will ever see a day when we do away with storage as we know it today (LUN, SCSI..).  They even get in to some of the weeds of Shingled recording techniques for disk drives. As promised during the show, a link to some bedtime reading on the topic of Shingled recording - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/09/27/sw_tdmr/ Links to the hosts and guests websites - Nigel Poulton – http://nigelpoulton.com Rick Vanover – http://rickatron.us Ray Lucchesi - http://silvertonconsulting.com/blog/ Greg Schulz - http://storageioblog.com

In this week’s Deep Dive episode Rick (aka 'the Rickatron') is outnumbered 3:1 by Brits as the infrastructure inquisitors turn the spotlight on to Cisco UCS. The static at the opening is not your internet connection - it's the beginning of an Infosmack sci-fi theater (theatre?) segment where Nigel and the Rickatron gather intelligence from the planet Zircon on the mystical Cisco UCS platform. Nigel claims this was inspired by comments from Leo Apotheker (CEO of HP) who once said that he had never seen a Cisco UCS and that if Cisco were selling any it must be on planet Zircon. This opening sets a new water mark of some sort. High or low? We'd appreciate your comments on twitter. Joining Nigel and Rick this week are two independent practitioners of UCS; Chris Dearden and David Owen Topics covered in this Deep Dive include: Service profiles Extended memory Innovation and keeping ahead What is different about Cisco UCS and is it really game changing Why Cisco is in the server market At the end of the show both Rick’s and Nigel’s interest is stirred but neither are necessarily convinced, and the door is left wide open for further exploration. Thoughts, comments and feedback welcome – @nigelpoulton @rickvanover @infosmac