back to article 'Alexa, manage my enterprise storage'

When we rather fancifully wrote a column about storage system management by chatbot, and added the idea of an Alexa-type, speech-recognizing front end, we thought we’d left the back of our envelope far, far behind. Turns out we hadn’t. Tintri has been working to develop a chatbot for storage admin staff. The chatbot project …

  1. Korev Silver badge
    Windows

    Hipster storage?

    Tintri is working on an Alexa integration, with the aim of having admin staff talk to their Tintri storage and manage it from anywhere – through Slack and similar services

    Sounds like storage admins are going to become hipsters. (which you could argue is an improvement ->)

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Joke

    Reminds me of Scotty...

    Hello... computer ?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    At last

    Alexa, format C

  4. Nik 2
    Pint

    What would they write on the coffee cups?

    Imagine a shelf with a dozen coffee cups all labelled 'Alexa'. Or maybe you need to know your MAC address...

  5. Paul Hargreaves

    Back in the world of reality.

    "Hi Alexa, clone me 500 VMs'"

    "'Phoning mum"

    [cancel, cancel]

    "Clone me 500 VMs"

    "Sure, cloning 500 VMs"

    "Done"

    "Which VM did you clone?"

    "I don't understand the question."

    "Where are the clones"

    "I don't understand the question."

    "What naming convention did you use?"

    "I don't understand the question."

    "Clone 500 VMs"

    "Happy to. Which VM would you like to use as the source?"

    "What VMs are available?"

    "I currently see 2327 VMs in Vcenter. Here are their names: VM-Win-A0001100, VM-Win-A0001101, VM-H-Win-B0001100, [...]"

    ...

    etc.

    Would love to see how this sort of tech could work in the real world, with real environments.

    1. JohnMartin

      You said banana is that correct ?

      Too Funny Paul .. It reminds me of my favourite scene from Escape from planet earth .. as does trying to get my voice interface to the satnav in my car .. paraphrased below in the form of a chatbot call record for an incident sometime around midnight.

      00:24:07 <Devops Lead Screaming> .. Gary, do something!

      00:24:10 <Gary the storage admin> I'll shut down the reformat of the array

      00:24:11 <Storage Chatbot> Twelve, eleven... You've chosen Terminate Reformat Array.

      00:24:16 - <Storage Chatbot> To confirm, say yes.

      00:24:17 <Gary the storage admin> Yes.

      00:24:18 - <Storage Chatbot> You said "banana." Is that correct? -

      00:24:19 <Gary the storage admin> No.

      00:24:20 - <Storage Chatbot> You replied "no."

      00:24:21 - <Devops Lead> Gary, hurry up!

      00:24:21 <Storage Chatbot> Terminate Reformat Array canceled.

      00:24:22 - <Gary the storage admin> No! I mean yes! - <background noise of Devops lead going postal> <Gary the storage admin> Ow!

      00:24:24 - <Storage Chatbot> Is that a yes or a no?

      00:24:25 <Gary the storage admin> No.

      00:24:26 <Storage Chatbot> You want to Terminate Reformat Array, is that true ?

      00:24:27 <Gary the storage admin> Yes !

      00:24:28 - <Storage Chatbot> you said yes, or...?

      00:24:29 <Gary the storage admin> Yes! Yes!

      00:24:30 <Muffled noise as Gary the storage admin turns away from the mic to scream at the Devops Lead> It's stuck!

      00:24:31 <Storage Chatbot> Sorry, Gary. Did you say yes to Terminate Reformat Array ?

      00:24:33 - <Gary the storage admin> YES !!!!

      00:24:35 - <Storage Chatbot> Reformat array terminated.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      To those resisting, you were probably the ones who thought ordering a car ride or a shared house with your smartphone was dumb or would never happen.

  6. Trigonoceps occipitalis

    Pleae State Your Name!

    "Bobby Tables"

    (xkcd.com/327)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't the cloud providers already automatically manage your storage for you... without having to say anything.

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