It’s clear how this fairy tale ends. So many companies are using “S3 plus” as their standard interface, and even inside their solutions, that it’s safe to say it’s won the cloud storage API battle. But S3 isn’t a finalized spec – the industry will extend and improve it over the coming years. Soon we’ll have a cloud storage standard based on S3, just like we have a LAN file services standard based on CIFS.
Thinking About Storage In a New Way, From Cloud to Flash, with Dropbox and Fusion-io
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.
Replacing Google Reader With Feedbin and Reeder
I am an avid Google Reader user, so I’m thoroughly annoyed by Google’s decision to kill it as of July 1. But there’s no stopping the tide, so I’ve made the move to Feedbin as a Reader replacement as of today. It’s a slick, snappy web application with a committed developer and, critically, support for Reeder, my favorite offline RSS reading application. Let’s hope this works!
VMware VAAI Storage Array Support in Plain English
The most exciting enhancements in VMware vSphere 4.1 is the addition of vStorage API for Array Integration (VAAI). This new API allows VMware ESX to offload storage processing functions to capable storage arrays, reducing the workload on the server hardware in introducing new and exciting possibilities for performance and efficiency. VAAI in ESX 4.1 includes three separate capabilities: block zeroing, full copy, and hardware assisted locking.
How To Automate “Get/Send Clipboard” in Mac OS X Screen Sharing
I’m a heavy user of Screen Sharing in Mac OS X. When I’m in the office, I sit at a workstation with my trusty IBM Model M keyboard, 27″ iMac, Microsoft Wheel Mouse Optical and Apple Magic Trackpad. Off to the side is my mobile environment, the MacBook Pro, open and running, with its display mirrored in a Screen Sharing window on the iMac. At the desk, I do most of my work on the iMac, with the MacBook limited to less-portable applications (Mail, iTunes, and iPhoto) and often displaying a full-screen TweetDeck board. But copying and pasting content between these two environments was a serious multi-click pain until I automated it with AppleScript and Speech. Here’s how I did it.
Zend Simple Cloud API = Freedom!
As I pointed out last week, cloud computing does not need traditional consensus-committee standards, at least not yet. The inherent flexibility and programmability of cloud platforms and applications lends a certain flavor of openness to cloud computing that reduces the requirement for (and thus impact of) standards. Furthermore, the amazing creativity currently being applied to […]
We Don’t Need Cloud Standards (Yet)
Championing “open” and calling for standards has become the first stalling action by late-movers in technology spaces. They see opportunity passing by and try to hold back progress and FUD the market by yelling about proprietary solutions, vendor lock-in, and a lack of standards. Many well-intentioned IT folks follow along: After all, who doesn’t want openness, standardization, and interoperability?
CloudStuff Versus Stuff in the Cloud
This world of cloud computing sure can seem cloudy. Last night at CloudCamp Columbus, I led a session outlining the incredible differences between the diverse offerings all called cloud storage. How can companies like Amazon, Nirvanix, Rackspace, EMC, and the rest use the same name for such vastly different products?
Sun Launches Their Own Cloud, But For Which Market?
While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.
Symantec’s Thin API: The Plot Thickens
Last week, I lauded Symantec for introducing an API in Storage Foundation which will interact with the thin storage capabilities of supported arrays. Since then, I’ve learned more about this capability, and I am writing this update to share that knowledge. As I noted last week, the press release was a bit hard to follow and […]