• Ubuntu,  Unix,  VMware

    Goodbye OpenSolaris/OpenStorage, Hello OpenFiler/OpenDedup

    I’ve read a number of reports over the past couple of days that indicate the demise of Project Wonderland and Open Solaris. As it is open source I would not be surprised to see the project continue, even if forked and retitled in some way. Oracle will continue selling Solaris, but “nothing is for free” is about to take on a whole new meaning. For now it seems that any plans around packaging services around the FOSS stack surrounding former Sun products should be put on hold until further official announcements are made. “So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las…

  • Mac OS X,  Mass Deployment

    Beyond Portable Homes

    Portable Homes allow a user to disconnect their system from the network and continue working. But Mobility, Portable Home Directories and other network sync accounts have a major shortcoming: they have to communicate with a server. Mostly because they rely heavily on directory services and the data that moves with a user needs to synchronize between computers that the user moves to. In the event that users have large home directories or a lot of multi-media content, this can create a lot of network saturation. In large environments where there are no limits on how big these directories can get, this can also be cumbersome to storage. Apple recently released…