Mike Fratto

Interop Las Vegas 2012

May 4, 2012 By Stephen Leave a Comment

I am thrilled to return to speak at Interop next week, though not so much about returning to Las Vegas for the third time already this year. This time around, I’ll be on two Interop panel discussions in Mike Fratto’s storage track. If you will be at Interop and would like to meet up, let […]

Multi-Hop FCoE Is Not Ready For Prime Time (Yet)

October 21, 2011 By Stephen 10 Comments

I know that a number of FCoE-related standards are settled, and I know that there are products in the market and even some limited multi-vendor compatibility. I even accept that some customers are deploying real “Full Monty FCoE” in production. But I just can’t recommend that technology yet: It’s not prudent, widespread, and low-risk, so I say it’s not ready for prime time.

Interop NYC and The Great Debate: ISCSI Beats Fibre Channel

October 3, 2011 By Stephen 4 Comments

The battle lines are drawn between 8 Gb Fibre Channel and 1 Gb or 10 Gb iSCSI and NFS. This is the baseline for my Interop debate. I am not arguing about the future of SAN, or even iSCSI versus NFS. Rather, I am arguing that most businesses would be best served by implementing an iSCSI SAN rather than purchasing Fibre Channel today.

FCoE vs. iSCSI – Making the Choice

May 20, 2011 By Stephen 18 Comments

iSCSI is an excellent choice in situations where Fibre Channel investment is nonexistent or badly in need of wholesale upgrade. FCoE, on the other hand, is likely to take over in high-end enterprise shops. It is relentlessly promoted by major vendors, and it seems that they will force the upgrade eventually.

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.

The 2018 iPad Pro is a Beast!

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!

My Visit to Bletchley Park

August 3, 2012

Bletchley Park is much more than a museum. For those interested in the history of computing, like me, or World War II buffs, it’s a must-see. The reconstructed Bombe and Colossus computer are truly breathtaking, and I find myself drawn to the stories of codebreaking that took place here. I highly recommend a visit!

Marketers: Fudging the Meaning of Buzzwords Matters (To You!)

December 2, 2015

Too many marketers and salespeople play fast and loose with words, but they’re only hurting themselves. Improper usage is embarrassing and causes a loss of credibility with the people they most want to reach. It would be wise to spend a lot more time being correct and a little less time jumping on bandwagons and buzzwords!

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!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road to the Software-Defined Future

November 29, 2012

The Software-Defined Datacenter is a great concept, but it just won’t work. The big enterprise companies will never allow VMware (and daddy EMC) to commoditize them out of existence, so useful implementations will be rarer than ruby slippers. The best we can hope for is point enhancements to enable greater virtual machine mobility through SDN and improved storage integration.

Frequent Flier Kung Fu for Novices

March 12, 2012

If you’re careful, even an infrequent flyer can rack up valuable points and maybe even elite status. But don’t do anything foolish, and don’t be fooled by the promises of first-class treatment. Even top-tier frequent flyers sit in coach most of the time!

The Prime Directive of Storage: Do Not Lose Data

December 12, 2014

People call on storage devices and systems to do lots of things, from accelerating I/O to copying and sharing data. But at the heart of it all, storage arrays really have just one job: Do not lose data!

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.

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.