Stephen Foskett › Comments

Apologies for the video - I was really tired at this point!!! - Stephen Foskett

Excellent info on the new updated Mac Mini - Stephen Foskett

Another great weekly summary from Simon Sharwood - Stephen Foskett

Whoa! - Stephen Foskett

"That’s weird! Drobo’s whole second-volume thing is a little funky – I think they assume that most people will create a thin 8 or 16 TB volume and leave it at that! I have also had some weirdness with my partitioned Drobo volume on my Mac. Again, the expectation is that you’ll just create one huge thin volume and call it a day! I guess you can always ask the engineers when you see them next month! Stephen" - Stephen Foskett

"You're not alone, Dave! RAID rebuild on my Drobo takes about 8 hours with two 1.5 TB drives and one 1 TB drive. And slow interfaces and random access don't help - I'm only getting 25-35 MB/s on my Drobo and Iomega ix4, meaning it will take more like 12 hours to copy a single terabyte of data. Raw USB or FireWire enclosures might do somewhat better, but there's a massive risk of data loss with single-drive units, something I'll be writing about soon. My advice is to buy a Drobo. It's not all that fast, and it is expensive, but it allows you to have a protected place to put your data that you can upgrade as time goes by. Need more space? Pop in another drive and let it do the work. No migration required." - Stephen Foskett

"I'm sure they will be sorry to see you go, Kostadis! Please do keep in touch with all of us in the community!" - Stephen Foskett

Mind if I retweet this one? - Louis Gray

Sure! I'll be happy to laugh at myself with you! - Stephen Foskett

"Hahaha yeah this is so true. I had a $19 Martini the other day. While it was indeed delicious, it probably contained just $2 of gin, vermouth, and lime. Oops I just gave out my secret Martini recipe! Anyway, why would I spend $19 for $2 worth of booze? Because the total package was worth it: I was with my friends after all. That's why we buy EMC, NetApp, and even Apple, isn't it? The total package must be worth it or folks wouldn't be buying..." - Stephen Foskett

"Sorry, Drew, but I don't know anything about Netgear's products. I've never used them, encountered them, or been briefed on them, so I wouldn't have anything to say about them. I'm sure lots of folks are covering and comparing them though! (Note: Drew appears to be Director of Storage Marketing for Netgear)" - Stephen Foskett

"Dave, I totally agree that policy is the future of not just storage but IT in general. The issue is that we storage folks sometimes can't see the flowers for the weeds - we are so interested in LUNs and replication that we forget that these are the lowest-level, least-interesting policy questions possible. Business applications want business policy, not IT infrastructure issues. They want real operational data retention, not backup or replication. They want litigation readiness, not just data protection or indexing. They want collaboration, not just movement of data. Until storage can be programmed and integrated with applications, we're still in the weeds." - Stephen Foskett

"Yes, the folks have put together an updated post! See it here: http://blogs.netapp.com/virtual......" - Stephen Foskett

"Well thanks for clearing that up then! I assume you have read Chris Mellor's piece in The Register: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009......" - Stephen Foskett

"Rob, I can imagine other reasons that folks question Xiotech's financial health, and can assure you that I do not "wish [Xiotech] to fail" as you seem to suggest. It is a small company; it has been through acquisition, spin-out, and product line assumption; it has announced both financing and (importantly) debt; it has seen fit to announce low-thousands sales of its premier product line. The best thing (in my opinion) for Xiotech to do is to prove the doubters wrong with exciting announcements, customer wins, and similar evidence of execution. I can not imagine that the company would release more sales or financial information than has been already shown (15,000 ISE sales in 12 months)." - Stephen Foskett

"HP paid travel, hotel, and meal expenses for the attending bloggers. This was important since, as non-professional writers, we would not have been able to attend otherwise. They also gave out a few items (2 pens, a pad, 2 USB drives, and some literature). This was the only "payment" and was in line with what I consider acceptable. By the way, I also got a few private comments (not from Val) saying basically "this is just like an analyst day or customer event." This may be true or may not but there is one major distinction: We are non-pro bloggers not analysts or reporters. The important thing that happened here is that HP recognized and invited in this new media crew, and we have rarely if ever been invited in the past. This is the main takeaway for me, not the fact that HP was honest, provided engineers, etc." - Stephen Foskett

"The EVA is definitely a fine array. It's a lot like a CLARiiON or FASt-T, actually. That's why I'm not all that interested. It was refreshed, expanded, updated, and paired with the virtualization platform, but it's not really notable. Especially for the money one has lots of choices. Yes the wide striping and sub-disk RAID is clever, but it's nothing that isn't available on other systems now (10 years after being introduced). It's like introducing the exciting new Honda Accord or Toyota Camry when everyone else is making hybrids and crossovers... Ya gotta do something to get noticed or you're just another option in a sea of options. And unlike those cars (both of which spawned hybrids and crossovers) the EVA doesn't have the features I'm interested in these days. One would think HP could add automated tiering, sub-disk tiering, deduplication, clustering, or something to that cool architecture. But instead it looks like a faster version of what DEC/Compaq designed. Plus, these days the..." - Stephen Foskett

"The EVA is definitely a fine array. It's a lot like a CLARiiON or FASt-T, actually. That's why I'm not all that interested. It was refreshed, expanded, updated, and paired with the virtualization platform, but it's not really notable. Especially for the money one has lots of choices. Yes the wide striping and sub-disk RAID is clever, but it's nothing that isn't available on other... more... - Stephen Foskett

"Good points, Tom! I have NO idea what you are talking about, but I'd like an answer. Can someone from HP speak up on the MSA 2012i issue Tom brings up? As for low-end, one of the event highlights was the intro of the little MediaSmart server and a look at the Windows Storage Server-powered iSCSI arrays. These looked like nice, cheap storage boxes to me." - Stephen Foskett

Be sure to update all of us with the response. - Emulex

A complete non-answer so far. HP deferred FCoE discussion to later. - Stephen Foskett

HP has Flex-10, Virtual Connect, seeing FCoE starting at the edge, moving in #HPTechDay - Stephen Foskett

"Congratulations on the new gig, John!" - Stephen Foskett

"Congratulations on the new gig, John!" - Stephen Foskett

Interesting analysis. I wonder how many of these instances linger and how many are terminated after a few minutes, hours, or days... - Stephen Foskett

"You keep writing good stuff and we’ll keep linking to you!" - Stephen Foskett

"I'm not sure that that will fit in a Mini. But you can always try! I love hsus2k's SATA expander idea, and he was able to run the expander and two drives (four?) from the Mini's power supply. Not sure this is really reommended, but hey it might work! You can definitely replace the optical drive with a second hard drive using the kit mentioned in my post. You can also definitely use a port multiplier to add more drives like hsus2k. What I did was much simpler. I bought a Drobo and hooked it to the FireWire port! Hahaha! It's not a speed demon, but it's reliable and huge - I've got 2.5 TB of usable space plus the 320 GB hard drive plus protection with RAID and Time Machine!" - Stephen Foskett

"Did you stuff the whole thing into that Cube pictured at the end? Wow, awesome! Drop me an email at the link at the top right, will you? Stephen" - Stephen Foskett

"I figured out which port was on which bus by using the System Profiler's list of USB devices and plugging a device into each port. Trial and error!" - Stephen Foskett

"Larry, I looked a bit, too, and can't say definitively. Avamar was using the term "de-duplication" in mid-2007, and Data Domain started using it around June 2006. But folks were talking about de-duplication as early as June of 2005 (see this link http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news...). So perhaps Avamar invented it, but the don't seem to be using the word until two years later at least!" - Stephen Foskett

"Even us vegetarians agree with the need to match your game with your hunting abilities! Wise words, especially the one: "most" Inventors of rabbit traps and elephant guns can get mighty rich hunting that game!" - Stephen Foskett

"The DroboPro does support 2-drive parity (something like RAID-6), which is a must for an 8-drive device like it. 2-drive parity on a 4-drive device probably would not be used by many folks. As for the eject issue, the product marketing manager has taken the suggestion and will put it to the engineers. Watch for this feature in the future!" - Stephen Foskett

"I’ve been meaning to post exactly the same thing! It’s nuts that the official/approved method of removing a drive is “pop it out”. This from the same folks who have a suspend button on the array… I’ll be talking to their VP of Marketing tomorrow and will make this suggestion!" - Stephen Foskett

"I’ve been meaning to post exactly the same thing! It’s nuts that the official/approved method of removing a drive is “pop it out”. This from the same folks who have a suspend button on the array… I’ll be talking to their VP of Marketing tomorrow and will make this suggestion!" - Stephen Foskett