Welcome to Random Short Take #87. Happy Fête Nationale du 14 juillet to those who celebrate. Let’s get random.
- I always enjoy it when tech vendors give you a little peak behind the curtain, and Dropbox excels at this. Here is a great article on how Dropbox selects data centre sites. Not every company is operating at the scale that Dropbox is, but these kinds of articles provide useful insights nonetheless. Even if you just skip to the end and follow this process when making technology choices:
-
- Identify what you need early.
- Understand what’s being offered.
- Validate the technical details.
- Physically verify each proposal.
- Negotiate.
- I haven’t used NetWorker for a while, but if you do, this article from Preston on what’s new in NetWorker 19.9 should be of use to you.
- In VMware Cloud on AWS news, vCenter Federation for VMware Cloud on AWS is now live. You can read all about it here.
- Familiar with Write Once, Read Many (WORM) storage? This article from the good folks at Datadobi on WORM retention made for some interesting reading. In short, keeping everything for ever is really a data management strategy, and it could cost you.
- Speaking of data management, check out this article from Chin-Fah on data management and ransomware – it’s an alternative view very much worth considering.
- Mellor wrote an article on Pixar and VAST Data’s collaboration. And he did one on DreamWorks and NetApp for good measure. I’m fascinated by media creation in general, and it’s always interesting to see what the big shops are using as part of their infrastructure toolkit.
- JB put out a short piece highlighting some AI-related content shenanigans over at Gizmodo. The best part was the quoted reactions from staff – “16 thumbs down emoji, 11 wastebasket emoji, six clown emoji, two face palm emoji and two poop emoji.”
- Finally, the recent Royal Commission into the “Robodebt” program completed and released a report outlining just how bad it really was. You can read Simon’s coverage over at El Reg. It’s these kinds of things that make you want to shake people when they come up with ideas that are destined to cause pain.