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Brian talks with HPE’s VP of Product Management for Cloud Data Infrastructure while on-site at the HPE facility in Spring, TX. Listen as they discuss the Alletra Storage MP system.

Brian recently visited HPE’s headquarters in beautiful downtown Spring, TX. He invited Sanjay Jagad, a good friend of Storagereview.com, to join him for a detailed discussion about storage and HPE Alletra Storage MP. They discussed the factors driving the storage industry today and how MP has impacted storage system construction.

We have a full write-up and long-form video on YouTube to get up to speed on the platform.

This 40-minute podcast covers a wide range of topics, and it is well worth your time if you can spare it. Otherwise, we have time-stamped the recording so you can skip around as needed.

0:00-5:00 Introduction

HPE Campus Visit & Introduction to Alletra MP Storage
- Brian visits HPE’s headquarters in Texas and introduces the Alletra Storage MP.
- Discuss HPE’s universal storage platform, which separates hardware from operating environments. Provides flexibility and high availability.
- Overview of business benefits and future of storage from HPE’s perspective.
Evolution of Storage
- Sanjay explains the traditional two-controller storage system and how the market is evolving to meet modern demands, such as increased data and distributed applications.

5:00 -11:00 Introduction to Alletra Storage MP

HPE’s Reimagined Storage Approach
- Introduction to Alletra MP, HPE’s reimagined storage solution.
- Focus on simplifying hardware designs with modular building blocks and embracing software-defined storage (SDS) for improved scalability.
Decoupling Hardware and Software
- HPE’s strategy of decoupling hardware from software to stay adaptable to new technologies (e.g., NVMe fabrics, CPUs).
- This allows for independent scaling of compute and storage, giving customers more flexibility.

11:00 -15:00 Scale and Efficiency

Granular Scalability and Cost Efficiency
- Granular scalability allows customers to add storage or controllers incrementally, preventing overprovisioning and optimizing costs.
- This OPEX-based approach enables customers to pay only for the resources they need at a given time, improving TCO (Total Cost of Ownership).
Supply Chain Efficiency and Modular Hardware
- HPE’s standardized hardware platform, using non-proprietary components (e.g., AMD CPUs, OCP NICs), ensures quicker adoption of new technologies like Gen 5 SSDs.
- The modular, Lego-like design allows customers to integrate new tech without replacing entire systems.

15:00 -22:00 Availability and Performance

High Availability and Performance Improvements
- HPE’s stateless controllers ensure seamless failover, offering high availability and performance improvements via the NVMe fabric.
- Customers benefit from dynamic scaling and minimal downtime, crucial for mission-critical workloads.
Investment Protection through Continuous Upgrades
- Timeless program: HPE ensures that as newer CPUs, memory, and I/O modules are released, they can be integrated seamlessly without requiring a complete system replacement.
- This offers customers future-proofing and investment protection for their infrastructure.

22:00 -26:00 Ability to adapt new technologies

Adapting to New Technologies and AI-Driven Management
- HPE’s architecture enables rapid adoption of new technologies (e.g., Gen 5 SSDs, DDR5, CXL).
- AI Ops simplifies operations by automating routine tasks such as provisioning, monitoring, and optimizing workloads. This reduces manual effort and speeds up processes.
Dynamic Workload Management
- The system leverages AI to dynamically adjust infrastructure resources and Kubernetes policies based on workload needs, ensuring SLA compliance and consistent performance.

26:00 -30:00 Unified Hybrid Cloud Control

Seamless Hybrid Cloud Management
- HPE’s architecture supports seamless hybrid cloud management, allowing customers to control both on-premises and cloud-based resources from a single platform.
- This provides true hybrid cloud flexibility, enabling consistent governance and security across environments.
Operational Simplicity and Time Savings
- The architecture reduces the time required to provision and manage storage from weeks to minutes.
- With fewer classically trained storage admins, HPE’s platform is easy to use for IT teams, making management more efficient.

30:00 -34:00 Integrating GreenLake

GreenLake Integration and Service Expansion
- HPE’s GreenLake Cloud Console enables customers to expand their storage services easily, starting with block storage and adding more services like data protection or AI services as needed.
- GreenLake offers a scalable and flexible management platform for customers to adapt their hybrid cloud strategies.
Reimagining Enterprise Storage
- HPE’s shift from traditional SAN to a universal platform offers greater flexibility and efficiency.
- This approach caters to traditional IT workloads and modern cloud-native applications, meeting a wide range of enterprise needs.

34:00 -40:00 Wrap Up

Customer Success and Scalability
- Strong customer adoption of Alletra MP, especially among large enterprises looking to standardize on HPE’s platform.
- HPE’s system’s modularity allows for seamless scaling, whether for compute or storage, as customer needs evolve.
Future Innovation and Flexibility
- HPE continues to innovate with a robust roadmap, promising more functionality and scalability in the near future.
- The focus remains on future-proofing customer infrastructure and addressing dynamic, cloud-native workloads.

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Brian visits HPE in northern California and has a chance to sit down with Rupin Mohan, Sr. Director (GM) Primary OEM Business at HPE.

This week, Brian welcomes a true veteran of the storage industry. Rupin Mohan is the Sr. Director (GM) Primary Storage OEM Business at HPE and recently met with Brian at one of HPE’s northern California locations to discuss the HPE XP8 Storage system. Naturally, the main topic centers around the fact that the XP8 has achieved an uptime of ten years without a single outage.

Rupin’s background within the storage industry is extensive. He has spent over 26 years with Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and is focused on “results-driven” business outcomes. He possesses a deep technical knowledge of flash memory, Fibre Channel, enterprise storage, and many other facets of storage technologies.

Rupin is also a member of the Board of Directors and Marketing Chairman of the Fibre Channel Industry Association (FCIA) and a member of the Board of Directors for the Storage Networking Industry Association (SNIA).

This is an engaging discussion about how Rupin and his team hit a ten-year milestone of zero downtime on the XP8. Rupin describes his team’s effort to ensure customers’ 100% availability.

This shorter-than-usual podcast lasts only 32 minutes, so try to take it all in if you have the time. If you are strapped for time, as most of us are, we have broken the podcast down into 5-minute intervals. So hop around if you need to.

Other StorageReview resources:

HPE XP8 On-site video
XP8 Technical paper

00:00 Welcome and introduction

Introducing the HP XP8
Ten Years of Uptime
Mission-Critical Environments
Scalability, Performance, Reliability

04:40 -10:00

Design For Availability
First Disaggregated System
Minimum Configuration
Customization
Hybrid options
Uptime and Optimal Performance.

10:00 – 15:00

XP8 in Mainframe and Open Systems
HP NonStop Systems Support
XP8’s Position in HP’s Portfolio
Legacy System Support
Lounging Under the GreenLake Umbrella

15:00 – 20:00

Hybrid Strategy
Keeping It On-premises
Legacy Systems Support
MP Personas
Built For Diverse Workloads

20:00 – 25:00

Data Migration
XP8 External Storage Feature
Simplifying IT Admin Tasks
Intuitive Management
100% Service Attach Rate
Ensuring Proper Installation

25:00 – 30:00

Financial Impact of Downtime
XP8 Market Stability
High-End Market Is Not Going Away
Keeping Businesses Alive

30:00 – End

Collaboration Across Division
Alletra MP Discussion
Wrap-up

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Amazon WorkSpaces delivers a compelling alternative to traditional desktops.

This week, Brian follows up on a recent review for Amazon WorkSpaces posted in mid-October with an interesting conversation with Amazon’s Director of Product, End-User Computing, Melissa Stein.

Melissa has spent the past four+ years with AWS and specializes in setting product vision and strategy, management, storage, software, and databases, to name a few. Melissa will be speaking at the upcoming AWS re:Invent, covering contact center efficiency with Amazon WorkSpaces (EUC206: Boost contact center efficiency with Amazon WorkSpaces and Thin Client), complimenting this podcast.

For our subscribers interested in thin client technology, AWS, and cloud computing, give this podcast some attention. If you need to hop around, we have broken down the discussion in five-minute increments to help you navigate where you need to be.

00:00 – 05:00 – Introduction

The podcast covers topics from Amazon’s thin clients, desktop as a service, and changes in the industry.
New Solutions for End User Computing
- Amazon WorkSpaces
- AppStream
Developing thin clients
- Design goals
- Keep the costs down
- Repurpose devices to reduce turnover and improve security
Security
- Imposed restrictions for thin clients
- Keep data off the thin client
- Encrypt everything
- No access for sideloading applications or connecting removable media

05:00 – 10:00

Continue discussion around security
The boot process prevents unauthorized access
Streamlined fulfillment
Pandemic-inspired device availability
Simplicity

10:00 – 15:00

Thin clients are shipped with a video and brochure
- No need for help desk support
- Simple for hybrid and remote workers
Desktop as a service
Reminiscent of “dumb terminals”
Lag and poor performance are mitigated
Amazon WorkSpaces
- Scalable
- Easy to manage, easy to use

15:00 – 20:00

Further discussion about scalability
Addressing high turnover
Shifting computing power to the data center
- Addressing inefficiencies
- Leverage cloud-based solutions
- Reducing costs
- Catering to seasonal workloads (tax season, open enrollment)
Thin clients for smaller call centers
Amazon WorkSpaces for persistent desktop needs

20:00 – 26:00

WorkSpaces Pools
- Cost-effective
- Great for users who don’t require persistent desktops
Close integration between hardware and software
Complying with hardware regulations
Energy-efficient
Efficiencies extend to data centers
- Reports of a 75% reduction in endpoint expenses

26:00 – 30:00

Customers appreciate:
- Cost-savings
- Reduced maintenance
- Eliminate VPN requirements
Thin client strategy is not limited to a single device
Future developments with a focus on broader use cases

30:00 – 36:00

What’s happening at AWS re:Invent
- showcase thin clients
- Amazon WorkSpaces
- Amazon Connect
- AI-driven analytics
Testing to ensure performance and reliability
Secure browsers
Optimize user experience

Wrap-up

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Chilldyne Podcast – liquid cooling solutions for data centers focusing on leak-proof design and efficiency for high-performance servers.

Brian rarely gets to sit down to a podcast with a doctor. However, today, he is joined by Dr. Steve Harrington, CEO of Chilldyne. We have been keenly interested in liquid cooling technologies, and there are more popping up all the time. But we have a soft spot for Chilldyne.

Some background on Dr. Steve Harrington. He is the CTO of Chilldyne and the founder of Flometrics. He is an expert and inventor in Fluid Dynamics and thermodynamics, designing pumps, valves, nozzles, flowmeters, aircraft cooling systems, rocket fuel pumps, rocket test stands, turbine flow measurement systems, medical ventilators, air/oxygen mixers, respiratory humidifiers, CPAP machines, spirometers, heat exchangers, vacuum cleaners, oxygen concentrators, motorcycle fairings, infusion pumps, electronics cooling systems, wave machines, data acquisition systems etc. But wait, there’s more. His expertise extends to electronics, programming, optics, nuclear physics, biology, and physiology.

Steve has more than 29 years of experience in fluid dynamics and thermodynamics. He has consulted for aerospace, semiconductor, medical device, racing, electronic cooling, and other industries. He has over 25 patents and has completed projects for NASA, DARPA, SOCOM, and USACE.

When he is not busy, he is a part-time faculty member at the University of California, San Diego, where he teaches an aerospace engineering senior design class where students instrument, build, and fly liquid rockets. He is also a surfer, a pilot, a scuba diver, a boat and car mechanic, an electrician, and a plumber.

There is much to learn about liquid cooling and we think this podcast will help answer some of the questions on the minds of IT and data center professionals everywhere.

That should be enough to make you interested in listening to this entire podcast. However, if you are strapped for time, we have broken the pod down into five-minute segments so you can hop around as needed.

Get the podcast on video!

00:00 – 05:30 Introduction“Hot” New Technology: Liquid Cooling

Brian opens with a pun about liquid cooling being a “hot” technology in data centers. Liquid cooling has come full circle—once abandoned with the advent of CMOS, it’s now making a resurgence due to the intense heat generated by modern processors.

From Supercomputers to Jet Engines

Steve provides some personal history on his journey to liquid cooling, starting with cooling supercomputers in the 1980s. Fun fact: His expertise in cooling rocket engines and laser systems translated well to modern data center liquid cooling.

Why Did Liquid Cooling Leave?

Liquid cooling took a break because CMOS technology was thought to have solved the power problem. Surprise! Power demands are back with a vengeance.

From Aerospace to Data Centers

In aerospace, liquid cooling isn’t just about cooling; it’s about reliability over time—think planes, rockets, and lasers. Data centers, on the other hand, need uptime and longevity, adding unique challenges to Steve’s transition from aerospace.

ARPA-E Grant and the 2 Kilowatt Chip

Steve’s foresight included partnering with ARPA-E to develop a cold plate for a two-kilowatt chip. This foresight is paying off, as more data centers are bidding for projects with these high-power chips.

05:30 – 10:24 Reassuring the CFOLiquid Cooling: A CFO’s Nightmare?

Testing liquid cooling systems can cost millions. Convincing CFOs to sign off on such “experiments” is no easy task, especially since they don’t fit neatly into the financial spreadsheet. It’s like buying a $2 million test drive—it sounds fun but is risky.

Sharing Secrets: The Meta Paradox

Meta and other commercial giants tend to lock up their liquid cooling secrets tighter than the company’s algorithm. Sharing is caring, but not when there’s competition involved.

Chilldyne’s Leak-Proof, Negative Pressure System

Chilldyne’s secret sauce: a negative pressure system that’s essentially leak-free. If a leak happens, air enters instead of coolant spilling, keeping the chips safe from a soggy fate.

Handling Leaks: When Not to Panic

Even with leaks, Chilldyne’s system keeps running.

Liquid Cooling Data: The Missing Chapter

Industry-wide data on the impact of liquid cooling on wear and tear is sparse. Liquid cooling can feel like more of a mysterious “beer conference” topic than an open discussion.

10:24 – 14:55 Keep the bacteria out of the waterThe Biodiversity of Data Center Coolant

Did you know that the local bacteria in your water supply can mess with your liquid cooling system? Different regions have different microbes, which can wreak havoc on data center coolant systems, leading to clogged plates and overheating GPUs.

Coolant Chemistry 101

Chilldyne has a built-in chemistry lab to monitor coolant quality. Forget your sterile water dreams; this is a battle between biology and technology.

Coolant Additives: A Budget Dilemma

Don’t cheap out on your coolant chemistry unless you enjoy emergency maintenance.

PG 25: Gamers’ Friend, Data Centers’ Enemy

PG 25 is great for gamers—it doesn’t freeze and prevents bacteria growth. However, it attacks seals, leading to leaks over time, making it less ideal for long-term data center use.

Chemistry’s Role in Data Center Maintenance

Data centers often forget that liquid cooling isn’t a “set it and forget it” solution. It requires regular monitoring and maintenance.

14:55 – 20:16 The need for low-toxicity additivesThe Additives That Keep the Cool

Chilldyne uses low-toxicity additives: a splash of antibacterial and anti-corrosion chemicals.

Say No to PG 25 (Sometimes)

PG 25 is a “don’t freeze” lifesaver for gamers shipping their liquid-cooled rigs but less so for data centers.

Facility Water is Just the Start

When installing a CDU (cooling distribution unit), Chilldyne starts with distilled or reverse osmosis-filtered water.

The Cold Plate Clean-Up Crew

One customer refused to use recommended additives, leading to a clogged, hot mess in their GPUs. Chilldyne stepped in with a chemical cleanse, but if a cold plate gets too gummed up, sometimes it’s game over—time for replacement.

Liquid Cooling ≠ Set It and Forget It

Electronics may run smoothly for years, but liquid cooling? That’s a different beast.

20:16 – 26:03 Water is still the best for coolingWater: The MVP of Cooling Fluids

Why stick with good ol’ water? It’s cheap, non-toxic, and performs well—especially in single-phase systems.

Immersion Cooling: The Slow Burner

Immersion cooling with engineered oils has some potential, especially in edge zones or moderate power servers, but it’s just not efficient enough for today’s two-kilowatt monsters.

When Pipes Get Silly Big

Watch for logistical nightmares as cooling systems scale up.

Electrical Limits: The Real Bottleneck

While liquid cooling systems can scale, there’s a limit to how much electrical current a chip can handle.

Don’t Forget the Chiller

While cooling towers are ideal in many places, some regions require chillers due to water scarcity. Go with a cooling tower.

26:03 – 29:44 Is that a leak?The Leaks Won’t Tell You

Unlike server components, liquid cooling systems aren’t yet smart enough to give you advanced warnings about leaks.

The Problem with Positive Pressure

Positive pressure systems that detect leaks with special tape are reactive—they shut down servers when something goes wrong. Negative pressure systems like Chilldyne’s, however, keep the servers running even with minor leaks, avoiding costly downtime.

Compatibility Chaos

The issue with buying parts from multiple vendors is compatibility problems.

Plumbing Isn’t an IT Skill

Data center operators are skilled in networking, cybersecurity, and power management—but they’re not plumbers or chemists. That’s where specialized vendors come in.

Switch-Over Valves: The Fail-Safe

Chilldyne uses switch-over valves to provide redundancy in cooling systems. These valves work like airplane safety mechanisms—if one system fails, the other kicks in without the servers even noticing.

29:44 – 35:22 Make sure liquid cooling is what you needScale Matters: The 100kW Threshold

Steve suggests that liquid cooling isn’t worth the hassle unless you’re dealing with over 100kW of compute power.

Fortune 500 and Beyond

Big companies are already there, but even mid-tier enterprises are starting to feel the heat. The power consumption of GPU-packed servers means that liquid cooling will soon be a necessity for many organizations.

The Rack Scale CDU That Wasn’t

Chilldyne has a design for a 50-100kW rack scale CDU, but no takers yet.

The Four-Inch Pipe Problem

Liquid cooling systems max out at around 1-2MW before the plumbing gets unwieldy. Keeping the system manageable is key.

Electrical vs. Cooling Limits

We’re approaching the point where electrical limits are more problematic than cooling capacity.

35:22 – 40:16 Is it hot in here?The Heat Disposal Conundrum

It’s not enough to cool the gear—you’ve got to deal with all that heat.

The Chip Temperature Tango

There’s a balance between cooling efficiency and chip performance. Design systems that can go colder if needed because the next-gen chips might perform 20% faster with lower temperatures.

Data Center Math is Getting Hard

Factor in cooling tower efficiency, GPU performance, fan speeds, and a whole lot more. The math behind today’s cooling solutions is critical for optimization.

HVAC and IT: Strange Bedfellows

HVAC engineers and IT teams used to operate separately, but liquid cooling is bringing them together.

Keeping the IT Guys in the Loop

Encourage collaboration between hardware providers and cooling experts to ensure the solution won’t melt under pressure.

40:16 – 43:35 Wrap-upGet Started with Liquid Cooling Now

Steve recommends starting small, but start now. Get a system, run it, and learn from it before you’re in too deep.

The Danger of Overconfidence

Some companies are planning massive liquid-cooled data centers without ever testing smaller systems.

Lead Time: It’s Real

Lead times for liquid cooling systems can range from 16 to 52 weeks. So, better get those orders in early!

Spec Confusion with New Racks

NVIDIA’s new MVL racks are on the horizon, but specific water temperature and chemistry guidelines are still unclear.

Home Lab Mentality: Get Your Reps In

Steve encourages enterprises to take the “home lab” approach: start small, mess around with it, and learn.

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Closed-loop liquid cooling from JetCool delivers power efficiencies and increased CPU/GPU performance.

Liquid cooling continues to gain traction in the enterprise, especially with the intense compute requirements associated with AI. CPUs and GPUs are running hotter, and traditional air cooling struggles to keep those temperatures down. We have covered several liquid cooling systems over the past few years, with JetCool being a standout player.

After running into JetCool during SuperComputing 2023, we brought their technology into our Ohio lab, nestled inside an R760. To say we were impressed would be an understatement. To gain more insight into this technology, Brian invited JetCool founder and CEO Bernie Malouin for this podcast.

Bernie describes himself as a technical professional with demonstrated experience from concept studies through deployment. By the way, Bernie also holds a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Mechanical Engineering and a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering. That’s impressive, but before he founded JetCool, Bernie spent eight years at MIT Lincoln Labs. He was the technical and programmatic lead for a multi-sponsor research project to implement advanced cooling technology in high-power RF devices for advanced electronics applications.

Although this podcast is less than 40 minutes long, Brian and Bernie cover a lot of ground. It’s worth viewing or listening in its entirety, but if you are short on time or need specifics on a particular topic, we have broken down the conversation into five-minute chunks so you can skip around.

00:00 Introduction

The landscape
It’s AI’s fault – or is it hype
GPUs and CPUs need to cool it
It’s about efficiency
What’s the power budget?
Wait! Liquid-Assisted?

06:00 Clarify Liquid Assist, please

Getting technical
Cold plates, closed-loop, and radiators, oh my
Efficiencies in cooling with JETCOOL
Arrays of tiny fluid jets
Surgically removing heat
Now, where are those heat nodes?
Profiling the CPU

10:00 Relationships with the chip makers

Staying ahead of the curve
Chip makers – partners in design
Details on where to cool
Tiny pumps
- micro DC brushless pumps
- circulating fluid throughout the server

15:00 Let’s talk about pumps, cold plates and radiators

Radiator technology
- Modified technology in Formula One racing
- Proven reliability
- Cold plates
  - Originally developed for aerospace applications
- What about the liquid?
  - JETCOOL uses PG 25 (Propylene glycol)
    - Benefits
      - non-corrosive
      - natural antifreeze
      - non-toxic
      - ready to use
- Top off the fluid
  - can you go to a jiffy lube?

22:00 What happens when the hose breaks

Leak tests
Overpressure tests
Only 8-10 Oz of fluid in the system
- Small puncture
- faulty seal
- might experience a few drops, but they evaporate
- the telltale sign that there is a problem
  - CPU temperature rises
Leak detection mechanisms

25:00 Looking for the signals

OCP is dedicating two days for liquid cooling for their next conference
Partners can do a better job of educating customers about liquid cooling
- Upgrade through the channel
- driving the pull-through

30:00 Yeah, but how much does it cost?

An upgrade is about ten percent of the system price
ROI
- within about six months
Suitable for co-location services
- gaining efficiencies in co-lo facilities
On-premises deployments
- limited space
- limited budget
- power constraints
Heavy lifting performed by the Intern and Kevin

37:00 Silence is liquid gold

One of the best benefits
Simple to try

Wrap-up: Stop by JETCOOL at OCP in October!

Full Video on YouTube

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This week, Brian is joined by Matthias Haas, IGEL’s Chief Technology Officer and Managing Director, Storagereview Contributor, and preeminent EUC expert Tom Fenton. IGEL Technology is a virtual desktop and end-user computing leader focused on thin client development. Check out Tom’s recent coverage of IGEL Disrupt.

Matthias describes himself as an “EUC visionary helping customers to future-proof their endpoint deployments at scale for a multi-cloud-enabled world.” He has been in IT for over 15 years, starting as a System Engineer focused on Linux security. During his tenure in software development, Matthias developed a deep technical understanding he used to create customer-oriented solutions. These products and solutions had a clear technical strategy but also answered customers’ day-to-day challenges.

Although a successful business model, IGEL has moved away from the hardware business typically associated with thin client technology and developed a secure, purpose-built thin operating system. Creating a thin operating system addresses the current transformation in multicloud deployments. The disruption to virtualization generated by Broadcom’s recent VMware acquisition adds angst to users dependent upon cloud technologies. Of course, many of the major hardware. Many enterprise software and hardware vendors have jumped on the VMware migration bandwagon. Still, IGEL has addressed this effect on end-user computing, creating a secure, easy-to-use, thin operating system.

For those unfamiliar with Tom’s work, he has over twenty years of experience working with virtualization and cloud technologies and over twenty-five years of Enterprise IT experience. He has a track record of keeping up with new technologies and presenting solutions to complex problems. Tom has been a key contributor to Storagereview.com.

This is an essential topic since EUC touches most of us daily. Although shorter than most of our podcasts, it is packed with information. If you have the time, give this a complete view, but if you are strapped for time, we have provided a time-stamped breakdown of the transcript.

00:00 Introduction

Tom gets a compliment from Brian
Matthias provides some IGEL history
Disruption due to Covid

05:00 What do you mean it doesn’t support Windows 11?

IGEL Disrupt announcements
Fully integrated
Partnerships
IoT
IGEL Disrupt 2024 dates
App Create Portal

10:00 Build that app

Build and sign on the App Create Portal
Content streaming
Pushing the Edge
Building the Insight Module
Secure the app

15:00 It’s agnostic

Reducing the attack surface
Talking about browsers
- Managing the footprint
- Make it permanent or temporary
Managing the identity

20:00 What’s needed to run a system?

Run it on top of Windows or macOS?
Providing the best user experience
Developing local apps
- Zoom
- Teams
- WebEx
Supporting AI

25:00 Neural Processing Units

Functionality
Inferencing
AI is a moving target for end users
GPUs in the cloud
Leveraging the capabilities

30:00 Running workloads on an endpoint

Or should workloads run in the data center or on a GPU?
Browsers will continue to be important
- Secure browsers
- Enterprise browsers

35:00 Digital signage infrastructure

Learn more from the IGEL website (link below)
- IGEL slack community
- Run IGEL OS 12
- Runs anywhere

39:00 Wrap up

Podcast on YouTube

IGEL Technology

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This is another live podcast in which Brian checks in with long-time friend and industry veteran Jonmichael Hands for this fast-paced, technically focused podcast. Jonmichael is currently the Senior Director of Product Planning at FADU but has an extensive storage, networking, and blockchain background.

This is another live podcast in which Brian checks in with long-time friend and industry veteran Jonmichael Hands for this fast-paced, technically focused podcast. Jonmichael is currently the Senior Director of Product Planning at FADU but has an extensive storage, networking, and blockchain background. He also has a patent for Accelerated data recovery in a storage system, a recipient of The Most Innovative Flash Memory Technology Award, and, while at Intel, was a member of the NVM Express marketing group.

Brian and Jonmichael are passionate about flash technology and seem on the same page. Jonmichael brings some deep and varied industry knowledge to the conversation, making this a candid learning session.

If you are interested in flash technology and want to hear more about the future of SSD in this AI universe, you will enjoy this one. But if you are only interested in a few topics, we have highlighted them in five-minute increments.

0-5 minutes

Introduction and Background
- Introducing Jonmichael, noting their long history and expertise in the industry.
- Reminisces about their last meeting involving Topo Chico and discussing chia, blockchain, and crypto.
- Ongoing crypto craze and Jonmichael’s return to the SSD world.
- The challenging market conditions for IPOs and crypto over the last two years.
- Transition back to tech and improvement in the SSD market, potentially leading to the best year for SSD revenue.

5-10 minutes

NAND Prices and AI Impact
- NAND costs during COVID, recent increases in SSD prices.
- The cyclical nature of Nand prices and renewed challenges.
- AI’s impact on data center storage demand and the importance of flash.
- Emphasis on increased CapEx for data centers and the unsung hero status of storage in AI.
- Upgrading legacy SAN infrastructure for high-end AI GPU work.

10-15 minutes

Meta Engineering and AI Storage
- Comments from listeners and viewers.
- Meta’s engineering efforts in AI storage solutions,
  - Building exabyte-scale storage.
- There is a need for more extensive flash capacity for training large multi-modal models.
- Emphasis on the cost and importance of fast SSDs in training servers.
- The complexity of modern AI data centers and advanced storage solutions.
- Significance of high-end SSDs and storage technology in AI training servers.

15-20 minutes

Storage Technologies and Market Trends
- Power requirements and storage challenges in data centers.
- Advantages of high-performance SSDs
- The need for efficient networking.
- Broadcom’s high-speed NICs and the importance of network bandwidth for GPU clusters.
- The role of switching in supporting AI workloads and infrastructure.
- Benefits of running GPUs locally and the competitive advantage of private data sets.

20-25 minutes

AI Strategy and Industry Insights
- AI strategies and the importance of GPUs.
- Setting up AI tools like Nvidia’s AI studio for private data use.
- Running AI models on affordable NAS systems for private data protection.
- Importance of AI tools for improving productivity and creativity.
- SSD form factors and the evolution of E1 and E3 standards.

25-30 minutes

Form Factors and Industry Adoption
- E1 and E3 form factors in hyperscale and enterprise markets.
- Transitioning to new form factors and customer preferences.
- Benefits of E3 form factors.
- Form factors for industry adoption.

30-35 minutes

Hyperscale and Enterprise SSD Adoption
- E1.S form factor in hyperscale and enterprise training servers.
- Limited availability of Gen 5 E3 drives.
- Transition challenges to Gen 5 E3 drives.
  - Potential improvements for Gen 6.
- Demise of Gen 4 for U.2 drives.
- E1.S and E3 form factors.
  - Thermal management and capacity options.

35-40 minutes

Client-Side Storage and Form Factors
- Slow uptake on client-side for Gen 5 drives.
- Inefficiency of M.2 for high-performance Gen 5 drive.
- Differences in performance requirements between laptops and desktops.
- Potential of E3 form factor in consumer desktops.
- Benefits of PCIe cabling standards.

40-45 minutes

Flexible Data Placement (FDP) Technology
- Flexible Data Placement (FDP) technology.
  - Benefits in reducing write amplification factor (WaF).
- FDP allows data to be tagged and placed more efficiently on the SSD.
- FDP can be implemented without requiring software to be FDP-aware.
- Comparison of FDP with zone namespaces.
  - Complexities involved in the zone namespaces.
- Flexibility and benefits of FDP for different workloads.

50-55 minutes

Host Management vs. Drive Management
- Rely more on host systems for storage management.
- Complexities of host-level management.
  - Understanding SSD internals.
- E1.S, benefits for dense storage arrays.
- Upcoming 128TB and 256TB drives.
  - Expected market impact.

55-60 minutes

Controller Technology and Performance
- Importance of controller technology in SSD performance.
- Advantages of 16-channel controllers for power efficiency and performance.
- Performance per watt as a critical metric in SSD evaluation.
- Ongoing developments and the future potential of FTP technology in the market.
- Wrap-up of the discussion and promotion of blogs and future sessions on related topics.

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Brian invited Peter Skovrup, VP of Product Management for Pure Storage, to continue their conversation from the Pure //Accelerate Las Vegas event in June. Brian and Jordan spent a few days with Pure, learning the latest for what’s new with Pure Storage technology – like their 150TB flash module!

This is another live event where the audience gets to ask Brian’s guests questions as they arise throughout the conversation. In case you missed it, our first two live events had a few hiccups, but we seem to have ironed those out now. This jam-packed session covers hardware and software, the all-important NPS scores, flash technology, and how it all fits together with Pure Storage solutions.

This is an exciting conversation that also tends to be a learning experience. If you have the time, it is worth listening to this entire podcast. However, if you are short of time or need to find details on a particular topic, we have created an easy way to jump around the podcast to get to the issues that are most interesting to you.

The podcast timestamps have been broken down into five-minute increments to make finding what you are looking for easier.

00:00 Introduction

Brian introduces Peter and talks a bit about Pure //Accelerate
Advancements in Pure Storage, flash modules, AI integrations, and Evergreen enhancements
The importance of NPS

06:00 Core Products

Where Peter is focused
- FlashArray for Scale-up
- FlashBlade for Scale-out
- Operate as a unified storage system
System Architecture
DirectFlash Module (DFM)

10:00 Why DFM is important to Pure

Personal anecdotes about football
What is it
What does it do
Global management for flash storage
Online Community

15:00 Energy Efficiency

DFM benefits
Reducing flash power consumption at DFM level two
Simplifying design by limiting DRAM
Centralizing processing
DRAM becomes part of the controllers
Increasing density and efficiency in storage systems

21:00 Questions from the Live Audience

What are the speed trade-offs?
Challenges managing increased data storage
Performance impacts
Pure’s approach to non-disruptive updates
Business aspects for non-disruptive operations

26:00 Pure Storage Evergreen//One

Clarification on how Evergreen programs work for customers
Discussion on the financial and operational benefits of continuous upgrades
Explanation of subscription models and their flexibility
Benefits of Evergreen One and subscription-based storage solutions
Focus on delivering performance SLAs and scalability

30:00 Back to the importance of NPS

Traditional hardware investment model vs. Evergreen program
Emphasis on the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of Pure Storage’s upgrade process
Financial planning benefits of Evergreen programs
Importance of the clarity and visibility of costs
Non-disruptive upgrades and flexibility for customers

36:00 Introduction of Pure One

Introduction of Pure One
Data visibility features
Simplifying storage management
Management-as-a-service capabilities
Copilot
Workload planner, anomaly detection, and security assessment
Benefits of Pure One for operating and optimizing storage environments at scale

42:00 Finally, mentioning AI

AI workloads and the importance of data support
Nvidia’s presence at the event
Collaboration with Nvidia and the certification of Superpod

45:00 SuperPod at scale

Importance of 400 gig Ethernet for AI workloads
Flashblade’s scalability and performance for AI and HPC environments
Hardware requirements for AI workloads and the advantages of Flashblade
Flashblade’s architecture and its benefits for AI and unstructured data
Flashblade versus other parallel file systems
Importance of metadata operations in high-performance file storage

51:00 Data Management

Challenges of managing data for AI
Importance of a comprehensive storage solution
SLA-based solutions for AI workloads
Long-term investments in AI
Guiding customers
Pure Storage’s technology for large AI deployments

58:00 Managing data for AI

Pure Storage scalability
Small deployments
Pure Fusion
Edge and Distributed deployments
Non-disruptive operations
Optimization and Utilization
Evergreen programs

62:00 Wrapping up

Brian and Peter begin wrapping up the discussion
Let’s talk real football—The EUROs

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Brian goes for another live podcast this week featuring Jakob Dellinger, the “air cooling guru” at Noctua. We have featured Noctua fans in a number of our reviews, most notably our recent “Noctua Unveils NH-D15 G2, Thermosiphon, and Next-Gen Fans” and the HomeLab45 update “The HL15 Homelab Server Goes Shhhhh with New Noctua Kit.”

Noctua has taken fan assembly to a higher level with products for everything from laptops to data centers. They pride themselves on innovation and reducing fan noise levels across the spectrum. Based in Austria, Noctua (the Little Owl) was founded in 2005 and quickly became one of the most acclaimed suppliers of premium-quality quiet cooling products that are apparently inspired by, but do not smell like, coffee.

This is another live podcast where our YouTube audience joined the conversation and submitted questions to Jakub and Brian. We are pushing the boundaries on these live podcasts, inviting our audience and guests to have a genuinely interactive conversation on topics that interest them.

After dealing with several hiccups at the show’s beginning, Brian got down to business. His first question was, “Why do people love your products so much?”

00:00 Introduction

Attention (obsession) to detail
Quality and Performance
Started as an OEM
Focused on quiet, highly efficient, quality components
Engaged with Taiwanese partner to develop cooling components

05:00 Finding the inspiration

The CEO hated loud PCs
Fix it before the machine is powered on
Recap Vince’s video series for his Home Lab (Unleash the Hush: Noctua Fans and Eaton Sound Proof Rack Combine for a Peaceful Studio)
Why are Noctua Fans beige and brow?

10:00 Scratch ‘n Sniff

Brian shares a tidbit from his youth and asks Yakub to create a fan that emits an espresso aroma
That is on the punch list
Comments from the audience
Computex
Delivering new products
- Square frame
- Fan radiator
- Socket support
- NVIDIA prototype
- Yakub goes deep

16:00 Squeezing Enterprise boards into workstations

Training LLMs
Edge servers where quiet matters
Liquid cooling
There’s a place for air-cooled systems, too

20:00 PC and Workstation case design

Thermal design
Not just for workstations
Getting creative
Let the users do crazy stuff with the fans
Heat sinks and heat distribution
Applying thermal paste
Potential to lose performance with poorly adhered heat sync

26:00 How to check for performance loss

Yakub gets into a deep discussion about cooling options
More than one option for every situation

31:00 Questions from the audience

Aftermarket contact frame
Better results from the 1mm washer mod
More from Computex
- Noctua power supply

35:00 Showing off new products

Even in the early development cycle
Family-owned and run business
No Shareholders to report to
Delivering to the customer

40:00 Cooling GPUs

DIY water cooling
Voiding the warranty
Mixed results
Preconfigured workstations seem so loud
Consumer-level cards are more advanced today

46:00 More on the HomeLab 15

Fan design
Thicker fan materials provide alternative options
Thicker may not be better
Fan size does matter

50:00 Wrap up

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For this show, Brian sits down with Anthony Cusimano, Director of Technical Marketing, at Object First. If you are not familiar with Object First, you can check out our deep dive earlier this month, Object First Ootbi: Simple Ransomware-Proof Backups For Veeam.

Another live podcast! Thank you to all who attended.

For this show, Brian sits down with Anthony Cusimano, Director of Technical Marketing, at Object First. If you are not familiar with Object First, you can check out our deep dive earlier this month, Object First Ootbi: Simple Ransomware-Proof Backups For Veeam.

Here’s a brief intro to Object First. It was founded by the original founders of Veeam and introduced its flagship product, Ootbi (Out-of-the-Box-Immutability), in 2023. Despite the common skepticism surrounding the notion of “ransomware-proof” technology, especially in the context of backups and storage, the technical prowess and on-premise testing of Ootbi suggest they can make this promise a reality for many organizations.

Anthony has been with Object First for over two years and serves as its Chief Evangelist and Director of Technical Marketing. Prior to joining Object First, Anthony spent six years in sales and marketing with Veritas Technologies. Throughout his career, he has focused on security and preventing cyber attacks.

This is an engaging discussion covering the departure of Veeam founders to establish an appliance hardware company, that runs Veeam! Customers enjoy enhanced security by controlling both the software and hardware.

If you don’t have the time to watch end-to-end, we have highlighted segments below.

00:00 Introduction

Object First background
What was once old is new again
Focus on Veeam customers
Ootbi short intro

05:00 Getting more information

A little detail on our deep dive
It’s all about security
Immutability Flag

11:00 Security Measures

Why immutability is important
Educating the masses
Making life easier
Getting some of your time back

16:00 Questions from YouTube viewers

Implementing security
- The reasons for immutability
- Educating the users
- How to make it more secure

20:00 Beating the drum for Zero Trust

Zero Trust Data Resilience
Research paper download to enhance security
Update cadence

25:00 Cooking what’s next

Enhancements
Easy updates
Solid hardware
Solid software
Hinting what’s coming

30:00 Looking at mid-enterprise

Options for more enterprise customers
Reaching out for feedback

35:00 Hey! What about AI?

Compliance and analytics
Hold on to that data
30 minutes in, and this is the first AI conversation
Things can only get bigger
Slow backup vs slow recovery

40:00 Attacks work because they are clever

And devastating
It’s more than just data
Organizations need to practice the plays just like a football team
Practice the processes
Attacks cause surgery delays
Comments from Chrome Donkey and Beard of Knowledge

45:00 Talking hardware

Appliance configuration
How it works
Eliminate bottlenecks
What guides hardware decisions
Taking customer feedback

50:00 The case for smaller customers

There’s no value in free
Ensure true immutability
Internal malice

55:00 Cutting the tube

Anthony talks about the SR liquid cooling video
Assume breach, verify integrity
Internal breaches
Accidental deletions
Beware of puppetry

60:00 Neverending Story

Anthony’s banner
How it relates
Brian’s luck dragon with wings
Wrapping up

65:00 Wrap up

Full Video

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Brian welcomes Andy Klein to the Podcast this week. Andy is the Principle Storage Cloud Storyteller at Backblaze. In addition to the storyteller role, Andy currently serves as the Technical Marketing Director. Andy has been associated with storage and security technology for most of his career and has been with Backblaze for over 12 years.

Brian and Andy discuss storage technology and direction and how Backblaze uses and qualifies drives for use in their data centers. This did prove to be a lively discussion around storage products, but not necessarily data center storage products. Backblaze is a service adored by home users.

Andy is one of the techs behind the Backblaze-generated quarterly storage report. The annual report details failure rates for hard drives and, in a limited sense, SSDs in use at Backblaze. Backblaze is one of the best in being open and communicative about drive usage and failures.

We decided to go live with this podcast and invited our Discord to join. Of course, since it was live, ran into a bit of an issue getting started, so there had to be a restart to get back on track.

00:00 Introduction

Details from Q1 storage report
Backblaze indexes over 300k hard drives
High-level overview
Drive-farming
Drive insights delivered that are unavailable elsewhere

05:00 Operational details

16K 4TB drives
20K 1TB drives
Drives stay relevant because they work
Different drives have different failure rates
45 drive chassis
drive chassis
Densities
Cost per TB
Reference to Podcast #124: The Path to 50TB HDDs with Frickin Lasers

10:00 Procurement Process

Testing them all
No smart drives
Heavy performance penalty
Delete and rewrite
- Encouraging users to delete files
- Smart drives don’t fit the Backblaze model
- Catching the drives destined to fail
- Weeding out the drives that won’t fit the model
  - Discord question
  - Aggregating drive families or even brands
  - Every drive has a different personality
  - Inconsistent model numbers

15:00 Making it easy to track drive changes

The report is geared to making it easy to follow trends, changes, failure rates
- Firmware versions
- Configuration changes
- Skew changes
Buying the least expensive drives
Drives that arrive DOA
Let’s go to Costco or Best Buy
Oops! Banned from Costco

20:00 Transitioning to Enterprise drives

Warranties
And then voided warranties
You never get a new drive for replacement
Learning the drive history!
Using Flash
- Still buying the cheapest
- Use cases

25:00 Operational considerations

Another trip to Costco
Burning out drives BEFORE they fail
- Write, delete, write, delete, use, delete
- Kinda like a restore server
- All data goes to hard drives
- Flash drives are for short stashing
- Operationally efficient

30:00 Form factors

Discord question
- How do form factors influence purchases
- Densities can be managed with HDDs
- Influenced by environment
Adding a new tier
- Dream it, price it
- Keep it simple
HAMR
Scheduled
Pulled back

35:00 Experimental Tech

Watching and Waiting
Planned Helium drives
- Filled a small vault
- Vault=1200 drives
- Striping across 20 systems
Legacy question from Discord
Storage servers are contracted out
Supermicro servers

40:00 Protocol for failure

Cloning
Read-only servicing
Recovering data
Liquid cooling
A data center without AC
Nautilus
- Pulling water from the river
Some light banter about pulling water from the Ohio for the Cincy Lab!

45:00 Finding the right chassis

Not all Chassis are equal
Savings from water-cooled data center
Running smart software
- Servers remember what they were doing in the event of failure
- Bringing them back online
Resiliency
Telemetry

50:00 Using Solid Technology

Exposure to just about everything
Staying in sync
Rebuilding on the fly
Discord question
- What’s the network fabric
- Interconnects
Shard integrity checks
Rebuilding drives
Sustainability
- Giving away outdated drives
- Recycling

60:00 What’s exciting for the future?

How will larger drives affect business
Costs
What’s on the bookshelf?

Wrap-Up

Full Video

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Our podcast has Brian introducing Jordan Winkelman from Quantum Corporation. If you remember, we did a deep dive review of Quantum Myriad a few weeks ago. To prepare for that review, Brian traveled to the Quantum office in Denver, where he met up with Jordan in the breakroom. The discussion expanded to include AI topics like security and surveillance, all things storage and a bit of space-related topics.

Jordan has spent over 25 years in the technology industry with technical roles supporting advertising, retail, medical, VoIP, and enterprise software and infrastructure solutions. More recently, for the past eight years, he has supported scale-out storage and field technology practices at Quantum. Jordan brings a wealth of experience in designing, testing, validating, and optimizing technology solutions for businesses of all sizes.

Quantum was very engaged in the review process and provided great support and detail. This podcast reveals the same level of attention from Jordan and provides a lively discussion on storage, security, containers, and a lot more.

Jordan and Brian go deep on technology and how the storage market has progressed over the years. There’s reminiscing about old 40MB storage drives and how difficult it is to get funding from Silicon Valley for a storage company startup. It’s a fun discussion and worth the time.

If you want to skip around the podcast, we have provided a timeline below, so feel free to jump to the topics that are more important to you.

Live on our Discord.

00:00 Introduction

What isn’t Quantum
43-year-old storage company
A bit of history around Quantum drives
Purchased AIC Scalar Robotic Tape Library
Myriad
- What’s coming for Myriad

05:00 Talking about Hard Drives

A bit of history about HDDs
LTO tape
- Tape rebound
- Tape use
- Tape densities
Call it Cold Storage
Erasure coding

10:00 Meeting customer SLAs

Use cases for Object to Tape
- Education
- Medical
- Financial
Things that need to be stored for many years
Financial incentives to retain tape
Where will data be consumed
Viewing in the MSG Sphere

15:00 Is it local, or is it streaming?

Is there a massive secure pipe for video
Is reliable transmission infrastructure available to stream
Media companies are set up for any streaming failure
- Multiple data centers
- multiple network routes
- It works for movies, TV shows, theaters, etc.
How is Quantum addressing streaming vs. live content?
- Premier League football
- FI
- Superbowl
- Companies want to monetize all content
Quantum is widely deployed throughout this industry
Using a media asset management system
High likelihood content is flowing through a Quantum product

20:00 Live clips

Higher frame rate, higher resolution
- May capture data in 8K but only stream 4K
  - Having the ability to upres at a later date
Video capture
- Cameras can ingest at different frame rates

25:00 Networking impact

Serial Digital Interface (SDI)
M&E still uses FC
- mostly because of low latency
- Ethernet still has latency issues
- Moving to IP-based technologies called 2110

30:00 PCI is changing with Gen 4, Gen 5, and Gen 6

GPU Servers
- Storage Heavy
- Filling the bays tends to oversubscribe lanes
Use Myriad’s high-performance platform
- Ability to support hundreds or thousands of concurrent connections
Systems are designed differently today
- Some support high performance for unstructured data
  - AI Workloads
Requires high-performance Ethernet interconnects

35:00 AI means different things to different people

Training and developing models
Inferencing workloads at the edge
It cannot be run in a silo
Still a breakdown in structured vs unstructured data
Integrated Deduplication and data reduction
Find the place where data lives to generate money

40:00 Power and Cooling

SSDs generate more heat than HDDs
Keeping the GPUs fat
Quantum’s take on liquid cooling
Data center designers understand the physics of cooling
- Quantum doesn’t get that involved
- Focus on maintaining media stability
Moving to an environmentally controlled box outside the data center

45:00 Where is the best place to store non-revenue data?

Data may have intrinsic value
- Where to store that data
- The cloud may not be cost-effective for that data
- Why didn’t Blu-Ray succeed in the data center?
Why is tape still the best answer
Talk about CD and the misconceptions
DNA based storage, ceramic, optical
Technologies entering the storage market

50:00 DNA Storage

Still a long way off
Quantum has invested heavily in that space
- DNA Storage Alliance
Consortiums contribute heavily with knowledge and technology
Hammer Technology has been in the news for over 20 years
- Technology takes a long time to go mainstream
New things
- Object storage on tape
- Tape is not slow

55:00 Fitting media into a footprint

Is it tape?
Is it drives?
Is it tapes and drives?
How can you make the most dense library
- cost-effective
- Physical footprint
Redundant Array of Independent Libraries (RAIL)
Build off-the-shelf consumer product
Scale
Physical deployment
LTL consortium

60:00 Wrap up

Quantum

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45Drives has been a cloud-scale staple for some time, delivering some of the first purpose-built storage servers for service providers. Over time the company has added many more servers, most recently an exciting 15-bay rig designed specifically for the homelab enthusiast.

Doug Milburn joins the podcast to discuss the origins of 45Drives and the considerations that went into the HL15. Doug also discusses some of the roadmap for the homelab line, which should get enthusiasts bubbling in the event the HL15 isn’t your cup of tea.

Doug describes himself as a “geek by birth.” He likes everything electronic, computer, mechanical, whatever, studying physics for a couple of degrees, a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, and picking up everything else along the way.

We are just starting our test and review of the HL15, to get up to speed on our progress check out our unboxing and setup video here.

The podcast was done live on Discord – join Discord to keep up to date with all the latest from the SR Lab!

We are transcribing the podcast here, so you can skip to sections that might be more interesting to our listeners. However, if you have time, catch the podcast in its entirety. You won’t be disappointed. The YT video in embedded below for those who prefer the visuals.

00:00 Introduction

Personal background
Life in Nova Scotia
Education background
Building metal things
Challenges doing research
Building enclosures

05:00 Integrating everything

Materials, research, building, manufacturing equipment, etc
Created 3D CAD software – Protocase Designer
Backblaze cold storage
Met with Netflix to build computers
Drives operating in parallel
- incredible data transfer rates
- Multiplexing slows things down
- Tripping over drivers

10:00 Get up to speed on the HL15

Check out our YouTube Video
Brian talks about building the server
- Jordan and Kevin get top billing
- Kevin and Jordan try to explain the reasoning
- Brian closes his eyes and pretends not to listen
Storage demands were not as significant as today
- Data sets were smaller 15 years ago
- AI is driving these massive data sets
What’s different for 45Drives today
- Focus
- Customers drive 45Drives business direction

15:00 Working with government agencies

Federal government creates lots of data
- everything from law enforcement to scientific agencies to military
University research
- Univ of California San Diego
  - Wildfire project
  - Utilizing video cameras for fire observation
  - Using AI creating massive data sets
  - Lots of videos to process
Municipalities
- Video Everywhere
- Forensic data
- Body cams
- Car dash cams
Creating the Server Zoo
- Data is here, there, everywhere
Adopting clusters
What’s interesting to 45Drives

20:00 Cold storage

Enterprises like the reliability that comes from 45Drives
Moving to flash
- Flash 32 drive unit
- SATA and SAS
- First tri-mode unit
- Building a machine
  - Hot-swap drives
  - 16 million IOPs
  - 32 Gb/s
- Lab guys love the HL15
- Impressive build

25:00 Delivering a clean build to customers

Machines cut the die, but people inspect and clean up
Why 45Drives build safe and solid chassis
Sharing anecdotes

30:00 Building affordable home lab equipment

Affordability range
Get it down to $2K
Business is brisk
Sold in excess of 250 units
Discord question: Why build a white server instead of the traditional black?
Came from feedback from many resources
Discord question: does adding color and graphics add to the cost?

35:00 Built in North America

45Drives is a believer in fair wages
Employees are in with variable pay
Build with quality
Let customers add to it easily
Cost-effective customization
- Add whatever drives you want
- Use the software you need

40:00 People have their own idea of what they want

45Drives fills 45 percent full builds
55 percent are built with other options

45:00 You can’t please all the people all the time

People should buy what they can afford
Just getting started, buy from eBay
Get a used server like a PowerEdge
build it so you can use it
the HL15 is a premium server
Is there a thin client on the way?

50:00 Looking at the hardware build design

Keeping the price point
Top loading caddy
relieving repetitive stress injury
Do you really need 240 screws?
Reducing vibration on hard drives
Flash vs HDD
- The right tool for the job
- Cost per terabyte

55:00 Question from Discord audience

How do 45Drives characterize support and warrant for the HL15
- Low defect rate
- Ship it back, or they send the part via FedEx on 45Drive’s nickel

60:00. Things you should and shouldn’t try

Don’t try what we did in the lab
Want another podcast with 45Drives?

63:00 Wrapup

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Brian invited Seagate’s Colin Presly to the podcast this week to discuss research and developments in hard drives. Colin has been with Seagate for 20 years and is currently the Senior Director in the Office of the CTO. Originally from the UK, Colin moved to Minnesota over 20 years ago. The headline? HAMR is sampling with customers and 50TB HDDs are possible.

Having grown up in the UK, Colin is a big sports enthusiast supporting teams like Liverpool Football Club (good pick), Formula 1, Rugby, and cricket. He is still a fan and continues to follow his teams from Shakopee, MN.

From a technology perspective, Colin considers himself to be an experienced engineering leader and technologist with over 20 years of broad technical and managerial experience in the disc drive industry. He has a proven track record managing diverse cross-functional teams, developing precision capital equipment, and productizing enterprise-quality disc drives.

After a few minutes of talking sports, Brian and Colin got serious about the real topic of this podcast: hard drives. The great thing about Colin is his enthusiasm for sport and technology.

This is a great discussion between two people who have been in the storage industry for a long time and still have the passion to get excited about what’s around the corner. Hear what is around the corner in hard drive development.

Streamed live with StorageReview Discord members.

Full video on YouTube

You should give this podcast a view in its entirety, but if you are stretched for time, the timestamp is below.

00:00 – Introduction

Let’s talk sports
- Football (real football).
- Formula 1
- Rugby
- Cricket

05:00 – Let’s talk spinning disks

Hard drive technology
Open them up and see what actually goes into the hard drive
Cloud is a hard drive
Progressive increments in capacity
What goes into the technology
Hard drive inflection point for growth
What are the limitations

10:00 – Hard drive direction

Platters, heads, size, area
Structure
Preventing flipping bits
Scale with larger platters
Is 3.5 inches the right size going forward
Hard to justify changing the HDD’s physical size
Changing the size of the HDD is not the best approach

15:00 – Comparing Flash

New ways to consume storage
Hyperscalers
Challenging in all sectors
OCP
We need the standards
NVMe for hard drives?
Watch this space – an exploration activity

20:00 – The appeal of one interface

Convincing the market
Hyperscalers have a major influence
SMR
- Writing wider tracks
- Challenges on Read
- PMR and CMR
- Restrictions
- Want to get to the next BIG step
- ISOMER
- HAMR- Heat-Assisted Magnetic Recording

25:00 – Intent to launch larger hard drive

Game changer
Increased drive capacity
Shifts in data center technology take time
A customer has nothing to change
Plasmonic effect
Heat in the media allows for changing media type

30:00 – Executing heating of an area

Heat is localized – nanometers
Heat makes the bit flip
Seagate has put years of effort into the project
Miniaturization journey

35:00 – Challenges in thermal and magnetic stability

Directing heat to the interface
Surviving that amount of heat
Experiments to get where they are today
HAMR is the next leap in technology
Is HAMR a play for small drives
Power consumption

40:00 – Replacing older 4TB drives with 20TB drives – energy savings

Big demand for that 2TB increment can save operation costs
Positive environmental impact
The demand will drive development

45:00 – GenAI driving storage capacity

Density is critical
- Legal reasons to increase density
- Political trends
- Video
- Keeping the data long-term

50:00 – Referencing CORVAULT 106 Drive System

Multi-actuator
Colin ran the program
Splits in two inside the drive
Creates a parallel operation
Performance per TB

55:00 – Wrap-up

Seagate HAMR

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This podcast features a conversation between Brian and Jeffrey Gregor (he prefers Gregor). Gregor is the General Manager for OVHcloud® US, a leading cloud provider with a global presence. Prior to joining OVHcloud, Gregor was a Navy Officer, a highly decorated Navy Officer, with over 15 years serving the US.

OVHcloud was established in 1999, with some borrowed funds and hardware, as a web-hosting startup in northern France and has grown steadily, expanding across Europe. Following the expansion into Canada in 2015, OVHcloud opened offices in the US. Gregor joined OVHcloud when the company opened offices in northern Virginia. And the expansion continues.

We recently posted a deep-dive review for OVHcloud US, focusing on GPUs in the cloud and how to approach cloud training for AI. The review is worth the time as it provides background on OVH, how we performed our tests, and the results.

Gregor explains the

Streaming live on the StorageReview Discord.

00:00 Introduction

What you need to know about OVHcloud
Company structure
Services offered
New acquisition to target the edge market
Partnerships
- VMware
- Nutanix

06:00 Competition

Providing building blocks for multicloud
Fitting in the multicloud environment
Platform-as-a-Service
Open Source Software support
Footprint
- New investments
- Design and built servers
- Adding new data center in central US

11:00 Expanding OVH

Gridscale acquisition
- Provides cloud workloads
- growing points-of-presence
Why metal-bending offers OVH advantages
- Custom configurations
- Proprietary water cooling system
- Environmentally friendly
18-month hardware refresh
- Repurpose existing servers
- Not all customers need the latest and greatest

16:00 Making it cost-effective

Low-cost options
Access to a robust playground
Flexibility
- Avoiding long-term contracts
- Build freedom in the cloud
Delivering high-value, high-performance
Sweet spot is SMB, small enterprises

20:00 Helping customers move to the cloud

Providing a broad range of products and services
Predictable pricing
Taking the first step to migrate to the cloud
- Modernizing applications
- Familiarization
- Understanding the ecosystem
Managed services
- Kubernetes
  - public cloud
  - private cloud
Sustainability
- Liquid-cooling
- Repurposing storage
- Getting more life out of products and systems
Green from the beginning, not because it’s the right thing to do

26:00 Security

SOC- and ISO-certified
- PCI
- DSS
- HIPPA compliance
Physical security
Logical security
Secure Infrastructure
Customers secure their applications
Great reputation for thwarting DDoS attacks
- Anti-DDoS system
Building your own has advantages

30:00 GPU Instances ties everything together

Easy to use
Cost-effective
NVIDIA V100S
H100’s are on the way when available
Allows users to go to the next level
No lock-in contract

35:00 Geeky, Nerdy Engineers

Constantly testing hardware and software
Building for the Next Big Thing
DPUs, GPUs, accelerators
Data sovereignty
Cloud AI and LLMs

40:00 Toronto Data Center

Discord users want to visit the Toronto site
No FEDRAMP yet-maybe future
SLED certification
Getting started with OVH
- private cloud
- Credit is available when signing up

45:00 Wrap-up

YouTube Channel

OVHcloud US

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This week Brian sits down with our own AI expert, Jordan Ranous, to discuss and speculate on the challenges facing enterprises and small businesses as they try to get a grip on the hot topic of the decade, Artificial Intelligence. If you have been following StorageReview, then you are aware of some of the tests, reviews, and trials we have been exploring in our lab. Jordan is engaged in almost all AI content posted on our site.

Jordan is an experienced AI technologist with a background working with financial institutions. Brian always offers his guests some tough questions, and Jordan gets the same treatment. AI is such a hot topic, and the buzz in the industry just keeps getting louder, generating more questions than answers. Jordan has a rare talent of being an expert in AI and being able to articulate answers that can be easily understood.

This is the first podcast that we’re actually integrating live with our Discord community so they can interact and ask questions on topics we are hitting at that moment.

If it’s AI-related, Brian and Jordan talk about it. It is certainly worth watching the podcast in its entirety, but if you would like to hop around, we have the time-stamped transcript below.

Join the Discord to participate in future pods in real-time.

00:00 Introduction

Setting the stage for the live event
- Invited the StorageReveiw Discord community
- Exploring AI in the lab
- Hands-on
Recapping Flash Memory Summit (FMS
- AI Vision Demo
- SR Sloths stole the show
AI does not have a universal definition
- Generative AI tools
  - ChatGPT
  - Dall-E
Generative AI vs AGI (artificial general intelligence)
Computer Vision
- A subset of broader AI
- Object recognition
- Image Datasets

05:00 Finetuning the model

Business Intelligence
- Categorizing images
- Identifying brands rather than just shapes
- Self-checkout
- Loss Prevention
Creating the Datasets
- Training data
- Install disparity between enterprise and small retail shops
Tools for AI
- Leveraging the right tools for the job
Implementation challenges
Creating chatbots for various industries

10:00 Chatbots for customer service

Chatbot is programmed to fix the problem, not initiate transferring the call
Pressing zero doesn’t do anything
Creating higher frustration for customers
Catching AI doing something it shouldn’t
AI has the potential to hyperextend in any direction
- Keep an eye on your AI model to keep it honest and focused
- Quality data means quality results

15:00 Security is paramount

Inherent biases in AI
Training data collection is critical
Gather a diverse group to build the training data
Proper finetuning
Be careful of the persona you create
Doom server demo
- AI’s talking trash
- AI gamers fighting each other and making disparaging jokes
- AI understood the assignment and acted upon it
Ethics
Enterprises might be reluctant to provide too much information
- Know where it should go
- And where it might go
- The fear of the unknown

20:00 Active Directory for access levels

Keeping data secure and available to appropriate teams
- Call centers probably do not need access to proprietary marketing material
- NeMo Guardrails
- How questions are asked or how to prompt the question
Hiring Prompt Engineers
Support tools
- Democratizing the toolset

25:00 What’s the on-ramp for small businesses

Set up internally
Create solid prompts
Do the simple stuff first
Ease into the technology
- Understand how it works
- Understand limitations
Use an AI model to analyze CRM data
- Help with sales forecasts
- Analyzing the sales funnel
Use built-in tools
Not every business needs a custom model

30:00 What’s a good starting point

Fund IT for AI APIs
Consume available tools
Employ a paid version of ChatGPT4
Monitor billing
API provides additional freedom

35:00 What about the hardware

Workstations with GPUs
Keep GPUs busy
Parallelize
Rack space consideration
Liquid or Air cooled
TBs of storage
GPUs take slots that might have been used for storage
How much power can a rack support

40:00 Dell’s latest CPU servers

Fast, shared storage
Software
SSDs
- E1.S
Inferencing cards
Ultra-high-speed servers and workstations

45:00 Where cloud can benefit AI

OVH
Cloud is a valuable resource
Hourly billing

50:00 Wrap-up

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Dell XE9680 Review

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We recently spent some time with the Dell PowerProtect Appliance, posting an in-depth review…

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Recently, Brian took a trip to Longmont, Colorado, to look at the Seagate Exos CORVAULT, a high-density storage platform five years in the making! We followed up his visit by posting a deep dive into the CORVAULT, looking at everything from unboxing to setup and highlighting the many features associated with this technology.

Brian’s guest on this show is Erik Salo, Seagate’s vice president of product and business marketing. Erik has been with Seagate for over ten years and has had his hands on everything from distribution, storage, and cloud-edge technology. With that kind of background, Erik was the perfect choice to get some background on this new storage platform.

The concept for CORVAULT was hatched during a meeting, thinking about all the sophisticated and innovative technology used in building Seagate products. Erik believed that, instead of thinking of storage in single 3.5-inch increments, it might be time to think in terms of hundreds of those 3.5-inch products in a high-density platform. The discussion moved to cloud storage, and the numbers just kept growing.

This is a podcast with plenty of detail about what goes into creating a product like CORVAULT. It is certainly worth a view, but if you need just to hit some highlights, the video is transcribed below.

00:00 Introduction (recorded on-site in Longmont, CO)

CORVAULT background
Think about storage differently
How to manage those disks
Focus
Erasure encoding
Failure management

05:00 Dramatic changes in scale

Server overhead
Server management
Inefficiency when making all products the same
Built for resiliency
Costs
Erik’s history in replacing drives
Smart drives

10:00 Smart drives know

Servers are smart enough to know what capacity remains
Self-resilient systems
Who makes up the customer population
- Enterprise
- Cloud
Staying focused
How do customers decide on storage technology
- What do they want to do
- How do they want to do it
- How much will it cost
- What hardware is available

15:00 Building out infrastructures in the lab

Focus on core competence
How software uses storage
Deciding what goes into a system
Keep it simple
Use cases for specific products
What if a customer doesn’t need 106 drives
A smaller unit with all the same features

20:00 Bigger, Bigger, Bigger

From floppies to Terabytes
How much of the data is useful
Surveillance videos
Sophistication

25:00 Helping customer figure out what’s next

Seagate is an adopter of all the technology
- AI
- High volume manufacturer
- Components are still hard to get
Companies stopped ordering during COVID
Seagate has a long-term view

30:00 How to get customers interested

Three step process
- Reference ArchitectureWhat about flash
- Provide demo unit
Performance of CORVAULT
What is the system tuned for
What about flash
Managing supply chain

35:00 Conclusion

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Brian flew down to Houston to attend HPE GreenLake Day for Storage, where he caught up with Patrick Osborne, amongst many others, to gain insight into new HPE GreenLake solutions. Patrick has been with Hewlett Packard Enterprise for over 13 years with a laser focus on storage technology, Cloud Infrastructure, and Big Data.

Patrick holds the SVP & GM position running the Cloud and Data Infrastructure Platforms business for HPE. Before this, Patrick was VP Storage Business Unit and, before that, VP & GM, Big Data, Analytics, and Scale-out- Platforms. Patrick describes himself as a technology and business leader focused on growth and scaling teams.

In this podcast Brian and Patrick cover off on a lot of what’s new at HPE GreenLake like files services from VAST Data, new block storage options and even new data protection and replication offerings. The guys also get into what’s new with Alletra MP hardware, which underpins the new block and file services and how Alletra MP will impact HPE’s traditional SAN storage arrays in the near future.

We timestamped this podcast to help you navigate the show.

00:00 Introduction

GreenLake Day for Storage Intro
What’s new
GreenLake Cloud Platform
- Block Storage
- GreenLake for Block Storage
- Features
- New OS
- Alletra MP

05:00 Alletra MP

What’s in the Alletra MP Platform
Collect customer attributes
Assess data and plug it into the sizing model
Cloud physics
- Review APIs
- Deliver SLAs
- RFPs are less focused on specs
Are workloads really that different between customers
Using the telemetry database
Storage teams are smaller

10:00 Managing and protecting customer

Data Protection
- IP protection
- Government requirements
- Data Sovereignty
Using Kubernetes, OpenShift, EKS
New services
- Web experiences
- Mobile
Acquisition integration
GreenLake For File Storage
Partnering with VAST Data
- Partnering with known vendors
- Bespoke hardware
- Making it easy for customers
- Shipping in volume
- Space is the new edge
Curated partnerships for GreenLake platform consumption

14:00 HPE Partnerships

Open ecosystem
Partner friendly
Building the most modern partnerships for customers
File storage
Data services
Zerto
Protection for VMs
Ransomware

18:00 Demos and Roadmaps

HPE release cadence
Waterfall release methodology
GreenLake Cloud Platform
- releases can happen more often
Continuous delivery of improvement

25:00 Shift in investments

CapEx vs. OpEx
Flexibility

29:00 Wrap Up

That’s a wrap

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Brian invited Ernie Costa to join him for this podcast. Ernie is a Team Lead at Commvault and a Microsoft Azure Hybrid MVP (Most Valuable Professional). Ernie’s LinkedIn profile lists his background as a Systems Administrator, Engineer, and Architect with 20 years of Enterprise, SMB, Financial, Hospitality, and Educational experience.

He was involved with data center operations, on-premises and cloud infrastructure design and implementation, networking architecting, project management, vendor contract negotiations, and multi-tier Help Desk procedures. Ernie knows his way around the data center and the cloud.

As mentioned above, Ernie is also a Microsoft MVP. To put the MVP title into context, Microsoft describes the “award” this way:

“Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals, or MVPs, are technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community. They are always on the “bleeding edge” and have an unstoppable urge to get their hands on new, exciting technologies. They have very deep knowledge of Microsoft products and services while also being able to bring together diverse platforms, products, and solutions to solve real-world problems. MVPs make up a global community of over 4,000 technical experts and community leaders across 90 countries/regions and are driven by their passion, community spirit, and quest for knowledge. Above all, and in addition to their amazing technical abilities, MVPs are always willing to help others – that’s what sets them apart.”

Taking advantage of Ernie’s MVP Award, their conversation gets into Microsoft Azure Arc, Managed SQL Server, HCI Stack, and more.

Podcast #87: What’s Next for Azure Stack HCI with Cosmos Darwin?

Podcast #119 timestamp:

00 Introduction

Background
- Current role with Commvault
- Microsoft consumption
  - Azure
  - Hyper-V
  - Azure Stack HCI

05 Hypervisor and HCI

Why Hyper-V?
On-prem HCI
Reasons for HCI from an internal perspective

10 Hybrid model

Folding all Azure Cloud features into an on-prem HCI
Governance and Security
Azure Arc
What is Arc
- Branding term
- A suite of cloud-connected technologies
- Management

15 Virtual Appliance

- SQL Server deployment
- SQL on Linux
- Everything gets handled for you
- It’s less worry about
- Containerization

20 Server Names

- Naming conventions
- Operational benefits
- Test environments
- Manual vs. Automation

25 Azure Stack vs. Azure Cloud

Similarities
On-prem vs. cloud management
Kubernetes tools
Arc delivers all the visibility

30 Costs

It costs to have it cloud easy
Azure Stack HCI is cost-effective and fast
Early support was spotty
Support today is better

35 Other services

AVD – Azure Virtual Desktop on HCI
Thin Clients
Security
Corporate espionage
Data exfiltration

40 Dispersed Workforce

Global workforces
Data Gravity
On-premise virtual desktops
GPU Partitioning

45 Azure Stack HCI update cadence

Management
Microsoft remote support through Azure
Network desired state
How to experience Azure Arc
Azure Arc Jumpstart

50 Sandbox

SQL Server Managed Instance
Powershell
That’s a wrap

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Brian invited his friend Nishant Lodha, Marvell’s Director of Emerging Technologies to sit for the podcast. Nishant has been with Marvell for over 13 years. His key responsibilities include subject matter expert, technology evangelist, driving growth in emerging markets, competitive analysis, product positioning, outbound marketing, and hands-on technology analysis.

Nishant has worked with StorageReview on several topics, most recently on Innovation and Reliability Make Fibre Channel the Choice for Data Center SANs. Nishant strongly believes that Fibre Channel is the best solution for SAN deployment, and he is not alone. Look to other vendors, and they will echo his thoughts (although maybe not as loudly).

This is an excellent discussion about SAN technology, where it is, and where it is going. It is worth the 45 minutes, but the time stamp is below if you need to jump around in the video.

00:00 Introduction

Candid introduction
VMware vSphere integration
Bringing the data center on-prem
Operational simplicity and reliability

05:00 It just works because of the engineering effort

Fibre Channel versus the “new things”
- NVMe
- NVMe over Fabrics
- ESXi support
- Adoption

10:00 Deployment cycle

Currently, a small number of adopters for NVMe over fabrics
How to be successful with NVMe
The hardware is pretty solid
The software is taking longer
- critical features are lacking
- ESXi 8 should be the driving factor

15:00 What about DPUs

How will it transform the industry
Used as networking/accelerators
VMware bringing DPUs on-prem
Storage applications are typically mission-critical
DPUs are proven for networking
DPUs could offload storage processing
CXL timeframe

20:00 CXL potential

CXL opportunity
How do technologies impact engineering
How server vendors prioritize technology
How lanes are utilized

27:00 CPU Interactions

Cooling
Green initiatives
Visibility into energy consumption

30:00 Economics

Energy consumption
Management and visualization
vVols
Loss of visibility
Challenges with monitoring external applications
Troubleshooting challenges
VM-ID

35:00 More on VM-ID

Worldwide unique IDs
Using the data to determine the impact
Future of performance capabilities
Speed discussion
64G FC arrays

40:00 Performance dynamics

Migrations with FC
- Congestion issues
- Drivers for increased speeds
- Intelligent and value-driven
- What’s at the edge
Infrastructure is stretched
Retrain the workforce

46:00 Edge challenges

Unmanaged/unmanned
We need to add more storage at the edge
Higher performance at the edge
Cost
Making devices autonomous
Vendor direction

50:00 Wrap up

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Brian tackles the concept of data deletion on this podcast and why it is essential. Brian’s guest is Dr. Vincent Berk, Chief Strategy Officer at Quantum Xchange.

Dr. Berk has a Ph.D. in AI/ML and describes himself as an “energetic technologist, entrepreneur, and animated thought leader in cyber security, driving growth through innovative SaaS solutions. He was the founder and CEO of FlowTraq, a cyber security company that Riverbed acquired.” Dr. Berk is also a blogger, public speaker, and startup advisor. Before his current role, he was a computer science faculty member at Dartmouth College. He urged boards and executives to start viewing their hoarded data as a liability rather than a ticket to incredible growth. He stressed the importance of instituting policies that dealt with data destruction.

Why do we covet our data so passionately? According to Dr. Berk, the affordability, low maintenance, and ease of use of the cloud mean that organizations have an increasing tendency to hoard data. He asserts that this hoarded data is a corporate liability, a detriment to organizations that increases their appeal to bad actors. For example, from December 2022 through February 8, 2023, there have been nine data breach incidents. The unlucky targets included MailChimp, T-Mobile, JD Sports, and others. The Roomba data breach included leaked images from iRobot customers. Check your smart vacuum.

Brian wastes no time jumping right into the discussion by asking Dr. Berk how he got into the notion of people deleting data. It’s an interesting topic that gets overlooked. If you don’t have time to listen all the way through, the time stamps are listed below.

00:00 Intro (Jumping right into the topic)

Why the interest in data deletion
Risk profile
Why keep all that data
Inexpensive to store
Risk vs. Liability

05:00 Point of diminishing returns

It depends on what you will do with the data
Examples of value
- Medication
- Social Media
Finding a way to use the data
Risk profile
Is the value higher for older or current data
Purpose

10:00 Good hygiene for data

Encrypt
The cost of keeping data
Reasons to keep the data
Violation
Remediation

15:00 It’s hard

Data is stored everywhere now
- files
- databases
- cloud
- wire
Who is responsible
Risk justification
Where to start
Legal Ramifications

20:00 What are the processes

Encrypt or destroy
Long-term costs
Green initiatives

25:00 Philosophical

Should the Internet “forget” data
Leaving the decision to the social media companies
Clicking the “I agree” box without reading the content

30:00 What happens when companies get acquired

Risk to backups
Bad actors go for the backups
Is it necessary to backup
- What do cloud service providers say?
Cloud is just different
Encrypt
- who has access to the keys
What data does need to be kept
- orphaned data

35:00 Is there an easy button

Externalized cost of the benefit of the computing industry
Drawbacks
Losing data is the exception
What happens to the data during troubleshooting
What happens to the data when someone leaves the organization
The industry doesn’t have this discussion

40:00 Shared docs

File sizes
Number of files shared
Docs that get shared over and over
What is the liability of the data
Should SAS companies create a best practices

45:00 Wrap-up

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Brian sat down with ScaleFlux’s JB Baker for an interesting discussion about computational storage and the impact ScaleFlux has had on the industry. StorageReview has covered ScaleFlux news for several releases, most recently in early January. Check out the review on the CSD 3000 SSD for some background.

Before getting too far into the podcast, computational storage integrates computing resources in the storage itself instead of relying on the host system’s computing resources.

JB is a storage veteran, having worked with Intel, LSI, and Seagate prior to joining ScaleFlux as Sr Director of Product Management. He was recently promoted to VP of Marketing, “helping users efficiently scale data processing, storage, and management.”

It is a candid and relaxed conversation that starts with the evolution of computational storage. JB is not necessarily a fan of the term and explains why early on in the podcast. It’s a fairly short podcast and well worth the time. Watch or listen to the conversation or you can skip around by using the timestamp below. Enjoy.

00:00 Introduction

What is computational storage
How is it used
How did it evolve
Where does the technology fit
Why does JB hate the term

05:30 Computational Storage Participants

Product evolution
Product functional requirements
Making the drive simple to integrate
Plug and Play
Functionality

11:30 Technology

Compression
Scaling
Value Prop
Data reduction

16:30 Gen4 Performance

How ScaleFlux meets the performance numbers
How do customers scale
Use cases
Array discussion

21:00 DPU Technology

Where do customers allocate compute
Creating a rich feature set
FPGA pitfalls for size

25:00 Form factors

E1.S
Costs and pricing
Price vs. performance
Premium performance drive
Reducing energy consumption
Visualizing the benefits

31:00 Wrap-up

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Brian recently caught up with Dell’s Michael Richtberg to get the latest on PowerFlexOS and dive into what’s on the roadmap for Storage Products from the Advanced Innovations team.

Michael has been a strategist for many years helping technology companies develop the next great “thing.” His specialty is product management, product marketing, M&A, and innovation discovery. Prior to joining Dell EMC in 2014, Michael spent his time working with organizations focused on storage, cloud services, and HCI with an eye on Software-Defined Storage.

StorageReview.com has spent a lot of time with Dell storage platforms and most recently covered the introduction of adding PowerFlex to AWS Marketplace. It’s easy to see Michael’s “fingerprints” all over that achievement.

Michael provides a great description of how the cloud model works for PowerFlex on AWS MarketPlace with real-world examples. If you have time to listen to the full 40 minutes, you will not be disappointed. However, we have broken down the Podcast into five-minute segments to help you get to the topics that are of interest to you.

00:00 Introduction

PowerFlex and Software-Defined Storage
Cloud-enabled
ScaleIO
PowerEdge

05:00 Cloud Storage

How does Dell collect and aggregate storage in the cloud
Creating high-capacity storage
Deploying across availability zones (AZ)
BC/DR across regions
Rebuilding systems in the cloud

10:00 More on multi-AZs

On-prem infrastructure requirements
Multi-rack deployment
Where does PowerFlex fit in the portfolio
- PowerStore
- PowerMax
- PowerFlex
- Engineering solutions

15:00 PowerFlex vs PowerScale

Differences
Building the system
Scalable
How is early adoption on AWS Marketplace
How customers are using cloud and on-prem

21:00 Running on AWS

How does it compare
Compliments AWS service
On-prem customer vs AWS customer

25:00 Is there an Edge play?

Starting small
Growth design
Use cases
Oriented to mission-critical applications

30:00 Product design

Scale-out
Performance and cost savings
Efficiency
Address the entire stack
Cloud vs on-prem
- Everything is the same

35:00 How updates work

Automating the process
Alpine
- Simplify delivery
- Expansion
  - Geos-other clouds

40:00 How do customers get there from here?

The easiest path to get there
Based on workloads
Qualified sales experts to guide the customer
Wrap up

Podcast Video

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Brian recently caught up with Dell’s Michael Richtberg to get the latest on PowerFlexOS and dive into what’s on the roadmap for Storage Products from the Advanced Innovations team.

Michael has been a strategist for many years helping technology companies develop the next great “thing.” His specialty is product management, product marketing, M&A, and innovation discovery. Prior to joining Dell EMC in 2014, Michael spent his time working with organizations focused on storage, cloud services, and HCI with an eye on Software-Defined Storage.

StorageReview.com has spent a lot of time with Dell storage platforms and most recently covered the introduction of adding PowerFlex to AWS Marketplace. It’s easy to see Michael’s “fingerprints” all over that achievement.

Michael provides a great description of how the cloud model works for PowerFlex on AWS MarketPlace with real-world examples. If you have time to listen to the full 40 minutes, you will not be disappointed. However, we have broken down the Podcast into five-minute segments to help you get to the topics that are of interest to you.

00:00 Introduction

PowerFlex and Software-Defined Storage
Cloud-enabled
ScaleIO
PowerEdge

05:00 Cloud Storage

How does Dell collect and aggregate storage in the cloud
Creating high-capacity storage
Deploying across availability zones (AZ)
BC/DR across regions
Rebuilding systems in the cloud

10:00 More on multi-AZs

On-prem infrastructure requirements
Multi-rack deployment
Where does PowerFlex fit in the portfolio
- PowerStore
- PowerMax
- PowerFlex
- Engineering solutions

15:00 PowerFlex vs PowerScale

Differences
Building the system
Scalable
How is early adoption on AWS Marketplace
How customers are using cloud and on-prem

21:00 Running on AWS

How does it compare
Compliments AWS service
On-prem customer vs AWS customer

25:00 Is there an Edge play?

Starting small
Growth design
Use cases
Oriented to mission-critical applications

30:00 Product design

Scale-out
Performance and cost savings
Efficiency
Address the entire stack
Cloud vs on-prem
- Everything is the same

35:00 How updates work

Automating the process
Alpine
- Simplify delivery
- Expansion
  - Geos-other clouds

40:00 How do customers get there from here?

The easiest path to get there
Based on workloads
Qualified sales experts to guide the customer
Wrap up

Podcast Video

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Brian connects with Dell’s Product Management VP, David Noy for this week’s podcast. David…

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Brian connects with Dell’s Product Management VP, David Noy for this week’s podcast. David…

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Brian connects with Dell’s Product Management VP, David Noy for this week’s podcast. David…

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Brian catches up with Broadcom’s Rick Kutcipal for this session. Rick is a Product…

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Brian catches up with Broadcom’s Rick Kutcipal for this session. Rick is a Product…

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Brian catches up with Broadcom’s Rick Kutcipal for this session. Rick is a Product…

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This week Brian takes us on an HPE GreenLake deep dive with Omer Asad.…

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For this podcast, Brian connected with Pliops Global VP of Products and Marketing, Tony…

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There continues to be increasing interest in liquid cooling technology but also trepidation in…

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Brian invites Jeff Ready to talk about //Scale Computing and their HCI product and…

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Brian invited Genius Lab Guy Kevin O’Brien to step out of his comfort zone…

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Brian calls on Wayne Duso, Vice President, AWS Storage, Edge, and Data Governance, to…

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Storagereview.com has always had a strong relationship with Supermicro with engagements in hardware testing,…

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Brian gets Curtis Anderson of Panasas to join him for a deep and detailed…

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There has been a lot of buzz around liquid cooling, especially when discussing performance…

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Pure Storage kicked off Pure//Accelerate techfest22 earlier this month in Los Angeles, and that…

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This week, Brian connected with Eaton’s Global Connectivity Product Manager, James Martin, to talk…

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While Brian was in Las Vegas attending Dell Technologies World at the beginning of…

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While in Raleigh recently, Brian had a chance to visit Lenovo and talk to…

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Brian was invited to the VAST Data Ceres launch “party” recently and while there…

The post Podcast #98: Solidigm’s Greg Matson Talks NAND and the Future of Flash appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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While attending the VAST Launch event in San Jose, CA, recently, Brian was able…

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Brian sat down with VAST Data’s CMO and Co-founder Jeff Denworth for a deep…

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Brian talks with Western Digital’s Ashley Gorakhpurwalla, Executive Vice President and General Manager, HDD…

The post Podcast #95: The Latest in HDD Technologies With WD’s Ashley Gorakhpurwalla appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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While Brian and Kevin were in Denver working with Quantum, Dave Russell, VP Enterprise…

The post Podcast #94: Dave Russell Talks Veeam Backup Solutions, Ransomware and VeeamON appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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Although not a consumable product, PCI-Special Interest Group (SIG) has announced the release of…

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Brian invites Allyn Malventano to join him in the lab for an often candid…

The post Podcast #92: Intel’s Allyn Malventano Joins Brian For A Lively Discussion On PCIe Gen 5.0 appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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Supermicro had one of the largest and most active booths at the recent Supercomputing…

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Less than two weeks ago, NVIDIA GA’d LaunchPad, their free-to-use AI playground. With LaunchPad,…

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IGEL just hosted a series of events dubbed Disrupt Unite, across the US and…

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PCIe Gen5 is coming along at a rapid pace, we should see it in…

The post Podcast #88: PCIe Gen5 is Coming – What You Need to Know appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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Microsoft’s Azure Stack HCI offering has grown up a lot in the last year.…

The post Podcast #87: What’s Next for Azure Stack HCI with Cosmos Darwin appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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We’ve worked with DataON a good deal in the past around their Azure Stack…

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We’ve been talking a lot about E1.S (ruler) SSDs lately. The last podcast covered…

The post Podcast #85: Designing Servers for Ruler SSDs and Other Next-Gen Technology appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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This podcast offers an amazing deep dive into Ruler SSDs and what the new…

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If you’ve followed us for long, you know we’re big fans of Eaton. That’s…

The post Podcast #83: The Future of Power Management in the Data Center appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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In this podcast, our resident expert on end-user computing, Tom Fenton, commandeers the microphone…

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The Fungible data center offers the ability to create infrastructure on the fly, pulling…

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Jonmichael Hands left what most consider to be a very good job at Intel,…

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Micron announced a shift in portfolio strategy this week and involves ceasing the development…

The post Podcast #79: The Future of 3D XPoint And Optane with Chris Mellor appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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Larry O’Connor has been solving problems for creative professionals and Mac enthusiasts for over…

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HPE launched the first off-the-shelf supercomputer, Spaceborne Computer-1, to the International Space Station (ISS)…

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NVIDIA is known throughout the world as a GPU company. With their acquisition of…

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We’ve been covering a lot of edge use cases on the podcast and this…

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Creative Pros are a special bunch with specific technology and storage needs. And when…

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AWS may not have built the cloud, but they’ve driven more cloud adoption than…

The post Podcast #73: Mai-Lan Tomsen Bukovec, AWS appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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Last week Red Hat made a fundamental change to their plan with CentOS, dramatically…

The post Podcast #72: Gregory Kurtzer, Rocky Linux appeared first on StorageReview.com.

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The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) is part of the UK’s Natural Environment Research Council,…

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Cloudian launched in 2011 as one of the first storage vendors to fully support S3. At the time the concept of a private cloud was an emerging category, but much has changed since then. In the old days, object storage was primarily used as a backup target. While backup is a key use case, Cloudian added file support a few years back and has fully embraced Kubernetes to meet emerging workloads with a storage solution that was born in the cloud. New workloads are causing Cloudian to evolve again, this time by supporting all-flash and hybrid cluster configurations.

On this podcast, I have Jon Toor, CMO of Cloudian. Jon covers the state of object storage, highlighting both its strengths and the spots where it may not be the best fit. We also cover off on key partnerships, like VMware, and get into why object storage is so well suited to help combat ransomware.

Cloudian HyperStore Object Storage

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The HPC world is always one that’s a little amorphous to me. The workloads and analysis the scientists and researchers use are dramatically different than the garden variety applications we see in the enterprise. As such, these large Supercomputer sites operate differently in a number of ways.

In this podcast, I talk with a pair of Mark’s (Science Mark and Business Mark) from the Pawsey Supercomputing Centre in Western Australia. They’re making a $70 AUD million (~$50 USD million) investment to bring to life the next generation of their center. The bulk of those funds will go toward the yet-to-be-named Supercomputer itself, an HPE Cray EX powered by more than 200,000 AMD EPYC CPUs. Once complete, this will be Australia’s largest Supercomputer.

When it comes online, the new Supercomputer will offer 30X more compute power and 10X more energy efficiency over their current system. This power is critical in helping advance research in Australia, which is targeted toward a number of areas like astronomy, drug research and maybe even making red wines better. An effort like this requires a lot of moving pieces, however.

Pawsey Supercomputing Centre

HPE Supercomputing

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Ducks Unlimited Canada is all about the preservation of wetlands and the wildlife that rely on them. Maybe with the exception of beavers, who have their own plans when it comes to routing waterways. Okay, that’s not true, Ducks Unlimited doesn’t hate beavers. All of this preservation work requires a surprising amount of data. This includes what you’d expect, like aerial photography. But it also includes a vast array of extremely remote edge computing nodes with a bevy of sensors for measuring things like water levels, temperatures, and other environmental aspects. Every so often, they send a small payload of data back to the data center. When we think about IoT at the edge, there are few devices more edge than these.

On this podcast, I talk with Andrew Pratt, the manager of IT for Ducks Unlimited Canada. Andrew and I met at a Veeam conference last year. At the time he walked me through the IoT program in addition to their other data issues. This was the perfect time to reconnect on the podcast, to get an update on these adventures. In addition to his custom IoT boxes, we cover a number of topics including:

The data first approach of Ducks Unlimited
The need to service diverse constituents ranging from fundraising to data scientists
How the GIS team generates terabytes of imagery
Why AI is good but not great for interpreting spatial data
How to balance battery consumption and solar charging with data reporting at the extreme edge
How pushing analytics to edge devices might actually save power
Why visualizing data is as important as the data
And since we met at a Veeam conference – how Ducks Unlimited CA went all-in with Veeam for data protection and recovery

Ducks Unlimited could really use your help. Please check out Ducks Unlimited Canada to learn more and contribute if you can. I snagged this hat for $20, it’s patriotic with a duck, hard to beat that.

Beaver handiwork six days after the prior dam was removed.

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According to the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), who would know such things, 84% of organizations were running containers in production in 2019, up 15% from a year before. In fact, some would argue that the best technology is coming packaged in containers and if organizations don’t adapt, they will be left behind. Yet many organizations are still intimidated by the concept of containers. While containers are commonplace for businesses “born in the cloud” or “cloud-native” applications, more traditional virtualization-first organizations may not be adapting fast enough.

On this podcast, I talk with Sheng Liang, CEO of Rancher Labs. Rancher offers a number of products designed to help organizations manage Kubernetes clusters. In their words, “Rancher is a complete software stack for teams adopting containers. It addresses the operational and security challenges of managing multiple Kubernetes clusters while providing DevOps teams with integrated tools for running containerized workloads.”

Sheng has been in the container game for longer than most and has insights that are beneficial for anyone whether adopting Kubernetes or any other form of containers. Over the course of the podcast, we cover a number of topics including:

Where we are with containers today.
Are containers used outside of home-grown applications?
How does Rancher play in this space and what’s the benefit?
Why is it that Kubernetes is winning?
Edge computing and analytics is all the rage, what’s the play for containers at the edge?
The competitive landscape is hot – VMware with Tanzu and IBM with a variety of RedHat projects, why is Rancher the better alternative?
What is the impact of containers on infrastructure?
New features in Rancher 2.5, which was released this week.

Rancher Labs

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Roblox is one of the most popular game development platforms in the world. They enable developers to create games or experiences that are often easily approachable, making Roblox games perfect for families. In fact, any household with kids likely either knows the Roblox name or has been asked by a kid to re-up their Robux stash. Like many gaming platforms, Roblox saw a surge in traffic as lockdown hit across the globe. Before COVID their most popular day was Saturday. After COVID, every day was Saturday. In fact, they’ve seen record numbers of participation, including 5.2 million concurrent users and over 3 billion hours of engagement a month on the platform.

Not all infrastructures are ready for this kind of hit. While economically a massive surge sounds great, IT systems are often in a “barely holding on” mode, rather than a proactive planning one. Fortunately for Roblox, they recently re-architected everything, literally, everything. They moved away from reliance exclusively on third parties for game serving and got off of bare metal servers, containerizing critical elements of the platform.

The IT mission is simple. The platform needs to be available, it needs to be fast, and IT investments cannot be lead by a cost-first attitude. For Roblox being online is life. Life hasn’t always come easy for them, however. On this podcast, I talk with Dan Williams about Roblox’s adventures to bring stability to a sprawling platform and how their hybrid cloud strategy is leading the way. We also cover many more topics including:

Roblox studio for learning and creating new experiences
The potential to administer data centers via Roblox experience
How Roblox solved outages to meet their #1 goal of availability
Why Roblox didn’t go all-in on public cloud
How Roblox uses distributed edge nodes to put matchmaking closer to end-users
The impact of new technologies on their compute nodes and the benefits they’re seeing from AMD EPYC CPUs when it comes to user concurrency on a node
Why they went with HashiCorp for containers
Why they use most major cloud providers at once
And, some of Dan’s favorite game picks!

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Almost two years ago exactly, Lenovo and NetApp signed a collaboration agreement that had two core components. One was to form a joint venture specifically to sell into China. The other was for Lenovo to be able to offer its own line of storage systems. We’ve been working with the DM Series, which runs ONTAP, but is sold and serviced by Lenovo’s enterprise teams. For those that think of Lenovo as the ThinkPad company, there’s much more going on. In fact, they’ve got some of the best servers around, several have earned Editor’s Choice awards from us, two this year. The storage arrays are pretty strong too.

On this podcast, I talk with Stuart McRae, Director, Storage Product Planning and Product Management at Lenovo. Stuart has been with Lenovo for a number of years, IBM before that. He’s seen the growth of Lenovo’s data center business and now has an even larger role as the storage systems business takes shape.

On the podcast Stuart talks about:

The best college hoops team in NC
The importance of being customer-focused
The entire Lenovo storage portfolio including DM, DE, and JBOD offerings
The benefits of end-to-end NVMe in their new DM7100F array
What customers need after performance
The benefits of unified storage and upcoming object storage support
How customers are using the cloud, including the options when it comes to cloud tiering
Lenovo’s #1 customer satisfaction ranking in servers
Upcoming ThinkSystem management tools coming this year

Lenovo Tech World – October 28th-29th

Lenovo Storage Systems

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HP has been in the remote office game since the Mars rover program in 2004. While today’s remote work needs are a little more domestic by comparison, there is a new set of challenges. We all know about VDI which has been most effective for managing large groups of task workers. COVID has caused new problems though for creative pros and other high-end workloads that have shifted out of the office and into the home. Thus we’re now dealing with HDI, hosted desktop infrastructure.

Workers still need access to expensive GPU-heavy rigs, but moving the PC to the home isn’t a solution as these professionals also need access to the corporate network, file shares, etc. What’s more, organizations still want corporate data governance and backup policies applied. Lastly, organizations want these expensive systems to be in use for more than one shift per day.

Enter HP ZCentral Remote Boost – a software solution that aims to solve all of these problems, which also incorporates a little bit of collaboration and workflow optimization. Join this podcast as I talk with Tm Fenton, one of the leading experts on mobile work, and Clifton Robin, Global Technical Expert for HP’s remote work business. We discuss all of these issues and much more as it relates to empowering the professional remote workforce.

Relevant Links:

New HP Z Systems
HP ZCentral Site

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