Category Technology

Welcome to the thunder in a series of ‘when cloud computing goes wrong’ type scenarios.

Cloud computing it touted for its reliability, scalability and stability, infact it doesn’t even need backups, but we’ll take them anyway!   Until THIS happens.

SearchStorage ANZ reports that “in late January, ma.gnolia experienced a catastrophic data loss event and turned to backups to restore its database of users’ bookmarks. Both the primary and secondary backups failed irrevocably.”

I guess it just goes to show, that your cloud is only as stable as your infrastructure, your backups are only as good as your restores, and your business is only as viable as your ability to maintain and sustain it.    Being in a cloud doesn’t make you immune to getting struck by lightning, infact it increases the likely-hood even more when you’re not grounded.

Grounded definition according to cxipedia:

Having solid foundation, connected to stable technologies, having backups and ensuring that data is recoverable from them.

I’m sure if they had a shadow test/dev environment they could have rebuilt from that, but I guess that’s just my sensibilities coming through. grin.

Every now and then the discussion comes up “Where do I find ‘x’ people on twitter?”  I usually resort to random google searches, sometimes finding what I’m looking for, sometimes not quite so much!  So here is my repository for you, me and my cat to find people easier.

NetApp Folks are Twittering!

Storage Folks Are Twittering

Virtual Twits including a script which will auto-add them for you!

PowerShell Twitterers, including a script which will auto-add them for you!

C Level Tweeters

December: Newspapers that use Twitter (Thousands of accts on Twitter!)

60 New York Times profiles on Twitter

UK journalists on Twitter

USGovernment on Twitter

Hunger Twitterers

And that’s all I have for a repository right now – if you have a list which should be added here, or you think I should include some specific grouping, make it known :)

So, here is a breakdown of the NetApp folks on Twitter!

	Name + Blog	Twitter ID!
	Christopher Kusek	@cxi
	Michael Moeschler	@moesch
	Eric Pederson	@onStorage
	Kostadis Roussos	@kostadis_netapp
	Jeff Bearer	@jeffbearer
	Val Bercovici	@valb00
	NetApp	@NetApp
	NetAppUK	@NetAppUK
	Jeremy Merrill	@JeremyMerrill
	David A. Chapa	@davidchapa
	Samantha Moulton	@SamMoulton
	Mike Riley	@MSR11
	Kaitlyn Dierkes	@kdierkes

And a specific mention for the NetApp+Virtualization folks! ;)

	Name + Blog	Twitter ID!
	Chris Gebhardt	@chrisgeb
	Abhinav Joshi	@Abhinav_Joshi
	Brian Gracely	@bgracely
	Jack Mcleod	@VirtuallyNetApp
	Keith Aasen	@keith_aasen
	Vaughn Stewart	@Vaughn_Stewart

If you feel you should be added to this list, let me know and I’ll be sure to add you accordingly!

So, Incase you’ve been missing this whole trend of Free MS Press Books – Here it is again!

And incase you’ve never seen this pretty logo of it I’ll kick off with it.

It’s literally this simple, go to a page, click a link, and BAM! (after signing in) books downloaded!

What’s on the Agenda for late Feb you may ask?

Microsoft Visual C# 2008 Express Edition: Build a Program Now!
By Patrice Pelland  
Download here!

Windows Vista Resource Kit, Second Edition
By Mitch Tulloch, Tony Northrup, and Jerry Honeycutt with the Windows Vista Team
Download here!

Be careful about the Vista one, I’ve been having trouble downloading it, so you may experience that as well.

Also FYI: I download every one of these books not only to make sure the links work, but seriously.. free books? I OWN a number of these books in paper form, and I love digital!

This offer only valid Feb 19th through Feb 25th, so download today!

You ever watch a snowball fall down a hill?

As it collects more snow, it gets bigger it collects more snow and moves faster, and as it moves faster, it collects more snow and gets even bigger.

This is the twitter (and frankly every successful explosive growth resource in the past 2000 years) growth and scale-out model.

Now, imagine for a moment that a snowball had a limited amount of snow it was allowed to collect at a limited speed.   It would continue to grow at a linear rate, linear speed and quite frankly might even stop or MELT at the pace it was moving.   That’s not scale-out, that’s called a collapse and melt methodology.

This not only stifles innovation and integration, but it out right cripples an entire community working at growing at hockey-stick sized projections.   The kind of partner ecosystem which promotes growth and self-innovation is what has brought us ultra-successful business models (take Microsoft for example, heard of them?)

However, what it appears they’re taking in this ultra-conservative approach, with little action on raising the bar will go the route of eBay tactics where the community finds itself hands bound and tied, unable to help grow and scale the business, eventually leaving for other opportunities because this ship has sailed, and sadly sunk.

Check out the Social Too entry on this and perhaps Twitter might do something to stop itself from chopping its own head off.