A few weeks ago Synology sent me a DS216+ to review. Unfortunately, I haven’t had a lot of time to give it the thorough examination as I had wished, but I did manage to do a couple of quick tests in a temporary (that is, don’t try this at home or for a long-term solution) configuration. Overall I found the …
A NVMe Bibliography
A bibliography of NVMe educational materials, organized by topic.
Synology Hybrid Backup, Part 3
This is the third installment of the 3-2-1 backup workflow that I have established using Synology’s DSM 5.2 software. My goal is to illustrate a multi-tiered backup plan using my Synology equipment and the built-in tools to establish a resilient method for surviving data loss. In the first post, I discussed some of the considerations of backups and a provided …
Synology Hybrid Backup, Part 2
In the first article, I started talking about how to use the Synology to solve my various backup problems. I’m a bit picky about how the way I like my data organized, and as usual your mileage will vary, but because of the nature of my setup I need to use a variety of tools available within the Synology ecosystem. …
Synology Hybrid Backup, Part 1
We’ve all had it happen: that moment when the computer freezes, and hours of work is lost forever. But when the loss is catastrophic – a bad disk drive, the dreaded ‘clicking’ noise that signals you’re in deep, deep trouble, etc. – you know just how soul-crushing it can be. I have a particular plan in mind for satisfying my own …
Synology DSM 5.2 Beta Could Be A Big Deal
It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of Synology. The company has always, always treated me well. In fact if more companies acted like Synology did, I think that we’d have a lot of very happy consumers out there. It’s also no secret that I simply do not trust “The Cloud” for securing personal data. As I’ve said before …
Unboxing: Synology DS414 Slim
Unboxing the Synology DS414 Slim NAS device, and sharing initial impressions.
Bandwidth, Latency and Throughput, the Star Trek Way
Okay, I know there are a lot of different explanations about how to describe these common components of networks (see, for instance, here, here, here, here, and here), but every once in a while I get a question about whether or not 40G will make things go “faster” in networks (often relating to FCoE and storage in general). Why write another …
Quick Take: Why Not the User-Defined Data Center?
I’ve been struggling with names (or rather, the act of naming) recently. As I get more and more involved into the aspect of Data Centers and Programmability, trying to become more familiar in a world that remains considerably alien to me, I begin to struggle with some of the rather buzzword-laden (but ultimately vague) nomenclature: Software-Defined Networks Software-Defined Storage Software-Defined …
OpenStack and Storage, a Response
I respond to an excellent article by Stephen Foskett, who was responding to one of my one OpenStack articles.
Brocade and Evaluator Group’s Really, Really Bad FCoE Study
It’s been almost four years to the month that I took on Gartner’s horrible anti-FCoE diatribe, and since then I’ve joined Cisco, written a few more blogs, and even gone toe-to-toe with the technology’s largest critic – Brocade. For the most part, the tete-a-tete has been cordial, if a little snarky (just the way I like it!), and generally falls …
SNIA SDC Observations, Part II: The Not-So-Good
In my first post, I was talking about how the SNIA Storage Developer’s Conference really met and exceeded expectations in a lot of ways. There were many shining moments, but unfortunately there were quite a few disappointing ones as well.
SNIA Storage Developer’s Conference Observations, Part I
This past week I went to the SNIA Storage Developer’s Conference in Santa Clara. It was the first time that I came to a conference as an attendee in a very, very long time. Overall, the experience was positive and interesting, but there were some moments of disappointment as well, as some of the major limitations of storage perceptions came …
Cagematch: Synology vs. Drobo
This post is a long time coming and is extremely overdue. The only reason why I am finally getting off my rump and writing something is because today I was forwarded an open letter, “mea culpa” article written by Tom Buiocchi, CEO of Drobo on Scott Kelby’s site. Now, I only got the link to Mr. Buiocchi’s response, and I …
FCoE Fact Frustration? Me too.
Last week, I had a very interesting email conversation with Chris Mellor, storage writer for The Register. As a trade press reporter, Chris has been trying to distill some of the technologies of FCoE for his readers and one of his articles prompted me to write to him and offer some corrections and clarification. At first I thought that Chris’ …