See this page for more. Inclusive of this merging is a new set of requirements for using the word CentOS. Since we ship an updated and modified kernel, and we update and modify packages to reflect our needs, we are going to have to alter our “CentOS derived distribution” statement. Or switch to another distribution. Its an annoyance, but maybe its time to revisit the distribution scenario. I see nothing wrong with using Debian as the basis, and building from there.

I honestly no longer even write a nice note to their ISP. I just tend to block the whole ISP from reaching our site(s). Its easier, and lower pain for us. Definitely saddens me that we have to do this, but I see enough probes in our logs that I have to.

For our Unison Parallel File Systems Appliance: [root@unison-jr4-2 ~]# iperf -c 10.3.1.1 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.3.1.1, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 1.00 MByte (default) ------------------------------------------------------------ [ 3] local 10.3.1.2 port 48383 connected with 10.3.1.1 port 5001 [ ID] Interval Transfer Bandwidth [ 3] 0.0-10.0 sec 13.5 GBytes 11.6 Gbits/sec and of course in parallel [root@unison-jr4-2 ~]# iperf -c 10.3.1.1 -P2 ------------------------------------------------------------ Client connecting to 10.3.1.1, TCP port 5001 TCP window size: 1.

A Unison file system appliance connected with Infiniband and 10GbE. [root@unison-jr4-2 ~]# qperf 10.3.1.1 rc_bi_bw rc_bi_bw: bw = 9.7 GB/sec [root@unison-jr4-2 ~]# qperf 10.3.1.1 ud_lat ud_bw ud_lat: latency = 3.66 us ud_bw: send_bw = 4.9 GB/sec recv_bw = 4.9 GB/sec and of course, IPoIB [root@unison-jr4-2 ~]# qperf 10.3.1.1 tcp_bw tcp_lat tcp_bw: bw = 474 MB/sec tcp_lat: latency = 13.4 us which, if you run the same thing over a pair of good 10GbE ports …

The story is in the Register. An immediate question, and one of somewhat deja vu (all over again) … what is the impact upon Lustre IP? Xyratex had announced that it obtained ownership of the Lustre IP from Oracle a few months ago. This IP was in the form of trademarks, and a number of related bits. Now Xyratex has been bought. And if it keeps the Lustre HPC bits, it will be directly competing with its customers.

I’ve said this many times, and at many different venues. HPC drives downmarket, and does so very hard. High cost solutions have limited lifetimes, at best. At worst, they will not catch on. 2013 was the year of the accelerators. We predicted this many years ago. I won’t beat this dead horse (for us). I’ll simply say “we were right”, and right with great specificity and accuracy. This seams to be a pattern with us.

The day job had been talking to and working with Calxeda for a while. They’ve been undergoing some changes over the last few months as they worked to transition from an evangelist to a systems builder. The day job just got a note that they are restructuring. What this specifically means to an outsider, I am not sure, though I could speculate. HP has a vested interest in them. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a rapid asset acquisition.

Not me. Henry Newman at Enterprise Storage Forum. See articlehere. His first prediction of more consolidation in the SSD space is a given. I’ve been arguing that for a while. On the fab side, there are what … four producers left? Toshiba/Sandisk, Samsung, Intel/Micron, Hynix? Did I miss anyone? Will any of them leave (voluntarily or otherwise)? I think the SSD space that will really consolidate is on the SSD-as-a-rack-appliance side, as well as on the card side.

Story at The Register. Usually you give a CEO some time to right a listing ship. I pointed out in a recent post that there are some significant grumblings about Violin and in fact about most of the flash-as-rack-appliance space. I had noted We’ve run into them a few times in competitive situations, so take what I write about them with an appropriate mass of NaCl. All the pure-play flash array vendors have to answer a basic question about their existence.

Avago, a spinout from Agilent which was a spinout from HP, just bought LSI. Avago is largely a supplier of components to a variety of industries, dealing with modules, optoelectronics, etc. If you look at their product mix, you see effectively zero overlap with LSI. They are not even in, arguably, the same markets. I am scratching my head over this one. I could see it as a play to gain a foothold into the storage space.