Although I’m not a programmer, the need has occasionally arisen for me to write some code. These essential tools from my technical toolbox are included here.
Understanding the accumulation of data
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Top VMware Blogs 2014: How I Voted
Once again, it’s time for vSphere-Land.com’s “Top vBlog” voting. And once again Feedbin and Twitter are full of hundreds of bloggers lamely begging for me to vote for them. And once again, I didn’t base my votes on their begs or my own hunches. Follow along as I explain how I actually voted and why I think you should use the same mechanism. And no, I’m not going to say who I voted for!
Webinar: Size Does Matter (In Storage)
I don’t often do webinars, but I am happy to join when the topic, the guests, and the agenda are right. And that’s what I’ve got this week, as I join a Gridstore webinar with two fantastic guests: Geoff Barrall, founder of BlueArc, Drobo, and Connected Data, and George Symons, who you might run into [...]
Truth in Storage: The Next Generation – Announcing My 2014 Seminar Series
This year for my Truth in IT seminars, I’m shifting away from virtualization to focus on enterprise storage once again. But this won’t be any ordinary “storage 101” seminar. Rather than trying to talk about every element, I’m focused on what’s new!
Making a Case For (and Against) Software-Defined Storage
Everyone is talking about “software-defined” everything lately, so it was only a matter of time before industry buzz turned to software-defined storage. VMware and EMC really stoked the flames with a constant barrage of marketing directed in this direction. But how exactly do you software-define storage? And what does this mean?
Infographic: Datacenter History In Lego
You might remember my October post, Datacenter History: Through the Ages in Lego. Now it’s available as a handy infographic, thanks to my friend Aditya Vempaty of Coho Data. It’s pretty cool how this turned out – I think he’s got a real talent for this kind of thing!
Debit or Credit? Always Choose Credit!
“Credit of debit?” It’s all very confusing for American shoppers. But the news about a massive point-of-sale data theft at Target makes one thing very, very clear: Always choose “credit” when the cashier asks!
Mac OS X Bug: ExFAT Hangs Spotlight and Time Machine
I’ve had terrible issues with Mac OS X never completing Spotlight indexing and Time Machine backups. I was pulling out my hair until I decided to check the console log. That’s when I saw this: Thousands of mdworker errors, with a dozen appearing every second. What could it mean?
Scaling Storage At The Client
Scaling storage is a serious challenge for the industry, but there is a great deal of thought, effort, and creativity going into it right now. Companies like Gridstore, Oxygen Cloud, and Cleversafe have come up with effective client-side solutions to enable scale-out storage to sing. If you’ve got an appropriate application, client, or gateway, scale-out is a real possibility!
Scaling Storage In Conventional Arrays
It is amazing that something as simple-sounding as making an array get bigger can be so complex, yet scaling storage is notoriously difficult. Our storage protocols just weren’t designed with scaling in mind, and they lack the flexibility needed to dynamically address multiple nodes. So my hat is off to these companies and others who have come up with clever ways to maintain compatibility while scaling out beyond the bounds of a single storage array.
Scale-Out Storage Field Day?
Having wrapped up Storage Field Day 4 this week, it seems that the theme was scaling storage. Delegates learned about scale-out storage from CloudByte, Coho Data, Nimble Storage, Overland Storage, Avere Systems, Gridstore, Oxygen Cloud, and Cleversafe.