storage

An introduction to Microsoft Scale Out File Server

Posted on by Luca Dell'Oca

Last week I attended the E2EVC Conference in Brussels. It’s an independent conference about virtualization, filled with technical sessions about many different technologies and platforms: there were some VMware sessions, but the majority of them were about Citrix and Microsoft. It was a great opportunity for me as a “VMware guy” to learn about “the other sides” of the virtualization world. Among the available sessions, Microsoft Scale Out File Server (SOFS) seemed from the beginning an interesting topic; I went to listen to two sessions and I was finally able to get a better knowledge of SOFS.

Veeam storage snapshots and NetApp

Posted on by Luca Dell'Oca 11 Comments

In the new upcoming v8, Veeam Backup & Replication will add a new storage vendor for its Backup from Storage Snapshots support, and this vendor is NetApp. All the FAS and V Series will be supported, both in 7-Mode or Clustered Mode, with the only requirement being the OnTAP OS being at least 8.1.
After playing with the tech preview for a month now, I’d like to talk a little bit more about a couple of new technologies that are going to be in there.

QoS: the next “Big Thing” in storage?

Posted on by Luca Dell'Oca 1 Comment

In the last months I talked with or looked at several storage vendors, and I saw a new topic becoming more and more important: QoS (Quality of Service). The list of vendors offering this feature (with differences in their own technologies) is becoming quite large: CloudByte, GridStore, Coho Data, SolidFire, HP 3Par, NetApp. And for sure I’m forgetting someone else.
As you can see in my short list, there are both startups that have this feature from their first release, and also big names who added QoS to their existing products. There is a new trend coming, and QoS is for sure becoming a “hot” topic in storage.

Solidfire: a “quality” storage

Posted on by Luca Dell'Oca 1 Comment

Da quando è uscita dallo stealth mode nel 2009 ho sempre osservato con interesse Solidfire, perchè hanno un prodotto storage veramente particolare, differente da tutti gli altri produttori, e di sicuro interesse per chi come me lavora nell’ambito dei service providers. Alcune settimane fa ho avuto una piacevole chiaccherata con alcuni loro rappresentanti, ed ho potuto finalmente approfondire la mia conoscenza sul loro prodotto.

GridStore, a storage dedicated to Windows

Posted on by Luca Dell'Oca

I’ve been invited to Storage Field Day 4 in San Josè, California. One of the vendors I met has been GridStore.
GridStore is located in Mountain View, CA, and has been founded in 2009. They have a precise focus for their product: their main customers are small and medium companies, that use physical Windows servers or Hyper-V systems. The idea of their solution is to separate storage capacity from performances. The solution is divided into two components, a scale-out storage, made with different hardware models, and a “Virtual Controller” that can be installed in any Windows system, regardless it’s physical, virtual or the hypervisor.

Storage Field Day 4: CloudByte

Posted on by Luca Dell'Oca 1 Comment

I’ve been invited as a delegate at Storage Field Day 4 in San Josè, California. The first vendor we met was CloudByte.
CloudByte is a company partly indian and partly american, with offices both in Bangalore and Cupertino. Their main product is ElastiStor: it’s a software only solution able to transform a server with some local storage (or connected to a remote storage) in a storage array. Several ElastiStor machines can be connected together to form a distributed, scale-out storage.

Storage Field Day 4: a quick preview of the vendors I will meet

Posted on by Luca Dell'Oca

For the second time in a row, I’ve been invited to attend as a delegate the 4th edition of Storage Field Day, that’s going to take place next week in San Josè, California.
Again, the list of delegates and vendors is really huge, and I can’t wait to be there. Since I feel these are some precious opportunities, I forced myself to acquire as much informations as possible about all the vendors, so to arrived at the event really prepared.
I collected in this article only public informations that are available on vendors’ websites and thanks to articles from other bloggers and journalists.