Dave Graham

Image via Wikipedia I was advised the other day that a certain manufacturer was adopting a rather interesting model for Fibre Channel over Ethernet CNA licensing.  Rather than simply purchasing a FCoE CNA with all the features (10GbE, iSCSI, and FCoE) turned on, they were going ... (more)

If you follow me on Twitter at all, you’ll know that I’m a big fan of Qlogic.  I appreciate the functional simplicity of what Qlogic designs encompass as well as the “get business done” attitude that they bring to their switches, HBAs, NICs, and CNAs.  Imagine my happiness, then,... (more)

In my first post on policy, I tried to show what policy’s influence would be like from a top-level standpoint. We see that policy can start from a localized array standpoint and “fix” performancing or hotspot issues based on key LUN migration technologies (like EMC’s FAST promise... (more)

As many of you may know, I work for EMC’s Cloud Infrastructure Group as part of the Atmos solution team. In this role, I’ve been blessed with getting a closer look at where the future of cloud storage is going as well as some of the drivers that will get it there. In this post, I... (more)

This was filmed Wednesday, September 2nd. Enjoy! ... (more)

Yup, I’m at it again.  This tech minute recording was taken yesterday (September 1) and features the wonderful talents of Chad Sakac and Chris Hoff!  Enjoy! ... (more)

Just a video from the Cisco Tech Minute filmed on Monday, August 31.  Enjoy! ... (more)

One of the principle points of contention within the cloud storage space is what to do with metadata (literally: “data about data”).  There are several schools of thought regarding how metadata should be presented, protected and optimized but for the sake of this post, I’ll just... (more)

I’ve been ruminating on a conversation that I was part of at the recent Cloud Camp – Boston “un-conference.”  In this particular case, a customer (a VAR; NOT a manufacturer) was talking about leveraging cloud storage for a particular customer of theirs who had the following “e... (more)

Going along with the Cloud theme that I’m fortunate enough to be a part of, I’ve decided to use the “micro-burst” moniker to section off quick n’ dirty posts on a variety of cloud subjects that I don’t have time to dive into fully.  With that in mind, let’s get on with the show.... (more)

Well folks, it’s been fun being your “EMC Technical Consultant on the Interweb.” (there are more of us, trust me. ) It is with great happiness, however, that I get to report that I’m moving over to what has to be the most exciting innovation within EMC in the short time I’ve been... (more)

So, after a few days of beating around this problem, I’ve come to the conclusion that either I’m a complete Linux tool (likely) or there is something fundamentally wrong with FUSE 2.7.4 and CentOS 5.3 (x86-64 edition). (FUSE = Filesytem in User Space) To that end, I’ve got the ... (more)

There appears to be quite the interesting discussion going on over at Scott Lowe’s blog regarding FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) as its relationship to the data center, VMware, and, pretty much everything else. I love watching people put their thoughts to eletronic ink (via ... (more)

In my first article on the Emulex E3S Gateway, I simply relayed a high-level look at the device as well as a sample diagram of how integration would look within a very simplistic block-based environment. Overall, it appears that the concept of a hardware “gateway” to the cloud i... (more)

It’s not often that I get excited about technology within the storage space. There are notables, of course, mostly that take my love for high bandwidth interconnects (e.g. Infiniband, Rapid I/O) and mash them up with high-speed storage (EFDs, Fusion-IO). That being said, when it... (more)

Cool new toy just landed in my lab for a production VMware vSphere implementation.  This one is going to one of our internal groups that has a moderate load Microsoft SQL implementation. I’ve included a static picture set below so that you can see some of the absolutely fantastic... (more)

Nothing tends to solidify a community more than a cause that hits each of us at our base element: our physical being.  In this case, we’ve seen a massive explosion of support within the storage community with folks from NetApp, HDS, HP, IBM, and EMC (amongst many) coming to the ... (more)

As you’re probably aware by now, Iomega just launched their new line of eGo portable drives with increased capacity and protection capabilities. While this may seems to be a superficial change for those used to other portable harddrives (from other manufacturers that shall not be... (more)

It’s interesting to people watch at a conference.  You get to appreciate the reach and depth of EMC’s product portfolio which is represented best by the customers and employees that both use and create this technology.  Sometimes, it’s hard to segment the two.  But, at the end of... (more)

So, my good friend Stu Miniman (@stu on Twitter) put out a video a few months back extolling the virtues of FCoE (Fibre Channel over Ethernet) for the next generation data center.  This video, while fascinating, didn’t answer the underlying hardware questions that we all had: Wha... (more)