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 [...]
10 Cool Storage Features From the 2009 Microsoft MVP Summit
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Everything, Personal, Terabyte home on 06. Mar, 2009 | View Comments
Note: Every one of these items has previously been discussed by Microsoft. I can’t yet talk about any other storage features I might have seen…
iSCSI Quick Connect – No more fumbling through tabs and popups, just enter an IP address and you’re connected! Yeah, baby!
Wire-speed 10 Gb iSCSI – The software iSCSI initiator can saturate a [...]
Top Ten Coolest Enterprise Storage Flops
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage on 06. Dec, 2008 | View Comments
This is the second entry in my Top-Ten in Storage series.
Not every innovative product can succeed in the market, and no matter how good some ideas seem, they can fail to make much of an impact. The truth is, people buy solutions, not technologies.
This list includes products so cool, so ahead of their time, that [...]
Granularity: The Hidden Challenge of Storage Management
Posted by Stephen in Computer history, Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 05. Oct, 2008 | View Comments
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.
Windows Server 2008 Changes Storage
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Personal, Terabyte home on 31. Jul, 2008 | View Comments
Although it’s been available for a while now, Windows Server 2008’s storage changes aren’t widely reported. TechTarget’s Dave Raffo wrote a piece about it today, Windows Server 2008’s hidden storage features, including some quotes from me, but it’s still less than clear.
So let me sum up:
Server Message Block (SMB) 2.0 is probably the biggest news. Microsoft [...]
Storage Fixes in VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 2
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage, Virtual Storage on 28. Jul, 2008 | View Comments
VMware just released Update 2 for VMware ESX Server 3.5 (Virtual Infrastructure), and it includes some storage fixes of note:
Support for Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS) for filesystems Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 guests. This means VMware services like VCB and SRM can now signal Windows Server to quiesce filesystems before creating a clone [...]
Microsoft: The A-Rod of Storage
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage on 10. Mar, 2008 | View Comments
Imagine there was someone many people loved to hate, but grudgingly loved just the same because of their incredible prowess. In Red Sox Nation, that would be Alex Rodriguez, who we follow year after year with a mix of admiration, envy, and anger as he seems to make all the right moves for the [...]
Microsoft’s best-kept secret
Posted by Stephen in Enterprise storage on 20. Jun, 2007 | View Comments
I’ve said before that Microsoft’s work in the field of enterprise storage was truly remarkable. Every other operating system vendor, as well as the grubby hordes developing Linux and BSD, should be ashamed that the “evil empire” beat them to the punch with great storage ideas like VSS, VDS, and transportable backup integration. [...]






