* Posts by Aitor Ibarra

7 publicly visible posts • joined 28 Oct 2011

Hitachi GST pushes out boosted SSD

Aitor Ibarra

I saw a few articles that said it was SLC, and just now found the official line: http://www.hgst.com/press-room/2012/hitachi-gst-ships-the-industrys-first-25-nanometer-slc-nand-flash-enterprise-class-ssds

I think you're right about the 520 only being MLC though - In that case, the price difference will be even greater. The 520 may well be suitable for enterprise use, in certain scenarios, (just as X25-M etc were, with over provisioning), but it's not really a competitor for this drive...

By successor to the X25-E, I meant from Intel...

Aitor Ibarra
Thumb Up

SLC vs eMLC

Looks like Hitachi are using SLC, hence the much better endurance numbers than the Intel 520. This will command a very high premium over the 520, even if headline performance is not as good. I imagine steady state performance will be better though. The big story for me is that if this is Intel fabbed NAND, this would mean Intel are producing 25nm SLC, so maybe there will be a true successor to the X25-E?

OnLive sneaks Windows 7 into the iPad

Aitor Ibarra
Mushroom

Where's their agreement with Microsoft?

Hosting Windows client OS (XP, Vista, 7 etc) and renting it out is a strict no-no. Microsoft do not allow it under SPLA (which is how everyone offering hosted services based on Windows has to license). The only workaround is to give each end- user their own hardware (i.e. no virtualisation, unless the server is hosting desktops for one company ONLY, which kills abilty for hoster to consolidate) and then you'd have to charge up front for retail licenses (what Desktone are doing IIRC).

You could put together a VDI service based on Windows Server (RDS) which you can make look and feel pretty much the same as a client Windows, and consolidate more (RDS supports multiple desktops per server) or give each user their own instance (if you want to give each user local admin rights). However, some applications will refuse to install on a server OS.

Lots of hosting companies have tried and failed to get Microsoft to budge on this, even when large amounts of money was waved at Microsoft. I can't believe OnLive are doing this without agreement with Microsoft, so maybe Microsoft has finally decided to allow hosters to offer VDI...

Forecasting logon storms with desktop virtualisation

Aitor Ibarra
Boffin

Good dedupe can solve the IOPS problem...

of all your VDs booting at the same time etc, as well as cutting down on the space you need for them. You just need a very good CPU doing the deduplication. And store user files and stuff somwhere else, so the bulk of the system disk is going to be common across all VDs, even if they have different patches and applications installed.

Here's one way to do it...

1) You need a fast network for iSCSI between hosts and storage. Let's say 10GbE to the hosts and multiple 40GbE to the storage server

2) Storage server needs plenty of PCIe bandwidth, fast CPUs, and lots of fast RAM

3) Storage server runs an iSCSI target that supports inline deduplication - e.g. Starwind. This uses system RAM as a cache, so you most important 40GB (say) of common data is in RAM

4) Your disks are a RAID of SLC SSDs, or maybe use them as cache for hard drives (e.g. LSI CacheCade)

In my small tests my network (just 1 x 10GbE) ran out of road before I could stress the CPU. I was booting up to 10 Windows VMs in the same time I could boot just one off a non deduped target - about 20 secs. Starwind's dedupe is still an experimental feature but should RTM around Q1.

How digital audio ate itself and the music industry

Aitor Ibarra

WHF didn't like your comment

It and some others got deleted; as of now there is just the original comment and the editor's reply.

I once worked at a computer magazine where the editorial guys were heavily pressured by the advertising guys to write favourable reviews of heavily advertised product. They resisted, but the magazine folded, maybe due to poor advertising sales...

I would hate to think the same is happening to the Great British Hifi Press. But in this case I'd actually prefer it to the alternative - that they actually believe what they say!

Aitor Ibarra

Part 2 had better mention jitter...

...and the difference between optical and coxial S/PDIF otherwise it won't be sufficiently audio-nerdy.

And please have a go at What HiFi for recommending a £55 "audiophile" USB cable.

http://www.whathifi.com/review/furutech-formula-2

Stallman: Did I say Jobs was evil? I meant really evil

Aitor Ibarra

Well I don't...

Not a very common name that we share so to avoid confusion among people that know me: I don't think Steve Jobs was evil. That doesn't mean that I think he was Jesus or deserves another crappy version of Candle In The Wind to be written about him either.