Understanding ZFS: Disk Space Discrepancies

Posted on January 21, 2009

Here's a good ZFS Trivia question to bewilder your friends and common question: Why do the two following outputs for the same ZFS pool disagree? # zfs list zones NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT zones 634G 185G 69K /zones # zpool list NAME SIZE USED AVAIL CAP HEALTH ALTROOT zones 832G 634G 198G 76% ONLINE - If you add up USED and AVAIL from the zfs ...

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The Showmanship of Steve Jobs, 20 Years Ago

Posted on January 20, 2009

If you commonly watch Apple keynote events, I offer you a look back, almost 20 years, to a NeXTSTEP presentation in San Francisco. Notice how his style is almost unchanged in all this time. Part 1: Part 2: I have one of these NeXT Turbo Slabs... amazing system. If you are interested in NeXT gear or software, I buy my gear from Black Hole, Inc..

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The Clash of Community, Company, and Celebrity

Posted on January 19, 2009

In my last post I noted a pinch of rage over John Plocher's Sun RIF. A commenter rightly see's a divided logic between my prior statements that Sun hasn't downsided enough and my anger over a single individual whom I know. I've edited the prior post, but I think the paradox is an interesting one on which to expound. What happens when someone of public notoriety or celebrity leaves a firm within which that person gained that reputation? ...

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OpenSolaris Governance Update

Posted on January 18, 2009

Since no one else is updating the community regarding OpenSolaris governance, I will... Our Sun internal leader, Tim Cramer, has left Sun. According to his Facebook comments it appears he's going to Dell of his own will. This was announced Jan 12th to the OGB-Dicuss list. There has been no other announcement regarding the matter that I can find. Apparently

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Coming to a bookstore near you….

Posted on January 16, 2009

I wanted to comment on two forthcoming books: The first is Sharon Veach's Solaris Security Essentials. This is currently available on Safari as a rough cut and looks very good so far. Sharon is an excellent writer and the book will be a welcome edition to any administrators library. Co-writen by Nicholas A. Solter, Jerry Jelinek, and David Miner. I'm particularly excited for Jerry (I'm his biggest fan... GO ZONES!). writing a ...

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Why I Hate EMC

Posted on January 16, 2009

I do, I really hate EMC. And here is a great example of why: If your reading this via an aggregator, here is the video embedded above: EMC Atmos featured on YouTube. HE SAYS NOTHING!!! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!!! What is the product? What does it actually do? How does it do it? THIS IS MARKETING BULLSHIT. There, I said it. I am truly shocked that companies, in this day and age, can still get away with old school marketing ...

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OpenSolaris Storage Summit 2009

Posted on January 16, 2009

Don't forget... The second OpenSolaris Storage Summit will be the day prior to USENIX FAST '09, at the Grand Hyatt San Francisco. Feb 23rd, the Summit is where you want to be! This is a free event and lots of fun. Register Here. Just add your name to the list and your good to go. I hope to see you there. In related news... the SNIA Winter Symposium 2009 is coming up in just a week (January 20 - January 23). I'll be ...

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DB2 Express C for Solaris/X86

Posted on January 15, 2009

DB2 has been off my radar for a while, but I circled back around due to my continuing rage at Oracle and their stupidity in not releasing Oracle 11g for Solaris/X86. To hell with 'em... IBM has done a wonderful thing and released DB2 9.5 for Solaris/X86... whats more, there is an Express C version. Express C is a thinned down free version of DB2. This means that you can legally run a modern, enterprise grade database at no cost on the ...

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Exploring Tokyo

Posted on January 5, 2009

For once, "Tokyo" refers in fact to a physical place, not some code project. Shocking but true. Just prior to Christmas, I took a week-long trip to Tokyo Japan on Joyent business. This was interesting for me because it was both my first time to Japan and in fact first time to leave the country. Given that I am a California native, I've had little reason to leave. We commonly say here "Your within a 4 hour drive of almost any environ...

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SysAdmin Advent Calendar Blog In Review

Posted on December 31, 2008

If you missed this years excellent Systems Administration Advent Calendar Blog you missed some great content. But do not despair! Its all there for your reading pleasure. Articles on scripting, new technology, primers, and workflow are there to help you into the new year. I even contributed an entry: Day 17 - Time Management. A warm round of applause goes to Jordan Sissel for organizing it and rallying various bloggers to participate.

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