Fedora 10 RAID initialization problem
We interrupt this boring strings of blogs for some real
news.
Does TCP/IP have a future?
Network Convergence is a hot topic nowadays. This is driven
mostly by storage networking. The first products which can
deliver Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) are starting to
appear even now. There are a couple of drivers for
developing Ethernet for storage networks:
- Ethernet development is ahead of Fibre Channel and
Infiniband in terms of speed - Common network layer simplifies infrastructure
management - Reduction in the number of network interfaces and thus
initial hardware cost
Back to Square One
In 1992 when I started my study in Astronomy, most students
at the physics department were using X-terminals.
Workstations were still fairly expensive then and had more
power than any one person needed (on average). The
X-terminal was a fairly dumb device. It had an X server for
graphical representation and tftp client for booting. They
worked very well in combination with UNIX servers.
Virtualisation Tips III
In the previous 2 blogs, the soft side of virtualisation was
touched. This part is about the real stuff (no offence to
non-techies meant). Though this part is technical, there
are some tips to save money below, so non-techies may want
to read this as well.
Virtualisation Tips II
At the introduction of virtualisation in any organisation
its impact on service management is often overlooked.
Virtualisation is implemented as just another technology.
To gain maximum profit from virtualisation changes in the
way services are managed are needed. Something, that became
clear already in
"Virtualisation
Tips I". Changes in processes and procedures might
even be necessary to remain legally compliant. If
cost is the main driver behind virtualisation, the systems
management approach is absolutely critical. Not only in
processes and procedures, but also in tooling.
Virtualisation tips I
The human factor is often overlooked when implementing new
technologies in the data center. Most organizations do
think about training their personnel and most actually do
spend budget on that, but that is it.
Switch Mishmash
Last week, I stumbled upon an interesting problem. One of
the projects I'm working on as an astronomical sensor grid,
putting out about 2.6Gb/s of data per sensor station,
coupled to a central super computing infrastructure. This
system is still in the buildup/tender phase, so the network
consists of networking equipment of various brands, to test
out what the differences are and how well they work
together. There are only 5 sensor stations at the moment,
so the total amount of data is manageable. In the future
the total data stream will grow to about 1Tb/s, to be
processed real time.
Using OpenDNS with your own DNS
Yesterday I read an article about OpenDNS
http://www.opendns.com. OpenDNS adds the
possibility of domain name based filtering. You can
configure your own white and blacklist, but they also have
a list of categories you can choose from. Most interesting
category I found was phising, but I image that if you got
small children at home you'd also want to block porn and
such. Domain name spelling correction is an added bonus,
plus they promise almost 100% service availability,
superior performance, domain name spell checking and
statistics gathering (can be turned off).
The Triangle of Amplification
SOA, SOX Compliance, Virtualisation, Security, Identity
Management, Outsourcing; all trends of the current time.
Organizations are struggling to adapt and incorporate.
Consultancy bureaus thrive on this (I belong in this
category). Now is the time to step back and look on how all
of these trends interact and what the demands are on he
organization from a holistic point of view.
End to all Desktop problems?
Some consultants would you believe that virtualisation
technology will solve all your desktop problems.... Yeah,
right!
