SAN vs NAS

SAN stands for storage area network. SANs is a high-speed network that provides access to different kinds of data storage devices with data severs associated to the network. In most cases a SAN is used within large companies that have computer networks.  An article I was reading talked about what SANs supports, the article stated “SANs support disk mirroring, backup and restore, archival and retrieval of archived data, data migration from one storage device to another and the sharing of data among different servers in a network. “ From this sentence you can see that there are many advantages to using a storage area network.

NAS stands for Network-attached storage. NAS is a hard disk storage device that has its own network address and provides file-based data storage services to other devices on the same network.  A network attached storage device has a local area network and is assigned an IP address.  NAS devices are configured through the web and you don’t have to go somewhere and access a box to configure it. Network-attached storage consists of hard disk storage that uses the multi disk RAID system. An article I read talked about what the NAS software offers. It says “ NAS software can usually handle a number of network, protocols, including Microsoft’s Internetwork Packet Exchange, and NETBEUI, Novell’s Netware Internetwork Packet Exchange, and Sun Microsystems’ Network File System. “  NAS has many useful features that will be useful to certain companies depending on their need.

SAN and NAS are different but have similar features. There are many advantages sand disadvantage to eat one of these products. I feel that one of them isn’t better than the other because they both have features that would be good depending on the companies needs.  I would personally pick NAS simply because of the fact that you can access it and configure things through the web.  For everyday people being able to do stuff through the web is better than going to the actually machine to make changes.

XBMC Media Center

XBMC Media Center is one of my favorite open source software’s. XBMC allows you to play back and stream all audio, video, and picture formats out of the box.  This media player software can be used on Linux, Mac, and Windows.  Users like XBMC because of the ability to customize the platform and how easy it is to navigate through the application.  XBMC is mainly written in C++. Originally XBMC started off as Xbox Media Center for the original Xbox console. Also XMBC are starting to appear on smart TVs.

I have XBMC installed on my Mac, the software works very well and it is very easy to use. With XBMC I added music from my iTunes library to my XBMC media library.  XBMX allows you to add music, videos, picture, and programs.  Currently on my XBMC library I only have music and videos. The first time I seen XBMC in action it was by a student who installed XBMC on his Raspberry Pi.  The guy had over 40 movies and more than 1000 songs stored in media center. XBMC is an application that can be use to have all your entertainment files in the same application.  This could be an easy application for High school students to install and mess around with and get use to the dealing with open source software. With XBMC you have to do deal with transferring of files to different locations so that when you files are on the XBMC application.  XBMC is something that people who aren’t very technical a chance to create something nice and have fun with it. Most people who use XMBC enjoy. Download XBMC to you machine and try it out for yourself. I bet that you will like it and be eager to explore what it has to offer.

Here is a link that will help you learn about XBMC:

What is XBMC ?

Continuity Software's risk detection line adds SAN configuration app

This article talked about the SAN configuration application. This application is designed to detect software to storage networks. Recently AvailabilityGuard/SAN is part of Continuity’s Availability Guard/Enterprise suite of risk detection application launched. This was designed to detect how Fibre channels, SAN switches, and host bus adapters will impact other SAN devices.  The AvailabilityGuard/SAN scans all devices in the SAN fabric through agentless data collection.  So what will happen is it allow all the issues to show up on the server and once the customer clicks the problem, step by step instructions will be provided to solve the problem.  The software supports FC switches from Broacade Communications and Cisco Systems. The pricing for this product starts at $20,00 per year.  David Simpson, a senior storage analyst at New York-based 451 Research LLC, talked a little bit about the product in the article. He made the point that the key is that Continuity is automating a process that is difficult and time-consuming to do manually. He was making the point that it would be more cost effective to purchase this product that will do it for you rather than do it manually. The article went on to talk about another example about how a SAN may find a switch lacks redundancy and this is a single point of failure. With the product it can show valid paths from servers to storage to meet service-level agreements.  Continuity Software CEO Gil Hecht talked about how dependable their product is, saying that if they detect a problem on the SAN, they will know where the problem is. I feel that this will be a very good product to make the lives of people working on servers a lot easier. They wont have to spend hours and hours looking for what the problem is and how to solve it. They can now have the problem and solution right there in front of them thanks to the SAN.

http://searchstorage.techtarget.com/news/2240204071/Continuity-Softwares-risk-detection-line-adds-SAN-configuration-app

Xbox One

With the new generation of game consoles coming out for the Wii, and PlayStation, Microsoft decided to also release a new game console called the Xbox One. The Xbox One will be releasing sometime in November, the actual release date has not yet been confirmed. When Microsoft first announced that the Xbox One was coming out a lot of users complained because at first the system didn’t actually have disk games. You could only purchase games by downloading them off of Xbox Live. Xbox supporters made a big fuss about this. Some supporters even talked about buying the PlayStation 4 instead of the Xbox One because PlayStation 4 allowed users to purchase the actual disk.  A few weeks later after Microsoft received many complaints about not being able to buy the actual disk for the game so Microsoft then announced that they would now allow users to purchase the actual disk game. Once they announced this the amount of preorders they received for the Xbox One skyrocketed. The Xbox also has many amazing features a few of them are, voice command, the ability to tune into your home’s TV services, and the ability to video chat.  The new Kinect that comes with the Xbox One tracks the motions you make as well as a very good voice recognition feature that allows you to do things like turn on the Xbox or Switch to and from your TV.  The Xbox One allows you to connect your Xbox to your cable box which allows you to play your Xbox and go back to watching TV while your are waiting for an online match to load. If you switch to the TV while you are in an online lobby waiting for a match to start the Xbox will notify you when the match is about to start. This is a very good feature that will be used a lot.  Xbox one also allows your to use Skype. This is another very good feature because now more and more people are starting to use video chat as a form of communication so it was smart of Microsoft to incorporate this into their new system. There are many more features that the new Xbox will have; we will all just have to wait until November to see what those features are.

http://www.xbox.com/en-US/xbox-one/innovation

http://www.techradar.com/us/news/gaming/consoles/xbox-one-release-date-news-and-rumours-937167

http://www.techradar.com/us/reviews/gaming/games-consoles/xbox-one-1153153/review