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This world of cloud computing sure can seem cloudy. Last night at CloudCamp Columbus, I led a session outlining the incredible differences between the diverse offerings all called cloud storage. How can companies like Amazon, Nirvanix, Rackspace, EMC, and the rest use the same name for such vastly different products? Continue Reading »
I'm a Microsoft MVP!
The news just came in from Redmond: I’m a Microsoft MVP again for 2009! I felt great last year, when I received the award for the first time, but this is even better since I now really understand what it’s all about and how I can use it to help the enterprise storage community! Continue Reading »
As I mentioned on Friday, I’ve recently built a multi-server web hosting environment around lighttpd, MySQL, and Ubuntu Linux. Ironically, my lighttpd web server slowed to a crawl that very evening! It turns out that I had not properly tuned lighttpd to function in a Linux environment. I was surprised to find that the Ubuntu package did not include basic Linux settings! I referred to the lighttpd performance documentation for help. Continue Reading »
The last few weeks have been tough on my web servers. The release of iPhone OS 3.0 tripled my site traffic overnight as folks investigate the new Exchange integration features, and traffic to IT commentary site, Gestalt IT, which I also host, has been growing rapidly. Plus, Google just refreshed PageRank again, sending even more visitors my way.
I had switched from Dreamhost to Slicehost back in February to improve reliability and performance, but the meagre 256 MB of RAM in my virtual private server (VPS) “slice” proved insufficient. The time had come to completely redo my core hosting infrastructure. After some experimentation, I have settled on a simple two-server configuration based on Ubuntu Linux, MySQL, and lighttpd. I thought it would be a good idea to document this new configuration, as well as my previous experiments, for posterity. Continue Reading »
The race to ship a 500 GB mobile hard disk drive unit was heated last year. Hitachi was first to announce a fat 12.5 mm drive in January, but Samsung and Western Digital fought a pitched battle through the second half of the year to produce serious volume in a the slim 9.5 mm 2-platter form factor. 320 GB and 500 GB became common in the first half of 2009, with vendors adding a baby-step 400 GB size as well.
Until this month, all four major disk vendors have remained silent on the step past the half-terabyte barrier, however. Certainly any could have slapped together a 640 GB, 750 GB, or even 1 TB 4-platter semi-mobile disk drive using existing technology, as Hitachi did last year, but no such announcement came. But the break just came: Seagate has quietly added a 640 GB model to their 2.5 inch FreeAgent Go portable disk drive line. There was no press release, but this is a major step forward. Continue Reading »
I’m really looking forward to joining the CloudCamp “unconference” movement, and will be heading to Columbus, Ohio, at the end of this month for my first Camp! Continue Reading »
Along with native over-the-air CalDAV and ICS support, iPhone OS 3.0 also introduces LDAP integration. Although LDAP is somewhat less common than the calendaring features, it still has a significant share of the directory market and is found in all sorts of products. Home users are unlikely to encounter it, since Google, Yahoo, MobileMe, and the like don’t use LDAP, but corporate users have long requested this feature so they could access their Microsoft Active Directory or Apple Open Directory server. Indeed, third-party applciations like LDAPeople were already providing support before iPhone OS 3.0 appeared.
One of the iPhone OS 3.0 features touted by Apple at WWDC was the ability to subscribe to Internet calendars in CalDAV and iCalendar/ICS format. On first testing OS 3.0, I discovered that these calendars could indeed be synchronized from my Mac’s iCal application through iTunes, but that these would not update over the air. However, on closer examination I have discovered that, indeed, iPhone OS 3.0 does allow direct over-the-air subscription to Internet calendars!
iPhone OS 3.0 is here, offering enhancements for enterprise Exchange ActiveSync
iPhone OS 3.0 was released today, and I’ve had a chance to play with it for a bit now. I am very impressed with the improvements Apple has made, and think that 3.0 will be much more welcome in Microsoft Exchange environments. However, it’s still not quite up to the high standard set by the BlackBerry.
Apple’s recently introduced mid-2009 MacBook Pros sure do look nice! I am definitely tempted to trade up my late-2007 model, leveraging the excellent resale value that Mac hardware commands. But two of Apple’s trick features for 2009 are already present on my old workhorse: An integrated SD card slot and up to 7 hours of battery life.
