Note: this is the first in a series of posts on the blogs that make up the Online Storage Optimization blogroll. Please look out for future reviews of other storage bloggers.
Every once in awhile I find myself enjoying a blog so much that I end up reading several posts in one sitting. Such was the case today with Storagebod’s Blog. Who else, I thought, could integrate references to Winnie-the-Pooh with cloud storage while making subtle points about storage infrastructure costs? This must be a sign I’m becoming a fan.
Storagebod, whose real name is Martin Glassborow, is an independent storage blogger whose topics cover a wide swath of storage and tech-related topics. His bio states that he’s responsible for storage infrastructure for a large UK Media company, which he doesn’t name. He also says in posts that he utilizes both EMC and NetApp storage, which puts him in an interesting position vis a vis the two competitors.
I’ve gotten chatting with Martin on Twitter on several occasions (as have some other contributors to this blog), and one thing that stands out about him is that while he has strong opinions about storage products, they always seem to come from a customer perspective — that is, he’s not interested in slamming a vendor for its own sake. Rather, he takes a pragmatic approach that speaks to a larger mission of helping other storage and IT professionals who are also struggling to control costs, keep data safe, and so on.
So, even while mocking IBM’s latest cloud offerings with his Milne-inspired ditty, he gives it the benefit of the doubt, saying, “…I’ve been a bit unfair, it’s not just tin, it comes with a raft of management software as well…”
Another recent post about a recent Amazon AWS outage doesn’t slam the company for losing a data center, but instead argues for better planning for such an eventuality.
“When Amazon lose a data-centre in their cloud, this should not be news! It will happen, it may be a whole data centre, it may be a partial loss. This not a failure of the Cloud as a concept; it is not even a failure of the public Cloud…”
In short, this is a blogger I recommend for anyone who would like to read spirited, opinionated yet fair coverage of storage from the point of view of someone who knows your pain. And while he never seems to quite find the best way to alleviate it, the process he goes through should be enlightening to many, both within and outside the industry.
