Steve Todd

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, […]

EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up?

November 10, 2008 by Stephen 14 Comments

As I guessed on Friday, EMC has officially announced their Maui Atmos software layer today, calling it the “industry’s first COS (cloud-optimized storage) offering”, “a new era for IT”, and “a new category of storage.” So the new era for IT is a cloud with globally-distributed object stores with policy management? Great! But I thought […]

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.

Why Buy a NEX-7? Why Sony NEX At All?

October 17, 2011

Your tweets about your NEX have intrigued me a bit…I get tired of lugging my Nikon D90 around with my kids, yet I find the quality of most point-and-shoot cameras terrible…so the NEX seems like an interesting compromise.

The End of Unlimited Data – Part 1: The Buffet

June 2, 2010

The headlines are all over the blogs: AT&T announced today that they are doing away with “unlimited” data plans and replacing them with limited packages at lower prices. I’m not going to repeat the news – Boy Genius Report has the best overview I’ve seen. Instead, I’m going to explain why I think this is a positive move for everyone involved, including AT&T, the customer, and the US wireless phone industry as a whole. This first post talks about the buffet mentality that got us here.

Nimble Storage Rolls Out an All-Flash Array

February 24, 2016

It took longer than I expected for Nimble Storage to introduce an all-flash array, but their AF7000 looks to be a very credible offering. They’re targeting XtremIO and Pure with their marketing, but I expect HP, Dell, and especially NetApp to be cross-shopped more frequently. In that fight, I expect the Nimble AF7000 to be very attractive indeed!

What More Could Alan Turing Have Accomplished?

October 7, 2012

Many of you have probably heard the name of Alan Turing, but most of those probably don’t appreciate the extent of his contributions. To say that he invented the modern world is an overstatement, but he did dream up the computers we see around us today, and helped win World War II in the process. But the story of Alan Turing is as much about exclusion and defeat as it is of genius.

What You See and What You Get When You Follow Me

May 28, 2019

Social media ought to be social, not just a broadcast platform. That’s my feeling at least. It’s been a while since I’ve ranted about “write-only” social media accounts, so I thought I might as well do it again. And at the same time, I thought I would update you on my promise to the people who read, follow, and interact with me online.

Debit or Credit? Always Choose Credit!

December 19, 2013

“Credit of debit?”ï»¿ It’s all very confusing for American shoppers. But the news about a massive point-of-sale data theft at Target makes one thing very, very clear: Always choose “credit” when the cashier asks!

Review: American Standard’s Champion 4 Toilet Flushes Almost Anything

July 31, 2012

Although most crappers are crap, plumbing companies like American Standard are hard at work innovating to eliminate the excrement. The current champion is fittingly called the Champion 4, and I have purchased, installed, and tested two examples of the type. The Champion is engineered to reduce the most common causes of clogs, and it has proved effective and “hands-off” in my real-world testing.

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?