Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 31. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
Like clockwork, VMware has cranked out another update to their flagship enterprise product, ESX 3.5. The last update came out in early November, 2008, and included some major new functionality. What’s in store this time to intrigue storage folks? Not much.
For more information on earlier updates, see my articles:
Storage Fixes in VMware ESX Server 3.5 [...]
Consulting Is A Perilous Business But Credibility Is What Matters
Posted by Stephen in Personal on 26. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
I’ve called myself a “vendor-independent storage consultant” for more than a decade now, but my good friend, Greg Schultz, recently challenged me on that statement. Sure, I haven’t worked for a vendor of tin boxes and spinning rust, or the software that runs the stuff, but I’m firmly rooted in the supply side of things. [...]
Is There A Real ROI For Email Archiving?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal on 25. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
Are you trying to build a business case for email archiving? Worried that the return you expect from your investment might not be real? I’ll be presenting a webinar on the topic on Thursday, March 26, 2009. Join me for a discussion of the real ROI for email archiving!
What: Is There a Real ROI for E-mail [...]
Two New Storage Decisions Sessions for 2009: Capacity Management and Radical Tiered Storage!
Posted by Stephen in Everything on 24. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
I’m pleased to announce that I will be presenting at all four of TechTarget’s excellent end user-focused 2009 Storage Decisions conferences in North America! I’m also very excited to be developning two entirely new sessions for the show:
Tools and Tricks to Manage Capacity – Knowing how much disk capacity you have allocated, how much is [...]
How Far Can You Push a Mac Mini?
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Terabyte home on 23. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
Last week I reported my progress upgrading my Mac Mini’s RAM and hard drive to extract much more performance out of Apple’s little desktop. And indeed, adding a 7200 rpm high-performance laptop hard drive did make a noticeable difference in system responsiveness.
But a question came in via email asking, will Western Digital’s killer 10,000 rpm [...]
Sun Launches Their Own Cloud, But For Which Market?
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 19. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.
Will Snow Leopard Finally Bring iSCSI To The Mac?
Posted by Stephen in Apple on 18. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
ZFS wasn’t the only AWOL storage technology in Apple’s OS X 10.5 – early builds of Leopard included a built-in iSCSI initiator. When the operating system was finally released in October of 2007, both ZFS and iSCSI were quietly dropped, making room for 300 other features Apple felt were more prime-time-ready.
With the next major OS [...]
Upgrades Give New Mac Mini a Whole New Attitude
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Terabyte home on 17. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
It may seem odd to buy a computer intending to upgrade it right out of the box, but so it was with me when I snapped up a new 2009 Nvidia-powered Mac Mini. I had been waiting for Apple to update the aged Mini line, saving up my pennies, but the out-of-box specs for RAM and hard drive space were underwhelming.
Handy Gadget: USB to IDE/SATA Adapter
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Everything, Terabyte home on 16. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
I imagine every home computer hacker one day finds they have one too many hard drives to deal with. Maybe you are migrating to a new system or installing a new OS. Or maybe you’re upgrading the disk in your new Mac Mini. Whatever the reason, a universal way to connect any hard drive to [...]
WeFollow: The Passive Twitter Directory
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 16. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
Kevin Rose announced the availability of an interesting new service at the March, 2009 South by Southwest festival: WeFollow is a passive, user-generated twitter directory.
The genius of WeFollow is that there’s not account to create and no complicated setup. You simply send a tweet to @wefollow with up to three hashtags and your account is [...]
