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Understanding FIPS 140-3, Storage Validation, And You

Security, Storage

Working with SLED customers for over a decade I often see security requirements like “FIPS 140-3” or “CJIS compliance.” While very simple on the surface, it’s easy to get wrapped around the axle in understanding where these requirements come from, how they’re met, and whether the complicate-ass nature of how these things are documented is just a deep state conspiracy to necessitate the use of AI RAG just to understand the basics. If you’ve clicked into this article because you’ve been asked to ensure FIPS 140-3 validation (or similar), I’ll cover the key details up front. If you’re a masochist[…]

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Nutanix Branches Out: Disaggregated Storage with Dell and Pure, Part 1

Compute and Virtualization, Storage

A year ago, at Nutanix’s 2024 .NEXT user conference, the Nutanix team announced they were working with Dell on bringing disaggregated storage to their platform. This past week, at .NEXT 2025, came the formal announcement of a similar partnership with Pure. I’m going to switch up my general article order and push the technical elements to the end of this blog – frankly the technical aspects are surprisingly straightforward. Instead, I’m going to start with some industry notes, opinion, and current caveats. The three of which should help you understand why this is happening, the impact, and guidance through some[…]

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NetApp Keystone – A deep dive into ONTAP AQoS and how they drive STaaS Service Levels

Cloud, Storage

I’ve been spending some time getting spun up on Keystone, and subsequently went down the rabbit hole as far as I could go. Keystone is structured around service levels. And to properly understand those service levels it helps to understand the concept of IO Density, alongside how that is implemented with ONTAP Adaptive QoS. Join me as I go down said rabbit hole through the underlying concepts and hopefully pop up on the other end as a Keystone service level expert. I/O Density Starting things off with I/O density. NetApp defines it as the “number of input/output operations processed per[…]

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SaaS Ruminations – Things to consider before consuming software-as-a-service

Cloud, Security

I was asked by a colleague to put together some notes on the importance of protecting SaaS solutions ala traditional backups. Me, being the long winded person I am, ended up putting together this piece. As I took a closer look at SaaS the more I realized the availability and security of your data is entirely at the whim of your service provider. That raises some interesting questions, such as what happens to your business if the data is unretrievable? Who’s legally responsible when data is exposed? Even if you’re not legally responsible, who will your users direct their ire[…]

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NetApp’s May 14th Announcements – New Hardware, Free Data Classification, and More

Storage

I wanted to take some time to cover NetApp’s May 14th, 2024 announcements. It was clear early on that marketing was prancing in their pantaloons a bit and a more technical focused installment from yours truly might be helpful to some folks. At a high level it’s more of the same from NetApp, a refresh to the mid- and high-end AFF hardware to meet ever growing industry advancements, same for StorageGRID, and the continual iterative updates to ONTAP and BlueXP. Super fun and exciting? Maybe not. But a sign that NetApp still remains highly relevant and deserving of space in[…]

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NetApp Insight 2023 – Event Rundown and Tech Updates

Cloud, Storage

Before I start rattling off some tech updates to come out of NetApp Insight 2023 I wanted to start by rambling about the event in general. On the off chance someone who’s actually in charge of the event will swing by here. I know a lot of my colleagues will swing by here, and a lot will be on the same page. First and foremost, after being remote for several years, Insight back in person was fantastic. I got to meet friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in ages, and meet new folks I would’ve never spoken to otherwise. Everyone[…]

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Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix – What it means for you

Compute and Virtualization

An alternate title for this blog was “Cisco divorces wife for friends-with-benefits relationship,” or some such. Unfortunately nothing I can come up with is as absurd as the spoonful of words that is Cisco Compute Hyperconverged with Nutanix. For the sake of simplicity I’m just going to refer to this solution stack as Nutanix on Cisco. For the unaware, Cisco came out of the blue and announced they’re killing their hyperconverged (HCI) solution, HyperFlex, in favor of just reselling industry leader Nutanix. How this affects HyperFlex customers really depends on where said customer is with adoption and product lifecycle. If[…]

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Cribl – A Long Ass Beginners Introduction

Cloud, Monitoring, Security

Welcome to the first of what’s likely to be a series of blog articles about Cribl. Don’t know what Cribl is? That’s okay, neither did I a few weeks ago. It’s something I found very interesting and valuable, and those of you who know me personally recognize my need write things down as part of a self education exercise. Gotta do something to make roots in the mind an engineer pulled six ways from Sunday. So what is Cribl? Well I’m going to cheat and ask what ChatGPT thinks first… Me > Tell me about Cribl ChatGPT > Cribl is[…]

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ONTAP Temperature Sensitive Storage Efficiency (TSSE) – A Simple Introduction

Storage

I wanted to take a few minutes (famous last words before this becomes essay length) about Temperature Sensitive Storage Efficiency (TSSE) available on NetApp ONTAP platforms. It’s a fairly straightforward concept, but enhancements and the release of NetApp’s new AFF C line have injected a bit of confusion. Hopefully this helps clear things up, or at least points you in the right direction. What is TSSE? A core component of ONTAP is a series of built in storage efficiencies, including deduplication, compression, and compaction. Through in-line processes data that is written to an AFF ONTAP platform is reduced before being[…]

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NetApp BlueXP – Setting up an on-premises Cloud Connector

Cloud

Before you can roll up your sleeves and start using BlueXP from NetApp you need to set up a Cloud Connector. These are small virtual machines which run a myriad of containers to facilitate all the various bits and bobs that provide a connectivity foundation for the BlueXP feature set. Ideally, well, ideally if you’re using resources in one of the large hyperscalers (AWS, Azure, GCP) you want to deploy a connector there. That gives you the ability to use the Cloud Connector as, basically, a API and command pass through. Essentially allowing BlueXP to talk directly to the hyperscaler[…]

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