Packet Pushers - Datanauts

Consulting seems like a dark art. Pay someone a lot of money to sell you something that is also...a lot of money. And then maybe pay them even more money to implement the solution. The Datanauts talk about how to maximize an investment in consulting.

Join the Datanauts as they explore Apache Mesos, an open-source data center OS that abstracts compute, storage, and network to make it easier for applications to share resources.

The Datanauts and Howard Marks serve up a buffet of storage topics, including the pros and cons of all-flash and hybrid arrays, the ins and outs of cloud and object storage, and what's up with Virtual Volumes.

The Datanauts explore the leaf-spine network architecture and examine how it works, how it differs from the traditional 3-tier design, and why it's a good fit for modern data centers.

The Datanauts look at how automation improves efficiency and breaks down silos. They discuss tools including Puppet, Chef, and PowerShell, and suggest how to get started with automation in your organization.

Today, networks extend into hypervisors via vSwitches. Network engineers ignore vSwitches at their peril. At the same time, virtualization engineers ignore the physical network at theirs. Let s work together to configure a vSwitch as good as it can be.

In this Datanauts episode, Chris and Ethan walk through performance troubleshooting from virtualization and network perspectives, and share tips for troubleshooting across silos.

While cruising in our Galaxy-class starship to another data center, we ve hit a storage scaling issue. There s no way to add any more performance to our antimatter storage array! The chief engineer suggests that we perform a saucer separation to decouple capacity from performance, which will allow us to scale the two requirements individually. Release the docking latches, and let s hope this maneuver can save us! Satyam Vaghani of PernixData joins the Datanauts for this discussion of decoupled storage.

New IPv4 address space is almost gone from the global market. Organizations need to introduce IPv6 into their environments to ensure uninterrupted business operations with the rest of the world. Yet, implementing IPv6 is not as simple as firing up a routing scheme. How does an organization know if it s ready? Special guest Ed Horley joins the Datanauts in this discussion.

The Datanauts journey into storage with guest Marc Farley to talk all-flash arrays, the future of Fibre Channel, the sorry state of storage management tools, and startups and incumbents to keep an eye on.

Chris Wahl and Ethan Banks bust IT silos by walking through a service request at a fictional corporation. They outline the steps required from network and server domains, providing context to help each group understand what the other is trying to accomplish. The result? A more effective team.

OpenStack is an open source platform for creating cloud services. Special guest Eric Wright, who leads the Toronto VMUG and Virtual Design Master competition, joins Chris Wahl and Ethan Banks to bring some clarity to this cloudy topic.

Converged infrastructure integrates discrete components, such as compute and storage, along with orchestration software, into a package that s simple to deploy and certified to interoperate. Join Chris Wahl, Ethan Banks, and special guest Stu Miniman as they drill into the origins and benefits of converged infrastructure, how it differentiates from hyperconverged systems, and how the convergence trend will affect IT roles.

A brand new podcast -- Datanauts -- has launched! Here's the summary of episode 1. The latest form factor, hyper-converged infrastructure, seems to be storming through the data center market like a thundering donkey with a rainbow laser cannon. Join the Datanauts as they pick apart the pros and cons of hyper-converged, ramble on about architecture and design challenges, and shine a piercing light into a dark and murky corner of the next generation data center!