vSphere 6

Adding a Second Ethernet Port to an Intel NUC via Mini PCIe

June 5, 2015 By Stephen 16 Comments

As I mentioned in my previous post about Raspberry Pi power monitoring, I recently built a VMware vSphere “datacenter” from three Intel NUC mini PC’s. One limit of the NUC is that it has just one Ethernet port. But there’s a Mini PCIe slot inside the fourth-generation NUC that can be used to add a second Ethernet NIC!

Automated UPS Monitoring for vSphere with NUT and Raspberry Pi (Cheap!)

June 3, 2015 By Stephen 9 Comments

NUT is a wonderful and extensible power management framework, and the Raspberry Pi is an awesome platform on which to run the UPS monitoring drivers and upsd server daemon. Even if you’re not running vSphere, a Pi running NUT makes sense for the connected servers found everywhere today.

vSphere 6: NFS 4.1 Finally Has a Use?

February 3, 2015 By Stephen 2 Comments

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?

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!

Go Get a ProtonMail Account and Protect Your Online Life!

It’s an easy decision: Get a free ProtonMail account and use that as your verification address for important financial and social media accounts. Keep using whatever email account you like for regular communication, but don’t mix security and communication!

Why You Should Never Again Utter The Word, “CIFS”

February 16, 2012

CIFS is not the network storage protocol used by Microsoft Windows, and many other clients. The protocol used to share files over a LAN by the majority of personal computers is called SMB. I wish everyone in the industry would get that through their heads.

How Will Cisco Recover From The Consumer Strategy Blunder?

January 2, 2013

Cisco made a massive strategic blunder in the last decade, aggressively moving into consumer devices rather than focusing on their core enterprise and service provider markets. It seems that Cisco is now in the process of rectifying this mistake, but charting a path to growth is an entirely different matter!

Defining Failure: What Is MTTR, MTTF, and MTBF?

July 6, 2011

Most computer industry vendors use the term â€œMTBFâ€ rather indiscriminately. But IT pros know that systems do not magically repair themselves, at least not yet, so MTTR and MTTF are just as important!

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.

My Core i7 Macintosh SE

May 25, 2017

I recently built the biggest, clunkiest iPad mini case ever, transforming my old Macintosh SE case into an iPad stand. But what to do with that empty case? Why, it’s the perfect size for a custom Mini-ITX PC! Introducing my liquid-cooled Core i7 monster Mac SE!

Edward Snowden Is Right: We Must Protect The Internet

March 19, 2014

Edward Snowden, NSA whistleblower, appeared at TED2014. His video, embedded below, must be watched. You may think he’s a hero or you may think he’s a villain, but he’s unequivocally right about one thing: We must protect the integrity of the Internet and online communications or we risk disrupting the world economy and all of our lives.

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.

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!