Stories by Paul Venezia

HP BladeSystem Matrix

During the Big Dig, the city of Boston erected a sign saying, "Rome wasn't built in a day. If it was, we would have hired their contractor." That's a good way to describe the general state of affairs regarding the ideal of divorcing services from hardware and pushing server management away from the physical layer.

Are sealed-in laptop batteries a good idea?

When Apple introduced its new MacBooks recently, it touted a doubled battery life -- but noted that the laptops' batteries were sealed into the case, not user-swappable as is the norm on laptops.

VMware vSphere 4

VMware vSphere 4, out today, is a big release, with plenty of new features and changes, but it's not your run-of-the-mill major update. The new features, which range from VM clustering to agentless VM backup, are especially significant in that they may mark the moment when virtualisation shifted from the effort to provide a stable replica of a traditional infrastructure to significantly enhancing the capabilities of a virtual environment.

VMware View 3.0

VMware's VDI solution makes virtual desktops real, but not particularly easy to manage

Sun Storage 7210 unified storage system

Not so long ago, I tested the Sun Fire X4500 Storage Server, aka Thumper, This wass a dual-CPU, dual-core Opteron-based server running OpenSolaris and housing a whopping 48 3.5-inch SATA drives, all within a 4U chassis. The sheer size and scale of that storage server could only be handled by Sun's own ZFS file system. Thumper was a tank in every sense of the word and carved a niche for itself in a wide variety of infrastructures.

Review: Sun's stellar NAS in a can

The Sun Storage 7210 Unified Storage System's combination of 48 drives, SSD log storage, broad protocol support, ZFS, and amazing GUI make for one great filer

Fedora turns 10

There comes a point in the life of any hard-core Linux user when the idea of digging about to find yet another obscure piece of software, compiling the code, and integrating it into your daily routine just seems annoying, not compelling. This is where Fedora comes through. Because more of the popular and necessary packages "just work" with Fedora, less time is burned spinning wheels and more time is available for productive tasks.

Killer open source monitoring tools

In the real estate world, the mantra is location, location, location. In the network and server administration world, the mantra is visibility, visibility, visibility. If you don't know what your network and servers are doing at every second of the day, you're flying blind. Sooner or later, you're going to meet with disaster.

Open source: How e-voting should be done

"It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything." -- Joseph Stalin

Review: Citrix hits the VDI high notes

It seems that the whole world has been talking about VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure), with very different views of what VDI actually means. If virtualization itself is an adolescent, VDI is still an infant, and thus there are still plenty of growing pains to come.

Top 10 iPhone apps for the techie

Most iPhone users don't care that they can get a root prompt on their phone, and most wouldn't think of opening the device to a world beyond iTunes. Well, these iPhone apps aren't for most users. If you're an IT pro wanting to use the iPhone or iPod touch to monitor and control other systems, or to satisfy other geek needs, these jailbreak and native apps are for you.

Preview: VMware Fusion 2 Beta 2

Virtualization on the Mac has never had it so good. There are several options available for running almost any x86-based operating system as a VM under Mac OS X, including Parallels, VMware Fusion, and VirtualBox. If you like the fact that Macs are less prone to problems, viruses, and spyware, but you simply have to run a few Windows applications, it's a great time to be alive.

Sorting out the facts in the Terry Childs case

It's been nearly three weeks since Terry Childs was arrested on four counts of computer tampering and sent to jail on US$5 million bail. In those three weeks, this event has taken turns to the strange, and wound up firmly in the land of the absurd. From bombastic claims in the press to midnight visits by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom to pages of functional usernames and passwords entered into the public record, this case has certainly proven engaging.

Why San Francisco's network admin went rogue

Last Sunday, Terry Childs, a network administrator employed by the City of San Francisco, was arrested and taken into custody, charged with four counts of computer tampering. He remains in jail, held on US$5 million bail. News reports have depicted a rogue admin taking a network hostage for reasons unknown, but new information from a source close to the situation presents a different picture.

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