For your average corporate end user, this isn’t as much of a problem as it is for those of us who work for Cisco partners and deal with a variety of clients. There are plenty of instances in which I happen to be lending a hand with a client that my company did not sell the Cisco SmartNet maintenance contract to. Some other reseller did, so my account is not entitled to that particular contract. In order to fix that, the customer has to authorize the attachment of the contract to my profile with Cisco. Then, I can open up support cases on any of the hardware covered under that contract. The problem with that approach is that I don’t always have the luxury of waiting for that process to work itself out. Consider a network outage that crops up and the client expects my company to drive the issue with Cisco TAC. While the outage is ongoing, I am having to plead with Cisco to get my account authorized to simply open the case. This is something that tends to happen on a fairly regular basis.

Read more at: Vendors Are Listening

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | Vendors Are Listening
Read more posts categorized as All, Networking

I saw a tweet pass by from PernixData and although I already knew the world of datacenter/storage design was changing it just really sank in. Over the last 5 years we have seen the world of storage change significantly. We have seen new types of storage being introduced like all-flash-based storage, hybrid storage (mix of SSD and SATA) and hyper-converged solutions. Examples of these would be Violin Memory (all-flash), Tintri (hybrid) and Nutanix (converged). More recently object-based storage solutions are trending, as Stephen Foskett states in his article on scaling storage it is nothing new but it seems to be more relevant in this new day and age.

Read more at: Hybrid, flash, converged storage, what’s next? Hybrid storage stack!?

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | Hybrid, flash, converged storage, what’s next? Hybrid storage stack!?
Read more posts categorized as All, Storage

Google is obsessed with the idea of connecting more and more people to the Internet, especially in the developing world and there isn’t a single technology that can get it done. So it has been toying with many ways to provide connectivity in areas that are un-connected. While I don’t have any doubts that Google’s mission to connect the world is mercantile, I still find the idea of pushing for seamless connectivity exciting. Seamless connectivity, as you know, has been a bit of personal passion for me.

Read more at: Google’s Balloon-based Internet Dream: Loon or Loony?

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | Google’s Balloon-based Internet Dream: Loon or Loony?
Read more posts categorized as All, Networking

The next important decision is whether to install Windows Server 2012 on the GPT disk or use DISKPART to reconfigure it back to MBR. (The DISKPART commands to convert from GPT to MBR and vice-versa are readily available using your search engine of choice.) GPT supports larger disk sizes, but the solid-state disk in this machine isn’t that large, so I could go either way. However, you need to know which you are doing because it determines how you set up your bootable USB and your BIOS.

Read more at: GPT, UEFI, MBR, oh my!

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | GPT, UEFI, MBR, oh my!
Read more posts categorized as All, Storage

Their launch product is a “software-only solution to NAS performance in virtualized environments” according to their press release. We’ll be seeing the first public demo of the product in action, which will apparently be released “later this year”.

I’m intrigued. Apparently the product is based on research performed by the founder, Vishal Misra, while at Columbia working with Dan Rubenstein. I’ve not had time to delve into things in great detail, but there are a couple of intriguingly named papers:

Read more at: TFD9 Pre-work: Infinio

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | TFD9 Pre-work: Infinio
Read more posts categorized as All, Storage

 

T-Minus 14 days till the immanent demise of Google Reader, a product I’ve used for a number of years on a daily basis for simple consumption of media. Sad Fact: I have google reader open all day and will reference it dozens of times during the day. It is the first thing I open when I logon my computer, and is usually the last thing I scan before I go to bed. I rely on Google reader more than I do email at times.

 

Read more at: Google Reader – Oh How I will Miss Thee

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | Google Reader – Oh How I will Miss Thee
Read more posts categorized as All, Tech

Brent Salisbury sent me a link to a fantastic OpenFlow/SDN presentation Scott Shenker did @ Stanford University a few days ago. It’s a perfect introduction to the fundamental ideas behind SDN and therefore a must-see for everyone vaguely involved in networking.

Here are some of the highlights (from my highly biased perspective):

Read more at: Scott Shenker on OpenFlow and SDN

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | Scott Shenker on OpenFlow and SDN
Read more posts categorized as All, Networking

Expecting another deep dive in to 802.11n high density WLANs (…small cell sizes, using 5GHz, band steering, disabling lower speeds etc.) I clicked through the link to see if I could find any new information. However, I was completely surprised to find myself looking at a whitepaper discussing the merits of 802.11ad! In fact, it actually highlighted the disadvantages of a traditional ‘legacy’ WiFi network – this had me hooked

Read more at: 802.11ad – Just for Home Cinema…Right?

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | 802.11ad – Just for Home Cinema…Right?
Read more posts categorized as All, Wireless

The use of a Link Aggregation Group (LAG) with Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) is rather standard with converged infrastructure northbound uplinks. This grants additional link redundancy and avoids the need for minor levels of interruption in the event of a single link failure, and when coupled with a virtual port channel (vPC) it can also provide protection against switch failure. However, I have found that the use of a LAG, often referred to as a port channel, can cause some confusion when configuring the vSphere switch side of the equation. Nearly all documentation in the wild focuses on the need to use an IP Hash teaming policy whenever a LAG is present.

Read more at: How Link Aggregation Affects vSphere Teaming Policies with Converged Infrastructure

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | How Link Aggregation Affects vSphere Teaming Policies with Converged Infrastructure
Read more posts categorized as All, Networking, Server Virtualization

This is a story of a disadventure I had that made me cold sweat for several days, but finally ended well…

Usually, I shut down my MacBook only when I need to install or update a software that specifically requires a reboot. Standby mode never gave me any problem, and allows me to start using my computer few seconds after I pull it out of my bag, so is common for me to have more than a month of uptime. Last week, one of those frequent Flash Player update required me a reboot, so I did it, right after checking as usual the uptime (28 days and some hours at that time).

Read more at: SSDs are more than simple hard disks (and how I found it out the hard way)

© Stephen Foskett for Gestalt IT, 2013. | SSDs are more than simple hard disks (and how I found it out the hard way)
Read more posts categorized as All, Storage