Random Short Take #96

Posted on 2024-08-07 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #96. I’m pouring one out for Geordie Guy this week. Let’s get random.

It’s been a tough week, but in what can only be considered excellent news, someone has gotten Windows NT 4 working on a few Apple PowerPC variants. Would you want to do that? Of course not. If you’re looking to run NT 4, you’re much better off finding some nice beefy DEC Alphas. But it’s always nice to have the option. You can read more over at The Register.
And in more good news, JB found out recently that 7-Eleven stores in Australia are going to become more like 7-Eleven stores in Japan. Hooray!
But it’s not all good news. Nicholson has published an interesting article on some of the problems with 10Gbps. “Networking speed is a luxury for people who have tigers on gold leashes, and we needed to save money somewhere” may be my new favourite quote.
You want more bad news? Fine. Tom Andry dives into why HDMI has sucked and continues to suck. I’ve had mixed experiences with HDMI over the years, but I can confirm that it’s not always been smooth sailing, despite the advertising to that effect.
It’s not all bad though. Found yourself struggling with sudo on Debian? Vivek has you covered with this comprehensive guide.
Talked yourself into building your own NAS but don’t know what case to use? Check out this post from Brian Moses.
In PR news, Leaseweb recently launched an object storage solution in Canada. Read more about what’s on offer here.
In other PR news, Pure Storage is investing in Cerabyte. This company is doing some cool stuff.

Finally, and I’m a little late to the party, I just wanted to call out Jetpack for being a bunch of pumpkins and wanting me to upgrade my stats plan because I run a “commercial” site. If you think I want to pay $12.99 a month to see different numbers from those that Google and my hosting provider give me you’re wildly mistaken. And sod knows how I qualify as commercial (unless it’s for posting GoFundMe links for people who are dead or dying) but you can seriously get fucked. Sorry for swearing Mum.

Random Short Take #86

Posted on 2023-06-01 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #86. It’s been a while, and I’ve been travelling a bit for work. So let’s get random.

Let’s get started with three things / people I like: Gestalt IT, Justin Warren, and Pure Storage. This article by Justin digs into some of the innovation we’re seeing from Pure Storage. Speaking of Justin, if you don’t subscribe to his newsletter “The Crux”, you should. I do. Subscribe here.
And speaking of Pure Storage, a survey was conducted and results were had. You can read more on that here.
Switching gears slightly (but still with a storage focus), check out the latest Backblaze drive stats report here.
Oh you like that storage stuff? What about this article on file synchronisation and security from Chin-Fah?
More storage? What about this review of the vSAN Objects Viewer from Victor?
I’ve dabbled in product management previously, but this article from Frances does a much better job of describing what it’s really like.
Edge means different things to different people, and I found this article from Ben Young to be an excellent intro to the topic.
You know I hate Netflix but love its tech blog. Check out this article on migrating critical traffic at scale.

Bonus round. I’m in the Bay Area briefly next week. If you’re around, let me know! Maybe we can watch one of the NBA Finals games.

Random Short Take #84

Posted on 2023-03-17 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #84. There’s a bit going on, so let’s get random.

Stephen Wagner published the most excellent NVIDIA vGPU Troubleshooting Guide – How to troubleshoot vGPU on VMware. It’s extremely comprehensive, and worth checking out if you’re doing anything with vGPU on VMware.
Preston did a great job of talking about the difference between Outage vs Outrage. It usually comes down to one letter.
I like Time Machine, and I like the way Howard explains Apple concepts in his blog posts, so this article “How does Time Machine make a backup?” really hit the spot.
My friend Vincent has made it to 100,000 hits on his blog, and I really hope he gets a lot more. He’s a smart chap.
The folks at Backblaze have published their annual Backblaze Drive Stats for 2022 and, not to be outdone by themselves (?), have also published The SSD Edition: 2022 Drive Stats Review.
In press release news, Nyriad and DigitalGlue Partner.
In other news, Asigra unveiled a backup platform to protect the world’s catalog of Software-as-a-Service Applications with SaaSBACKUP℠ Platform. What? You don’t back up your SaaS? You probably should, hey?
In another PR news, Pure Storage recently announced the FlashBlade//E.

Random Short Take #83

Posted on 2023-02-03 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #83. Quite a few press releases in this one, so let’s get random.

Folio Photonics announced it will showcase advancements in its optical data storage solution at CES 2023.
In other good news, Retraites Populaires has invested in Datadobi to move 18 years of data into a new IT environment. If you haven’t looked into Datadobi, and you have a bunch of data you need to be moving about the place, it’s worth a look.
Pure Storage has announced a new energy efficiency SLA for Evergreen//One. I’ve been a fan of Pure for some time, and I think the company is starting to make some real progress with its energy goals.
DH2i had a good 2022. You can read more about that here.
Leaseweb has announced that it’s strengthening its portfolio.
If you’ve ever had the chance to listen to Rebecca talk, you know she’s really smart. This article on setting the technical direction for a team made for great reading.
All the kids like to talk about storage over networks, not storage area networks. What about when old meets new? Chin-fah posted an excellent article on Fibre Channel protocol in a zero trust world.
Finally, have you found yourself wondering why your long HDMI cable doesn’t work? This might help.

Random Short Take #82

Posted on 2023-01-24 by dan

Happy New Year (to those who celebrate). Let’s get random.

Those of you who know me well will know I’m a big fan of Debian. I find running manual apt commands on my various Raspberry Pis therapeutic, but an automated approach is probably better. This is a great article on how to configure automated security updates on Debian automatically.
I miss Tru64, and Solaris for that matter. I don’t miss HP-UX. And I definitely won’t miss AIX. Read about the death of Unix over at El Reg – Unix is dead. Long live Unix!
The I3.metal is going away very soon. Remember this is from a sales perspective, VMware is still supporting the I3.metal in the wild, and you’ll still have access to deploy on-demand if required (up to a point).
I do miss using Rubrik, so I thought this article on how to run a script with 2FA enabled on Rubrik might fill the gap.
You think you have thoughts on online disk archives? Read this piece over at Blocks and Files – Opinion: Online disk archives are just wrong.
Oh VVols – I was just thinking about you recently. So was Alastair, and he even bothered to put some thoughts out there – VVols, Oh VVols, wherefore art thou VVols?
Speaking of VVols, Nicholson also has some thoughts – NFS Native Snapshots, Should I just use vVols instead?
But really, when I think about VVols, I can’t go past my man Cody from Pure Storage. Here’s his piece on multiple vVol datastores on FlashArray.

Brisbane VMUG – November 2022

Posted on 2022-11-16 by dan

The November 2022 edition of the Brisbane VMUG meeting will be held on Thursday 24th November at the Cube (QUT) from 5pm – 7pm. It’s sponsored by Pure Storage and promises to be a great afternoon. Register here.

Raise Your Kubernetes Infrastructure Status From Zero to Hero

If your developers or platform architects are asking you for storage features commonly found in your vSphere infrastructure but targeted towards Kubernetes, you are not alone – let Portworx help you go from “I don’t know” to “No problem”!

Locking yourself into a storage solution that is dependent on specific infrastructure is a sure way to reduce efficiency and flexibility for your developers and where their applications can run – Portworx elevates you to “Hero” status by:

Providing your team a consistent, cloud native storage layer you can utilise on ANY Kubernetes platform – whether on-premises or in the public cloud
Giving you the capability to provide Kubernetes native DR and business continuity not only for your persistent storage, but all of the Kubernetes objects associated with your applications (think SRM and vMSC for Kubernetes!)
Enabling you to provide Kubernetes-aware data protection, including ransomware protection and 3-2-1 backup compliance with RBAC roles that can fit the existing policies within your organisation
Delighting your developers that need access to modern databases such as Kafka, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, and more by delivering self-service deployments with best practices “built-in”, which accelerate development cycles without a dinosaur DBA or learning complex Kubernetes operators

Come join us to see how we can create your “Better Together” story with Tanzu and give you the tools and knowledge to bring agility for your developers to your underlying infrastructure for modern applications running on Kubernetes!

Mike Carpendale

Mike joined Pure Storage in April 2021 as the APJ Regions Platform Architect. He has 20+ years experience in the industry, ranging from his expert level hands-on experience of designing and managing large scale on-prem as-a-service offerings underpinned by VMware, to his more recent work in the public cloud.

PIZZA AND NETWORKING BREAK!

This will be followed by:

VMware Session

Peter Hauck – Senior Solutions Engineer

VMware

And we will be finishing off with:

Preparing for VMware Certifications

With the increase of position requirements in the last few years, certifications help you demonstrate your skills and move you a step forward on getting better jobs. In this Community Ssession we will help you understand how to prepare for a VMware certification exam and some useful tips you can use during the exam.

We will talk about:

Different types of exams

How to schedule an exam
Where to get material to study
Lessons learned from the field per type of exam

Francisco Fernandez Cardarelli – Senior Consultant (4 x VCIX)

Soft drinks and vBeers will be available throughout the evening! We look forward to seeing you there! Doors open at 5pm. Please make your way to The Cube.

Random Short Take #80

Posted on 2022-11-14 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #80. Lots of press release news this week and some parochial book recommendations. Let’s get random.

My friend Al has been back in the lab, and has put together some really useful how-to articles on how to upgrade from ESXi 7 to 8 and deploying VMware vCenter 8.
In press release news, Pure Storage has expanded its as-a-Service model across the full suite of Portworx offerings.
The nice folks at StorPool Storage have announced the company is a Diamond sponsor at CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2022 this week.
Verge.io has announced the appointment of Mike Wall to Chairman of the Board.
Tachyum has unveiled details of its architecture and prodigy design in an overview white paper.
Have you heard of World Digital Preservation Day? I hadn’t, but it sounds pretty cool.
Hammerspace has announced that it’s shattering expectations for high-performance file data architectures. I like what Hammerspace is doing, and I’m keen to dig in some more when I have a moment.
I’m a little bit younger than JB, and spent my youth in a town west of BrisVegas, but I’m always interested to read about what my adopted hometown was like in the Eighties. This article – Sweaty moustache dandruff, super-goth girl and $750 for a beer. Brisbane in the Before Times – was fantastic. And if you’re curious about Brisbane, I heartily recommend reading anything by Nick Earls, Andrew McGahan, and John Birmingham. And while I’m recommending books, it’s hard to go past Andrew Stafford’s “Pig City”.

Random Short Take #74

Posted on 2022-06-22 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #74. Let’s get random.

Chris Colotti put together a great article on VMware vSphere networking. It seems like a fairly fundamental issue, but one that I’ve seen plenty of times in the field.
Speaking of VMware, if you’re working in the financial services sector and looking at VMware Cloud on AWS, this blog about compliance for financial services (Asia Pacific and Japan) might be just the thing for you.
Pure Storage recently had its annual shindig, resulting in a few announcements, including the FlashBlade//S. Chris M. Evans goes into more detail in this post.
Speaking of storage hardware announcements, StorCentric recently launched the Nexsan EZ-NAS. You can find the specs here.
I just can’t seem to shut up about storage. This article from Chin-Fah stating the case for a Storage Appliance approach made for great reading.
More on storage? Datadobi’s StorageMAP apparently solves the top four areas of concern for IT leaders, according to a ew ESG Global Insight Report.
A take inside a take? Is that even possible, Dan?! Yes, yes it is. Here’s the good Doctor J’s Storage Short Take #44.
And finally, some humour for you. Breaking: Local Man Buys Best Subwoofer He’s Ever Heard.

Random Short Take #73

Posted on 2022-06-02 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #73. Let’s get random.

Two of my favourite things are Santa Cruz Skateboards and Backblaze, so this article on those two companies has also became a favourite thing – “We Were Stoked”: Santa Cruz Skateboards on Cloud Storage That Just Works
I enjoyed this article from William Lam on ESXi running in unexpected places …
I wrote about Datadobi’s StorageMAP a little while ago, and Chin-Fah adds his perspective on unstructured data observability with Datadobi StorageMAP.
Speaking of Datadobi, Manu Heirbaut recently joined Datadobi as the company’s Vice President of Engineering.
From the picture I thought that moving to LEGO to build data centres would make it take longer, but it seems that Huawei claims it’s halved the time needed to build a 1,000-rack datacenter. Upon reading the article I realised the picture was a little misleading.
Anthony was recently back at VeeamON, and delivered a comprehensive VeeamON 2022 Mainstage Technical Session Recap.
My friend Vincent always does a great job of breaking down tasks into smaller, more manageable tasks. He’s also very good at explaining how to get things done in a succinct fashion. Here’s an article he wrote on using the NetApp Command Line to create a SVM with a CIFS/NFS share.
In press release news, my friends at Pure Storage have expanded the Portworx Portfolio.

Random Short Take #67

Posted on 2022-02-14 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #67. Let’s get random.

MinIO was in the news recently, and this article from Chin-Fah seems to summarise nicely what you need to know.
Whenever I read articles about home Internet connectivity, I generally chuckle in Australian and move on. But this article from Jeff Geerling on his experience with Starlink makes for interesting reading, if only for the somewhat salty comments people felt the need to leave after the article was published. He nonetheless brings up some great points about challenges with the service, and I think the endless fawning over Musk as some kind of tech saviour needs to stop.
In the “just because you can, doesn’t mean you should” category is this article from William Lam, outlining how to create a VMFS datastore on a USB device. It’s unsupported, but it strikes me that this is just the kind of crazy thing that might be useful to folks trying to move around VMs at the edge.
Karen Lopez is a really smart person, and this article over at Gestalt IT is more than just the “data is the new oil” schtick we’ve been hearing for the past few years.
Speaking of Pure Storage, Kyndryl and Pure Storage have announced a global alliance. You can read more on that here.
Mike Preston wrote a brief explainer on S3 Object Lock here. I really enjoy Mike’s articles, as I find he has a knack for breaking down complex topics into very simple to digest and consume pieces.
Remember when the movies and TV shows you watched had consistent aspect ratios? This article from Tom Andry talks about how that’s changed quite a bit in the last few years.
I’m still pretty fresh in my role, but in the future I hope to be sharing more news and articles about VMware Cloud on AWS. In the meantime, check out this article from Greg Vinton, where he covers some of his favourite parts of what’s new in the platform.

In unrelated news, this is the last week to vote for the #ITBlogAwards. You can cast your vote here.

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