Enterprise Computing: Is iSCSI The New Home Protocol?

I’d like to think I’ve visited a lot of customer sites over the years. Admittedly most of these are “enterprise” class with multi-terabyte if not petabyte quantities of storage. None of those customers have ever bothered deploying iSCSI as their storage protocol. Invariably...

November 26th, 2009 | Enterprise Computing, GestaltIT, Personal Computing | Read More

Enterprise Computing: LUN Sizing and Standards

IanHF talked recently about LUN sizes and establishing standards across the enterprise. The choice of LUN size is a subject I’ve bored people with ad nauseum over the years and this is a good opportunity to go over it again. Why Bother? Ian’s post goes into more detail than the scope I...

November 24th, 2009 | Enterprise Computing, GestaltIT | Read More

Personal Computing: Drobo Replacement

Following on from my Personal Computing: Drobo Wierdness, I have received a replacement unit from Data Robotics. I thought for a change I’d produce a video and so here is my attempt to swap out my drives into the new unit. In the end I formatted the existing drives as four new NAS shares. ...

November 20th, 2009 | Personal Computing | Read More

Enterprise Computing: Thin Provisioning and The Cookie Monster!

The Gestalt IT Field Day was a great success in bringing together a mixture of delegates from varying discplines. Following the presentations from 3Par and Symantec, there was heated debate about the implementation of Thin Provisioning and the ability to reclaim released storage resources. This post...

November 17th, 2009 | Enterprise Computing, GestaltIT | Read More

GestaltIT Tech Field Day – Day 2: Ocarina, Nirvanix and Data Robotics

Day 2 of the Tech Field Day kicked off with a trip to Ocarina Networks. For those who don’t know (a) Ocarina offer a “data reduction” appliance (b) an ocarina is a small oval, china flute. I say data reduction as the Ocarina appliance uses a variety of methods for reducing data...

November 16th, 2009 | Cloud computing, GestaltIT, Personal Computing | Read More

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Day 1: MDS Micro, Xsigo, VMware

Day 1 of the Gestalt IT Field Day started early at 7am with a trip to VMware and their executive briefing centre where breakfast was provided. As well as food, there was an opportunity to see the “data centre in a rack”, used at VMworld to run all of the demo and presentation materials....

November 15th, 2009 | Featured, GestaltIT | Read More

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Day 0 – continued….2

Here are a few pictures from tonight’s dinner; some people turned up later than planned and joined in as they arrived. Congratulations to the restaurant staff who served them so quickly. Also congratulations to those who won prizes from Stephen’s cryptic competition. We’re...

November 12th, 2009 | Uncategorized | Read More

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Day 0 – Continued…

Finally arrived at the DoubleTree in San Jose. Met up with Devang, Nigel and Simon at the airport and shared a leisurely hour discussing our thoughts as we travelled to the hotel. Thanks to Stephen and Claire for a great limo! Whilst checking in we bumped into Robin Harris in the foyer. I’ve...

November 12th, 2009 | GestaltIT | Read More

Gestalt IT Tech Field Day – Day 0

The day has finally arrived and I’m sitting in the BA Lounge in Terminal 5. As with any long distance trip I have that usual mixture of trepidation and excitement, especially when travelling to a place I haven’t visited before. T5 is Heathrow’s new flagship terminal and the dedicated...

November 11th, 2009 | Uncategorized | Read More

GestaltIT Field Day: "Do You Know…" Contest

The GestaltIT Tech Field Day is only few days away now and you can expect by this time next week we’ll have some interesting posts on the seven presenting sponsors. By way of a warm-up, we’re providing a competition, full details of which can be found here. So, follow the links to...

November 6th, 2009 | Enterprise Computing | Read More

Archive for November, 2009