Innocence, Fairness, and Technology Benchmarks
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Gestalt IT, Virtual Storage on 26. Feb, 2010 | View Comments
HP recently commissioned Tolley Group to benchmark their BladeSystem c7000 against the Cisco UCS 5100. The short report focuses on two results, and reads like so many competitive benchmarks in the IT industry: Tolley focuses on metrics that highlight the strength of HP’s solution and the weaknesses of Cisco’s. What’s the real value of pinpoint maximum-performance benchmarks like this?
The Spectrum of Vendor Blogs
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 19. Jan, 2010 | View Comments
There is a spectrum of vendor-oriented blogging in various IT infrastructure areas: Some are more or less open about where they work, some focus on common technology, and others work in marketing. Bloggers are wise to keep these in mind as they move to new companies!
My 2009 IT Industry Predictions
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Computer history, Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage on 24. Dec, 2009 | View Comments
Predictions are perilous: Get it right and you look like a mere trend-watcher; get it wrong and you look like a fool. So I’m doing something different this year: I’m going to make predictions for 2009 now that it’s over, and reflect on just how smart I am (not) to have made them.
Iomega ix2-200 Adds iSCSI, Sync To Dual-Drive SOHO NAS
Posted by Stephen in Apple, Enterprise storage, Terabyte home, Virtual Storage on 07. Oct, 2009 | View 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
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Everything, Gestalt IT, Personal, Virtual Storage on 01. Oct, 2009 | View 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.
Located! Missing HP Printer Driver For Snow Leopard
Posted by Stephen in Apple on 30. Aug, 2009 | View Comments
Note: It looks like Apple now has the correct drivers available for direct download and upgrade. None of this should be required anymore.
Got a Hewlett Packard printer? Got Snow Leopard? Apple and HP report that the OS X 10.6 install DVD includes all required drivers and software, but it didn’t work for me. I went [...]
If Storage Vendors Were Automakers…
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage, Personal on 07. Aug, 2009 | View Comments
If the enterprise storage market was the auto market, who would be who?*
LA Folks: Come to the Nth Generation Symposium!
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 27. Jul, 2009 | View Comments
Nth Generation Computing has a massive presence in the Southern California IT infrastructure community, and their annual Symposia are on the calendars of most in the area. That’s why I’m very pleased to be able to attend and speak at this year’s event, and I look forward to seeing my LA-based readers there, too!
Back From The Pile: May 30, 2009
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Virtual Storage on 01. Jun, 2009 | View Comments
It was a week of HAM in the enterprise storage industry and angry arguments in the CloudCamp camp. But things looked up at the end with a productive discussion about backups. Google sent us a wave, but nobody was happy when GM threatened to collapse.
Enterprise Storage
HDS’ HAM-Fisted Announcement did not impress, with many wondering (So Long [...]
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 [...]






