Posts by Trevor_Pott

Re: You seem to have forgotten

LTSB: for the privileged few only!

"But is [Windows 10] worse than"

"cancer" Debatable, but probably not. I dislike chemo intensely.

"the Coming of the Beast" \m/ I'm mostly on The Beast's side, so yes, Win 10 is WAY worse.

"the End of Days" if the world ended we wouldn't have to use Win 10, so yeah, Win 10 is worse.

Re: Here's the Windows 10 future I see ... it will be used to download Android desktop

Remix OS is the ****ing future.

Re: Utter tosh and drivel

It's a nice fantasy world you live in. Pity it isn't reality. It would be a nice reality. One I'd want to inhabit.

Re: "Symmetrical"

Short version: with the broke-ass end user connections they offer to individuals and SMBs, it isn't!

Re: "Symmetrical"

100Mbit up. You're high fucking larious.

Look, I want 25 Mbit symmetrical. Soothing our telcos won't offer even for those residences that have fibre to the home. The best we can get is from the cable provider: 10 Mbit up for $150 a month, and you'll only get better than 8 Mbit of that every third Tuesday after sacrificing a goat and standing on one foot for an hour.

If you want more than 10 Mbit up you have to jump waaaaaaaaaay up. Quad bonded (2x DSL and 2x DOCSIS) from a third party provider can get you 15 Mbit up, but the line rental to the third party is $300 a month; to stay in business they have to charge over $500 a month, and they can't get faster than a theoretical 40 Mbit (in practice about 20 Mbit) up, because 4 devices is the max a residence can have with out current wiring structure.

So then we're on to "if you have fibre connected to the residence and want a commercial package". First off, most of the providers will flat out refuse to sell you business fibre packages to a residence even if you happen to have FTTH. If you do manage to sweet talk a third party provider into doing it (be prepared for killer latency on that!) you're talking starting at about $1800 a month for 50 Mbit up. If you kiss a lot of toads.

What's the use case? Working from home mostly. Some hobbyist stuff. Almost all related to video. Pushing videos up to Youtube for clients. Working on files between individuals who all work from home. Backing up your SMB's files to a cloud provider. Pushing images to your VPS. Video conferencing.

Upstream matters. I don't give a rat's ass about 1Gbit. But we're so far from even 50 Mbit here that it's stupid. I probably won't see 100Mbit up for residential users for less than an inflation-adjusted $500 a month in my lifetime. And that's a goddamned crime.

Re: Re:

When just about anyone else selling arrays is selling at $5 or even $10 usable? Yes. That's a good deal to me. (Especially when what is claimed usable by companies using data efficiency tech is usually about double what is actually achievable.)

Unity is more reliable than a Synology, by far. That means that I start comparing it to competition with the IXSystems TrueNAS at the low end, and then up against Tintri, Tegile, 3PAR and the like higher up. There isn't a whole hell of a lot in between. (Well, Compellent. But for how long?)

When I look at performance and capacity Unity is actually price competitive with SMB-focused hyperconverged appliances, let alone other arrays! And it makes a lot more sense in an environment already built around traditional infrastructure than trying a brownfield shift to HCI.

Also: I am not pre-judging the effectiveness of their hybrid solution. I don't believe in "all flash or go home". So loading it up as a hybrid solution (which starts somewhere around $10K USD) is perfectly acceptable to me, assuming it delivers. So far, people I trust have said the hybrid tech works just fine, and I am working with EMC to get a unit to test for myself.

Unity has a lower floor cost than its competitors. That is a *huge* advantage. Maybe it doesn't work out so well when fully loaded as an all-flash array, but that isn't where I'm looking at it. I'm looking at this from the standpoint of "will this deliver as a 20-40TB hybrid storage array for the SMB and midmarket", a segment that is horrifically underserved. Unity looks like it may well be one of the only solutions to hit that sweet spot and not be butts covered butts in butt sauce.

Hi, Tintri.

Re: Re:

I've had a good chat with the Unity product manager and I am at the very least optimistic about pricing on this. Typically I'm the guy who says everything is overpriced and I am also the guy who is normally demanding deduplication and compression on everything as well.

That said, for usable storage with the features it does offer and the performance they're committing to...there isn't a whole hell of a lot out there that competes directly with Unity. Even more so if/when data efficiency is added to the mix.

It is the very first time an EMC product has actually excited me. I can't wait to test it.

Re: I... Er... Um... Words fail me!

Nothing about this is useful. This is all so they can slip in shit like spyware and Win10 upgrade malware without you being able to avoid it.

Arrogant twatdangles, the lot of them!

Re: Out of the Pot and into the Frying Pan!

"Oracle Database is the #1 database and roughly 4/5 SAP customers run Oracle DB, so clearly theres a reason why"

Plenty of reasons why. Lies. Damn lies. Threats. Bribes. Historical "that's how it was always done". Consultants who only know Oracle. Kickbacks to incentivize getting Oracle in the door. You name it! Lots of reasons!

Of course, once Oracle is the DB in play, the company's genitals are in Oracle's vice and all Oracle will ever do is squeeze.

Oracle: every time you think there can't be a company worse than Microsoft, Oracle proves you wrong.

Re: Channel The Apprentice?

"The Republicans haven't got a hope in hell of winning the Presidency with anyone else but Trump."

Trump's a RINO, so they wouldn't be winning the presidency with Trump.

"If they try to stab him in the back at the convention, their true colours will be revealed and it'll most likely be the end of the GOP."

About fucking time.

Maybe if the republicans disband then two parties will form in it's wake: a truly centrist party that would siphon off a bunch of moderates from the democrats and rule in an open-minded, rational, evidence-based and logically consistent manner...and the batshit-crazy xenophobic conservative side will have their own party.

Then the US can have "crazy people on the right you avoid because they are dangerous and irrational", "the party that actually can run things without ruining things" and "crazy people on the left who you avoid because they are dangerous and irrational".

Right now, you just have two crazy right wing parties and Bernie Sanders. Sadly, he lost.

More's the pity. For all our sakes, everywhere in the world.

Re: Nothing to hide : Nothing to fear

"A policeman is a civilian, you inbred streak of piss!"

Civilians don't own attack helicopters and APCs. Police forces do.

Re: The lock in Question

systemd is more than a replacement for systemv. And that's the whole fucking problem.

That, and binary logs. Fuck binary logs.

"You" aren't really an individual. You aren't a single layer of consciousness. Hell, "you" aren't even a collection of cells with the same DNA: you're mostly scaffolding that supports a diverse colony of different bacteria.

Your primary consciousness - the particular set of neural impulses that likes to believe it is the individual known as "you" - represents a tiny fraction of your body's total neural output. Your endocrine system has more active neurons going about operating in an automatic fashion than the neurons responsible for "higher thought".

Even then, your "higher thought" is massively influenced and regulated by non neural impulses (for example: hormone levels) many of which don't originate in your brain. Those non-neural signalling mechanisms are the result of the endocrine system, the spine, your non-brain internal organs as well as your bacterial and viral populations.

"You" are an emergent property of a vast electochemical system composed of numerous discrete entities. Remove any one and the whole can change in dramatically, or fail altogether.

The concept you have of yourself as an individual is nothing more than the flawed product of ego.

So now let's discuss grammar of corporations...

Re: In plenty of good company

Many vendors aren't trustworthy. Microsoft is particularly untrustworthy because they repeatedly demonstrate that they don't care about trust.

Look, everyone screws up. Most vendors, when they do so, they work to rebuild trust. Microsoft hasn't, doesn't and for my money never will. So for me, they are the poster child for this discussion.

They are emphatically not the only vendor that needs keeping an eye on.

Re: You're Wrong

1) You are wrong: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/04/25/microsoft_emails_end_to_massive_cloud_storage/ <-- So sorry the facts don't support you!

2) Where did I argue Oracle and SAP don't have vendor lock-in? Where did I argue that only Microsoft have vendor lockin? Making stuff up?

3) Again, you're just rolling out random vendors. Just because the other kids at school set people on fire just to watch them burn doesn't make it okay that you do so. It doesn't matter what Apple or Google or any other vendor do. They will be analysed on their own merits. What matters, when considering Microsoft, is what Microsoft does, how it does it, and who it ignores when it does so.

4) I appeal to morals because morals are important. If the individuals and businesses you have don't have morals they can't be trusted. That isn't emotional. That's rational, pragmatic and logical. You wouldn't trust Frank Underwood to do anything he said. Why would you trust Microsoft?

Reputation and integrity matter. A lot more than your factless yet slavish devotion. Reputation and integrity - also known as morals - are the diagnostic indicators of how likely the vendor in question is to screw you.

Microsoft doesn't believe in the importance of trust. Clearly that has now trickled down to its fanpeople.

Charming.

Re: Seriously!

In the 2012 iteration? Files. I've found it a lot less butts than NTFS for large numbers of files.

The 2016 iteration has come a long way. Most notably in the advanced made for hosting VHDs. ReFS + Hyper-V is actually a decent combination. You know, if you use Hyper-V.

Also: Databases? They go in a VM. Preferably a Linux VM. ReFS should only really rear its head as a place to put files you need to share via SMB or as an underlying store for Hyper-V VMs.

Outside of that, Windows should really only be used inside VMs for legacy workloads that can't yet be migrated off. Those shouldn't be too complex or demanding. Some might be, I grant you, but most workloads can talk to files hosted on a network share or to a database hosted in another VM. Windows is for applications made by developers from the past. Nothing more.

Get your databases on a proper DB server and thus on a proper OS!

Bullshit. Outright bullshit.

Microsoft didn't listen to the feedback provided during the Windows Insider program. Which you'd know if you had actually participated. There was lots and lots of feedback provided on how to make Windows 10 not suck and they ignored it all, producing the turd that we got stuck with.

Microsoft decided what Windows 8 was going to be and they shoved it down our throats. They failed to sell it, and only after a truly abysmal failure did they relent and put a start button on Windows 8.1.

When that didn't placate the masses they announced that Windows 10 would have a start menu, but proceeded to then butcher the start menu completely, even before the insider program took off. They then ignored what the Windows Insiders had to say about the start menu and did whatever the fuck they felt like, resulting in the festering shitpile that we ended up with.

Here now, a year after release, they are doing the next "milestone" version with yet another major tweak to their deranged bullshit "start menu" and they still haven't produced anything resembling a useful UI.

Microsoft has been told repeatedly what the people want. To wit: "Windows 7 with feature (not UI!) enhancements, no spying, and full control over our own operating system. And no subscription fee."

Microsoft just don't fucking care.

It's their way or...actually, it's just their way. They don't listen to anyone. Sometimes they pretend to, with great fanfare and much bullshit, but after all is said and done all that anyone gets is a series of blogs detailing exactly why they aren't listening to any of the feedback they oh so carefully collected and why they are going to do exactly what they planned on from the very beginning anyways.

Microsoft are utterly incapable of listening to their customers, their partners, their developer community or even their own staff. Your world is whatever a Microsoft VP decides it is and you will fucking like it.

Nice bunch of people to do business with. Really makes me feel they're trustworthy. Really makes me think of them as a platform and a vendor I'm ready to commit millions upon millions of dollars to in the long term.

Really, just a nice bunch of people.

Re: Just a quibble

If you shoot at the king then you must kill the king. Do not uselessly fail a pole at them.

Re: Seriously!

Uh...ReFS? Have you seen the version of ReFS available in Server 2016? It is not to be sneered at.

And patent trolling isn't a technological argument. It is a sociopolitical one.

Re: What!!!

All these are pretty hard to replace, and are versatile, capable and at the cutting edge:

Azure Active Directory / Classic Active Directory

Azure Stack

Visual Studio

SQL server

Exchange <-- a miserable pig, but less of a horrifying cluster**** than any other mail server at enterprise scale!

Dynamics

----

Not exactly at the cutting edge of anything, but much beloved by me:

Windows XP

Windows 7

Server 2008 R2

Server 2012 R2 <-- Well, okay, the UI is ass covered in more ass, but much of the OS was good

Small Business Server (R.I.P old friend.)

Office 2003 and Office 2010 (With UBitMenu)

Re: The lock in Question

My experiences with MS phone support have almost exclusively been transferred to the far east. Namely: every single time I want to exercise downgrade rights. That's two hours per bloody key, every time.

Similarly, Office 365 support is always front-ended by admittedly quite friendly folks with accents that I sadly have trouble understanding, and who seem to have trouble understanding me. We talk enough to exchange e-mails, and then things proceed forward, albeit very, very slowly. The same issues occur with MSDN and Microsoft Network support, especially when it is something like "your billing doesn't understand the fact that I am part of two separate organizations and my Action Pack won't let me renew". Etc.

The only time I can remember ever having gotten someone who spoke an English dialect from one of the Five Eyes countries was when I called in for LCS support, shortly after the acquisition.

MS support might eventually solve many of the problems presented to them, but I cannot say I've had good luck actually communicating with them, nor have they been particularly expeditious. That said, they're huge, and it could just be luck of the draw with me...

Re: Insert comma here...

Missing comma I think

I think you're right. Have asked people with superpowers to correct. Hurrah and cheering!

Optional

If I am parsing Past Trevor correctly it is closer to

"Unfortunately, as clients get close to the point in their business cycle when they buy new hardware and/or software, I am often asked to help them understand what Microsoft's products and services currently are, what the licensing is like and - most importantly - what Microsoft's plans are for the future.

This includes having to assess the risks of staying with Microsoft as well as moving away from Microsoft, for new and existing workloads. Bearing in mind factors that go beyond just immediate technological considerations, such as long term concerns regarding licensing models, service existence, data sovereignty, ability to run workloads locally, lock-in, likelihood to want to move away from Microsoft at the next refresh, and whether it is better to eat the costs of moving now or defer them until later."

They encourage me to write short, however. Sorry if it didn't parse quite right. That Past Trevor guy; not always the best at things...

Re: People will do what they did before

You're only partly right. Most people absolutely get their operating system at the time of purchase. So when people buy a new endpoint:

Most will get an Android-based operating system.

Many will get an Apple operating system.

Some will get a Microsoft operating system.

Almost none will get a non-Android Linux operating system.

---

When people buy a new server:

Most will get an Open Source hypervisor (Xen or KVM)

Many will get VMware as the hypervisor.

Some will get a Microsoft hypervisor.

Even fewer will get Linux on metal to run Oracle databases.

Very few will get a mainframe or run a metal OS for non-Oracle purposes.

---

Microsoft isn't top dog on servers or endpoints.

Thank Jibbers. It's about fucking time.