Sometimes when I'm writing this blog, I feel a complete fraud! Actually I suspect most of the time that I am posting complete nonsense. Many of the technologies that I post on, I will never use in my current role.
1) Virtualisation – neither storage or server virtualisation impinge on my world. And it's currently hard to see that they might. Digital media production doesn't lend itself to virtualisation at present even the flag-wavers admit that they are not ready for such environments.
2) Deduplication – Digital media, enough said. Although Ocarina might have a play, digital media is the one place that deduplication does not really play.
3) Cloud – if we are not ready for Virtualisation, then we are not ready for Cloud. Even Cloud Storage currently has a limited presence in the large, performance oriented media space.
But even so, much of what is talked about still has relevance to me in what I do. I don't need to virtualise to utilise many of the process and procedures which are talked about and being developed. At times we all get caught up in the technology and believe that it is the technology that is something special but really it is only half the story.
Even if you don't see yourselves using the technology, you might find many of the processes and concepts relevant to you; for example, I may not use the general purpose Cloud Storage being provided by many people but I am still interested in how to build meta-data and what meta-data should be.
Arguably, a big chunk of what I am working on at the moment is building a specialised media-cloud which will serve content to a huge variety of applications. If all these applications could talk to the media cloud in a standard way; life would be alot easier (they don't), so I'm interested in the standards which are being discussed.
Virtualisation, actually in the media cloud, we will have very few servers but there may be times when we have to scale very quickly. So I can learn alot from the virtualisation guys on rapid provisioning.
So I'll keep posting on things that I know nothing about and hope that you guys don't catch on!
I agree with a big part of your post. It’s the same meme for me, as I’m not really a storage admin but still have a keen interest in the technologies behind it. Sometimes it’s not even as much relevance as just having fun with technology or finding a subject interesting. Sometimes it’s just plain and simple fun to geek out on things. 🙂
Nice! A+ for honest blogging 🙂 Maybe you need one of these on your site 😉
Seriously though, I think it’s fine. You’re obviously knowledgeable about storage, and how storage relates to these technologies is a necessary topic, so you’re doing fine. Keep writing, and I’ll keep reading.
Hi Martin,
If you work with uncompressed content, I think there are plenty of opportunities for you to explore dedupe technology. Our studio customers in LA and elsewhere are reporting upto 40% savings with these data types on NetApp FAS & V-Series controllers.
-Val.
I don’t think you’re a fraud at all. I’ve been reading your blog since you started it and consider you a great voice of the customer. Keep up the good work!