Ask the Experts

Ask the Experts

• Thin provisioning space reclamation issues with vSphere

  Learn about space reclamation in a VMware environment, including how vSphere's Thin Provisioning Stun primitive works.  Continue Reading

• How to best handle storage oversubscription in a VMware environment

  Storage expert Chris Evans explains the best process for handling oversubscription in a VMware environment, to avoid running out of space.  Continue Reading

• Hard drive cost vs. SSD cost with compression and dedupe

  Dennis Martin discusses the cost of hard drives versus the cost of SSDs when using compression and deduplication in this Expert Answer.  Continue Reading

• Network performance bottlenecks and SSDs

  Dennis Martin talks about how SSDs can shift performance bottlenecks away from storage and onto the network in this Expert Response.  Continue Reading

• Process to convert thick- to thin-provisioned VMDKs

  Learn about the disk provisioning options in vSphere and the process for changing a thick-provisioned VMDK to a thin-provisioned one.  Continue Reading

• New 2.5-inch PCIe SSD form factor emerging

  Dennis Martin, independent storage expert and founder of Demartek, discusses the 2.5-inch PCIe SSD form factor in this Expert Answer.  Continue Reading

• Does PCIe SSD live up to the hype?

  Dennis Martin, independent SSD expert and founder of Demartek, discusses PCIe SSD in this Expert Answer.  Continue Reading

• How will 10 GbE impact iSCSI speed?

  The adoption of 10 gigabit Ethernet has ramped up iSCSI speed and resulted in a smaller performance gap between iSCSI and Fibre Channel.  Continue Reading

• Three ways to configure iSCSI LUNs in a virtual environment

  Dennis Martin offers three ways to configure iSCSI LUNs with VMware and Hyper-V -- two using the hypervisor while the other bypasses the hypervisor.  Continue Reading

• Understand which SSD specs are most important

  SSD expert Dennis Martin explains which SSD specs you should care about and why they are important in this Expert Response.  Continue Reading

• What to expect when using HDFS in Hadoop architecture

  Analyst John Webster details issues with Hadoop architecture and what users can expect from Hadoop Version 2.0.  Continue Reading

• Understanding big data analytics and data warehousing

  Understanding big data analytics, and how it differs from data warehousing, depends on time to information, content complexity and cost.  Continue Reading

• Implementing Hadoop for reasons other than big data

  There are multiple ways an organization can benefit from implementing Hadoop, according to analyst John Webster.  Continue Reading

• Comparing scale-out and object-based storage systems

  Scale-out and object-based storage systems are both built for scaling, but metadata characteristics are the difference maker.  Continue Reading

• What's down the road for NAND flash technology?

  Technology expert Dennis Martin of Demartek discusses whether NAND flash technology will stick around or be overtaken in this Expert Answer.  Continue Reading