Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator’s Dilemma

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By taking this approach, Apple bent all the rules of disruption. To disrupt yourself, for example, Professor Christensen’s research would typically prescribe setting up a separate company that eventually goes on to defeat the parent. It’s incredibly hard to do this successfully; Dayton Dry Goods pulled it off with Target. IBM managed to do it with the transition from mainframes to PCs, by firewalling the businesses in entirely different geographies. Either way, the number of companies that have successfully managed to do it is a very, very short list. And yet Apple’s doing it to itself right now with the utmost of ease. Here’s new CEO Tim Cook, on the iPad disrupting the Mac business: “Yes, I think there is some cannibalization… the iPad team works on making their product the best. Same with the Mac team.” It’s almost unheard of to be able to manage disruption like this.

via Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator’s Dilemma – James Allworth – Harvard Business Review.

Enterprise Storage Encryption: An Administrator’s …

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Storage encryption has historically proven unpopular because of the issues of managing the keys used in various encryption methods, and the system performance burden that encryption/decryption placed on systems hardware. These issues have been iteratively surmounted in a number of advances. Faster CPUs, disk controllers and host bus adapters (HBAs) and tough-to-break encryption now reduce the burden once placed on subsystem, disk, and device encryption.

via Enterprise Storage Encryption: An Administrator’s … – Input Output.

This is a pretty good article.  Here’s one more blurb.

Subsystems are encrypted at the hardware level or at the device group level. Subsystems can also be encrypted by the use of third-party software packages designed specifically for this purpose. Subsystem encryption usually means that a single encryption key is used for the group, and that the private encryption key is stored in hardware or in system firmware. This type of protection means that a drive “stolen” or otherwise removed from the group of storage media can’t be decrypted, even by examining the disk using an identical system, as the identical system would be missing the key that unlocks the data by decrypting it.

This seems like a rather high level of security.

 

Cherokee web server vs Apache httpd web server

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Cherokee web server vs Apache httpd web server | Craig Strong.

Although I was impressed so far, the remaining challenge that Cherokee must live up to for me is it’s speed advantages. In the spirit of keeping things simple and to get a loose overview on performance advantages I thought I’d simply use ‘Zend Controller’ which is bundled with ‘Zend Server CE‘ to test how many requests per second both Apache and Cherokee could handle in turn upon my humble local virtual machine. From these tests I obtained the following results :

Apache Web Server Results

Apache requests per second on local VM

Cherokee Web Server Results

What happens to data when your cloud provider evaporates?

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Currently, there’s no way for a cloud storage service provider to directly migrate customer data to another provider. If a service goes down, the hosting company must return the data to its customer, who then must find another provider or revert back to storing it locally, according to Arun Taneja, principal analyst at The Taneja Group.

via What happens to data when your cloud provider evaporates? – Computerworld.

This is only a problem if you don’t have a physical backup of your own data somewhere under your control. Expecting the cloud to be the end all be all for all IT needs is a mistake IMHO. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. The cloud does serve useful purposes.

Ask Ars: what’s the relationship between CPU clockspeed and performance?

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Question: Intel’s Sandy Bridge launch just brought its desktop CPU line up to 3.8GHz, but I remember that the Pentium 4 got up to 3.8GHz before being cancelled. So why is it that Sandy Bridge is just now getting to the clock speed levels that the Pentium 4 was at years ago? And how is it that Sandy Bridge still manages to outperform the older Pentium 4, even though it has a lower clock speed?

via Ask Ars: what’s the relationship between CPU clockspeed and performance?.

Worth a read.

Server Racks, Server Cabinets, Network Racks, Shockmount Portable Cases and Computer Tables from Rackmount Solutions

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Rackmount Solutions is an industry leader in supplying server racks, server cabinets, wallmount racks, network racks, LAN racks, portable rackmount cases and accessory products for the IT/Network professional. We deliver rackmount storage server rack solutions for 19″, 23″, 24″ and 28″ wide equipment. We pride ourselves in providing quality customer service. Please call us toll free at 866-207-6631 and let us know how we can solve your rackmount needs.

via Server Racks, Server Cabinets, Network Racks, Shockmount Portable Cases and Computer Tables from Rackmount Solutions.

Just in case.

NAS shoot-out: 5 storage servers battle for business

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With so many use cases and potential buyers, the vendors too often try to be everything to everyone. The result is a class of products that suffers from an identity crisis — so-called business storage solutions that are overloaded with consumer features and missing the ease and simplicity that business users require.

via NAS shoot-out: 5 storage servers battle for business | Storage – InfoWorld.

I found the below snippet to be interesting.

Connecting the NAS boxes to your network should be done via a wired Ethernet cable, and each NAS in this roundup should get two Gigabit Ethernet connections. Strictly speaking, you need only one of these links, but by using both, you gain much greater flexibility. You should use them in a fail-over configuration, which means that if one of your Ethernet cables loses signal, the other will take over. You should also “bond” the two connections together to increase throughput or to balance the network load.

Also.

NAS shoot-out: Everything else but the kitchen sink
All of the NAS boxes in this roundup have the flexibility to do more than merely store your data. These features are too numerous to review in detail, but they include such things as the ability to collect images from IP video surveillance cameras, mobile apps that allow you to access your data from iPhones, iPads, and Android devices, and multimedia servers that provide access to photos, music, and video.

In addition to the built-in features, you can generally install software packages that extend the functionality. Typical add-on modules include BitTorrent downloaders, email servers, and content management and blog publishing applications.

GRC | Hard drive data recovery software  

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SpinRite v6.0 achieves complete operating system independence by incorporating the FreeDOS operating system. This allows it to be used on any and all Intel/AMD PC systems. As you can see from the Windows screen image above, SpinRite 6.0 can create a bootable diskette or generate a standard, CD-R burnable ISO file to create a “SpinRite boot CD”. A bootable SpinRite can also be “installed” into any other motherboard bootable devices, such as USB flashdrives for easy, portable booting and use.

via GRC | Hard drive data recovery software  .

I wonder how this differs from just running Knoppix and mounting the “dead” hard drive.

Here’s a FAQ.