Podcasts and Videos
Ray Lucchesi, President of Silverton Consulting has created a series of podcasts on storage array performance and data protection or backup topics. These were created for TechTarget.com and BakBone Software and were originally available on their website. They are now available below for free download.
As data wends it way from hosts, through the fabric and to the array, it encounters many potential bottlenecks. But that also means there are a number of ways to improve storage subsystem performance.
The key to tuning storage lies in a thorough understanding of your application requirements coupled with a deep understanding of storage array technology. This podcast series provides some helpful tips and tricks for you to use in improving your storage array performance.
Play All Array Performance Podcasts
Hear Ray, Greg and a gaggle of other industry pundits discuss HP TechDay wrap up on an Infosmack podcast.
Hear Ray, Dave, Rick and Nigel talk about Flash/SSDDavid on an Infosmack Deep Dive podcast.
Hear Ray, Dave, Rick and Nigel talk about Sods and Odds on IT in an Infosmack podcast
Hear Ray, Stu, and Nigel talk about HDS apparently more than just big iron storage
See Ray and Devang (from StorageNerve) discuss EMC World 2010.
See Ray, David Floyer and Dave Vellante discuss HDS’s new VSP storage subsystem.
Download Array Performance podcasts and presentations to be listened to later
Lesson 1 Array Performance - Presentation (PDF 105.0 KiB)
Lesson 1 Performance Fundamentals - Podcast (10:27) (MP3 9.6 MiB)
SUMMARY: Understanding the types of available arrays and what the particular performance metrics of those arrays are, can help you gain a better understanding of how to optimize your storage operation. In this podcast with president of Silverton Consulting, Ray Lucchesi, you'll quickly learn the very technical merits of different types of disk. Ray uncovers throughput, seek times, capacity and other disk specs in a side-by-side comparison of disk classes. Ray also touches on disk caching and transfer speeds.
Lesson 2 Primary Performance Influencers - Presentation (PDF 66.9 KiB)
Lesson 2 Primary Performance Influencers - Podcast (8:35) (MP3 7.9 MiB)
SUMMARY: What can shatter your disk performance? President of Silverton Consulting Ray Lucchesi covers -- in technical detail -- where performance hits may strike. In this short podcast Lucchesi explains how caching functionality, RAID and replication can all impact I/O. Ray will also look at the subsystem features or options that have the largest impact on I/O performance. A good deal of this podcast is devoted to response time improvements and throughput.
Lesson 3 Secondary Performance Influencers - Presentation (PDF 75.9 KiB)
Lesson 3 Secondary Performance Influencers - Podcast (11:20) (MP3 10.4 MiB)
SUMMARY: There are more subtle performance inhibitors in the array and network that you may not be aware of. In lesson three of SearchStorage.com's array performance podcast series, Ray Lucchesi exposes you to these hard to quantify areas which can impact I/O performance. Once you have optimized the primary performance drivers, you might want to look at these secondary points that can be used to produce additional performance gains and insights into your workload performance.
Lesson 4 Final Thoughts - Presentation (PDF 133.3 KiB)
Lesson 4 Final Thoughts - Podcast (9:56) (MP3 9.1 MiB)
SUMMARY: In the last part of the array performance podcast series, Ray Lucchesi discusses tools used to monitor subsystem performance and what you should be looking for. Also, Ray will guide you through when you should make performance decisions and choices. Finally Ray talks about subsystem performance benchmarks, current issues and places to go for more performance information.
Play BakBone Software Experts and Insights podcast on Data Classification
Gary Parker senior product marketing manager at BakBone interviews Ray Lucchesi, President of SCI on the whys and hows of data classification. Ray talks about why data classification is important for your data protection or backup/restore infrastructure. He describes four categories of application data which can be used to determine the appropriate technology for data protection.
Play BakBone Software Experts and Insights podcast on RTO & RPO
Matt Law senior product marketing manager at BakBone interviews Ray Lucchesi, on backup or data protection recovery point and recovery time objectives (RPO & RTO). RPO and RTO are defined and their impact on data protection policies is discussed. These objectives can change depending on the criticality of the data and may vary considerably. Also the cost of adhering to more demanding RTO and RPO go up considerably in comparison to relatively relaxed RTO and RPO of less important data.
