Maxwell Riggsbee describes how the idea for WHIPTAIL Labs was born and what work the Labs team is focused on.
The Goal WHIPTAIL LABS questioned how different database servers would scale to handle increasing levels of data, if given unconstrained IO and throughput. PostgreSQL and PG_Bulkload Oracle 11g and Datapump Microsoft SQL Server and Bulk Insert To find the answers, we ran bulk load tests using each database in our environment, built upon an INVICTA all-flash storage array. The Tests…
Paul will be hosting the upcoming webinar Big Data for the Real World on July 18th. I’d like to talk BIG DATA, albeit “from a certain point of view” (yes, that’s a Alec Guinness via Obi-Wan Kenobi, Return of the Jedi reference). At best, BIG DATA is a nebulous and overused term. To draw from well-known statistics that I’ve just…
Download these Lab Notes in PDF format as well as the supporting documents–1 Billion Rows, 4 Billion Rows and 15 Billion Rows. Attend the upcoming High Performance Bulk Loading with PostgreSQL webinar to learn more about the testing and results. UPDATE: Watch the recorded High Performance Bulk Loading with PostgreSQL webinar. The Goal WHIPTAIL LABS, tasked with rethinking the deployment…
Today we announced INVICTA INFINITY will be generally available in July. A few of our System Engineers share what this means for the industry. There are an increasing number of high-performance storage providers, particularly in the all-flash space, that are beginning to offer higher-density or clustered solutions. Nearly all of the these solutions are subject to limitations stemming from similar…
Last week Diana Hwang of TechTarget examined the five technologies enterprises are turning to in order to handle computing demands resulting from trends such as mobile computing. These technologies will lead to “data center modernization” and include cloud computing, flash storage, software-defined networking, virtualiztion and data center management tools. Which is your company using to handle computing demands (you can…
Flash storage has always had the potential to move applications substantially faster, but having the potential is one thing and realizing that potential in the real world is another. Inspired by the possibilities, WHIPTAIL set out to harness Flash to solve the most challenging application problem of them all—writing data quickly. We focused on customizing Flash so that it could…
Matt Goldensohn, Director of WHIPTAIL Labs, discusses the factors that affect flash. Matt reviews how to evaluate flash storage arrays–what the array is doing in regards to these factors, where it does it and how to measure how well it functions.
From PCMag to Amy Poehler (below), everyone is discussing “the cloud.” It is a hot topic that does not seem like it will cool down anytime soon. But the question remains, are people actually using the cloud in their daily lives? Are you storing personal documents, pictures, programs, etc. over the internet via services such as Dropbox? Let us know…
Video Transcript Welcome. My name is Max Riggsbee. I’m the Vice President of Products and Marketing here at WHIPTAIL. Recently we launched WHIPTAIL Labs, and along with that we’ve released what we call WHIPTAIL Lab Notes. Those notes tell you how we’ve gone about tuning a variety of applications to work in an optimal way on Flash. We like to…
Below is our first in a series of Lab Notes. The notes are also available in PDF format as well as the supporting documents. We look forward to hearing your thoughts and questions in the comments. Attend the upcoming ETL Nirvana webinar to learn more about the testing and results. And join the application deployment and development in flash environments…
Video Transcript Welcome. I’m Max Riggsbee, Vice President of Products and Marketing. Today we’re really happy to announce what we refer to as WHIPTAIL Lab Notes. And what are these notes? Well, here at WHIPTAIL Labs we go beyond the benchmark. Traditionally, what customers and vendors have gathered around are a variety of benchmarks, some of them synthetic or natural,…
Last week Gary MacFadden broke down the research that inspired his Data Storage TCO white paper. At the end of the presentation, Gary was joined by Matt Goldensohn, Director of WHIPTAIL Labs, to answer attendee questions, including how to convince senior management to invest in flash, what are the advantages of 100% flash arrays vs. hyrbrid and why haven’t traditional…
In previous posts I’ve explained what read/write symmetry is and how flash is manipulated in attempts to find this symmetry. Today I’m going to discuss the two reasons why every business needs read/write symmetry from their storage arrays. Symmetry Affects Performance Writes are important, more important than many realize. One of the most common practices in storage design is to…
Earlier this month we posted the white paper, Taking a Closer Look at Data Storage TCO, written by Gary MacFadden of Parity Research. To give our readers more insight into Gary’s research, we asked him a few questions about his previous experience and findings. The interview is below. If you have questions for Gary, be sure to attend the upcoming…
It goes without saying that the most important elements to every business are time and money. The battle with balancing these elements is a prevalent one in the data center, and it’s one that I’ve fought throughout my career. As a result I know a variety of ways to cheat time in search of performance and profit. While working as…
In his white paper, When Performance Counts, Think Flash: Taking a Closer Look at Data Storage TCO, Gary MacFadden of Parity Research compares the total cost of ownership for HDD and Flash storage. The numbers he found may surprise readers, so it only made sense to turn his research into an infographic. Be sure to share your thoughts in the…
Read/write symmetry refers to a storage media’s ability to execute either a read or a write call or a function with equal levels of priority, importance and delivery—it takes the same amount of time to read as it does to write. Hard Disk Drive Storage & Read/Write Symmetry With spinning magnetic media, data is written to or read from an…
We asked some of our executives what they thought about Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). How do they see businesses large and small taking advantage of as-a-service offerings? Where does flash fit in? Be sure to let us know what you think in the comments. James Candelaria, CTO SaaS,…
The following post was written by Mike Beevor. “I love WHIPTAIL, it’s so freaking fast and it never goes down.” These were the first words that greeted me when I sat down with Fred Schimscheimer, designer of the RAWC (Desktop Reference Architecture Workload Code) and senior technical marketing manager at VMware’s Palo Alto HQ. Fred’s had a WHIPTAIL for nearly…
The following post was written by Kirk Manzer. There always seems to be confusion when talking about IOPs and virtual desktops (VDI). I often have people tell me their users do 40-50 IOPs. My next question is “what is the read/write ratio?”, which is often followed by a deer-in-head-lights look. What does it mean to say a user does 40…
The below infographic is based on Chris Nichols’s post, The Power of Solid State Storage.
When two things fall into perspective in relation to each other it sometimes comes at really interesting times. I live in New England and, if you’ve watched the news over the past couple of years, we’ve had some really whacky weather patterns. In fact, the day after I received my offer to join WHIPTAIL we got slammed with a foot…
It’s one week to go until Cisco LIVE in Europe, possibly the last in London for some time and I for one am very excited. This will be WHIPTAIL’s first appearance and my first time on the “other side of the fence”. I left Cisco in June 2012, after six great years, as I saw WHIPTAIL was having the same…
The world has realized that there’s simply not enough electricity to go around. With costs rising and capacity lessening, dealing with energy issues dominates today’s IT strategy discussions. Data centers are among the largest power consumers in any modern enterprise and people are taking notice. Historically Speaking In the early 2000s, many IT research pieces were published, including an influential…
Video Transcript Hi, I’m Cathy Chandler. I’m the CFO of WHIPTAIL. My previous experience has spanned a number of industries. I probably spent the first 20 years of my career in manufacturing and then made a rather unusual change, to move into working with startup technology companies. I did that because after studying the US economy I learned that technology…
Video Transcript Hi, this is Dan Crain, CEO of WHIPTAIL, and I’d like to talk about some wonderful news for our company, our customers and our partners. We just announced that SanDisk had joined our company as an investor as well as a technology partner. We’re particularly honored by their investment and we are the first investment from their new…
One of the most interesting things I’ve seen while acting as WHIPTAIL’s CEO is when startup companies claim that they’re going to put large, established companies out of business. This approach creates distractions, potentially detrimental ones that set up everyone for disappointment. Hubris is never a good thing. AT WHIPTAIL, we’ve remained focused on what customers try to deal with…
The following was written by Brian Feller. Joe Bloggs is poised, on the verge of completing a truly legendary 30-man raid on his favorite multiplayer online role-playing game. The loot–the spoils of war–is in his sights, until . . . the dreaded crash. Not only has this wonderful moment been spoiled, but Joe can never get it back–short of going…
Storage only became a priority for IT teams once they began running out of it. Enterprise Management 360° interviews Dan Crain and James Candelaria, WHIPTAIL CEO and CTO respectively. In the podcast, Crain and Candelaria give listeners background information regarding how WHIPTAIL started and what its primary focus has been over the years. They go on to explain why virtualization…
WHIPTAIL CEO, Dan Crain, and the rest of our team would like to wish you and your loved ones a Happy Thanksgiving. We are truly grateful for your continued support!
While many other IT companies call Silicon Valley their home, we have always been proud to be headquartered in New Jersey. That has not changed. We would like to thank those who reached out to us in the wake of Sandy with concern for our company and our staff. While some of our employees experienced damage to their homes, thankfully…
Last month we had the privilege of hosting some of Europe’s top IT journalists including Enrico Signoretti of Juku. During the visit, Enrico created a short video (featured above) with our CTO, James Candelaria, giving a high-level overview of WHIPTAIL and our products.
Data is one of the most valuable pieces of information for enterprises and their personal business intelligence. With it companies are able to identify patterns ranging from effective marketing tactics to customer behaviors. The correct interpretation of this data can mean the world to a company and its future. In Fortune‘s September 24 Issue, the magazine takes a look at…
The following was written by Brian Feller. WHIPTAIL is thrilled to once again exhibit at Citrix Synergy, this time at the International Convention Centre of Barcelona (CCIB) between the 17th and 19th of October 2012. Following a fantastic event earlier in the year at Citrix Synergy in San Francisco, its European cousin is set to be bigger and better than…
As I sit in the airport ready to return to Barcelona, I think back to what was an awesome time at VMWorld last week. WHIPTAIL made a lot of noise and new friends with our guest Brent Spiner; who, over the three days, took the time to talk and listen to people who patiently stood and waited for the chance…
The following was written by Brian Feller. The second yearly installment of VMworld gets underway from October 9th – 11th in Fira Barcelona Gran Via conference centre, Barcelona, Spain. Among the many experienced exhibitors, WHIPTAIL will be in attendance to demonstrate just how fast data can move at the speed of life. Bringing together global voices on virtualization and cloud…
Today we announced that Brent Spiner will be at a second VMworld with WHIPTAIL, this time in Barcelona. After the success and fun we had with the previous Brent Spiner Caption Contest, we decided to host another challenge with a slight twist. Posted on our Facebook page is a collection of Brent Spiner photographs from his first VMworld appearance. Create…
When we attended Cloud Expo 2012 in New York City, we took the opportunity to conduct a survey on trending IT topics, gathering responses from a variety of vendors and other conference attendees. We found some survey results to be quite interesting. To our question “Do your most critical business applications respond as quickly as you’d like?” 54% said “No.”…
WHIPTAIL is proud to announce that we are a finalist in the 2012 Storage, Virtualization & Cloud Awards (SVC Awards). We have been nominated for Solid State Storage Product of the Year. The SVC Awards recognize products, projects and services operating in the cloud, virtualization and storage fields while also honoring the companies and teams affiliated with them. Comprised of…
It is no secret that Apple’s move to all Flash devices is only the beginning of what’s to come. Their much-anticipated release of the MacBook Pro Retina Display marked the true excitement expected of such technology. Their decision to abandon the notion of HDD has primarily targeted consumers. However, the important question is: Will the enterprise market follow the consumer…
The following was written by Brian Feller. The price is right, the number of applications is growing and the need is skyrocketing for a storage revolution; although the US has recognised the benefits of silicon storage technology for some time, this ‘perfect storm’ has been slowly brewing over in Europe and the first lightning strikes have hit the industry. According…
WHIPTAIL is proud to announce that we have made it to the finals in the 2012 Windows IT Pro Community Choice Awards! We have been nominated under the Best Hardware: Storage category with ACCELA and under the Best Virtualization Product category with INVICTA. Windows IT Pro, a digital trade publication and website that serves the information needs of IT professionals,…
If you’ve never been to VMworld, imagine a room similar in size to a football field. That room is divided up with a couple of hundred companies with massive customer booths, hundreds of demos, more vendor swag than you can transport in an 18-wheeler and some of the greatest minds in IT. … And that’s just the vendor showcase.…
For its 6th year in California, VMworld will be held in San Francisco at the Moscone Center on August 26-29th. Targeting the growing needs of cloud computing, VMworld will educate the audience with tools and training to master the new way of doing business, while networking with the best of the best. Among the many experienced exhibitors, WHIPTAIL will be…
As I’m putting the last things in my backpack and suitcase to prep for a week at VMworld, I’m realizing this is shaping up to be an incredible conference. A number of folks from a cross section of teams at WHIPTAIL have put tremendous amounts of effort into the prep for the conference, and I’m really looking forward to spending…
WHIPTAIL brings sci-fi to the data center and later this month we’ll be attending VMworld San Francisco with special guest Brent Spiner, who played the android Data on Star Trek. Leading up to the event Spiner is helping judge our latest contest—Create a Brent Spiner Caption. To participate, use a screenshot of Brent Spiner in any of his numerous movie…
Flash Memory Summit 2012 is intended to showcase the multi-billion dollar market for Flash memory and enterprise SSDs. Among the many members of this industry and for its third year, WHIPTAIL will be in attendance to educate the audience about its family of products. Whether it’s a silicon storage array like ours, a desktop technology or a mobile device technology,…
Data storage is a key element in the digital transformation of video content creation, conversion and distribution. Data capacity, lowered product prices, digital editing and various forms of distribution are significant components in the continued growth and development of entertainment. IT and creative departments are now working together to optimize file-based workflows for managing and delivering content to a wide…
Imagine this: You’re playing your favorite massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMO) and you just finished a 25-man raid. You defeated the boss and the phat loot is split amongst the players. But in the middle of your celebration, the game crashes and you find out there’s a rollback. All of the hard work you just did was wiped out.…
Recently I stumbled upon a 2011 product presentation from a large IT vendor. Let’s call the vendor DLB. In the presentation DLB makes the case for NAND Flash for storage. The first few slides talk about what everyone talks about… We’re creating more data, HDD performance hasn’t kept up with CPU performance, we’ve moved from a point-in-time to a real-time…
It’s unanimous that we’re experiencing technological advancements faster than ever. This means there are a lot of dated gadgets and devices out there collecting dust. They were so desirable in their prime, but then, suddenly there was something newer, smaller, faster, shinier, better stealing the spotlight and fulfilling consumer and business needs in ways the predecessor couldn’t. This is equally…
Last month we attended Cloud Expo 2012 in New York City. The event had a strong collection of vendors and diverse, passionate attendees. It was the perfect opportunity for us to conduct a survey on trending IT topics, something we’re passionate about at WHIPTAIL. We asked a variety of questions including: · Do your most critical business applications respond as…
We’ve been discussing the monster that is big data a lot lately (us and the rest of the IT world). To many people, the concept seems irrelevant and almost mythical. While the potential it offers businesses is huge, today we’re going to focus on why it exists in the first place. If you’re reading this, you have helped create big…
In the past week, there has been a lot of noise and discussion around NAS and SSD. We certainly welcome the conversation because it’s one in which we’ve been engaged for several years. And we’ve seen first-hand that customers are interested in having a network attached storage solution based on Flash. So, is this new news? In terms of SSD…
For its 10th year, Sys-Con hosts the 2012 Cloud Expo at the Javitz Center in New York City. By targeting the two most important trends in the IT world–cloud computing and big data–WHIPTAIL will make its mark among all of the other tech firms. With companies in attendance such as Xsigo, simplifying data center management, and QLogic, providing network infrastructure,…
If we had a nickel for every time we heard the phrase “big data,” we’d probably have enough nickels to fill Google’s data centers. It was only a matter of time before infographics sprouted up dedicated to big data. Wikibon created the visual representation below; it addresses how to tame this ever-growing beast. Big data isn’t just a big topic,…
As a culture, we want things and we want them now. Perhaps we should blame instant coffee for starting the trend and the internet for exacerbating our need for immediacy. The below infographic, created by OnlineGraduatePrograms.com, illustrates just how deep this “delay intolerance” runs. People are impatient and demanding; for example, 25% of web surfers will abandon a site if…
As a presales systems engineer working for WHIPTAIL, my job crosses a lot of functional groups within the company. It’s my job to figure out how to best help our customers apply the technology built into our products to solve not only technical, but also business, problems. I also have the luxury of advance view into our product roadmaps and…
I told you the storage industry was about to change. Sure, it’s been a very dynamic arena the past few years, but with our announcement this morning we believe it’s shifted once again. Specifically, how we look at storage needs to change. And we’re changing the perspective this week at Synergy. We’ve had customers tell us that the performance of…
This week, for the fourth year in a row, WHIPTAIL has the honor of attending Synergy. Those attendees who saw us in previous years may not recognize us in 2012. At the very least, they’re sure to do a double take. But I’ll get to that. Even as a small start up Citrix’s Synergy was a top priority for WHIPTAIL.…
Recently, we asked for feedback on what our readers would like to see a blog about. Greg Anderson suggested, “Hard disk shortages and how that affects SSDs. What will its impact be on pricing?” When flooding devastated areas of Thailand in late 2011, hard disk drive (HDD) suppliers were one of the many to be adversely affected. From small…
Disk contention is a situation occurring when multiple processes try to access the same disk(s) and the requests outrun the response times of the drive(s). This happens because most disks are restricted in the amount of data they can transfer and the number of accesses (I/O operations) they can handle each second. Disk contention became a more prominent problem when…
How much of your storage environment is performance based versus capacity based? How many times do you hear, “I have an application only three terabytes in size but I need 90K in I/O at its peak?” If you haven’t, be grateful. But be warned, it’s coming. For those who have heard similar statements, there is an option that will change…
It’s no secret that flash storage arrays have some seriously great potential and an abundance of advantages over alternatives, including that there are no moving parts, they’re fast and they’re compact. This encourages any person with a brain to ask why do so many people still insist on using disk for all of their storage needs?! Well, it’s because they’ve…
The following post was submitted by Greg Duplessie of The ExecEvent, an exclusive networking event for industry executives. The author’s views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of WHIPTAIL. A data center that uses only SSD and Tape to handle data storage and I/O needs. You may have heard this crazy thought before, but…
Updated 1/11/2012: Apple confirms Anobit acquisition. After months of rumors, it’s being reported that Apple officially bought Anobit, however neither side has confirmed. Anobit, an Israeli startup, manufacturers flash memory technology used in some of Apple’s products, including the entirely SSD-based MacBook Air, to control error rates of NAND flash inside consumer electronics. Anobit’s chips’ claim to fame is the…
As the Windows 7 commercials exclaimed, “To the Cloud,” many IT purists cringed. The term cloud computing first gained popularity in 2007 (though the concept began in the ‘60s) and has come to mean many things to many people. Most commonly, in anyway related to virtualization or internal or external repositories of data, it’s the cloud don’t ya know? The…
The following post was written by Eugene Alfaro of Cornerstone Technologies, an IT Engineering Services company located in San Jose, CA. The phrase “the next big thing” brings to mind the short-lived careers of many in the entertainment industry who excited the masses for a moment but could not sustain their popularity. Using that perspective, we can learn from recent…
Without question, the single most important application for any enterprise is email. It’s the lifeline between employees, clients, customers, family, and nothing will drive anyone from a data entry clerk to a CEO to unadulterated insanity faster than slow email. Nobody cares if a report takes an extra 10 seconds to run; everyone cares if email freezes, even momentarily. Is…
By guest blogger, Jur Faber, CEO Consolidate IT- The Netherlands Over the years the storage concepts have changed drastically. Application performance was a matter of memory, drives and CPU power. As I sit here looking at a server, I’m confronted with idle (napping?) CPU’s and overheating drives (nothing like the summer odor of cooking plastic.) The quality performance of everyday…
The following was written by Brian Feller. “Apparently there is nothing that cannot happen today”- Mark Twain Forklifts, hammers, wooden crates and intimidatingly large logos abound here in the Citrix Synergy Expo Hall on move-in day. The excitement is growing here for what the next week will bring: further extending on the promise of and (finally) the practical deployments of…
Lets face it, those of us who have been in the IT industry over the past 10 years have seen dramatic advances in almost every aspect of the business: Virtualization, Application delivery, Security, CPU, Memory, all of it is dramatically faster, less expensive, and easier to usethan it was a decade ago. One exception to this statement is: Storage. While…
