Joe Tech Blog (old): 11/01/2010

High Performance Computing Virtualization | Virtual SMP | ScaleMP: "The innovative Versatile SMP™ (vSMP) architecture aggregates multiple x86 systems into a single virtual x86 system, delivering an industry-standard, high-end symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) computer. Using software to replace custom hardware and components, ScaleMP offers a new, revolutionary computing paradigm."

Another way to scale-out server virtually: Build a big "logical" x86 server out of multiple relatively inexpensive x86 servers, instead of getting big Sun (ahem ... Oracle) or IBM SMP servers. Servers are connected via Infiniband. Unlike Vmware/Xen hypervisors, this method allows a workload to transparently span the resources of multiple physical servers. But even with Infiniband, the memory latency can still be very significant. I remember experiencing very poor scale-out performance on DB2 with the IBM x3950 multi-chassis setup.

Some good articles that describes virtual SMP solutions:

http://ideasint.blogs.com/ideasinsights/2009/11/building-large-smp-systems-with-virtualization.html (~~also mentioned a similar virtual SMP solution from 3Leaf that uses a proprietary server interconnect to reduce latencies~~ UPDATE - 3Leaf Systems is out of business)
http://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/everyday-virtualization/2010/04/smp-hypervisor-scalemp.aspx
http://searchdatacenter.techtarget.com/news/2240024681/Move-over-SMPs-Distributed-shared-memory-systems-step-in

I would love to see some real world benchmarks of these virtual SMP solutions vs hardware optimized SMP servers.

Sniff Your iPhone's Network Traffic - Jerod Santo

This should come in handy for troubleshooting.

Fon - Freedom to WiFi: "Fon is the world's first global WiFi network built by people like you. We think of it as crowdsourced WiFi. As a member of the Fon community, you agree to share a little bit of your WiFi at home, and get free roaming at Fon Spots worldwide in return. Sharing WiFi with Fon is safe and secure , and you wont even notice when others are connected because Fon only uses a tiny portion of your bandwidth. Fon has over two million Fon Spots across the globe. Imagine enjoying videos, movies and games at WiFi speeds while you're away from home - for free! Anyone with a broadband connection can join Fon. Just buy a Fonera and connect it to your ADSL/broadband, or activate Fon through one of our partners. Once your Fon Spot has been connected and registered, you're ready to enjoy all the benefits Fon has to offer!"

An extensive list of pocket routers
The Asus WL300-gE is still the best :)

Asus WL-330gE Portable 4-In-One Wireless Router Overview | Wireless Drivers

Awesome little travel router. Best feature is the "hotspot" mode which allows you to share a wifi connection. It replaced the Apple Airport Express in my travel kit about a year ago and I haven't looked back since.

MacVroom | Mac your ride!

While on the subject of Car PC, also check out this article.

iOS 4.2 Jailbreak Details

Patiently waiting for a reliable/consistent jailbreak so that I can upgrade to 4.2. It is looking promising, but I will still wait.

URI vs. URL, Bernie Zimmermann

Just say URI to be safe :)

angryciscoguy

Looks informative enough. Also check out his blurb and link to UC on UCS.

Bongiovi Acoustics

Interesting technology to dramatically enhance sound quality on all devices.

Anyone find a good travel projector? - FlyerTalk Forums

Good thread on travel-friendly projectors. Also check out Paul Riegler's comparison.

Caching Tutorial for Web Authors and Webmasters

Even ol' geeky me needs a reminder from time to time.

Extensible NetApp: Thinking outside of the box: "Kostadis Roussos"

Although Kostadis doesn't work at Netapp any more, I (and many other Netapp fans and storage geeks) still visit the archived blog (thanks, Netapp) from time-to-time to refresh our understanding of Netapp's many innovations. Kostadis' opinion pieces are both entertaining and educational too :)

DB2 pureScale

purScale scales out easier than Oracle RAC

While we are on the subject of DB2, here's a Netapp technical report on DB2+Netapp best practices.

Cisco eats own cloud food • The Register: "Cisco has deployed its own 'California' Unified Computing System blade and rack servers in its data centres and has standardised its application platforms and procedures for configuring and managing its software stack. This means that only 40 per cent of the IT budget is going towards acquiring and maintaining the IT platforms. The remaining 60 per cent is going to new application development. The company has 65 per cent of its servers virtualised and it takes 15 minutes or less to put a new virtual box out there for developers to put apps upon."

The Ultimate Wallboard - What's on your wallboard?

The official contest site. While you are thinking about wallboard and media displays, also check out my favourite digital signage cloud service http://www.digitalsignage.com/

Blades Made Simple™ � Blog Archive � What is the Truth About Cisco’s Blade Server Market Share?

Hehe .. Cisco's is mindf***ing the competitors and a few bloggers :)

NetApp - The Virtual Storage Guy: EMC Benchmarking Shenanigans

The lesson: read the details behind the benchmark before you drink the kool-aid :)

Microsoft and Intel Push One Million iSCSI IOPS – Gestalt IT: "Microsoft and Intel Push One Million iSCSI IOPS"

More info on how M$ and Intel did it. Btw, they used StarWind Software's iSCSI SAN.

Intel and Microsoft test iSCSI: "Microsoft and Intel perform a test and get 1 Million IOPS with iSCSI"

coconut-flavour.com - [coconutIdentityCard 2.4]: "Tells you where and when your Mac, iPod or any other Apple-Product was born"

Also checks the serial number against Internet databases of stolen Apple products. Currently checks against www.powermax.com. Not sure how accurate/useful this actually is.

The SSD Anthology: Understanding SSDs and New Drives from OCZ - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

Awesome article. Especially the bit about write performance degradation as more of the SSD is used.

The State of Statelessness: Cisco UCS vs. HP Virtual Connect | M. Sean McGee

Don't forget to read the follow up comments, especially the discussion between Cisco and Xsigo folks!

Performance & Security for Any Website | CloudFlare (Private Beta) | Home

Cool cloud security+CDN+... services. Kinda like Prolexic for civilians :)

Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Friday, November 26, 2010

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Monday, November 22, 2010

Saturday, November 20, 2010

Friday, November 19, 2010

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Saturday, November 13, 2010

Friday, November 12, 2010

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Tuesday, November 09, 2010

Monday, November 08, 2010

Thursday, November 04, 2010

Wednesday, November 03, 2010