Keith Townsend

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]Wow, what happened to 2021! You’d think all the time spent at home over the last 20 months would mean 2021 would crawl by but that’s not the case. I’m particularly reflective as I write this article because today I’m also celebrating my 38^th work anniversary with HPE. The pace of change has accelerated from when I started working at HPE and especially recently. Let’s look at some of the big moments in 2021 Around the Storage Block.

HPE signals a massive change with Unified DataOps

On May 4th, HPE Storage made a massive announcement. Leading up to it, I had a blog post with a video that talked about it being the biggest thing I’ve worked on in my 30+ years in HPE Storage. It’s true. I wrote an article in the Summer edition of ConnectConverged titled “Why you should care about Unified DataOps” It was a Q&A with Tom Black, SVP and General Manager of HPE Storage. If you didn’t read that, I highly recommend it.

It was such a big moment for data storage that I could spend this entire year in review article talking about it but I’ll just point you to some things you can read or watch to get the highlights.

• I wrote a summary of the May 5^th announcement that’s a good starting point for an overview. If you want to see a summary, I have a Unified DataOps Chalk Talk that is a very good summary.
• Data Services Cloud Console is the cloud console for unified DataOps as-a-service. Here’s the blog post from my colleague Simon Watkins diving deeper into Data Services Cloud Console. And there have been other articles over the last several months looking at HPE Data Ops Manager (part of Data Services Cloud Console), a look at intent-based provisioning, and other Data Services Cloud Console topics you can find on ATSB.
• HPE Alletra is the data infrastructure for Unified DataOps. Here’s the blog post diving deeper into HPE Alletra. There have been a shed load of blog posts about HPE Alletra on ATSB that you should explore.
• Not new, but HPE InfoSight is key to Unified DataOps and I had a new HPE InfoSight Chalk Talk to help show where it fit. And as with the other topics, there have been a lot of very helpful blog articles around HPE InfoSight on ATSB. There is also a test drive with InfoSight that you can take so check that out!

Next-Generation Data Protection

Very much related to and on the heels of the Unified DataOps announcement was the HPE GreenLake for Data Protection services announcement. Cloud-native HPE Backup and Recovery Service is backup as a service and is specifically designed for hybrid cloud. It’s delivered through Data Services Cloud Console and this new HPE GreenLake service redefines backup and recovery with the simplicity and flexibility of the cloud experience. Check out the ATSB blog post, “The next generation of data protection services: HPE Backup and Recovery Service” and my Chalk Talk that summarizes it. In the Chalk Talk, I also mention Zerto, which HPE acquired this fall. You’ll be hearing a lot more about how Zerto fits into the HPE portfolio.

The Evolution of HCI to HCI 2.0

Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) really came into its own over the last 5 years. But it has its shortcomings. HPE introduced HPE Nimble Storage dHCI a few years ago as an alternative to address those shortcomings. A blog post from the beginning of the year, “What does next level hyperconverged infrastructure look like? Meet HCI 2.0” is a really good introduction to what we tried to address with HCI 2.0.

Keith Townsend is an independent influencer and blogger. I met Keith several years ago at VMworld and typically see him often at industry events (when we have them). Keith was sent an HPE Nimble Storage dHCI to test out and see if the claims HPE is making are accurate. Check out “Curious about the evolution of HCI to HCI 2.0? The CTO Advisor, Keith Townsend explains!” and see the videos Keith created chronicling his experience with dHCI.

Here’s an additional option for you to experience HCI 2.0 – take dHCI for a test drive and if you want to read more about dHCI on ATSB, you’ll find lots here.

Talk, talk, talk

Lastly, I want to mention my podcast. At the beginning of the year, the name changed to Around the IT Block to reflect that I’d cover more than just storage. But another huge shift happened – it’s now an official HPE podcast. You can find it on lots of different podcast platforms like iTunes, Google Podcast, Amazon Music Podcast, Spotify Podcast, and several others. If you don’t use any of those, you can find it on Transistor.fm, our hosting service but you won’t be notified of new episodes.

I’ll also use a blog post I have on ATSB to update whenever I have a new episode and keep a running list of all of them as the homepage for the podcast on hpe.com. The most recent ones have been really good, covering Unified Data Analytics, HPE GreenLake, the latest Gartner Magic Quadrant for Primary Storage, and the latest on the HPE MSA Gen6 Storage.

I would love to hear from you on Twitter where you can find me as @CalvinZito or connect with me on LinkedIn. Be sure to include a message that you are a Connect member. Here’s to 2022! Hope you and your loved ones are healthy.

 

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