Understanding the accumulation of data
Eye-Fi (the company) would rather that we focus on the capabilities of their card rather than its technical components. But any self-respecting geek is going to want to know what makes it tick! I’d rather not cut open my card to get a peek at the chips inside, but Eye-Fi released some official details about the components used in the X2 series of cards, and a quick Google search revealed all that I needed to know.
After testing the Iomega USB 3.0 SSD extensively both in terms of benchmarks and real-world usability, I’m sold on it. the only outstanding question is the high price of the unit: The 64 GB drive starts at an attainable $190, but the big 256 GB drive is downright expensive at $620 (street price). It’s hard to knock the drive’s performance, component choices, or build quality, but is it worth more than a budget laptop?
I’m building a home/lab server to run a variety of workloads, but VMware ESX is chief among these. Sadly, VMware ESX is especially picky about network interface cards (NICs): Although many are supported, most are intended for servers and thus very expensive and difficult to find at retail. So I set out browsing through the VMware ESX HCL, Newegg, and Amazon to find the best network card for my home lab machine. Here’s what I’ve found out so far.
There is a battle shaping up in the enterprise storage industry. On one side are those who see flash storage as an upgrade for the disk drive, and on the other are those who see it as a cache between the CPU and the drive. It’s a fundamental difference of opinion – flash chips can [...]
I was thrilled to see the announcement by Blackmagic Design of two Thunderbolt versions of their respected Intensity video input/output box. But which is the better choice, the Intensity Shuttle or Intensity Extreme?
As a parent, especially a techie one, you never know when a teachable moment is going to appear. Last night, I mentioned that I was testing a new Ruckus access point and enthused about how fast it was. My 12-year-old asked, “why is it so fast?” This led to a wonderful discussion about radio waves, congestion and propagation, and spectrum licensing. Yeah, I’m that kind of dad.
Twitter is here to stay, and has become a potent communication tool in many industries. I recently received a request for advice on how better to use Twitter, and thought I would share some of the lessons I’ve learned over the years as an avid IT industry tweeter.
Make no mistake, the Das Keyboard Model S for Mac is a whole class better than the plastic junk most people use, and the snappy Cherry MX blue key switches are more rewarding than any scissor or membrane keyboard out there, but this is no IBM Model M, so buckling spring fans should look elsewhere.
EMC VFCache (née Project Lightning) is a fairly simple offering: A server-based PCIe flash card that acts as a read cache with no integration with storage arrays or hypervisors. But EMC’s entrance into the host-based flash storage market is a powerful demonstration of the wave of disruption caused by flash-based storage and high-performance computing.
The new Nimbus Data E-Class comes just at the right moment, with 500 TB of capacity, a fully redundant “dual active” controller architecture, massive performance (even InfiniBand), and complete feature set (once VAAI is released).
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?