Random Short Take #88

Posted on 2023-09-11 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #88. This one’s been sitting in my drafts folder for a while. Let’s get random.

This article from John Birmingham on multitasking was great. I’ve frequently found myself thinking that multitasking was going to save me from myself whilst ultimately leading to an early demise.
What fresh Hell is this? El Reg reported a little while ago that Google launched $99 a night Hotel Mountain View for hybrid workers. It’s rough out there kids, and this might be your only option. But I hope it isn’t.
The USB-C iPhone won’t clean up Apple’s Lightning mess, and that’s a bit of a shame. But I have a bag of dongles in my bag and I don’t want them to go to waste (again).
Chin-Fah wrote a particularly thoughtful article on Open Source Storage and Data Responsibility that made for some great reading.
Backblaze has updated its article “What’s the Diff: Hot and Cold Data Storage“. Very much worth checking out if you’re new to this stuff.
I loves me some data protection, but rest assured that the current market isn’t your father’s data protection market. B&F reports on Gartner seeing shifting players in enterprise backup.
Speaking of data protection, Preston de Guise does a great job talking about what’s new with PowerProtect Data Manager 19.14.
Been wondering if your media streaming experience is really all that it could be? Are discs really better than streaming? I don’t think they are, but I’m often too lazy to get up and put the disc in the player.

Random Short Take #87

Posted on 2023-07-14 by dan

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:

1. Identify what you need early.
2. Understand what’s being offered.
3. Validate the technical details.
4. Physically verify each proposal.
5. 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.

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 #85

Posted on 2023-04-14 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #85. Let’s get random.

I like that Backblaze isn’t just in the business of selling backup and storage in the cloud, but also educating the punters. This article on object storage for film, video, and content creation was great.
It’s about time Alex put pen to paper again (so to speak), and this arrticle on the current state of cloud security was insightful.
My friend Vincent is at it again, and discusses What We Are Talking About When We Talk About Immutable Backup? It’s a great topic, and one that a few vendors gloss over when they talk about how they’re keeping your data safe.
Preston posted a terrific piece on how data hoarding is probably holding your business back. I’m as guilty as most of holding on to information and data for way too long. And most business folks are too.
In press release news, Nyriad is showcasing some interesting stuff at NAB.
William Lam recently took a trip down memory lane and looked at ESX 1.0. He followed that up with installation instructions via video for all of the ESX(i) versions that have been released, and even posted a handy workaround when nested installations weren’t working. Great stuff.
Speaking of old things, El Reg had some info on running (hobbyist) x86-64 editions of OpenVMS. I ran OpenVMS on a DEC Alpha AXP-150 at home for a brief moment, but that feels like it was a long time ago.
This article from JB on the Bowlo was excellent. I don’t understand why Australians are so keen on poker machines (or gambling in general), but it’s nice when businesses go against the grain a bit.

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.

Random Short Take #81

Posted on 2022-12-15 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #81. Last one for the year, because who really wants to read this stuff over the holiday season? Let’s get random.

Curtis did a podcast on archive and retrieve as part of his “Backup to Basics” series. It’s something I feel pretty strongly about, so much so that I wrote a chapter in his book about it. You can listen to it here.
More William Gibson content is coming to our screens, with the announcement that Neuromancer is coming to Apple TV. I hope it’s as well done as The Peripheral. Hat tip to John Birmingham for posting the news on his blog.
It’s been a while since I looked at Dell storage, but my friend Max wrote a great article over at Gestalt IT on Dell PowerStore.
William Lam’s blog is a veritable fount of knowledge, and this piece on ESXi Advanced & Kernel Settings Reference is great.
I love Backblaze. Not in the sense that I want to marry the company, but I really like what the folks there do. And I really like the transparency with which they operate. This article giving a behind the scenes look at its US East Data Center is a fantastic example of that.
In press release news, DH2i has announced that it’s collaborating with Red Hat to accelerate the delivery of intelligent applications across the multi cloud.
In other press release news, Zerto has been cited as a contender among data resilience solutions suites by an independent research firm.
And, to “celebrate” 81 Random Short Takes (remember when I used to list my favourite NBA players and the numbers they wore?), let’s take a stroll down memory lane with two of my all-time, top 5, favourite NBA players – Kobe Bryant and Jalen Rose. The background for this video is explained by Jalen here.

Take care of yourselves and each other, and I’ll hopefully see you all on the line or in person next year.

Random Short Take #79

Posted on 2022-10-28 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #79. Where did October go? Let’s get random.

A lot of data protection stuff this time around, kicking off with Preston de Guise’s deep dive into Dynamic NAS Protection with PowerProtect Data Manager.
Switching from NAS to cloud, W. Curtis Preston’s latest podcast went into some depth on using public and private cloud and how to protect it.
We’re not done with backup and recovery yet though. This article from Ben Liebowitz on setting up immutable backups for Vembu using S3 was comprehensive.
Rounding out the data protection news, Zerto has published a release saying that organisations don’t have great ransomware recovery strategies but they’re trying to do better. Make of that what you will given some of the latest news in Australia and around the world when it comes to data leaks and attacks.
Tom Hollingsworth wrote a great article on clearing out the cruft in your home – specifically the electronic kind. I have a cupboard full of cables I tell myself I’ll need at some point, but I really need to just get rid of them. In my defence, I did unplug my LaserDisc player last weekend. Baby steps and all that.
I follow Jeff Geerling for his zany antics with hardware, but I also really enjoyed his take on what’s wrong with some of the streaming services (in this case Netflix) we can’t help but feel obliged to shell out for.
Speaking of streaming, this article covered some of the best mechanisms to purchase digital content with. I still prefer buying discs, but I’m a bit weird too.
Finally, I’ve been a fan of John Birmingham’s writing since I was a misspending my youth at university in the 90s, so it makes sense that I’d enjoy his food reviews too (mainly because it’s not just about food). It should come as no surprise that I, too, love pork rillette.

Random Short Take #78

Posted on 2022-10-12 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #78. We’re hurtling towards the silly season. Let’s get random.

I mentioned verge.io in one of my recent short takes. Chris M. Evans has done the heavy lifting for me and written about test driving the verge.io Software-Defined Data Centre. Worth checking out.
Speaking of SDDCs, this article on automating VM Migration AND their Firewall rules to VMC was super useful.
I’ve been a Dropbox user for some time, and as disk-slinger in a former life, I really enjoy reading the company’s tech blog. This post on cloud storage abstraction with Object Store was great.
Data breaches – everyone’s having them. Are you missing out? It’s probably just a matter of time. While you’re waiting, check out this article from Preston – John Proctor and Data Breaches.
It’s always sad when a startup stops. Mellor writes that Pavilion Data – last NVMe over Fabrics flash array startup – has died. I had the opportunity to take the kit for a spin in a previous role, and spent some time with some of their people. Smart folks doing interesting things. I hope those impacted land on their feet.
In press release news, Imply has announced a major Open Source Contribution for Apache Druid; as well as a new financial guarantee for Apache Druid users.
I always enjoy talking to Chris about his Plex setup, because he’s taken it to the next level. Here’s a great article he put together on how to automate lighting with Plex playback.
Finally, our old friend VMware vCenter Converter is back. You can download it from here.

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