Fibre Channel

The Next Wave of Virtualization

July 9, 2008 by Stephen Leave a Comment

Real Video: The Next Wave of Virtualization Server virtualization is pushing storage into a new world. Luckily, N_Port ID Virtualization and 8 Gb Fibre Channel is here to deliver all the I/O these servers demand. Ellen O’Brien of TechTarget interviewed me about storage virtualization after Storage Decisions last month, and the video is now live […]

SAN School Podcast Series Posted

July 8, 2008 by Stephen Leave a Comment

TechTarget recently uploaded three podcast versions of my SAN School series from Storage Decisions last year. These are audio-only, but I might be able to dig up the accompanying slides. If you’re interested in this, please leave a note below or contact me through email. So without further ado, I present three lessons on SAN […]

Where the SAN Stands

July 7, 2008 by Stephen Leave a Comment

Real Video: Where the SAN Stands Curious about the current state of SAN technology? Stephen Bigelow of TechTarget interviewed me (last summer) about SAN options, and the video is now live on their BitPipe site. Topics covered include combined iSCSI and FC SANs, ups and downs of modular storage and oversubscribed switches, next-generation SAN management […]

Storage Virtualization: What Is It Good For?

June 17, 2008 by Stephen 4 Comments

Even though storage virtualization technologies have been on the market for 20 years or more, and numerous companies have tried to sell it as a product in its own right for at least half that long, many are still unsure of what to do with the technology. A great new piece by Dave Raffo, News […]

Will FCoE Rule the Future?

April 22, 2008 by Stephen Leave a Comment

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) has been a hot topic of discussion in the enterprise storage world lately, but many end users are just now hearing about it. Although some folks seem to think it’s here with a vengance, others doubt that it will ever make the splash it promises, with 8 Gb FC, iSCSI, […]

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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.

Download My Free E-Book, “Essential Enterprise Storage Concepts”!

April 4, 2017

I’ve got a lot to say about storage, as you might have noticed from reading my blog. So I finally sat down and wrote a book on enterprise storage. Now you can download the e-book for free, thanks to support from my friends at SolarWinds!

Scaling Storage At The Client

November 25, 2013

Scaling storage is a serious challenge for the industry, but there is a great deal of thought, effort, and creativity going into it right now. Companies like Gridstore, Oxygen Cloud, and Cleversafe have come up with effective client-side solutions to enable scale-out storage to sing. If you’ve got an appropriate application, client, or gateway, scale-out is a real possibility!

Instapaper for iPad and iPhone Enhances My Web World

June 1, 2010

One of my favorite iPad and iPhone apps is Instapaper. Like the iPad itself, Instapaper seems almost foolishly simple and derivative until you experience it. Then it becomes something else entirely: A product so useful you may ask yourself “how did I ever get along without this?”

The Myths of Standardization

December 15, 2011

I certainly benefit from standardization of the world around me, and I welcome interoperability and interchangeability as well as the price and product selection advantages. But I am not blithely focused on standardization above all else. I will happily use a proprietary solution if the alternative is inelegant, ineffective, or insufficient.

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.

How To Keep Your Family Activities In Sync With A Shared Google Calendar

April 18, 2010

Smartphones, computers, and iPads are proliferating in families today. Although my three kids do not (yet) have their own mobile phones, we still have quite a few devices with calendar functions: An iPhone each for me, my wife, and our au pair along with an iPad and a few computers. Using Google Calendar, we have set up an awesome shared calendar to keep all of our activities in sync. Read on for instructions!

MacBook Users: Encrypt Your Drive with OS X FileVault! It’s Easy and Free!

December 20, 2012

Once you encrypt your MacBook’s drive with FileVault 2, you’ll never even know it’s there. But if you ever lose your machine, you can rest easy knowing that your data is safe. Considering how well this solution performs and that it is included free of charge, there is no reason not to use it!

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).