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Got Excess Money? Upgrade Your 2009 Mac Mini RAM To 8 GB!

October 22, 2009 by Stephen 6 Comments

Are you the kind of person who always wants the best? Does an upgrade that costs as much as the original item sound like a good investment? Are you the owner of a 2009 Mac Mini? Then you’re in luck! Apple’s latest firmware update allows nVidia-based Mac Minis to be upgraded to 8 GB of […]

Mac Mini: Apple’s Inexpensive Server

October 20, 2009 by Stephen 7 Comments

Apple today revised their desktop computer lineup, including a quick refresh of the already updated Mac Mini. The new Mini lineup sports faster CPUs, larger hard drives, and an interesting twist on the hacks we’ve all already been performing: A dual-hard disk drive Mac Mini Server with no optical drive! Maybe we won’t need to […]

The Dumb Disk Fallacy

October 13, 2009 by Stephen 9 Comments

I am spending a few weeks examining the truths and fictions that bind our industry together. Let’s start with one of my favorite old canards: That enterprise storage must be overpriced because bare disk drives are so cheap. I have seen this straw man argument set up by so many throughout my career that it […]

Iomega ix2-200 Adds iSCSI, Sync To Dual-Drive SOHO NAS

October 7, 2009 by Stephen 8 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) […]

Drobo: First Impressions

September 4, 2009 by Stephen 8 Comments

Although the Drobo “storage robot”, essentially a friendly home RAID enclosure, has long impressed me, it never fit my laptop-oriented lifestyle. But my home network has changed with the addition of a 2009 Mac Mini server, so it was time for me to pick up a Drobo of my own!

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GPS Time Rollover Failures Keep Happening (But They’re Almost Done)

This is week “1111111111” in the GPS system. Tomorrow morning it will roll over to week “0000000000”. How well will various systems handle this change? Not well, judging by what we’ve seen so far!

Ranting and Raving About the 2018 iPad Pro

I remain enthusiastic about the iPad Pro, despite getting a scratched screen and my concerns about durability. It’s a worthy successor to the original and offers enough improvements that I’d recommend the upgrade for just about anyone who uses their iPad for serious work. It’s still not yet a laptop replacement, but this is due more to a lack of desktop-class software for iOS than anything in Apple’s control.

Thinking About Storage In a New Way, From Cloud to Flash, with Dropbox and Fusion-io

July 23, 2013

I’ve been a storage revolutionary for quite a while, looking for new ways of data storage rather than technologies that perpetuate the same old approaches. That’s why I’m excited about the implications of two very different API access methods announced by Dropbox at DBX and by Fusion-io today at OSCON.

Top VMware Blogs 2014: How I Voted

February 25, 2014

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!

Faster Ethernet Gets Weird

June 19, 2015

“One size fits all” doesn’t work for Ethernet, but this proliferation of speed options sounds like trouble without automatic capability negotiation. It’s nice to have options, but the IEEE must remain focused on interoperability and rein in the interests of the various companies proposing next-generation Ethernet technologies.

My Advice For New Business Travelers: Get The Credit Cards!

March 20, 2014

New business travelers first should sign up for a preferred hotel and airline program and focus their travel dollars there. Then, they should get a Chase Sapphire card or American Express Platinum card to earn points on travel and transfer those points to the hotel or airline program for redemption. Finally, they should consider getting the co-branded credit card for their hotel chain and airline of choice.

On the Death of Innovation, or “These Kids These Days!”

May 21, 2012

An obnoxious meme has returned to the fore lately, claiming that innovation is dead. The hippies did it, or maybe it was the Internet, or even a decline of America. But nothing could be further from the truth, and statements like this make me question the perspective of the speaker.

Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS”

February 16, 2012

CIFS is not the network storage protocol used by Microsoft Windows, and many other clients. The protocol used to share files over a LAN by the majority of personal computers is called SMB. I wish everyone in the industry would get that through their heads.

Not All 802.11n Networks Are Alike

July 2, 2011

Buyers of 802.11n wireless network equipment should not assume they will see a great benefit right out of the box. Most will have to enable by hand a high-performance configuration including wide channels and 5 GHz operation. And some client devices may never reach the levels of performance expected by consumers due to hardware limitations.

Regarding My Symbolic Links and Good Reads

April 16, 2015

I’ve been told that my shares drive traffic to the blogs I read. I’m thrilled that I can share great writing with you in this way, and I hope you find it valuable! But just in case you don’t, I hope you’ll take advantage of the fact that I filter these posts for you into “Symbolic Links” and “Good Reads” so you’ll find it easier to ignore them.