At Storage Field Day, IBM presented on their SpectrumProtect Plus, their “SLA-based data protection”. Dan Frith breaks down what this means, essentially it’s software that supports the ability to meet SLAs through configuration-level service level objectives. While Dan may take issue that this isn’t really “SLA-based”, he thinks it shows that IBM is working to provide modern data protection solutions for their customers.
Storage Field Day 15 – (Fairly) Full Disclosure
We always appreciate it when Dan Frith hops on a plane to travel around the world to attend Storage Field Day. He was at our event last week, and declared it a “great trip.” Make sure to catch up on all our video of the presentations if you missed any of the sessions Dan sat in on. In this post, Dan discloses anything he received at the event.
Storage Field Day 15 – Day 0
Dan Frith crossed the world from his native Australia to join Storage Field Day this week in Silicon Valley. Be sure to follow Dan’s blog and twitter while you’re watching the live stream, and join in the conversation with #SFD15.
Storage Field Day – I’ll Be At Storage Field Day 15
Dan Frith will be traveling from Australia into the land of yesterday to attend Storage Field Day in Silicon Valley next month. The event has a good mix of new and familiar companies for Dan. He’s sure to have up some quality coverage soon after the event, stay tuned!
E8 Storage Announces Software-only Offering
Dan Frith heard from E8 Storage at Storage Field Day last year. The company recently announced an exciting new feature, the launch of E8 Storage Software that can run across a range of qualified commodity hardware. This lets you connect up to 96 host servers to a single E8 Storage Controller. While E8 has no plans to exit the hardware market, Dan thinks the shift to embrace a more software centric approach is indicative of larger industry trends.
Cloudian Announces HyperFile, Makes Object Better
If you’re interested in 840TB of object storage in 4RU with strict S3 compliance, than Cloudian’s new HyperStore 4000 appliance might be for you. Dan Frith got a look at it at Storage Field Day last month. He found the addition of “converged access” makes it interesting for anyone that needs support for file and object storage in the data center.
Elastifile Add More Elasticity To Their Offering
After seeing them at Storage Field Day earlier this year, Dan Frith shares his experience with recent updates from Elastifile. The company offers a Cross-cloud Data Fabric to solve the typical data management problems of hybrid-cloud deployments. Dan found the solution flexible, with notable features like encryption at rest coming soon.
Primary Data – Seeing the Future
As 2017 comes to a close, there’s the inevitable glut of predictions as to what’s in store for the next year. IT is no exception to this, and Dan Frith entertains some from Primary Data. Dan saw the company present at Storage Field Day earlier this year, and looks at their predictions for what 2018 will bring for software-defined storage and HCI.
X-IO Announces ISE 900 Series G4
X-IO released their ISE 900 Series G4, an upgraded all-flash array. The new product packages in ISE hardware and software features, an now adds individual hot-swappable drives and Performance-Optimized Deduplication. Dan Frith finds it a compelling product, and appreciates X-IO positioning it as offering a feature rich AFA for a good price.
Have Axellio Edge, Will Travel
Dan Frith gives a look at X-IO’s Portable Axellio Edge Computing System, which is designed to allow for easily transferring edge computing data via a luggable form factor. This separates compute resources into a large hard case for checking on a flight, with NVMe drives in a smaller carry-on case. It may not be the easiest way to travel, but sometimes using old fashioned sneakernet is the most secure way to move your data.
Kingston’s NVMe Line-up Is The Life Of The Party
At Kingston’s Tech Field Day Extra presentation from VMworld, they showed off what the company is doing with NVMe. They reminded the delegates that NVMe isn’t a new type of media, but rather a protocol, one with radical simpler calls than something like SATA. Dan Frith was impressed by the speeds and various form factors the versatile protocol inhabits.
Druva Is Useful, And Modern
Druva recently previewed their Druva Cloud Platform at a Tech Field Day Extra presentation from VMworld. Dan Frith thinks it’s an interesting combination of their Phoenix and inSync products into a single platform. The platform’s strength lies in its predictable cost model to customer and source side global deduplication.
The Thing About NetApp HCI Is …
NetApp went into details on their new hyperconverged infrastructure offering during their Tech Field Day Extra at VMworld. Dan Frith gives his thought on their entrant into this crowded market. He doesn’t bother with the semantics of whether this is “true” HCI. Instead he notes that NetApp impressively builds on their SolidFire storage solution to build an offering that offers the ability to scale compute and storage independently with easy provisioning expected from HCI.
Tech Field Day – I’ll Be At TFD Extra at VMworld US 2017
VMworld US is almost upon us. We’ll be hosting a number of Tech Field Day Extra presentations at the event, with companies like NetApp, Kingston, Druva, and Pluribus Networks. Dan Frith will be there as a delegate and we’re looking forward to seeing what he thinks.
Uila are Using Your Network (and some smart analytics) to Understand What’s Really Going On
After viewing Uila’s presentation at Tech Field Day 13, Dan Frith discusses their unique approach to monitoring and root cause analysis, saying they shine at making the trip from data collection to problem identification a quick and easy process.
Primary Data Attacks Application Ignorance
At Primary Data’s Storage Field Day presentation, they brought up the idea that applications are “unaware”. This ignorance is to the underlying infrastructure, as they are not generally written with a specific set of hardware or specification in mind. Dan Frith shares his thoughts on their solution to this problem, DataSphere, “a metadata engine that automates the flow of data across the enterprise infrastructure and the cloud to meet evolving application demands”.
Storage Field Day 13 – Wrap-up and Link-o-rama
Dan Frith finishes up his coverage of Storage Field Day and the Storage Field Day Exclusive at Pure Accelerate. This includes links to all his coverage, other delegates, and his closing thoughts on the events.
StorageCraft Are In Your Data Centre And In The Cloud
At StorageCraft’s Storage Field Day presentation, Dan Frith was reminded of why he’s liked using their solutions in the past. The world of DRaaS, offers a “terribly simple” way to get it up and running. And when disaster does strike, the ability to immediately use their cloud as a failover means you don’t lose a lot of time in recovery either.
SNIA’s Swordfish Is Better Than The Film
At Storage Field Day, SNIA presented on their Swordfish, their scalable storage management standard. With the way that storage has radically changed in the data center over the last fifteen years, Dan think that projects like Swordfish demonstrate just how vital SNIA has become in the industry.
ScaleIO Is Not Your Father’s SDS
Dan Frith looks at ScaleIO, a Dell EMC software-defined storage solution. He runs down the comprehensive feature list in the article, and finds that with the right hardware combination, ScaleIO can offer compelling block storage performance across a variety of use cases. Dan definitely recommends giving it a try for yourself.