June 2014 Server and StorageIO Update newsletter

Industry and Technology Updates

There has also been plenty of activity in the Information Technology (IT) and in particular the data infrastructure sector (databases, file systems, operating systems, servers, storage, I/O networking, cloud, virtualization, SSD, data protection and DCIM among others). SANdisk announced their intention to buy SSD vendor Fusion IO for a $1.1 Billion dollars as part of a continued flash consolidation trend For example Cisco buys Whiptail, WD buys Virident, Seagate buys Avago/LSI Flash division among others (read more about flash SSD here). Even with flash SSD vendor and technology consolidation, this is in no way an indication of the health of the market. Quite the opposite in that flash SSD has a very bright future and we are still in the relative early phase or waves and flash will be in your future. The question remains how much, when, where, with what and from whom. Needless to say there is plenty of SSD related hardware and software activity occurring in the StorageIO labs as well as StorageIO.com/SSD;).

NetApp Updates

In early June I was invited by NetApp to attend their annual analyst summit along with many others from around the world for a series of briefings, NDA updates and other meetings. Disclosure NetApp has been a client in the past and covered travel and lodging expenses to attend their event.

While the material under NDA naturally can not be discussed, there was discussion around NetApp previously announced earnings, their continued relationship with IBM (for the E Series) along with the June product updates. Shortly after the NetApp event they announced enhancements to there ONTAP FAS based systems that followup to those released earlier this year. These recent enhancements NetApp claims as being their fastest FAS based systems ever.

Given the success NetApp has had with their ONTAP FAS based systems including with FlexPod, it should not be a surprise that they continue to focus on those as their flagship offerings. What was clear from listening to CEO Tom Georgens is that NetApp as a company needs to offer, promote and sell the entire portfolio including E Series (disk, hybrid and all flash EF), StorageGrid (bycast), FlexPod and FAS among other tools (software defined storage management) and services (for legacy, virtual and cloud). Watch for some interesting updates and enhancements for the above and other things from NetApp in the future.

Staying busy is a good thing

What have I been doing during June 2014 to stay busy besides getting ready for summer fun (as well as preparing for fall industry events) including in and around the water?

• Presented several BrightTalk Webinars (see events below) with more coming up
• Release of new ITP white paper and StorageIO lab proof points with more in the works
• More videos and pod casts, technology reviews including servers among other things
• Moderated a software defined panel discussion at MSP area VMUG
• Providing industry commentary in different venues (see below)
• Not to mention various client consulting projects

What’s in the works?

Several projects and things are in the works that will show themselves in the coming weeks or months if not sooner. Some of which are more proof points coming out of the StorageIO labs involving software defined, converged, cloud, virtual, SSD, data protection and more.

Speaking of Software Defined, join me for a free Spiceworks Webinar on July 2, Do More with Less Hardware Using Software Defined Storage Management (sponsored by Starwind Software). The webinar looks at the many faces and facets of virtualization and software defined storage and software defined storage management for Hyper-V environments. Learn more about the Hyper-V event here or here.

In addition to the upcoming July 2 Hyper-V software defined storage webinar ( a recording for replay will be posted to the StorageIO.com/events page after the event), I also did a webinar on BrightTalk a few weeks covering software defined storage management. View the BrightTalk webinar replays by clicking the following links The Changing Face and Landscape of Enterprise Storage (June 11), The Many Facets of Virtual Storage and Software Defined Storage Virtualization (June 12), Evolving from Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity (BC) to Business Resiliency (BR) recorded Jun 19.

Watch for more StorageIO posts, commentary, perspectives, presentations, webinars, tips and events on information and data infrastructure topics, themes and trends. Data Infrastructure topics include among others cloud, virtual, legacy server, storage I/O networking, data protection, hardware and software.