Storage Unpacked Podcast

In this week’s episode, Martin and Chris discuss Computational Storage with Tong Zhang, Chief Scientist and co-founder at ScaleFlux. Computational Storage devices add value to traditional NAND by offloading data processes directly onto the storage media. ScaleFlux offers two families of CSDs, including the CSD 2000 series, which implements inline data compression to improve endurance and logical device capacity. In this conversation, Tong covers the benefits of using CSDs as well as some of the challenges of implementation. It’s likely we will se CSDs being used for AI/Analytics pre-processing, especially in the public cloud. More information on ScaleFlux can be found at https://www.scaleflux.com/ with further technical details of Computational Storage on the SNIA Website. Elapsed Time: 00:43:39 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:04:00 – What is the ScaleFlux view of Computational Storage?* 00:06:45 – What will the drivers of Computational Storage be?* 00:08:40 – Compression can increase endurance and capacity* 00:11:00 – The CSD2000 does inline compression/decompression in FPGA* 00:13:05 – Why aren’t all vendors doing inline compression?* 00:14:45 – Databases make a good use case for CSD* 00:17:10 – Compression can be 2:1 or as high as 5:1, depending on data* 00:20:15 – SSDs do get hot!* 00:21:30 – FPGAs will be replaced by ASICs in the future products* 00:23:00 – AI/Analytics is a big target for Computational Storage* 00:25:00 – Advanced functionality may require APIs* 00:27:00 – NVMe will be used as a protocol to push code to CS drives* 00:30:20 – Compute and storage are going to have to work closer together* 00:35:00 – Computational Storage adoption will be evolutionary* 00:38:00 – How will RAID/erasure coding be affected with CS?* 00:40:20 – ScaleFlux will support PCIe-4/5 and possibly PLC NAND* 00:43:00 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #190 – NVIDIA BlueField SmartNICs and DPUs* #180 – SmartNICs – Pliops Storage Processor* #177 – SmartNICs and Project Monterey* #96 – Discussing SmartNICs and Storage with Rob Davis from Mellanox Copyright (c) 2016-2021 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #8vwo.

This week, Chris and Martin are talking to a podcast repeat offender, Subbiah Sundaram, VP of Products at HYCU. HYCU has recently announced the availability of Protégé for Microsoft Office 365, delivered as SaaS or Backup as a Service (BaaS). This continues an expansion of the HYCU and Protégé backup offerings that started with Nutanix data protection and has expanded past on-premises virtualisation to encompass the public cloud and now SaaS. The conversation covers a wide range of topics relating SaaS and data protection, including the way in which services are implemented via APIs provided by SaaS vendors. With unlimited data storage, SaaS backup offers real opportunities for data mining and analysis. To learn more about Protégé for Office 365, follow the link to https://www.hycu.com/tryhycu/. You can find more details on the support for Office 365 in the press release – here. Elapsed Time: 00:47:15 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:03:00 – Vendors do not back up your SaaS service (for you)* 00:04:45 – Office365 is a multitude of separate services* 00:09:00 – Where does HYCU BaaS reside?* 00:10:00 – The charging model for BaaS is different to on-premises offerings* 00:11:25 – How does the customer monitor success/failure in SaaS offerings?* 00:17:00 – Some businesses are happy with self-restore, others are not!* 00:18:30 – What features do SaaS vendors offer to do backup?* 00:20:00 – SaaS API users need to rethink how their services are built* 00:22:00 – Centralised credentials management is key to delivering SaaS* 00:25:50 – How can unlimited storage be justified and what does it mean?* 00:29:00 – Can unlimited storage be abused?* 00:31:50 – Can unlimited be used as deliberately limited (active deletion)?00:35:50 – Is BaaS a perfect tool for e-discovery?* 00:42:55 – How will HYCU bring in the existing non-SaaS service together with SaaS?* 00:44:20 – The Public Cloud is the right place to doing backup analytics* 00:45:30 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #165 – Homogeneous Data Protection with HYCU* #73 – HYCU – Data Protection for Hyper-Converged Infrastructure* HYCU Announces GA of HYCU for Azure* Backup os Your Responsibility – Even in Public Cloud Copyright (c) 2016-2021 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #tv7t.

This week, Chris and Martin chat to long-time friend and Kubernetes legend, Nigel Poulton. Nigel is well-known in the industry for producing training courses and books on Kubernetes, although was once a storage person in a previous life. The aim of this podcast episode is to examine how storage and Kubernetes come together. However, we start by asking Nigel to explain his pivot to containers and now the Kubernetes ecosystem. This discussion touches on some interesting aspects of how persistent storage and Kubernetes should be managed together, which today is via the CSI (Container Storage Interface). Is this plugin a long-term solution for data mobility? We also manage to get an obligatory mainframe reference into the conversation. Sadly we didn’t get through all of our discussion topics in this long-running episode, so Nigel will be back later in the year to continue the conversation. You can find more on Kubernetes, over at Nigel’s Website: https://nigelpoulton.com/ Elapsed Time: 00:53:08 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:01:00 – Nigel is looking for things to “read”* 00:05:10 – Why did Nigel pivot to Kubernetes?* 00:07:50 – Is Kubernetes the future of containers?* 00:09:55 – Kubernetes needs to avoid the OpenStack risk* 00:13:15 – Are we building permanent or temporary cluster?* 00:17:40 – Why did AWS open source EKS?* 00:22:30 – Shouldn’t we talk about storage now?* 00:25:40 – Networking is just “pass the parcel” (hot potato)* 00:28:00 – Customers should be using CSI-supported storage* 00:32:00 – Nigel believes data mobility should be an application responsibility* 00:35:10 – Obligatory mainframe reference (DFSMS)* 00:39:20 – How should autoscaling work for storage and Kubernetes?* 00:42:20 – Why is QoS in storage not seen more frequently?* 00:49:00 – Nigel is into muscle cars* 00:51:00 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #53 – Persistent Storage and Kubernetes with Evan Powell* #151 – Introduction to StorageOS v2.0* #145 – Anthos Ready Storage for the Enterprise* #129 – Choices for Persistent Container Storage with Niraj Tolia* Will We Care About Kubernetes in 2025? Nigel’s Bio Nigel’s a technology geek, author of three utterly mind-blowing and life-changing books, and creator of weapons-grade Kubernetes training videos (his words not ours). Copyright (c) 2016-2021 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #lx84.

This week, Chris and Martin are in discussion with Cathy Southwick, CIO at Pure Storage. The topic of conversation is the results of a CIO survey undertaken by Pure to look back at the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic and how customers have changed their IT strategies. The discussion covers how Pure Storage has adapted to the lack of in-person site visits and adapting to remote installation and operations. Digital transformation projects have continued, while customers have adapted their priorities and goals to align with the challenges presented by COVID-19. Public cloud has been an easy target for migrations. Customers are now looking at how best to rebalance workloads between on-premises and the public cloud as companies stabilise and re-adjust to a COVID-compliant way of working. You can find Cathy’s LinkedIn article and the results of the survey here – https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-we-can-learn-from-cios-covid-19s-impact-cathleen-southwick/ Elapsed Time: 00:32:51 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:00:30 – Martin gets trolled by Google Maps! * 00:03:30 – How has Pure and their customers managed the Pandemic? * 00:06:00 – How has data centre access being managed? * 00:09:00 – Digital transformation projects have continued to be delivered * 00:14:00 – Automation is top of the priorities, with security and customer experience * 00:16:30 – Employee well-being figured highly * 00:17:30 – How have customers adopted the cloud?  Tactical or Strategic? * 00:21:00 – FinOps – Financial operations for cloud will be the dream next job 00:24:00 – Will Cloud drive the “as a service” models? * 00:26:10 – The Portworx acquisition indicates a pivot towards data and data mobility * 00:28:35 – EMC – Where Information Lives – describes the future for storage companies * 00:30:40 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #152 – Post Pandemic Storage Efficiencies* #149 – Coronavirus 2.0* #146 – Coronavirus and Impacts on the Technology Industry* #185 – Pure-as-a-Service 2.0 Cathy’s Bio Cathy Southwick joined Pure Storage in 2018 as Chief Information Officer. In this role, she leads Pure’s global IT strategy and advances the company’s operations through the delivery of next-generation technology capabilities and systems. Cathy is an accomplished leader with over 20 years of experience defining and executing forward-looking IT strategies. Prior to Pure, Cathy held leadership positions at AT&T, including Vice President, Technology Engineering and Vice President, Cloud Planning & Engineering. During her tenure at AT&T, Cathy led the planning and execution of IT strategies from the Core Network, IT application modernisation, and the IT cloud. Before joining AT&T, Cathy spent 11 years at Viking Freight System (now owned by FedEx) where she held escalating leadership positions in IT architecture and planning, software development, merger integration, strategic planning, human resources management, procurement, project/portfolio management, and process re-engineering.

This week, Chris and Martin chat to Kevin Deierling, SVP of Marketing for Networking Products at NVIDIA. SmartNICs and DPUs (Data Processing Units) are starting to become mainstream as application use-cases such as AI and analytics drive a need for greater data throughput and performance. Kevin explains the design and thinking behind BlueField, NVIDIA’s family of DPU products that combine offloaded network, storage and security functionality. Elapsed Time: 00:47:36 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:01:30 – We’re not a networking podcast!* 00:02:15 – Why will we need DPUs and SmartNICs?* 00:04:30 – Von Neumann is diverging* 00:06:50 – What is the BlueField architecture?* 00:08:45 – A DPU could act as a storage array controller* 00:11:30 – Storage DPUs make devices appear local* 00:13:00 – DPUs enable efficient bare-metal server deployments* 00:15:00 – Storage, networking & security use around 30% of traditional cores* 00:16:00 – Does a DPU represent better or worse performance than CPU?* 00:20:15 – NVIDIA DPUs emulate existing devices, reducing application changes* 00:25:00 – Where does the outboard management take place?* 00:26:00 – DOCA is the application framework for DPUs* 00:28:00 – BlueField 2X combines GPU and DPU on the same card* 00:31:40 – DPUs enable the real-time nature of data processing* 00:35:40 – Mainframe reference!* 00:38:00 – Where will initial adoption take place?* 00:40:00 – How does the use of SmartNICs affect TCO?* 00:45:10 – The future is 1000x improvement with BlueField 4* 00:46:00 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #96 – Discussing SmartNICs and Storage with Rob Davis from Mellanox* #177 – SmartNICs and Project Monterey* #180 – SmartNICs – Pliops Storage Processor* VMware Project Monterey – First Impressions* Fixing the x86 Problem Copyright (c) 2016-2021 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #ky1r.

This week, Chris and Martin debate the success of software-defined storage or SDS. Over the past 10-15 years, storage systems have evolved into a wide range of software solutions, appliances and cloud-based products. What has driven this move to focus entirely on software and what will the next stage of evolution be? Are we in a position where everything is based on software, in some form? This discussion also touches on consumption models. Has SDS provided the catalyst for vendors to offer better subscription licences and consumption models? Is the writing on the wall for the traditional storage array? Elapsed Time: 00:40:51 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:00:55 – Intel H10 recap* 00:01:43 – Siri interrupts!* 00:03:34 – Has SDS been a quiet success?* 00:05:20 – The five phases of SDS evolution* 00:07:08 – What compatibility issues exist?* 00:07:40 – Phase 2 – bespoke SDS solutions* 00:10:14 – Phase 4 – Infrastructure abstraction* 00:11:50 – Phase 5 – Partnered solutions* 00:13:00 – Is it possible to defined SDS today?* 00:14:21 – PowerStore is SDS (not sold like that)* 00:15:20 – Some SDS packaging is a commercial decision* 00:17:00 – Many storage solutions will run as virtual & cloud instances* 00:19:00 – SDS has been around for many years in different forms* 00:21:30 – Is high-end storage (like PowerMax) SDS?* 00:23:10 – Where is SDS challenged?* 00:26:01 – Is Open Source the biggest challenger to commercial storage?* 00:29:39 – Where will SDS go in the future? * 00:30:04 – Will SmartNICs affect the development of SDS?* 00:32:30 – Do purchasing models need to change for SDS?* 00:36:00 – Vendors may need to rewrite their software* 00:37:00 – Does SDS need to be more “data aware”?* 00:39:00 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #156 – Introduction to Hammerspace* #148 – Unpacking HPE’s Storage Strategy* #141 – Building Storage Systems of the Future* Storage Predictions for 2021 and Beyond (Part III – SDS)* Will TCO Drive Software Defined Storage?* ScaleIO Becomes Software Defined on Hardware Vendors & products referenced in this podcast: Nexenta, OpenFiler, FreeNAS/TrueNAS, VMware, NetApp, Isilon, HPE (Primera & 3PAR), Dell PowerStore, Pure StorageCeph, OpenEBS, Rook, Weka, StorageOS, Portworx, Hedvig, Hammerspace, StoreONE, Backblaze, Wasabi, AWS S3,LizardFS, Gluster, GPFS, Spectrum Scale, SVC, PowerMax, Hitachi, Nimble Storage, Red Hat, NVIDIA, Komprise, Qumulo Copyright (c) 2016-2021 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #ugbm.

This week, Chris and Martin dig deeper into the adoption of Intel Optane technology in both the consumer and enterprise markets. Optane is a new persistent memory technology that offers greater performance and lower latency compared to NAND flash, but currently is more expensive and offers smaller capacity devices. As Optane becomes more prevalent in both markets, how is it being adopted and what needs to change to increase adoption levels? Note: Since recording, Chris has tried out the Intel H10 device and the results were disappointing. Read more here. Elapsed Time: 00:31:49 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:01:20 – Is Optane poised for data centre and consumer dominance?* 00:02:20 – What are the Optane consumption forms?* 00:03:38 – How can Optane be used at home?* 00:06:10 – Could Optane offer “instant on”?* 00:07:05 – How does H10 manage the Optane/QLC cache?* 00:08:10 – Optane offers benefits for home video editing* 00:10:22 – Optane is 16x more expensive than QLC* 00:10:40 – Could FuzeDrive be a better solution to build a hybrid drive?* 00:12:00 – A home PC can offer greater performance than 10-year old arrays* 00:13:45 – Will we use M.2 in the data centre (or U.2)?* 00:14:00 – Where is Optane being used in the data centre?* 00:16:25 – Operating System support for Optane is already here* 00:17:44 – Will Open Source databases be first to exploit Optane* 00:19:28 – Optane is optimised for byte-level addressing* 00:22:08 – Optane adoption is still tactical, like SSDs* 00:22:50 – How would containers and Optane work?* 00:26:40 – Intel doesn’t appear to sell raw Optane chips* 00:28:35 – Would Martin consider Optane for home?* 00:30:40 – Wrap Up Vendors mentioned in this podcast: StorONE, VAST Data, Pure Storage, 3PAR/HPE, Vexata, MemVerge, IBM, Western Digital, Infinidat, StorageOS, Portworx. Related Podcasts & Blogs * Intel H10 Hybrid Optane M.2 SSD is a Disappointment* When Will Optane SSDs Replace NAND Flash?* What is Intel Optane?* FlashArray//X Gets Optane Acceleration with DirectMemory* HPE Demos 3PAR with Intel Optane (3D-XPoint)* #174 – Introduction to Zoned Storage with Phil Bullinger* #171 – Exploiting Persistent Memory with MemVerge* #184 – MCAS – Memory Centric Active Storage Copyright (c) 2016-2021 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #kehf.

This week, Martin and the two Chris’s conclude their end of year discussions. This episode covers “Turkeys” of 2020, Missing in Action companies and those technologies that should be put into Storage Room 101. These are the products we never want to see darken our doors again. Finally, the team finish on a discussion of what to expect in 2021. And for your delight, here are some Hitachi Mr T videos: * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tW1S2tsxVHg* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boZyHDJ5qCs Elapsed Time: 00:49:54 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:01:00 – What are the Turkeys of the Year?* 00:01:40 – Is secondary data re-use a turkey?* 00:05:00 – Is Snowflake offering real data analytics?* 00:07:50 – We explain ETL processes* 00:12:00 – Teradata did analytics 30 years ago* 00:12:40 – Internet of Things – another turkey?* 00:15:00 – We said goodbye to Stellus, Datrium, Violin* 00:16:40 – Storage buyers’ remorse?* 00:19:00 – Is Optane aimed at being the AMD killer?* 00:24:00 – Missing in action – Formulus Black?* 00:26:00 – Whatever happened to Memristors?* 00:27:00 – It’s time for Storage Room 101!* 00:30:00 – Viruses create holes in floppy disks!* 00:32:00 – What is the point of DNA storage?* 00:36:50 – Johnny Mnemonic!* 00:37:00 – Optical drives – never again!* 00:39:20 – Who still uses bare metal recovery?* 00:41:10 – What will 2021 look like?* 00:43:00 – HAMR disks will appear in 2021* 00:46:00 – PLC NAND will appear in 2021* 00:48:30 – What won’t we see the end of in 2021?* 00:49:00 – Wrap Up Vendors mentioned in this podcast – Delphix, Actifio, Catalogic, Cohesity, Snowflake, Rubrik, HYCU, IBM, Veritas, Commvault, Stellus Technologies, Datrium, Violin Systems, StorCentric, Vexata, Retrospect, Kaseya, DDN, Tintri, EMC, Mozy, Iomega, NetApp, Storwize, Pure Storage, Intel, AMD, Micron, Formulus Black, InfiniteIO, Hammerspace Related Podcasts & Blogs * #186 – End of the Year Show 2020 – Part One

This week, Martin and the two Chris’s look back at 2020 for the highlights and lowlights of the storage industry. What’s been hyped and what’s been a success? Will we be travelling in 2021 and what impact has the lockdown had on 2020 sales? This episode is the first of a two parter over the next couple of weeks before we close down for the Christmas period. Elapsed Time: 00:43:10 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:00:56 – Chris has not been to China * 00:01:55 – Chris M is on a health kick! * 00:02:48 – Gartner analysts haven’t moved * 00:04:05 – Chris M sees all-flash arrays as a disappointment * 00:05:20 – Sales has had a tough year * 00:07:00 – What about conferences? * 00:08:11 – Chris would consider ExCeL – if it wasn’t closed * 00:10:15 – Is it the end for influencers and big conferences? * 00:12:00 – Just call me Mr Chips! * 00:13:00 – The cloud is great – apart from AWS us-east-1! * 00:14:30 – What happened with fund raising in 2020? * 00:17:30 – How was Zerto funded this year? * 00:21:30 – How did the Kasten/Veeam acquisition work? * 00:24:50 – Veeam must be an IPO target at some point * 00:27:00 – NASUNI could be an IPO target too * 00:28:00 – Jensen likes leather jackets and no socks * 00:29:00 – Datrium lives on in VMware 00:29:35 – CloudJumper or CloudSweater? * 00:31:50 – Whatever happened to Stellus? * 00:33:00 – Remember Whiptail? * 00:34:00 – What tech has been over-hyped in 2020? * 00:41:00 – NVMe Ethernet drives are coming * 00:42:40 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #146 – Coronavirus and Impacts on the Technology Industry* #149 – Coronavirus 2.0 Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #9d7j.

This week Chris and Martin talk to Rob Walters, GM for Pure-as-a-Service at Pure Storage. The company has recently announced upgrades and expansion of the “as-a-service” model, formerly known as Evergreen storage. The name change and the widening of the portfolio represents an opportunity for customers to see transparent pricing and a greater depth of service offerings. In this sponsored episode, we review the origins of the service and look at how that has evolved into the capability for customers to consume Pure block and file products as true services. We discuss the challenges in implementation, that are mitigated through customer service and data collections from Pure1. You can learn more about Pure-as-a-Service here – https://www.purestorage.com/products/staas/pure-as-a-service.html and more on the announcement with the press release here – https://www.purestorage.com/company/newsroom/press-releases/pure-expands-pure-as-a-service-offerings.html Architecting IT and Storage Unpacked coverage of Pure Storage is available through the Pure Storage Microsite. Elapsed Time: 00:35:20 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:01:50 – What is Pure as a Service? * 00:03:00 – What is the demand for storage as a service? * 00:04:55 – How much of “as a service” is being is being driven by Public Cloud? * 00:06:55 – Is opex rather than capex driving service demand? * 00:08:20 – The initial offering was Evergreen Storage Service (ES2) 00:10:00 – What are the details of the offering? * 00:11:30 – Minimum 50TiB and 12 months * 00:12:40 – Customers need to evaluate and understand their requirements * 00:15:00 – PaaS aims to “rightsize” customer requirements * 00:18:00 – Pure1 is an essential component to delivering service offerings * 00:19:44 – How are mixed service levels delivered? * 00:21:30 – How do operational processes change to manage the hardware? * 00:24:20 – Are Pure publishing pricing? * 00:26:30 – How hard is it to find out the details of what a vendor charges for storage? * 00:28:00 – What happens if SLA guarantees aren’t met? * 00:31:00 – Datacentre deployment needs planning * 00:34:00 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * Pure Storage Microsite* Democratising Enterprise Storage Pricing* #118 – Pure Accelerate 2019 with Patrick Smith Rob’s Bio Rob Walters joined Pure in 2019 to lead the new Storage as a Service (StaaS) business unit, responsible for defining strategy and establishing a high-growth new business portfolio. In a career spanning more than 20 years, Rob has worked in Enterprise IT and built products and services for both SMB and Enterprise that span systems and application management, managed services, and the public cloud. Prior to Pure, Rob spent four years at Amazon as General Manager of Search Services for AWS, responsible for the introduction and scaling of Amazon Elasticsearch Service, as well as Amazon CloudSearch. In this role,

This week, Chris and Martin talk to Daniel Waddington, Principal Research Staff Member in the Global Storage Research Group at IBM Research. Daniel is developing MCAS – Memory Centric Active Storage – a high-performance key-value store designed for persistent memory. The aim is to create a platform that can be used to bring storage and compute closer together. Persistent memory has been a regular topic on Storage Unpacked (see related podcasts below) and we’re always interested to understand exactly how it can be fully exploited in the enterprise. PMEM offers byte-level addressing and is particularly suitable for sparse workloads. It’s hoped that MCAS can fully utilise the unique nature of persistent memory and find uses in traditional storage platforms and the public cloud. To learn more, check out the MCAS repository on GitHub. If you’re interested in learning more about the Computer History Museum we discussed at the top of the recording – here’s their website. Elapsed Time: 00:36:41 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:02:20 – How tall is a 3380? * 00:03:20 – What is MCAS? * 00:05:20 – MCAS uses persistent memory DIMMs using Intel Optane * 00:06:30 – Optane offers much lower I/O granularity – byte addressable * 00:07:42 – Intel Optane provides much more deterministic I/O latency * 00:08:38 – Has Optane been fully exploited in its current form? * 00:11:00 – Could Arm be used with persistent memory? * 00:11:34 – MCAS – deeper dive * 00:12:30 – MCAS will enable “push down” operations * 00:14:15 – MCAS could be used to help eliminate battery backup * 00:19:00 – How will CXL and other remote memory technologies help? * 00:21:30 – Computing architectures are evolving * 00:23:00 – Disaggregation is enabled via technologies like CXL * 00:24:33 – How long will it be before MCAS is available? * 00:26:23 – Exactly how would “push down” work? * 00:31:00 – MCAS will enable technologies like Computational Storage * 00:34:02 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #171 – Exploiting Persistent Memory with MemVerge* #169 – In-Memory Computing and Apache Ignite* #36 – The Persistence of Memory with Rob Peglar Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #wxje.

This week Chris and Martin take the opportunity to grill (not broil) Matt Starr from Spectralogic to learn everything about magnetic tape. This episode came out of a discussion with Chris Mellor (episode #176) in which we asked the question why tape media doesn’t wear out. The answer is obviously within the podcast so you’ll need to listen to find out! In this conversation, the team look back at the evolution of tape but more importantly what we can expect in the future. Magnetic tape is more of an archive offering these days (although ransomware has made it more popular for air-gapping backups). It seems tape has a long future as the lowest cost storage medium with lots of innovations still to come. You can learn more about Spectra Logic over at https://spectralogic.com/. The featured image for this episode is a single 44-cabinet tape library as mentioned in the podcast that was taken at a Spectra Logic event in 2013. Elapsed Time: 00:35:47 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:02:20 – A brief history of magnetic tape* 00:03:00 – Cartridges introduced the ability for automation * 00:05:50 – AT&T test pings and automated tape loading * 00:07:25 – LTO and MagStar are the leading tape formats today * 00:08:00 – What is helical scan, serpentine and linear? * 00:09:30 – Tape damage is an ongoing issue * 00:10:00 – ECC on tape is much better than disk * 00:13:40 – What size are tape heads and how do they fly? * 00:18:51 – What are the current tape technologies? * 00:20:00 – IBM can test features on Jaguar before considering LTO * 00:21:50 – Disk took over the backup mantle from tape * 00:23:40 – Ransomware makes tape more applicable for backup * 00:25:50 – Tape offers the cost-effective location for data * 00:28:00 – Tape users are decreasing but storing more data * 00:29:50 – What is the future for tape? * 00:30:28 – Time to first byte will be important to improve * 00:33:00 – Object to Tape is on the horizon Related Podcasts & Blogs * #176 – Opinionated Storage Opinions with Chris Mellor* Garbage Collection #006 – LTO-8 and the Future of Tape* It’s Time for Hard Drives to Join Tape in the Archive Tier Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #zdn9.

This week, Chris and Martin chat to Evan Weaver, CTO and co-founder at Fauna. The company has developed a database as a service, available simply through a globally available API. Fauna calls the platform “client serverless”. How can a database be made globally available and still guarantee performance, resiliency and most important, data consistency? Of course, you will need to listen to find out. As we learn in this podcast, a database accessible via API provides the ability to write applications that talk directly to the platform, with application use cases for mobile and IoT. Evan references the Calvin algorithm. A detailed paper can be found here. More information on Google Spanner is available through this link. Google Percolator is documented here. Finally, here’s a link to an article that discusses the idea of the Sysplex timer on the mainframe, a feature from 1990, that still remains important today. If you’d like to try FaunaDB for yourself, get over to https://fauna.com/ and sign up. Elapsed Time: 00:35:28 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros* 00:02:30 – We’re seeing a return to new “client server”* 00:03:37 – Database users could be devices, not humans* 00:05:30 – We’ve gone full circle to needing powerful backends * 00:07:09 – Fauna developed out of the need to scale Twitter* 00:09:00 – How does FaunaDB manage typical operational challenges?* 00:11:07 – Single clock – mainframe parallel Sysplex* 00:13:48 – Technology reinvents itself* 00:15:07 – What is CALVIN?* 00:19:00 – Web APIs aren’t long-running transactions* 00:23:00 – Partitioning by geography is the typical way to maintain performance* 00:24:21 – What are the use cases for Fauna?* 00:27:00 – How are the operational challenges addressed?* 00:30:00 – Can users try FaunaDB? * 00:33:37 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #140 – Introduction to Document-Orientated Databases* #147 – Introduction to Key Value Stores and Redis* Databases are the next battleground for public cloud Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #ecko.

This week Chris and Martin debate the future of on-premises storage infrastructure companies in light of announcements and events from IBM, Dell and NetApp. IBM is splitting in two, while Dell and NetApp have recently held virtual versions of their annual conferences. Is the on-premises infrastructure business shrinking and becoming too low-margin to be worthwhile? Martin mentions Lou Gerstner’s book – linked here – Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? The Simpson’s episode where Mr Burns runs for Governor is “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish” – without a doubt a classic. Martin mentions Fabric Pools – here’s a link to the documentation. Elapsed Time: 00:36:09 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:02:00 – What’s the future of the infrastructure business? * 00:03:05 – IBM splitting into two companies * 00:06:00 – IBM mainframe storage will stay in IBM? * 00:08:40 – Mainframe retained for z/Linux? * 00:10:00 – IBM continually reinvents itself * 00:11:00 – Where does IBM Research go? * 00:13:10 – What was the value of DTW? * 00:14:40 – So Mr Burns, why are you so popular? * 00:16:40 – Apex – Capex with a silent C? * 00:18:15 – Is “as a service” a real infrastructure business model? * 00:19:30 – Violin Systems acquired by StorCentric * 00:20:40 – Could the IBM spinout be acquired? * 00:21:50 – NetApp is morphing into a cloud business * 00:24:55 – Project Astra – NetApp wants to be cloud glue * 00:26:40 – Is cloud storage enough to re-invent NetApp? * 00:28:30 – Everyone is “service washing” their product lines * 00:29:15 – Recurring revenue is the holy grail * 00:31:50 – Buying MIPS is the future! * 00:32:35 – As-a-service storage needs to be operationally efficient * 00:35:25 – Wrap Up Related Podcasts & Blogs * #107 – Should IBM Quit the Storage Business?* #65 – Challenges in Managing Unstructured Data* #130 – Making Money in the Storage Business Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #blot.

This week Chris and Martin chat to Steve Fingerhut, CMO at Pliops. Pliops has developed a “Storage Processor” in the form factor of an AIC (add-in card) that offloads storage functions from application software. This discussion looks at why the technology is needed and how Pliops has implemented the solution to drop into an existing server. The Pliops Storage Processor acts as a high-speed key-value store, implementing in the first instance features such as data compression. As a hardware accelerator, the technology reduces CPU core overhead, saves on storage and can reduce application licensing costs. One interesting factor is the implementation of this hardware compared to other SmartNICs, in that the data path remains within the server itself. You can find out more at https://pliops.com/ Elapsed Time: 00:34:04 Timeline * 00:00:00 – Intros * 00:01:30 – What is the need for SmartNICs? * 00:04:00 – The gap is now flash/CPU not SSD/HDD * 00:07:00 – Pliops accelerates workloads within the server * 00:08:55 – Offload processing is not a new thing * 00:10:30 – Pliops presents as a block device * 00:14:40 – What happens with resiliency/redundancy? * 00:17:00 – How are benefits of Pliops quantified? * 00:21:00 – Offload can save application licensing costs * 00:22:24 – Right-sizing servers is hard * 00:25:40 – Is the product shipping? * 00:28:45 – hardware is more relevant again * 00:31:00 – How will composable affect these solutions? * 00:32:53 – Wrap up Related Podcasts & Blogs * VMware Project Monterey – First Impressions* Fixing the x86 Problem* #177 – SmartNICs and Project Monterey Copyright (c) 2016-2020 Storage Unpacked. No reproduction or re-use without permission. Podcast episode #e62o.