Edge Computing – Reality or Myth?
With all the talk about edge computing lately, including our forthcoming Edge Field Day event, Chris Evans takes a look at the space. Recalling Field Day presentations by Dell and Scale Computing, Chris considers the hardware, software, application, and data requirements for edge deployment. Learn more by reading his article as well as the recent posts by Stephen Foskett at Gestalt IT, and tune in for Edge Field Day in February!
VMworld 2021 – Bringing It All Together With Project Ensemble
On his personal site, Architecting IT.com, Chris Evans writes his takeaways from VMware’s VMworld 2021. Specifically, he compares VMware’s Project Ensemble, displayed at the event, to other products such as those presented at a past Cloud Field Day event by Morpheus Data, in a past Tech Field Day appearance by Platform9, and the products displayed by ZeroStack during a Virtualization Field Day event, which he attended at as a delegate. Click the link below for more context behind these comparisons.
Rubrik, Cohesity and the Battle for NoSQL Backup
As always, Chris Evans has a keen insight into the backup market. He recently updated a post about Rubrik’s acquisition of Datos IO to add in some additional perspective on the NoSQL backup market. With Cohesity acquiring Imanis Data, Chris sees this as both companies trying to bridge the gap between traditional backup and data management, something always easier said than done.
Western Digital Redefines DRAM Caching
Chris Evans digis into Western Digital’s Ultrastar DC ME200. This is a solution to extend server DRAM using caching into byte-addressable NAND. Chris does a great job of giving this a technical overview, and considering if this will find a welcoming market, or simply cover up Western Digital’s lack of a true storage-class memory solution. He also highlights similar efforts to use NAND as a memory cache, specifically citing Diablo Technologies’ Memory1 solution, which he saw back in 2016 at a Tech Field Day event.
Rubrik Acquires Datos IO – Backup Wars Looming?
In this piece, Chris Evans shares his thoughts on Rubrik’s recent acquisition of Datos IO. This makes sense as a way for the company to grab an early leader in the NoSQL backup market, and increases their overall backup capability surface area. Overall he sees this down the line of providing another way for Rubrik to transition from backup into an overall data management company.
What are Storage Class Memory and Persistent Memory?
In this post, Chris Evans breaks down the differences between Persistent Memory and Storage Class Memory. The former puts non-volatile media directly in the DIMM slot, providing storage with extremely low latency, but requiring changes to BIOS and OS to address properly. The latter uses NAND and DRAM in a tiered system to effectively increase the addressable memory to the system. An example being Storage Field Day presenter Diablo Technologies. Of course, thanks to marketing, these terms are often interchangeable, but the article does a good job making the technical distinction clear.