conference

Software-Defined Data Center Symposium, April 22 in Santa Clara, CA

March 21, 2014 By Stephen 1 Comment

I’ve written and spoken quite a bit on the “software-defined” future, what it means and how it will come about. Although it seems like a marketing buzzword to some, I feel it is a fairly accurate description of the future of the enterprise and service provider data center. That’s why I’m working to organize the next Software-Defined Data Center Symposium, and am happy to announce that it will be held in Santa Clara, CA on April 22, 2014.

Storage Developer Conference, Santa Clara CA

September 17, 2012 By Stephen 1 Comment

If you’re a real storage geek like me, you simply must attend SDC. If you’re there this year, come say hi! If not, you should start making plans for next year. Be there!

Cisco Live US, San Diego CA

June 2, 2012 By Stephen Leave a Comment

Next week I’m off to San Diego for Cisco Live US 2012. My previous experience with Cisco Live was definitely positive: It’s a whole world of networking fanatics and lots of ecosystem companies. Plus, last year included an amazing party hosted by yours truly (in disguise!)

IBM Edge2012 – Orlando

May 4, 2012 By Stephen 5 Comments

IBM has really stepped up their game this year, and they will highlight all this at their upcoming storage technology conference, Edge2012. I’m really looking forward to seeing what IBM Edge is all about, and I’ll be attending and speaking at the event in June.

Aruba Airheads Conference – Las Vegas

March 16, 2012 By Stephen Leave a Comment

Next week, I will be attending the Aruba Airheads Conference in Las Vegas. My previous experiences organizing Wireless Field Day opened my eyes to the exciting world of Wi-Fi, so I jumped at the chance to help Aruba organize blogger participation at their conference. This is one of the services my company, Foskett Services, offers!

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.

Aerobie AeroPress Review: The Hacker Coffee Maker

February 7, 2011

Computer geeks like me love coffee, the stronger the better. We computer folks are also known for experimentation and a do it yourself ethic. Some of us even love to get outdoors and toss around a flying disc or football. What happens when you mash up all of this? You get the Aerobie AeroPress, the hacker coffeemaker.

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.

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.

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 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.

The Rack Endgame: Open Compute Project

September 17, 2014

On reading my thoughts about the evolution of enterprise storage, many pointed out that this looks an awful lot like the Facebook-led Open Compute Project (OCP). This is entirely intentional. But OCP is simply one expression of this new architecture, and perhaps not the best one for the enterprise.

Why Big Disk Drives Require Data Integrity Checking

December 19, 2014

Hard disk drives keep getting bigger, meaning capacity just keeps getting cheaper. But storage capacity is like money: The more you have, the more you use. And this growth in capacity means that data is at risk from a very old nemesis: Unrecoverable Read Errors (URE).