ASIX

Tortoise or Hare? Nvidia Jetson TK1

September 22, 2020 By Stephen 1 Comment

I’m quite pleased with the Intel NUC boards that came with my surplus Rabbit cloud, but I can’t say the same about the Nvidia Jetson TK1 boards. They’re weird, flaky, limited, and haven’t proved useful even in simple applications. Frankly, I’m not sure what I’m going to do with the 15 Jetsons sitting in my office!

USB Ethernet Not Working in macOS 10.12 Sierra?

October 22, 2016 By Stephen 24 Comments

It’s become routine: Each new update of Mac OS X macOS breaks third-party drivers and applications. This time it’s many popular third-party USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapters that don’t work. But have no fear! It’s a simple fix!

Cable Matters USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter: Hands-On Review

August 14, 2013 By Stephen 13 Comments

Should you buy a Cable Matters USB 3.0 Gigabit Ethernet adapter for your Mac or PC? On the hardware and software side, it seems fine. Once the drivers are installed, it functions adequately. But I am deeply concerned that a vendor that would cut corners on the MAC address and OUI would cut corners other places, leaving me skeptical about the company and its products. Therefore, I cannot recommend this device.

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.

Virtualized and Distributed Storage: This Time For Sure!

September 2, 2014

We were never able to achieve storage virtualization in mainstream enterprise IT because we lacked the ability to identify and move data non-disruptively. This has been solved by caching and distributed storage solutions, and it’s only a matter of time before the legacy need for centralized storage falls away.

Deduplication Coming to Primary Storage

September 16, 2008

Although deduplication of storage is nothing new, with Data Domain and other making hay with the technique for years, it has never been ready for prime time – reduction of active primary storage applications like email and databases. Instead, deduplication has been relegated to second- or third-tier status, deduplicating archives and backup data. But change is in the air, and deduplication vendors are starting to bustle towards the bright lights of primary storage.

Infographic: Real-World Port Throughput Relative To Thunderbolt (Formerly Light Peak)

February 21, 2011

Just how fast is 10 gigabits per second anyway? To help out, I’ve prepared another napkin-tastic infographic!

Free as in Coffee – Thoughts on the State of OpenStack

May 2, 2016

Last week I headed to Austin, Texas to attend the semi-annual OpenStack Summit there. Along with the usual socializing, I was looking to understand the current state of the technology: What does OpenStack really mean these days, and where is it going? Let’s start with “free”. As “the Internet” is quick to point out, this critical word has multiple […]

The iPhone Revolution 10 Years Later

January 9, 2017

10 years ago today, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone, perhaps the most revolutionary technological product in history. There have been many important products introduced before and since, but nothing else was as groundbreaking as the iPhone. Watching the introduction, it’s amazing to see just how many things were introduced that day that have become integral to daily life today.

A Fairy Tale of Two Storage Protocols

September 23, 2014

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.

Ten Terrible Apple Products

June 14, 2012

I’m often accused of being an Apple fanboy. While it’s true that I love my vast selection of fruity products from Cupertino, I’m not blind when the company makes mistakes. In fact, I think Apple’s mistakes are as enlightening as their successes: They reveal a company that is fallible, sometimes learning but often allowing the junk to rot far longer than other companies would.

The Rack Endgame: A New Storage Architecture For the Data Center

September 3, 2014

Top-of-rack flash and bottom-of-rack disk makes a ton of sense in a world of virtualized, distributed storage. It fits with enterprise paradigms yet delivers real architectural change that could “move the needle” in a way that no centralized shared storage system ever will. SAN and NAS aren’t going away immediately, but this new storage architecture will be an attractive next-generation direction!