iSCSI Network Designs: Part 2 — Simple Scaling

This Post is Part of a Series  —  click for list on iscsi» We have looked at a simple iSCSI net­work solu­tion in iSCSI Network Designs Part 1. We have kept the stor­age traffic sep­ar­ated from our data for oper­a­tional reas­ons. But we are lim­ited to 1GB/​​s and the port dens­ity of the switch.
List of Posts in this […]

iSCSI Network Designs: Part 1 — Introduction and Basics

This Post is Part of a Series  —  click for list on iscsi» I am work­ing on a Data Centre that has more than 500 serv­ers and we are con­sid­er­ing what our stor­age strategy should be. This is why I have been look­ing at FCoE and iSCSI and estab­lish­ing the bene­fits (or not).
My next few posts will be a “stream of […]

Rant: How to Fudge Your Statistics ( or Why Ping Is Not a Good Measure)

Statistics on how leav­ing Media Temple has improved web­site performance.

Rant: Problems With Media Temple Hosting

I have hos­ted this blog on Media Temple after a glow­ing review by some other people. It is now clear that for the last two or more weeks, the web site is often not avail­able as they are hav­ing stor­age prob­lems. It works some of the time and not at oth­ers. Some pages are taking […]

Network Dictionary — Admintastic

Admintastic
1. Term used to describe a sys­tem that was oth­er­wise straight­for­ward and easy to use, after a Security Consultant has ‘reviewed’ it.
2. Describing the ease of use of a Checkpoint fire­wall cluster, deeply sar­castic and derog­at­ory.
3. Term for Change Management excellence.

Lessons in IT Security From the Credit Crunch

I read an art­icle in the Financial Times Corroded to the core: How a staid Swiss bank let ambi­tions lead it into folly. It struck me how rel­ev­ant this is to IT Security.

Catalyst 6500 Serial Number — Where Is It ?

Simple but sweet, this just shows you how to get the serial num­ber for all the mod­ules in your Catalyst 6500 switch.

Blue Coat to Acquire Packeteer-​​Excellent-​​Outcome

Fantastic news! As a long time user of Blue Coat and Packeteer, I am pretty excited about this. The Packeteer traffic man­age­ment tech­no­lo­gies is a long way ahead of the Cisco queueing strategy, and the Blue Coat product set has plenty of fea­tures that hold Cisco at bay in the WAN Acceleration (pre­vi­ously known as Traffic Management.…sigh…queue the […]

Network Dictionary — Wi-​​Fi

wi-​​​​fi

1. Marketing abbre­vi­ation for ‘wire­less fidel­ity’. Intended to con­vey a mes­sage of per­form­ance, qual­ity and excel­lence by extra­pol­at­ing con­cepts from “high fidel­ity”.
Of course, wi-​​​​fi is noth­ing of the sort. Using IEEE802.11b, there is not enough band­width to do much, and the radio spec­trum is so hope­lessly com­prom­ised and over­loaded its sur­pris­ing any­thing works.
Naturally, that […]

Wanted: Virtualization Engineer, Referee Exp. Pref. — GigaOM

A post from GigaOM on the divide between Network and Server Engineers and the use of mobil­ity in Virtualized Servers. You know, I was just writ­ing an art­icle on this prob­lem.
When you can migrate a server from one side of the data centre to another with the click of but­ton, your net­work capa­city must accom­mod­ate not […]

More People Against FCoE — Part 2

More posts from people who are opposed to FCoE. More meat for the mill.…

Not Anti FCoE, More Like Anti Fibrechannel — a Response

I got linked from Dante Malagrino at the Cisco Data Center blog yes­ter­day. He writes a good post on why FCoE might be a good idea. Let me just say I am not only anti-​​​​FCoE, I am anti-​​​​Fibrechannel.
My rebut­tal after the jump…

People Against FCoE, Its Loud and Proud — Part 1

For those of you who are think­ing of rush­ing into FCoE and the Cisco Nexus switches you might want to think again. There are a few people com­ing out against FCoE and ask­ing why is any­one both­er­ing ? Should I be put­ting it in my design port­fo­lio ? Is FCoE a done deal just because Cisco is […]

Ip Tcp Timestamp

ip tcp timestamp
I have seen this com­mand a few times, today I am going to look into it and see what it does. Also, this is prob­ably a clas­sic CCIE lab gotcha.

Serial Console on OSX

I knew it had to be pos­sible to view serial data in the OSX ter­minal win­dow. Finally, a little googling told me what I needed to know. Here’s how to read and send serial data from the ter­minal in OSX. (just like hyperter­minal on windows)

Network Dictionary — Webinar

1. web driver work­shop that imparts product inform­a­tion and tech­no­logy train­ing.
2. over­blown method of deliv­er­ing product inform­a­tion that you can get by read­ing the bro­chure.
3. Marketing that makes sense to mar­ket­ing people. Largely con­sumed by people who don’t know enough to read the manual, and should be on a train­ing course. There are enough […]

Review of ActivIdentity ActivID 4Tress AAA and 2 Factor Tokens

In a recent pro­ject I was required to use ActivIdentity ActivID for two factor authen­tic­a­tion. This post is about my over­all exper­i­ence with the product and its poor approach to HA. While ActivID does work fine, and its tokens look nice and it works OK, this is not a product for any small or medium com­pany, and requires […]

American Technology Companies Have Poor Support Outside the US — Why ?

I use a lot of tech­no­logy that is developed in the US, and, con­sist­ently, when they ship that tech­no­logy to ‘rest of the world’ they pass their sup­port respons­ib­il­it­ies so a dis­trib­utor. While this looks like a good idea, the ser­vice the dis­trib­utor deliv­ers is usu­ally poor.
Why is this accept­able, and as a cus­tomer, why do I have put up […]

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