Filesystem and OS benchmark extravaganza: Software makes a huge difference

I’ve published benchmarks of various OSes and filesystems in the past, but this time I thought I’d try a slightly different approach.

How to decipher EMC’s new VNX pre-announcement and look behind the marketing.

It was with interest that I watched some of EMC’s announcements during EMC World. Partly due to competitor awareness, and partly due to being an irrepressible nerd, hoping for something really cool.

Are some flash storage vendors optimizing too heavily for short-lived NAND flash?

I really resisted using the “flash in the pan” phrase in the title… first, because the term is overused and second, because I don’t believe solid state is of limited value. On the contrary.

EMC’s VNX2 forklift: The importance of hardware re-use, slowing down obsolescence, and maximizing your investment

It was with interest that I watched the launch of EMC’s VNX refresh. The updated boxes got some long-awaited features, EMC talked a lot…

Beware of benchmarking storage that does inline compression

In this post I will examine the effects of benchmarking highly compressible data and why that’s potentially a bad idea.

Compression is not a new storage feature. Of the large storage vendors, at a…