Grey Beards on Systems

In this episode we talk with Jim Handy (@thessdguy), Director at Objective Analysis,  a semiconductor market research organization. Jim is an old friend and was on last year to discuss Flash Memory Summit (FMS) 2016. Jim, Howard and I all attended FMS 2017 last week  in Santa Clara and Jim and Howard were presenters at the … Continue reading "50: Greybeards wrap up Flash Memory Summit with Jim Han...

Sponsored By: In this episode we talk with Brian Biles, CEO and Co-founder of Datrium. We last talked with Brian and Datrium in May of 2016 and at that time we called it deconstructed storage. These days, Datrium offers a converged infrastructure (C/I) solution, which they call “open convergence”. Datrium C/I Datrium’s C/I  solution stores persistent data … Continue reading "49: Greybeards talk op...

In this episode we talk with Enrico Signoretti, Head of Product Strategy for OpenIO, a software defined, object storage startup out of Europe. Enrico is an old friend, having been a member of many Storage Field Day events (SFD) in the past which both Howard and I attended and we wanted to hear what he … Continue reading "48: Greybeards talk object storage with Enrico Signoretti, Head of Product St...

Sponsored By: In this episode, we talk with ClearSky Data’s Lazarus Vekiarides, CTO and Co-founder,  who we have talked with before (see our podcast from October 2015). ClearSky Data provides a storage-as-a-service offering that uses an on-premises appliance plus point of presence (PoP) storage in the local metro area to hold customer data and offloads this data … Continue reading "47: Greybeards...

In this episode Howard and I were both at Dell EMC World2017 this past month and Alastair Cooke (@DemitasseNZ) asked us to do a talk at the show for the vBrownBag group (Youtube video here). The GreyBeards asked for a copy of the audio for this podcast. Sorry about the background noise, but we recorded live at … Continue reading "46: Greybeards discuss Dell EMC World2017 happenings on vBrownBag"

In this episode, we talk with Andy Klein, Dir of Marketing for Backblaze, which backs up  desktops and computers to the cloud and also offers cloud storage. Backblaze has a unique consumer data protection solution where customers pay a flat fee to backup their desktops and then may pay a separate fee for a large recovery. On their … Continue reading "45: Greybeards talk desktop cloud backup/storag...

Sponsored By: In this episode, we talk with a new vendor that’s created a new method to backup database information. Our guest for this podcast is Tarun Thakur, CEO of Datos IO. Datos IO was started in 2014 with the express purpose to provide a better way to back up and recover databases in the cloud. … Continue reading "44: Greybeards talk 3rd platform backup with Tarun Thakur, CEO Datos IO"

In this episode, we talk with another next gen, Tier 0 storage provider. This time our guests are Yaniv Romem CTO/Founder  & Josh Goldenhar (@eeschwa) VP Products from Excelero, another new storage startup out of Israel.  Both Howard and I talked with Excelero at SFD12 (videos here) earlier last month in San Jose. I was very impressed … Continue reading "43: GreyBeards talk Tier 0 again with Yaniv...

In this episode, we talk with Zivan Ori (@ZivanOri), CEO and Co-founder of E8 Storage, a new storage startup out of Israel. E8 Storage provides a tier 0, next generation all flash array storage solution for HPC and high end environments that need extremely high IO performance, with high availability and modest data services. We first … Continue reading "42: GreyBeards talk next gen, tier 0 flash s...

In this episode, we talk with Jacob Cherian (@JacCherian),  VP of Product Management and Product Strategy at Reduxio. They have a produced a unique product that merges some characteristics of CDP storage and the best of hybrid and deduplicating storage today into a new primary storage system. We first saw Reduxio at VMworld a couple … Continue reading "41: Greybeards talk time shifting storage wit...

In this episode, the Greybeards discuss the year in storage and naturally we kick off with the consolidation trend in the industry and the big one last year, the DELL-EMC acquisition. How the high margin EMC storage business is going to work in a low margin company like Dell is the subject of much speculation. That … Continue reading "40: Greybeards storage industry yearend review podcast"

In this episode, we talk with Matt Starr (@StarrFiles),  CTO of Spectra Logic, the deep storage experts. Matt has been around a long time and Ray’s shared many a meal with Matt as we’re both in NW Denver. Howard has a minor quibble with Spectra Logic over the use of his company’s name (DeepStorage) in their product … Continue reading "39: Greybeards talk deep storage/archive with Matt Starr, CTO S...

In this episode, we talk with Rob Peglar (@PeglarR), Senior VP and CTO of Symbolic IO, a computationally defined storage vendor. Rob has been around almost as long as the GreyBeards (~40 years) and most recently was with Micron and prior to that, EMC Isilon. Rob is also on the board of SNIA. Symbolic IO … Continue reading "38: GreyBeards talk with Rob Peglar, Senior VP and CTO, Symbolic IO"

In this episode, we talk with Donna Dillenberger (@DonnaExplorer), IBM Fellow on IBM’s work with blockchain technology. Ray was at IBM Edge Conference last month where Donna and others presented on what BlockChain technology could do for financial services and asset provenance. Ray wrote a post on Blockchains at IBM after the conference. Blockchain is the … Continue reading "37: GreyBeards discuss...

In this episode, we talk with Andy Banta (@andybanta), Storage Janitor (Principal Virt. Architect), Netapp SolidFire. Andy’s been involved in Virtual Volumes (VVOLs) and other VMware API implementations at SolidFire and worked at VMware and other storage/system vendor companies before that. Howard and I were at VMworld2016 late last month and we thought Andy would be a … Continue reading "36: Grey...

In this episode, we talk with Jim Handy (@thessdguy), memory and flash analyst at Objective Analysis. Jim’s been on our podcast before and last time we had a great talk on flash trends. As Jim, Howard and Ray were all at Flash Memory Summit (FMS 2016) last week, we thought it appropriate to get together … Continue reading "35: GreyBeards talk Flash Memory Summit wrap-up with Jim Handy, Objective A...

In this episode, we talk with Ash Ashutosh (@ashashutosh), CEO of Actifio a copy data virtualization company. Howard met up with Ash at TechFieldDay11 (TFD11) a couple of weeks back and wanted another chance to talk with him.  Ash seems to have been around forever, the first time we met I was at a former employer and he … Continue reading "34: GreyBeards talk Copy Data Management with Ash Ashutosh...

In episode 33 we talk with Frederic Van Haren (@fvha), founder of HighFens, Inc. (@HighFens), a new HPC consultancy and former Senior Director of HPC at Nuance Communications. Howard and I got a chance to talk with Frederic at a recent HPE storage deep dive event, I met up with him again during SFD10, where he … Continue reading "33: GreyBeards talk HPC storage with Frederic Van Haren, founder Hig...

In this our 32nd episode we talk with Brian Biles (@BrianBiles), CEO & Co-founder and Hugo Patterson, CTO & Co-founder of Datrium a new storage startup. We like to call it storage deconstructed, a new view of what storage could be based on today and future storage technologies.  If I had to describe it succinctly, … Continue reading "GreyBeards deconstruct storage with Brian Biles and Hugo Patters...

In our 30th episode, we talk with Dave Wright (@JungleDave), SolidFire founder, VP & GM SolidFire of NetApp and Lee Casswell (@LeeCaswell), VP Products, Solution & Services Marketing NetApp. Dave’s been on before as CEO of SolidFire back in May of 2014, but this is the first time for Lee. Dave’s also been a prominent guest … Continue reading "GreyBeards talk with Lee Caswell and Dave Wright of Net...

In our 30th episode, we talk with 3rd time guest star,  Marc Farley (@GoFarley), Formerly with Datera and Tegile. Marc has recently gone on sabbatical and we wanted to talk to him about what was keeping him busy and what was going on in storage/IT industry these days. Marc is currently curating a car comedy vlog … Continue reading "Greybeards talk car videos, storage and IT trends with Marc Farley...

In our 29th episode, we talk with John Spiers (@lefthandsan), Co-founder & CEO of NexGen Storage and Ron Nash (@hronaldnash), Chairman & CEO of Pivot3, a hyper converged infrastructure provider.  We have talked with John before (see last June’s podcast episode) about NexGen Storage technology. Recently, Pivot3 announced they were going to acquire NexGen Storage and Howard … Continue reading "GreyB...

In our annual yearend podcast and it’s the Ray and Howard show, talking about storage futures, industry trends and some storage world excitement of- the past year. We start the discussion deconstructing recent reductions in year over year revenues at major storage vendors. It seems with the advent of all flash arrays (AFA), and all major vendors and most startups … Continue reading "GreyBeards on...

oIn our 27th episode we talk with Molly Rector (@MollyRector), CMO & EVP of Product Management/Worldwide Marketing for DDN.  Howard and I have known Molly since her days at Spectra Logic. Molly is also on the BoD of SNIA and Active Archive Alliance (AAA), so she’s very active in the storage industry, on multiple dimensions and a very … Continue reading "GreyBeards talk HPC storage with Molly Recto...

In our 26th episode we talk with Brian Carmody (@initzero), CTO of Infinidat.  Howard and I also talked with Inifinidat at Storage Field Day 8 (SFD8), a couple of weeks ago which recorded their session(s). For more information about Infinidat, we would highly suggest you watch the videos available here . As they say, Brian is … Continue reading "PB are the new TB, GreyBeards talk with Brian Carmod...