Collection of useful, relevant or inane places on the the Internets for 7th Apr:

• Data Robotics, Inc. – Proof that iSCSI will rise from the bottom up. Drobo announces an eight drive, iSCSI capable storage server. Since their storage is REALLY EASY to use, storage has now hit the home worker and small business in a big way. The iSCSI server means that mass adoption will occur in enormous volumes. Because of this market dynamic, iSCSI will "do an Ethernet". The cheapest technology always wins.
• SNIA embraces NAS and FCoE • The Register – Yes, storage over Ethernet may be inevitable, but iSCSI will win in the long haul.
• Cisco’s Unified Computing System – It’s not just a blade center | Colin McNamara – CCIE 18233 , VCP, RHCE, GCIH, GEEK – Colin McNamara get it right. His outline of how Cisco UCS strategy it put together is a great piece of work. Far more useful than any of the marketing material that Cisco has put together and really shows the possibilities.

  Personally, I am spending some time learning about HP Virtual Connect and consider how this 'competes'. The level of competition between Cisco and HP is going to cause a lot problems in the near future. Forget storage, existing relationships between server & networking are going to be redefined by this technology.

  Its possible that the market will bifurcate to follow whatever strategy HP chooses to follow, because I have a feeling that HP isn't going to follow Cisco on this.

• Field Notice: *Expired* FN – 27675 – WS-C6506 Chassis Handles May Break Off  [Cisco Catalyst 6500 Series Switches] – Cisco Systems – Field notices that very old Cisco 6500 have handles that might break off. I have had this happen a few times and never really trust the handles anyway.

  Mind you, dropping a C6500 is always good fun.