Once upon a time there was Ethernet. Every half decade or so, the industry got together and worked out a faster version. Sometimes they didn't totally agree, but a standard emerged at 10x the speed of the previous version. Throw all that out the window: Faster Ethernet is coming, and it's going to be weird! Although it looks like a simple network Channel, Ethernet is … [Read more...] about Faster Ethernet Gets Weird
QLogic
EMC VFCache (aka “Project Lightning”) Is One Small Step, But an Important One
EMC will today unveil a new product, and will no doubt attract a great deal of press. The modest technical capabilities of VFCache 1.0 limit its use case, but the announcement is big news, since it marks EMCs first foray into the hot server-attached storage market. EMC VFCache is a Simple Read Cache I was not pre-briefed on this product, and I'm not all that thrilled at the … [Read more...] about EMC VFCache (aka “Project Lightning”) Is One Small Step, But an Important One
VMware ESX FCoE CNA Compatibility in Plain English
VMware has one awesome hardware compatibility list. It's not the breadth of it (in fact, ESX's range of hardware support is astonishingly small) but the thorough, public way in which VMware shares this information. It's really worth a look, and I regularly visit the list to see what's changed. But the thoroughness and detail of the VMware HCL can be daunting. It's fairly … [Read more...] about VMware ESX FCoE CNA Compatibility in Plain English
Stephen’s HP Product Line Decoder Ring
HP has always been an alphabet soup company, assigning just about every item in their bewildering array of products a unique product number. Like Mercedes-Benz cars, even the product names are a mix of letters and numbers that can be off-putting to browsers. Now that they have grown to supersize proportions through internal expansion and acquisition, just about everyone outside … [Read more...] about Stephen’s HP Product Line Decoder Ring
Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4
Like clockwork, VMware has cranked out another update to their flagship enterprise product, ESX 3.5. The last update came out in early November, 2008, and included some major new functionality. What's in store this time to intrigue storage folks? Not much. For more information on earlier updates, see my articles: Storage Fixes in VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update … [Read more...] about Storage Changes in VMware ESX 3.5 Update 4