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Submission + - Tulips, Dot-coms and SANs: Why SSD Merger Mania Won't Work (enterprisestorageforum.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: Texas Memory and IBM; Cisco and Whiptail; STEC, Virident and WD: the storage industry seems to be in full merger mania over SSDs, but Henry Newman at Enterprise Storage Forum doesn't think the current mania will work out any better than any other great mania of history. Not Invented Here opposition by acquiring engineering teams and the commodity nature of SSDs will make much of the money poured into SSD companies wasted, he says.

'I seriously doubt that the STEC Inc. technology will be seen in HGST/WD SSDs, nor do I think that Virident PCIe cards will be commoditized by HGST/WD to compete with LSI and others,' writes Newman. 'A Whiptail system will likely be put into a Cisco rack, but it’s not like Intel and Cisco are the best corporate partners, and we will likely see other SSDs put into the product. ... It all comes down to what I see as 'the buying arms race.' Company X purchased some SSD company so company Y needs to do the same or they will not be considered a player.'

Submission + - Are We Witnessing the Decline of Ubuntu? (datamation.com) 2

Submitted by jammag
jammag writes: "When the history of free software is written, I am increasingly convinced that this last year will be noted as the start of the decline of Ubuntu," opines Linux pundit Bruce Byfield. After great initial success, Ubuntu and Canonical began to isolate themselves from the mainstream of the free software community. Canonical, he says, has tried to control the open source community, and the company has floundered in many of its initiatives. Really, the mighty Ubuntu, in decline?

Submission + - NSA General Shouts Back At Black Hat Heckler (esecurityplanet.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: General Keith Alexander , the man behind the NSA's prism effort delivered a keynote at the Black Hat conference today. He attempted to set the record straight claiming what they do is all lawful and is saving American lives. During the keynote, General Alexander was heckled by someone in the audience that yelled out,"You should read the constitution."

The General responded, "I have and so should you."

Submission + - Software-defined data centers might cost companies more than they save (datamation.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: As more and more companies move to virtualized, or software-defined, data centers, cost savings might not be one of the benefits. Sure, utilization rates might go up as resources are pooled, but if the end result is that IT resources become easier for end users to access and provision, they might end up using more resources, not less.

That's the view of Peder Ulander of Citrix, who cites the Jevons Paradox, a 150-year-old economic theory that arose from an observation about the relationship between coal efficiency and consumption. Making a resource easier to use leads to greater consumption, not less, says Ulander. As users can do more for themselves and don't have to wait for IT, they do more, so more gets used.

The real gain, then, might be that more gets accomplished as IT becomes less of a bottleneck. It won't mean cost savings, but it could mean higher revenues.

Submission + - Is Red Hat Making Money from OpenStack? (datamation.com)

Submitted by Sean Michael Kerner
Sean Michael Kerner writes: Everyone is talking about the OpenStack open source cloud platform — but few vendors are actually making any money from it. Take for example, Linux leader Red Hat. During the company's first quarter fiscal 2014earnings call, CEO Jim Whitehurst admitted that while expectations are high, the OpenStack money is at least a year away.

"My guess is we will do a lot of POCs (Proof of Concepts) in the next year on OpenStack, but people won't start writing 6-figure checks for software," Whitehurst said. "They may for some services, but for software, until they get a little closer to production, that's probably still a year or 18 months away."

Submission + - Subversion 1.8 Released But Will You Still Use Git? (developer.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: Remember back in the day when we all used CVS? Then we moved to SVN (subversion) but in the last three yrs or so everyone and their brother seems to have moved to Git, right? Well truth is Subversion is still going strong and just released version 1.8. While Git is still faster for some things, Greg Stein, the former chair of the Apache Software Foundation, figures SVN is better than Git at lots of things.

With Subversion, you can have a 1T repository and check out just a small portion of it, The developers don't need full copies," Stein explained. "Git shops typically have many, smaller repositories, while svn shops typically have a single repository, which eases administration, backup, etc."

Submission + - 10GbE: What the Heck Took So Long? (enterprisenetworkingplanet.com) 2

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: 10 Gigabit Ethernet may finally be catching on, some six years later than many predicted. So why did it take so long? Henry Newman offers a few reasons at Enterprise Networking Planet: 10GbE and PCIe 2 were a very promising combination when they appeared in 2007, but the Great Recession hit soon after and IT departments were dumping hardware rather than buying more. The final missing piece is finally arriving: 10GbE support on motherboards.

'What 10 GbE needs to become a commodity is exactly what 1 GbE got and what Fibre Channel failed to get: support on every motherboard,' writes Newman. 'The current landscape looks promising. 10 GbE is starting to appear on motherboards from every major server vendor, and I suspect that in just a few years, we'll start to see it on home PC boards, with the price dropping from the double digits to single digits, and then even down to cents.'

See the article at 10 Gig: What Took So Darn Long?

Submission + - Brands Don't Matter Much to Cloud Computing Buyers (datamation.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: You may have one of the best-known and respected brands in cloud computing, but that may not matter much when it comes time for RFPs, according to a new survey of IT buyers from Palmer Research/QuinStreet. A third of respondents view big names like Google, Amazon and Microsoft very favorably, yet at RFP time, less than 10% of those names get asked for formal proposals. It could be a sign that the cloud is a wide-open market that's up for grabs, as buyers seem much more interested in basics like reliability, technology expertise, pricing, maintenance and customer service, according to the survey. Oh, and trialware doesn't hurt either.

Submission + - 1 Year After World IPv6 Launch - Are We There Yet? (enterprisenetworkingplanet.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: One year ago today was the the official 'Launch Day' of IPv6. The idea was that IPv6 would get turned on and stay on at major carriers and website. So where are we now? Only 1.27% of Google traffic comes from IPv6 and barely 12 percent of the Alexa Top 1000 sites are even accessible via IPv6. In general though, the Internet Society is pleased with the progress over the last year.

"The good news is that almost everywhere we look, IPv6 is increasing," Phil Roberts,technology program manager at the Internet Society said. "It seems to be me that it's now at the groundswell stage and it all looks like everything is up and to the right."

Submission + - If You Don't Get Your Way In an Open Source Project Do You Stay or Go? (enterprisenetworkingplanet.com)

Submitted by darthcamaro
darthcamaro writes: The largest open source effort in the history of networking is now facing its first big challenge — as one of the core founding member of the OpenDaylight Foundation is leaving. OpenDaylight is an effort led by the Linux Foundation to build open source Software Defined Networking tech. Big Switch, the founder of the open source Floodlight controller, didn't get everyone to adopt their approach so they are leaving. While Big Switch is trying to paint the story as open source vs goliath, the Linux Foundation's OpenDaylight people don't see it that way.

"In this case the developer community combined technology from multiple sources (including BSN), which the company obviously didn't like. Open source is based on compromise and working together. Sometimes strong motivations and investor goals can get in the way of that. In the spirit of open source, we fully expect BSN to honor its commitments to this project."

Submission + - Do Developers Need Free Perks to Thrive? (datamation.com)

Submitted by jammag
jammag writes: Free sodas, candy and energy bars can be surprisingly important to developers, says longtime coder Eric Spiegel. They need the perks, not to mention the caffeine boost. More important, free sodas from management are like the canary in the coal mine. If they get cut, then layoffs might be next. “The sodas are just the wake-up call. If the culture changes to be focused more on cost-cutting than on innovation and creativity, then would you still want to work here? I wouldn’t.” Are free perks really that important?

Submission + - Hitachi's holographic storage breakthrough (infostor.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: The idea of holographic storage is 50 years old, but it's never become a commercial reality. That may be about to change, according to Henry Newman at InfoStor, who reports on a big breakthrough by Hitachi announced at the IEEE Mass Storage conference this week.

'If the information provided is accurate, then I would consider this the first disruptive technology to hit the storage industry in a very long time,' writes Newman.

Submission + - GNOME or KDE? The Old Question Is New Today (datamation.com)

Submitted by jammag
jammag writes: The question is as old as Hatfield vs. McCoy, but it's taken on new relevance as user loyalties have broken down — and the Linux desktop now has a dazzling array of design philosophies, applications and unique features. Veteran Linux pundit Bruce Byfield awards points for ranking in each category. He tallies them up and recommends what he feels is clearly the best answer. You agree?

Submission + - How Much Storage Does It Take to Cure Cancer? (enterprisestorageforum.com)

Submitted by storagedude
storagedude writes: The answer: A lot.

It takes 1.5 GB of data to sequence the genome of an individual. With 12.5 million cancer patients in the U.S., it would take just under 19 PBs to store all that data. Then you need to sequence the cancer, which would take 20 to 200 times more storage than that. Throw in all the other diseases that could potentially be treated with in silico analysis, and you have one heck of a Big Data problem.

Writes Henry Newman on Enterprise Storage Forum: 'We are on the brink of having the technology and methods to be able to detect and treat many diseases cost-effectively, but this is going to require large amounts of storage and processing power, along with new methods to analyze the data. ... Will we run out of ideas, or will we run out of storage at a reasonable cost? Without the storage, the ideas will not come, as the costs will be too high.'

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