Are you the kind of person who always wants the best? Does an upgrade that costs as much as the original item sound like a good investment? Are you the owner of a 2009 Mac Mini? Then you’re in luck! Apple’s latest firmware update allows nVidia-based Mac Minis to be upgraded to 8 GB of [...]
Mac Mini: Apple’s Inexpensive Server
October 20, 2009 By 7 Comments
Apple today revised their desktop computer lineup, including a quick refresh of the already updated Mac Mini. The new Mini lineup sports faster CPUs, larger hard drives, and an interesting twist on the hacks we’ve all already been performing: A dual-hard disk drive Mac Mini Server with no optical drive! Maybe we won’t need to [...]
Flush Time
October 19, 2009 By 5 Comments
Single-parity RAID is under attack. Caching is the hottest trend in storage. The end of the high-performance disk drive is imminent. What happened? Increasing areal bit density has caused disk capacity to grow much faster than disk performance. A presentation at Storage Networking World by Ronald Bianchini of Avere exposed the mathematics of this phenomenon.
Columbus, OH Event: 3 Enterprise Storage Problems You Can Solve Today
October 14, 2009 By Leave a Comment
This summer, I presented three use cases for public cloud storage at the Nth Generation Symposium in LA. I will reprise this presentation next Wednesday (October 21) in Columbus, OH within the excellent confines of TechColumbus. This is a free lunch-time event (sponsored by Nirvanix) and all are welcome to attend. Please register if you [...]
The Dumb Disk Fallacy
October 13, 2009 By 8 Comments
I am spending a few weeks examining the truths and fictions that bind our industry together. Let’s start with one of my favorite old canards: That enterprise storage must be overpriced because bare disk drives are so cheap. I have seen this straw man argument set up by so many throughout my career that it [...]
We Hold These (Storage) Truths…
October 12, 2009 By 4 Comments
I usually welcome discussion (and even argument) about the things I know best: There is always more to learn, and the best insights come through engaging those who disagree with us. But some ideas have been argued so well for so long that they deserve enshrinement. For example, although non-scientists like to argue about evolution [...]
Iomega ix2-200 Adds iSCSI, Sync To Dual-Drive SOHO NAS
October 7, 2009 By 7 Comments
EMC’s low-end storage specialist, Iomega, today introduced a two-drive version of their iSCSI-capable StorCenter NAS line. The ix2-200 also adds native Time Machine support, data synchronization (including a QuickTransfer button), spin-down for its new low-power drives, and will soon boast VMware and Hyper-V compatibility certification. It also sports a more modern (and much less ugly) [...]
The Truth About HP’s Tech Day
October 1, 2009 By 22 Comments
HP and Ivy did a darn fine job of putting together a set of sessions to tell us what they have. They presented folks who really knew their stuff, warts and all. They invited a variety of independent voices and let us ask and say anything we wanted with no expectations, let alone an NDA. This was a stellar event, and every other IT company should be asking why they didn’t do it first.
