Understanding the accumulation of data
Sometime on November 30, Google broke public calendar sharing for apps users. This means that any calendars previously shared with the world (like, for example, my IT events calendar) are no longer visible. As is typical for Google, the change was made quietly and it was not immediately obvious how to fix it. But here’s what you should do if your calendar is no longer public.
I’m not whining and crying because Google broke something I love. I’m upset because Google redirected a vibrant world of sharing into their own walled garden with no way to escape. This move effectively captures the fraternity of Reader sharers and firmly directs them to Google Plus for sharing and commenting. Sure, the new Reader is ugly and features are reduced generally. But the elimination of the sharing and reading feedback loop is a real loss to Internet users.
Storage protocols continue to mimic direct attached storage, with the concepts of block and file at its core. No amount of virtualization, and no new protocol, will fix this – we need a storage revolution.
Virtualization of IT systems decouples physical infrastructure from logical resources, hiding complexity and enabling new capabilities. However, not all potential benefits of virtualization have meaningful value outside IT circles: Too many of our discussions revolve around the very complexity that virtualization technology should be hiding! True business value is derived from transformed virtual resources in the next-generation data center, not the incremental capacity gains of virtual servers. But how will we get there, and what will this future look like?
Many storage challenges focus on the conflict between data management, which demands an ever-smaller unit of management, and storage management, which benefits most from consolidation. Developing data management capability that is both granular enough for applications and scalable enough for storage is one key to the future of storage.
I love April Fools day. Like Halloween, it gives us all a chance to take ourselves a little less seriously and just have some fun. And the best April Fools pranks are those that point out real limitations in our thinking and mindset. That’s always been my April 1 goal: Why not combine Wi-Fi and PoE? And doesn’t the “giant iPod Touch” sound like a hoax?
I spent this week at the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit in Redmond, WA. It was an excellent trip, full of great information that I can’t talk about: Microsoft is the only company I have an NDA with! But I can say that no one should count that company out. Although Apple, Google, and Facebook (?!) get all the attention, Microsoft is making some good moves. The Kinnect and Windows Phone 7 show that innovation and creativity is alive and well in Redmond!
I replaced my trusty MacBook Pro last week, the latest in a series of upgrades stretching back over 25 years. In the past, moving to a new computer is a time-consuming process of installing applications and moving data. But things were different this time: I still had the installs to do, but most of the data migrated on its own.
I spent last week tying up loose ends before Tech Field Day 5 in San Jose. It’s going to be a great event, with presentations by Symantec, Drobo, Xangati, NetEx, InfoBlox, HP, and a new company making their US launch! In the mean time, I am working hard to wrap up the Small Enterprise Storage Array Buyers’ Guide for DCIG and continuing my regular work – spreading the word about state of the art IT! I’ve been researching VMware extensively, and building a home lab server, in preparation for my Storage for Virtual Servers seminar, too.
Last week was cut short by attendance at EMC’s “Record Breaking” product launch. I covered the shenanigans and marketing antics already, and will dive deeper into the technical and product announcements later. Next week I’ll be at The Exec Event in Palo Alto, but have some posts ready to roll while I’m away!
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.