the storage anarchist

1.035: enterprise flash drives get wired!

Despite the fact that the Right Honorable Martin Glassborow (aka Storagebod) doesn't think EMC's first-to-market enterprise-ready flash drives are all that innovative, the folks over at Wired Magazine have included flash storage as one of their Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008.
 

Coming in at a respectable #7 (and ahead of Flexible Displays, Edible Chips and Michael Phelp's Speedo LZR), Wired shares my optimism that most data centers will begin deploying enterprise-class flash storage for their most performance-demanding tiered storage applications in the coming year. Especially now that all the nay-sayers back in 1H08 now admit that they'll be shipping the same drives "soon" – including the previously vocal opponents over at Hitachi, HP, Pillar and 3PAR. (Sadly, IBM demonstrates its continued inability to even play catch-up in the storage technology space…let's not forget that IBM's official response to flash was to promote the increased use of TAPE!).

No, all the storage vendors who want to survive to see 2010 will be shipping and supporting flash drives in 2009, mark my words. And as Martin underscores in his post, the secret ingredient for both the Memristor and the flash drive will be the that leverages them .

Like many others, though, I question how the Apple App Store won out on Wired's Technology list…or even why the top 2 positions were awarded to personal communication device-related products. Personally, I'd say Mozy will have a bigger impact on the world than either the AppStore or the Android.

But then, I promised myself not to do one of those prediction posts this year.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention: Robin Harris apparently made no such promise – he ranks EFDs #3 in his 2008 Top Storage Products (like Martin, he picks Atmos in the top position).

Well, anyway, that's probably all I have for the remainder of the year. So…

Have a Happy New Year!

 

technorati tags: enterprise flash drives,EMC,Symmetrix,DMX,memristor,Wired Magazine,Mozy,Decho,Apple,Android,iTunes App Store

1.034: i've been working on the (redacted)

As the end of the year draws near, I realize I've not offered any explanation for my recent rather lengthy spells of silence here on my blog.

The thing is, I've been busy, working on several rather exciting projects that quite honestly have been consuming nearly all my waking hours. Some really neat, game-changing stuff – even more interesting perhaps than the stuff I was working on last year at this time!

Not only have these projects kept me away from the keyboard, but I've been living in abject fear that I'd somehow slip up here on my blog and reveal some corporate secret or another in what surely would have been a very poorly timed CLM.

But you know me – anarchy means there are no rules. So I sucked it up and went ahead and wrote a post anyway.

But with my last sliver of common sense, I paused just before hitting the "Publish" button, and sent my draft out for a peer review.

Follows is what came back from my wizened peers and advisors…(and thanks to all of you for saving my butt!)

 

1.033: the end of the world

I found this little flash dittie whilst searching for clip art for this article, and I just couldn't resist posting it (warning - strong language):
 

attribution unknown

If you've been reading the storage blogs over the past couple of weeks, you might be inclined to believe that the end of the world is near. Especially if your world has anything to do with EMC - it seems like everyone lately is gleefully predicting the impending demise of EMC.

Why is everybody always picking on EMC!