Dec 29

Monitor storage for a Dell PERC H710 Mini on vSphere 6.5

So I managed to get myself some DELL R320 servers for the lab. Great servers, love that R3x0 series, they fit my needs perfectly. In previous R3xx series and vSphere versions using the “thick” vSphere client you could just monitor the storage (PERC H710 mini) and other hardware so that you could easily find out if your server needs maintenance.

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Dec 20

Tis the Season to be Jolly and heres a little Christmas Gift from Cormac and Duncan the VSAN Elves

Tis the season to be Jolly, and here is a little festive treat from Santa’s little VSAN helpers Cormac Hogan and Duncan Epping.

Holiday gift: vSAN Essentials book available for free

or from

vSAN Essentials e-book is now free

VSAN as we know is VMware Software defined storage solution that is integrated at the VMkernal level and a core component in SDDC and vxRAILs.  This is a serious tome about all things VSAN 6.2, (yes we are at VSAN 6.5 but this book is still relevant)

So mosy on over to either of the two sites and download the book, I can vouch for it. these too folk know their stuff.

Oct 26

TWITTER AND THE RIGHT NOT TO BE BLOCKED

What follows in pure conjecture, and in no way constitutes legal opinion. It merely outlines one of many possible outcomes.

An article in the New York Post on June 6 reported on a potential legal case aiming to force President Trump to unblock users he has blocked from seeing or tweeting to his timeline, either directly or by replying. This raises an interesting legal conundrum. The President uses his personal Twitter account, @RealDonaldTrump, rather than the official @POTUS account that was created under President Obama’s tenure to handle presidential Twitter discourse.

Unintended Consequences

UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

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Oct 25

“NO THANKS, WE’RE TOO BUSY,” OR PAY BACK TECHNICAL DEBT?

We have all heard this refrain. I bet many of you can even hear yourselves saying it. Over my many years in IT, I have often heard this from coworkers, bosses, and clients. I have even said it a few times myself. But what if we just stopped and listened? Who knows where that conversation could travel? Perhaps it could be the start of the next big thing. We now have a new term that relates to this message, and that term is “technical debt.”

No Thanks We’re too busy

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Oct 12

Privacy: it is such a personal thing, Part 1

This is the first in a series of articles that outline the legal position on an individual’s right to privacy with regard to personal data held across the world. There is an implicit assumption that every individual has the right to privacy. In fact, you could say it is a human right. This right to data privacy is being or has been codified into law across the globe. There is only one major exception in the free Western world, and that is the US, where there is no legally backed guarantee to data privacy. Yes, there is the common-law tort of invasion of privacy derived from English law and the 1974 Privacy Act. However, a guaranteed protection of data rights has never been codified into federal statute in the US, whereas more than eighty other countries and independent territories—including the EU; the UK; and the majority of Latin America, the Caribbean, Asia, and large parts of Africa—now have comprehensive data-protection laws.

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Oct 11

Like Cloud and Virtualization, Serverless Computng is still someone Else’s Computer

Today, serverless is all the rage. In the beginning, we had the server. Then along came virtualization, and things were good. We saved money. We could purchase less tin but run more servers. We could easily see the benefits of moving in that direction: lower power requirements, less hardware needing cooling down in our computer rooms. This was an easy sell for engineers and salespeople alike. Techies loved the elegance, and the business types loved the financial savings. The messaging was easily understandable.

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Oct 10

VMware Leaves the Data Protection Market

Back in April, VMware announced the end of life for its vSphere Data Protection (VDP) product. This little nugget was once again hidden in a blog post, in which VMware stated that moving forward after vSphere 6.5, it would be helping to consolidate backup and recovery by realigning its focus on its Storage APIs. Now, before you go into full panic mode, you do not need to worry: the VMware Lifecycle Product Matrix gives the relevant end-of-general-support dates for each version, and 6.1, the latest, is supported until mid-March 2020. You will have to plenty of time to plan your migration if you are using VDP.

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Oct 09

AWS Leads by a furlong, but Azure is Rapidly gaining ground

At the time of this writing (in early April), one of the biggest days in the UK horseracing calendar, Aintree’s Grand National Day, was upcoming. This seemed to me prophetic, as people often state that AWS is the leader in a one-horse race. Historically, yes, it has often appeared to be in a one-horse race, smashing competitors left, right, and center—first humiliating VMware, the godparent of the cloud, by beating it at its own game, then by crushing other, more traditional companies’ cloud aspirations without thought.

Many believed this battle, if not the war, had been well and truly won and that AWS was the victor. It had even clipped the wings of Google.

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Oct 08

Unity – Is not in the cards for Nexsan and EMC

Recalling the 1960s movie David and Goliath, a battle between IT titan Dell EMC and relative minnow Nexsan has been waged in the federal court for the District of Massachusetts over the use of the trademark “Unity.” Both companies market storage arrays branded “Unity.” EMC wrote a cease and desist letter to Nexsan concerning misuse, claiming prior use. However, Nexsan believed that claim to be erroneous, countering that it had filed for the trademark before EMC. It sued the giant for misuse first.

In case number 1:16-cv-10847-WGY in the federal court for the District of Massachusetts, Nexsan’s complaint stated: “EMC has threatened suit unless Nexsan abandons its UNITY trademarks.” Nexsan sought “a declaration that it has priority to, and is not infringing upon, certain trademark rights asserted by EMC Corporation.” The cease and desist order from Dell EMC was an obvious attempt at strong-arm tactics by the storage giant against the smaller company. Dell EMC not only failed to obtain the results it was expecting—this being Nexsan running off scared into the twilight and surrendering its trademark—but also ended up on the wrong arm of a trademark suit.

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Oct 07

RIP Harry Huskey

On April 9, 2017, Harry Huskey died at the age of 101. Many of you will most likely be scratching your heads whilst reading this on your screen—either your phone or tablet, or maybe even your desktop device—and you will most likely be asking, “Who, and why should I care, other than knowing somebody’s loved one has passed?”

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