Author: Chris Engelbert
Simplyblock's blog brings you the latest of storage, cloud, and thought leadership
Chris Engelbert
Jan 17th, 2025 | 4 min read
We Built a Tool to Help You Understand Your Real EBS Usage!
There is one question in life that is really hard to answer: “What is your actual AWS EBS volume usage?” When talking to customers and users, this question is frequently left open with the note th
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Jan 08th, 2025 | 15 min read
NVMe over TCP vs iSCSI: Evolution of Network Storage
TLDR: In a direct comparison of NVMe over TCP vs iSCSI, we see that NVMe over TCP outranks iSCSI in all categories with IOPS improvements of up to 50% (and more) and latency improvements by up to 34%.
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Dec 17th, 2024 | 16 min read
Encryption At Rest: A Comprehensive Guide to DARE
TLDR: Data At Rest Encryption (DARE) is the process of encrypting data when stored on a storage medium. The encryption transforms the readable data (plaintext) into an encoded format (ciphertext) that
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Dec 11th, 2024 | 12 min read
Scale Up vs Scale Out: System Scalability Strategies
TLDR: Horizontal scalability (scale out) describes a system that scales by adding more resources through parallel systems, whereas vertical scalability (scale up) increases the amount of resources on
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Dec 10th, 2024 | 6 min read
AWS Cost Management: Strategies for Right-Sizing Storage in Dynamic Environments
For companies that use Amazon Web Services (AWS) for storage, having firm control over costs is key. Mismanaging storage can directly lead to soaring expenses and unexpected losses in a fast-paced wor
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Nov 27th, 2024 | 7 min read
NVMe & Kubernetes: Future-Proof Infrastructure
The marriage of NVMe storage and Kubernetes persistent volumes represents a perfect union of high-performance storage and modern container orchestration. As organizations increasingly move performance
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Oct 23rd, 2024 | 12 min read
Serverless Compute Need Serverless Storage
The use of serverless infrastructures is steeply increasing. As the Datadog “State of Serverless 2023” survey shows, more than half of all cloud customers have already adopted a serverless environ
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Oct 10th, 2024 | 11 min read
AWS Storage Optimization: Avoid EBS Over-provisioning
“Cloud is expensive” is an often repeated phrase among IT professionals. What makes the cloud so expensive, though? One element that significantly drives cloud costs is storage over-provisioni
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Oct 02nd, 2024 | 20 min read
Why would you run PostgreSQL in Kubernetes, and how?
Running PostgreSQL in Kubernetes When you need a PostgreSQL service in the cloud, there are two common ways to achieve this. The initial thought is going for one of the many hosted databases, such as
Read blog
Chris Engelbert
Sep 17th, 2024 | 5 min read
Best Open Source Tools For Kubernetes
The Kubernetes ecosystem is vibrant and ever-expanding, driven by a community of developers who are committed to enhancing the way we manage and deploy applications. Open-source tools have become an e
Read blog