Podcast #269 - Three storage legends discuss the history and legacy of the data storage industry

In this podcast episode, Chris Evans is joined by Chris Mellor (editor at Blocks and Files) and Eric Herzog, CMO at Infinidat. Between them, these “storage legends” have “hundreds” of combined years of data storage knowledge, stretching back to the 1980s.

While data storage might not seem the most interesting topic in IT these days (as AI is grabbing all the attention), it should be remembered that *all* data sits on storage somewhere, whether thats on-premises, on a PC or in the public cloud. The success of the industry ensures data is accurately stored and available for processing wherever it is needed.

The discussion goes right back to the start of computing time, with IBM and the 1952 tape drive, and forwards, right up to the delivery of data for GPUs. This is a wide-ranging subject, the surface of which this podcast only skims.

For future episodes, we will ensure Chris M has a better microphone, and we manage our time. Sadly we didn’t get into future predictions, which we’ll cover in another podcast episode. Side note: We originally thought to call this the “Old Gits Storage Podcast”, but Eric’s geezer comment made it clear that the US might not understand the reference…

Elapsed Time: 00:52:15

Timeline

00:00:00 – Intros
00:02:11 – Storage is back, baby!
00:02:54 – Winding back to 1952 – and tape!
00:04:04 – Al Shugart left IBM to found what became Seagate
00:05:40 – IBM MicroDrive created the iPod (and flash) revolution
00:08:32 – RAID made “commodity” a practical enterprise alternative
00:10:40 – Everybody (almost) in IT used to make HDDs
00:11:45 – Whatever happened to RAID cards?
00:12:17 – Iceberg – ahead of its time?
00:14:00 – Block isn’t the only option for storing data
00:15:57 – Ransomware is driving new storage innovation
00:18:34 – Backup companies are now cyber resilience companies
00:21:34 – Cloud storage is good, but do the costs work?
00:23:48 – Storage still needs skills to understand
00:26:00 – Sustainability seems to have taken a back seat
00:27:00 – Storage hardware vendors are emulating cloud service models
00:28:06 – Do we constantly need new storage architectures?
00:29:33 – What comes next – VAST Data-style architectures?
00:30:25 – Distributed Storage – does it have a future?
00:31:00 – Eric likes bigger, faster, cheaper
00:37:40 – What’s happened to tape? Is it a single manufacturer problem?
00:42:42 – Do you say EMC or Dell?
00:44:25 – Dell has pivoted focus towards AI and selling GPUs
00:47:26 – Shout out to the standards folks
00:52:00 – Wrap Up!

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