Archie Hendryx

This last fortnight there's been a cacophony of hyperbole and at times marketing fluff from vendors and analysts with regards to Reference Architectures and Converged Infrastructures. As IBM launched PureSystems, NetApp & Cisco decided it was also a good time to reiterate their strong partnership with FlexPod. In the midst of this, EMC decided to release their new and rather salaciously titled VSPEX. From the remnants and ashes of all these new product names and fancy launch conferences, the resultant war blogs and Twitterati battles ensued. As I poignantly watched on from the trenches in an almost Siegfried Sassoon moment, it was quickly becoming evident that there was now an even more ambiguous understanding of what distinguishes a Converged Infrastructure from a Reference Architecture, what it's relation was with the Private Cloud and more importantly whether you... (more)

2012 Storage Predictions: Vblock FastPath, VI SAN Probe and Hadoop

Yearly prediction blogs are so clichéd hence why I've always tried to avoid writing one. Despite this I've always made a mental note of technology, products or companies that I thought were going to really do well in the upcoming year. Back in 2008 I felt VMware were going to really take off after the release of 3.5. In 2009 I had a gut feeling DataDomain would explode just before they were bought by EMC. In 2010 I spoke to a friend about how 3PAR's technology could no longer be ignored and in 2011 I still wasn't convinced that FCoE would overtake FC in revenue despite all the an... (more)

The Cisco UCS: An Undisputed Computing Success

Back in March 2009, when Cisco announced the launch of their UCS platform and subsequent intention to enter the world of server hardware, eyebrows were raised including my own. There was never any disputing that the platform would be adopted by some customers, certainly after seeing how Cisco successfully gatecrashed the SAN market and initially knocked Brocade off their FC perch. We'd all witnessed how Cisco used its IP datacenter clout and ability to propose deals that packaged both SAN MDS and IP switches with a consequent single point of support to quickly take a lead in a ne... (more)

Understanding IOPS

IOPS is commonly recognized as a standard measurement of performance whether to measure the Storage Array’s backend drives or the performance of the SAN. In its most basic terms IOPS are the number of operations issued per second, whether, read, writes or other and admins will typically use their Storage Array tools or applications such as Iometer to monitor IOPS. IOPS will vary on a number of factors that include a system’s balance of read and write operations, whether the traffic is sequential, random or mixed, the storage drivers the OS background operations or even the I/O Bloc... (more)

Cloudy Concepts: IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, MaaS, CaaS & XaaS

Generally IT folk, whether in Storage, Virtualization, Change Management or Project Management love the use of acronyms and synonyms to express key concepts amongst each other. What other industry would allow an individual to spurt a line such as "Have SOX seen the BCP and CAB approval for our VDC's DR SAN and will this then be added to the CMDB by CoB today?" without immediately flinching or bringing in a logopaedics specialist for help. More often than not, IT folk have also used these synonyms and acronyms as smokescreens to prevent outsiders from realizing "well this IT stuff... (more)