Beth Pariseau

Tracking EMC’s Symmetrix V-Max Launch

April 14, 2009 By Stephen 2 Comments

EMC completely took over April 14 to launch their next-generation Symmetrix enterprise storage system. Sporting their new V-Max architecture, the Symmetrix (let’s just call it DMX-5, ok?) is a scale-out system based on standard components wrapped together into a multiprocessing powerhouse. This news is so fresh you would leave footprints if you step in it, […]

Spring Storage Networking World 2009, Here I Come!

April 6, 2009 By Stephen Leave a Comment

I’m off to Orlando this morning for Storage Networking World (SNW) Spring 2009. It will be great to see all of my friends in the industry again, though EMC will be quiet in the run-up to EMC World and the DMX-5 “Tigon” launch mysterious April 14th announcement! I will be wearing two hats at the […]

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.

A Watch Guy’s Review of the Apple Watch

April 27, 2015

Is the Apple Watch a personal communication revolution like the iPhone, a well-executed gadget like the Apple TV, or a total miss? Does it mark the end of the the world as we know it for watches? And what’s it like to use one? I’m a watch guy and a gadget guy, so perhaps my perspective will be of some value.

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!

vSphere 6: NFS 4.1 Finally Has a Use?

February 3, 2015

Way back in the 1990’s, UNIX admins delighted in upgrading from NFSv2 to NFSv3. Then NFSv4 came around and … crickets. Now VMware has become the first major/useful/mainstream application for NFSv4.1, so the floodgates are open! But are they?

The Four Horsemen of Storage System Performance: The Rule of Spindles

August 25, 2010

Why do some data storage solutions perform better than others? Mechanical performance, RAM caching, I/O capacity, and the intelligence of the system all have a part to play. Today we examine the rule of spindles: Adding more disk spindles is generally more effective than using faster spindles.

Co-Processors, GPGPU, and Heterogeneous Computing

June 26, 2017

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about microprocessors, from the many-core CPUs that AMD and Intel introduced recently to the massively scalable GPGPU processing that’s taking machine learning by storm. After years of consolidation on commodity x86 CPUs, it seems that the computing paradigm is turning again to specialized offload processors. This trend towards heterogeneous computing will change the face of hardware, from mobile devices to the datacenter.

The 2018 iPad Pro is a Beast!

November 9, 2018

The third-generation iPad Pro is a great machine but also a bellwether of change at Apple. It will be very hard for the rest of the mobile and client computing industry to keep up with this kind of progress!

EMC Redefine Possible (TL;DR Edition)

July 9, 2014

EMC made quite a few announcements today at their “Redefine Possible” event in London. There’s a lot of coverage out there already, so I decided to present a summary of the whole thing in “too long; didn’t read” (TL;DR) fashion.

It’s Time To Speak Out Against Sexism In IT Recruiting

May 6, 2013

I have waged a long-standing battle against the sexist and offensive use of scantily-clad, non-technical “models” at technical trade shows. Sometimes known as “booth babes”, the use of women in this way harms our entire industry and makes companies look stupid, to boot. But when a recruiting firm uses such offensive tactics, it does even more harm, verging on illegal!