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.

Random Short Take #77

Posted on 2022-09-21 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #77. Spring has sprung. Let’s get random.

I mentioned StorPool’s release 20 in my last Random Short Take, and Chris M. Evans dives in further here.
Tony is back at it again with more posts on NSX, and this one on NSX Edge Transport Nodes with failed deletion makes for some interesting reading.
I (sadly) haven’t touched Rubrik in around a year now, but I couldn’t resist linking to Frederic’s post on Active Directory recovery with Rubrik. Great how-to article as always.
Zerto has announced its Partner of the Year Awards for 2022.
In other press releases of interest, Aparavi has announced it will deliver unstructured data management on Seagate Lyve Cloud.
Speaking of unstructured data and press releases, Datadobi has some good news to share with its latest StorageMAP update.
Folio Photonics recently announced some breakthroughs with multi-layer optical disc storage technology. I can’t do the technology justice, so you should check out what Justin had to say over at Forbes, and Mellor had some thoughts too.
This short, sharp piece from JB is the best. Too often I’ve found myself grinding through a TV show because I had high hopes for it, or so many people told me it was great. What I should have realised is that amateur TV critics (i.e. your friends and colleagues) are often like home theatre enthusiasts who have bought their first subwoofer. Whether it’s good or bad, that’s the choice they made, and they need you to endorse that choice so they can feel better about it as well.

Finally, the blog turned 15 years old recently (about a month ago). I’ve been so busy with the day job that I forgot to appropriately mark the occasion. But I thought we should do something. So if you’d like some stickers (I have some small ones for laptops, and some big ones because I can’t measure things properly), send me your address via this contact form and I’ll send you something as a thank you for reading along.

Random Short Take #75

Posted on 2022-08-09 by dan

Welcome to Random Short Take #75. Half the year has passed us by already. Let’s get random.

I talk about GiB all the time when sizing up VMware Cloud on AWS for customers, but I should take the time to check in with folks if they know what I’m blithering on about. If you don’t know, this explainer from my friend Vincent is easy to follow along with – A little bit about Gigabyte (GB) and Gibibyte (GiB) in computer storage.
MinIO has been in the news a bit recently, but this article from my friend Chin-Fah is much more interesting than all of that drama – Beyond the WORM with MinIO object storage.
Jeff Geerling seems to do a lot of projects that I either can’t afford to do, or don’t have the time to do. Either way, thanks Jeff. This latest one – Building a fast all-SSD NAS (on a budget) – looked like fun.
You like ransomware? What if I told you you can have it cross-platform? Excited yet? Read Melissa’s article on Multiplatform Ransomware for a more thorough view of what’s going on out there.
Speaking of storage and clouds, Chris M. Evans recently published a series of videos over at Architecting IT where he talks to NetApp’s Matt Watt about the company’s hybrid cloud strategy. You can see it here.
Speaking of traditional infrastructure companies doing things with hyperscalers, here’s the July 2022 edition of What’s New in VMware Cloud on AWS.
In press release news, Aparavi and Backblaze have joined forces. You can read more about that here.
I’ve spent a lot of money over the years trying to find the perfect media streaming device for home. I currently favour the Apple TV 4K, but only because my Boxee Box can’t keep up with more modern codecs. This article on the Best Device for Streaming for Any User – 2022 seems to line up well with my experiences to date, although I admit I haven’t tried the NVIDIA device yet. I do miss playing ISOs over the network with the HD Mediabox 100, but those were simpler times I guess.

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.

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