Disqus - Latest Comments for sfoskett

Re: A Few iPhone Exchange ActiveSync Gotchas

BobL_NJ — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:09:37 -0000

Great article. Our school district uses mobile.domainname instead of oma.domainname, but the clincher was to enter something into the domain name field. My Outlook Web Access did not require a domain name and I didn't remember what it was until I tried to access a server via remote desktop.

ActiveSync kept rejecting my password before I added the domain option. You would think it would have rejected my username instead -- I might have figured it out quicker.

Re: New Mac Mini Is A Diamond In The Rough

HighHopes — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 00:15:38 -0000

I didn't get the same results from the same trail and error routine, but I can see how you did.

The USB bus assignment is more dynamic than you assumed.

If you look at the System Profiler you will see there are four USB buses: two low-speed buses (IR Receiver bus, and Bluetooth USB Host Controller bus) and two high-speed buses.

Here is where it gets a bit tricky. The Mac Mini can detect if you are plugging in a low-speed device like a keyboard or a high-speed device like a hard drive. If you plug in a low-speed device the Mac will connect it to one of the two low-speed buses. If you plug in a high-speed device it will connect to one of the two high-speed buses.

The five port assignments are not as you described. The are not three buses for the five ports. There are two buses (either high-speed or low-speed depending on the device you plug in) for the five ports. Ports 1, 2, and 5 are on one bus and ports 3 and 4 are on the other.

You would see this clearly if you plugged in five high-speed devices in all five ports. All five devices would show in System Profiler as being connected to the two high-speed buses with port 1, 2 and 5 connected to one bus and ports 3 and 4 connected to the other. The same is true if you plugged in five low-speed devices. All five would show as being connected to the two low-speed buses with the same port assignments.

What I assumed you did during your trail and error is you mixed both low-speed and high-speed devices during your testing not realizing the Mac was dynamically switching between high and low speed buses depending on the device being used.

So, if you had high-speed devices plugged into, say, ports 1, 3, 4 and 5 and then you plugged a low speed device into port 2 you would see the System Profiler report the low-speed device connected to the low-speed IR Receiver bus. I can see where one would assume that port 2 is hard wired to that bus, but this is not true. The Mac detected the low speed device and connected it to the IR Receiver bus. It would connect it to that same bus if you had plugged the low speed device into ports 1, 2, or 5. If you plugged the low-speed device into ports 3 or 4 the Mac would connect it to the other low speed bus, the Bluetooth USB Host Controller bus.

Try it yourself. Go through the five USB ports first with a low-speed device and then with a high-speed device. You'll find that ports 1, 2 and 5 are on one bus (either high or low speed) while ports 3 and 4 are on the other bus (either high or low speed)

This means that if you have two high speed devices you want to have one plugged into port 1, 2, or 5 and the other plugged into port 3 or 4. There are only two high-speed buses for the five ports, not three.

Re: How To Subscribe To Internet Calendars In iPhone OS 3.0

ahhgo — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 23:12:31 -0000

How about if there IS NO CALENDAR listed but there actually is one? Well, after looking around at all sorts of web sites, including apple.com, and not finding anything useful, I got mad. Having messed with computers and the like for over 20 years, I am a good guesser... I told the thing to create a new calendar account, put in exactly the same info that I did the first time I created a Google calDAV account, and there was the account and the big red Delete button. Hit delete and got a message that calendar was being turned off (or something like that). No more extra calendar. I am not impressed with the calendar stuff on the iphone.

Re: Flush Time

deemery — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 12:16:52 -0000

One Drobo costs about 2 1/2 times OWC Raid Mirrored enclosures. A
(presumably unlikely) hardware failure (e.g. power supply) on the Drobo
would leave me hanging. I'm just not convinced the cost is worth it
right now. The 'sweet spot' for me for a Drobo would be $200, and that
doesn't look likely.

But thanks much for the Drobo notes, they helped me understand this a
lot better than anything else I've read.

dave

p.s. just got Snow Leopard server and a 2nd Mac Mini. I already have
Leopard server on another Mini, that serves as my 'inside server'. SL
on the new Mini will replace the old G4/933 that's running Tiger server
as my externally facing machine. I want to see if I can get IPNetRouter
to work on SL on the Mini, that's a product I've had a lot of good
experience with in the past, but it wasn't working quite right on the
G4/Tiger Server for some reason.

Re: Flush Time

sfoskett — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 11:13:24 -0000

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.

Re: The Dumb Disk Fallacy

sfoskett — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:56:41 -0000

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...

Re: Iomega ix2-200 Adds iSCSI, Sync To Dual-Drive SOHO NAS

Drew Meyer — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:43:23 -0000

Ah, that makes sense and sounds like an opportunity. Let me see what we can do. And yes, I am the Dir of Marketing for our storage products.

Re: Iomega ix2-200 Adds iSCSI, Sync To Dual-Drive SOHO NAS

sfoskett — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:40:52 -0000

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)

Re: Why policy is the future of storage, part 2

sfoskett — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 11:16:00 -0000

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.

Re: Essential Reading for VMware ESX iSCSI Users!

sfoskett — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 10:31:44 -0000

Yes, the folks have put together an updated post! See it here:
http://blogs.netapp.com/virtualstorageguy/2009/...

Re: Will Alan Atkinson Have The WysDM To Steer Xiotech Right?

sfoskett — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:46:53 -0000

Well thanks for clearing that up then!

I assume you have read Chris Mellor's piece in The Register:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/02/xiotech...

Re: The Truth About HP’s Tech Day

Tom — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:18:20 -0000

I will try ONE LAST TIME to explain...your blog destroyed my first response. That means something is broken.
The $1000 cost is per hardware iSCSI card that VMware and HP would force me to buy to have our 2012i SAN be supported for ESX 4.0 -- QLogic 2-port HBA cards.
Both VMware and HP documentation say this. To further muddy the waters, VMware support told me ALUA must be set up in the array,.and HP told me ALUA is not possible in the 2012i.
So now I am in a situation of take my chances and run ESX 4.0 on the 2012i any way I can and be unsupported or spend all this money and not know for sure if ESX 4.0 will work on the 2012i with these hardware iSCSI cards.
Very poor support from both companies so far in my efforts to gain clarity etc.
Oh, and these cards are not supported on this SAN for ESX 3.5 so I think I cannot even test!! to see what happens etc.
I used my work email in this post if you are interested in responding.
Thank you, Tom

Re: Will Alan Atkinson Have The WysDM To Steer Xiotech Right?

peglarr — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:14:14 -0000

Hi Stephen, I certainly did not mean that you personally wish us to fail...that's why I constructed my sentence above the way I did, as 'many', meaning many others in the industry. We are not small; in fact, we are the world's largest privately held storage company. We have a top 10 market share in SAN storage. We have not announced debt; we announced a line of credit which we can tap into, if necessary, which is a prudent thing to do, since we are private and do not dine at the public trough. We have plenty of exciting announcements and dozens of customer wins/case studies out there; have a look.

Re: Will Alan Atkinson Have The WysDM To Steer Xiotech Right?

sfoskett — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:56:00 -0000

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).

Re: The Truth About HP’s Tech Day

sfoskett — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 11:43:04 -0000

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.

Re: The Truth About HP’s Tech Day

MSAstorage — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 00:24:28 -0000

Tom, can you please explain the $1000 per server issue? Are you referring to the VMware licensing cost for VSphere? Don’t you think that would be true for any iSCSI SAN arrays? That really has nothing to do with HP. MSA arrays don’t require you to pay extra fee for using their arrays or even storage provisioning software except Snapshot licensing fee.

Re: The Truth About HP’s Tech Day

JohnMH — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 19:44:31 -0000

Don't think we're going to see native or embedded dedupe on any block based array anytime soon. To introduce de-dupe easily and quicky at this point requires some form of file system and the relevant metadata, hence why it's currently restricted to NAS. Ntapp can do it but coming from a NAS background they own the underlying file system and so have a major advantage over the block vendors who need to provide this via a gateway product..

On scale out, it tends to suffer from the loose coupled cluster effect. To achieve true scaleout on commodity you have to mirror across nodes to match or increase availability over a close coupled architecture, which in turn means you need to buy as a minimum at least twice your usable capacity. Btw they're usually based on a majority node model so require a minumum number of nodes before they're optimally configured for availability.

Since each capacity block requires a fully loaded commodity server you can't add capacity in anything less than an entire node. You also need to match capacity and drive technology across the cluster due to the requirement for mirroring since all node must have equal or greater capacity.

As you scale out you gain performance, assuming the O/S can intelligently load balance across the scale out cluster. Not all O/S's are equal in this respect and you also burn many more infrastructure ports feeding the cluster as a whole.

Lastly each capacity block (node) is no longer a simple enclosure with a passive backend, it's now a high end multicore CPU loaded with memory etc and consuming as much power as a fairly high powered server within your estate, economically and environmentally it only scales so far.

Not knocking LeftHand, XIV et al, but like I said they have their sweetspots and currently the dual controller modular boxes do the job in the market they're in, whilst managing to offset the majority of the above.

Re: The Truth About HP’s Tech Day

sfoskett — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 18:07:38 -0000

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 fact that LeftHand runs on commodity gear and scales out not just up is pretty interesting. Modular 2-controller arrays have had their day.

Re: The Truth About HP’s Tech Day

sfoskett — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 17:59:02 -0000

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.

Re: New Mac Mini Is A Diamond In The Rough

dlane — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 02:27:40 -0000

can each bus fully saturate the entire USB 2.0 speeds at the same time? Can the chipset handle it? what's the maximum bus speeds the Ion can handle?

Re: Iomega’s ix4-200d: A Killer Desktop Storage Array

corradoc — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:01:09 -0000

Stephen, are you sure you cannot upgrade disks? Is the underneath OS customized for each box and hardened to avoid user changing disks?
To my knowledge, Iomega uses customized versions of BusyBox (a linux variant).
I mean, I certainly have to go through a complete format (thus loosing content) but swapping disks with bigger ones shouldn't be impossible.
Or, do you mean that, by doing this, you break warranty support?

Re: Disclaimer

jtreadway — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 20:31:09 -0000

Thanks Steve.

Re: Disclaimer

sfoskett — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 09:34:30 -0000

Congratulations on the new gig, John!

Re: How Far Can You Push a Mac Mini?

hsus2k — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 23:14:14 -0000

Yes, you do want to make sure you have enough power for everything you hook up.
Lucky the Seagate 7200.4 (500GB) HD only draws .451A at 5V which uses about 2.2W (4X=8.8W) plus the Hardware Port Multiplier.

Just have to watch out what else I'm hooking up on the USB port.
I think the 110W power supply will manage what I have so far. Plus the optical drive is not spin all the time.
If you have anything over 20W (addition to what the original components), I would be careful.

Anyway, like I said. If you have the older 2007 mini. Don't spend too much money on it.
Upgrade the RAM to 4GB Max, maybe a large Capacity 7200 or 1000 rpm HD and up to a T7600 Processor Chip. That's the most you can do for it.
As for the new 2009. all you have to do is just swap the disk HD to a large capacity SSD. That's all it needs. if you want storage, just add external HD.

You just can't modify Mac mini beyond that. It is just a small Desk top using Laptop components. It is meant to be a HTPC, not a graphic editing machine.
Which was What I thought of doing. Now studying to build my own "BigMac" with PC components and stuff all into G4 Cube.

Re: How Far Can You Push a Mac Mini?

sfoskett — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 21:44:15 -0000

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!