Understanding the accumulation of data
I am certainly not the first person to notice the peculiar “race to the bottom” that happens when products are commoditized. But it is been much in my thoughts recently as I observed the annual tragedy of holiday price wars. How can a company economically produce a DVD player, tablet computer, or even a string of Christmas lights at the prices we see today?
iTunes Match often stumbles over music files, marking some as “Not Eligible” and seemingly not recognizing others. Here’s my solution to the former problem, and perhaps the latter as well.
Although delivered a month late, Apple has finally shipped the complete cloud integrated version of iTunes. This includes iTunes Match, a much awaited feature allowing both online streaming of music and “upgrading” library content from the iTunes Store. Here’s how to upgrade your old low bit rate MP3 files with high quality 256 bit AAC replacements from Apple’s server.
The time has come to take sides on the core question of storage for virtual servers: Do you want storage intelligence to live in the hypervisor or the array? Most administrators are already lining up on one side or the other, unintentionally casting their vote while the rest flounder. But the storage industry must wake up and embrace the divide.
Verizon Wireless has a promotion running in November that doubles the data allowance for 4G phones. This is a great deal compared to competitors, and it comes with Verizon’s excellent 4G LTE coverage and performance. But it only applies to smartphones, not MiFi “mobile broadband” devices, and the offer ends in December.
VMware is adding storage integration features to their flagship vSphere server virtualization product line at a rapid pace. From backup to enterprise array offload, VMware is staking their claim. But information about one new storage feature in vSphere 5 has been scarce: The true nature of the Storage API for Storage Awareness (VASA) is only just beginning to be revealed.
Among the many new features in Apple’s iOS version 5 is the ability to update the operating system “over the air” without attaching it to a computer. An added bonus of updating in this manner is a smaller (and thus much quicker) differential or delta download. Today, Apple released the first over the air update to iOS, 5.0.1. Here’s how to trigger an automatic over the air update.
I often receive storage devices for review, but it’s unusual that two such similar ones arrive at once. After giving each a fair amount of testing and use, I come away unimpressed.
VMware’s introduced the “vStorage APIs for Array Integration” (VAAI) in vSphere 4.1, and block-heads like me went nuts. We’ve been trying to integrate storage and servers for decades, and VMware’s APIs finally allowed this to work in truly seamless fashion. But the world of VAAI is a thicket of bizarre naming and puzzling functionality. Some VAAI primitives are ignored or even hidden! Let’s take a look at the complete list.
Tomorrow, I will be in San Francisco for TechTarget’s Storage Decisions conference. This show does a good job on the editorial side, suggesting timely topics and bringing in folks like Dennis Martin, Mark Staimer, and Jon Toigo. I will have two presentations on data reduction and storage virtualization in the main conference track – both are updated from my New York sessions.
This week, two blog readers let me know what Google Chrome was warning them of malware on my blog. I dived in and discovered that, indeed, a nasty, obfuscated JavaScript attack had made its way into my site. Although I was disappointed by the lack of clarity about how to fix it, I believe I was able to remove it last night.
Although Clear clearly wants buyers to sign up for monthly service, they also have “secret” on-demand 2-hour, daily, and weekly plans. Here’s how to get online cheap!
HP stumbled mightily in 2011, and it had nothing to do with product or people. Even sales remained strong, though the PC business is changing. HP’s mighty stumble was a crisis of confidence due to a chain of shenanigans at the very top. This culminated with the short reign of Léo Apotheker, leaving HP to reassure the market of its strategy.
For a massive IT company, Dell sure doesn’t get the kind of respect given their competitors. Time and again, I’ll hear the sneers about Dell being little more than a “box shifter” who doesn’t “get” real enterprise IT needs. After a series of acquisitions in storage and networking, Dell is trying to stake a claim as a serious competitor to HP, IBM, Oracle, and the like. But why should anyone take Dell seriously, especially in enterprise storage?
Any time OS X corrects your spelling or (more likely) inserts appropriate accent marks, Dictate loses its mind and can no longer correctly enter some random letter. There are two ways to fix this problem (apart from just restarting Dictate all the time).
Moving cold virtual machine images from system to system, or even across great distances, is one of the main selling points of server virtualization. But it becomes much more difficult to manage movement of virtual machines that are still running, especially outside cluster or across WAN links. When talking about virtual machine mobility, it is important to consider what is being moved, the state it is in, and where it is going.
The difference between American and European mobile phone providers are vast, and the modern traveler is likely to run afoul if they are unprepared, running up a surprisingly large bill! Here’s a rundown of my standard techniques to prepare my American mobile phone for travel abroad.
The CompactFlash Association announced a new media card format last month, and now Sony and Nikon have introduced the first media and digital cameras, respectively. But what exactly is an XQD memory card? Read on for the details.
What elements remain unresolved to make FCoE truly world-class? What should the vendors be prioritizing?
Although they are ridiculously inefficient, incandescent lightbulbs seem to have a huge number of fans. Despite the romance of the glowing filament, many governments are moving to ban the use of incandescent light bulbs in many applications. Here in the United States, the federal government intends to encourage the use of more efficient light bulbs but there is no outright ban.