Windows Search is still a steaming pile of ^%&^*!

It is January 1, 2022, and Windows Search is still a steaming pile of, you know, merde!

It is. I am serious!

It takes forever – and I do mean, f-o-r-e-v-e-r!  - to have your files indexed, and you cannot trust it to just work.

More infuriatingly, Windows Search constantly, intermittently, and without warning, loses track of the search index, and voila, your files can no longer be found!

This is absolute bullcrap!

This is in stark contrast to Windows Search on Windows Server.

Any version of Windows Server, for goodness sakes!

Shame on whatever group is in charge of this BS.

I don’t want to search the effin’ Internet.

I just want to locate files I know I have on my PC.

Now, is that too much to ask for, Microsoft?

By the way, Windows Search has been running all day, and failing all day.

For two days now.

 



A flying biped robot

Fantastic concept.

However, I see the biped locomotion as a mobility hindrance, as it most likely would be a drain on the battery.

The addition of motorized "feet" my be a range extender, I think.

Original story on

Gizmodo.


2-The-I-black - 300px.jpg

I have been on a Twitter timeout....

Twitter put me on a timeout.

Evidently, I hurt the feelings of that troglodyte Stephen A. Smith quite badly.

The account suspension came as I was preparing to go OTG, so I decided to give social media a rest until I got back stateside.

The suspension notification is below, and the actual offending tweet is below that.

I had to delete the tweet before being let back into the Twitterverse.

Zooming into the tweet.

Screenshot 2021-07-14 170637a.png

This is another strike against Twitter’s algorithms, the first being that their ad presentment algorithms which cannot correctly surface relevant ads at all!

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited


Ka Iwe logo - 003-300px.jpg

Apple Moves to Owning More of Apple Pay Customer Experience

Headline:

Apple, Goldman Plan ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’ Service

(c) Bloomberg

 My take:

Children,

This lesson is titled, "Owning the Customer".

By owning ALL aspects of the customer purchase experience, Apple becomes privy to a more granular insight into Apple-devices customer needs, wants, and aspirations leading to more Apple devices and services.

Genius!

In one fell swoop, Apple would be able to keep control, and indeed all aspects of owning the customer purchase experience, start and continue to glean valuable customer data, monetize that as a new service, use that same data to develop new products and services, and best of all, keep new entrants at bay!

Additionally, because Apple already has an existing relationship with the customer, via Apple ID, it raises the bar for new entrants and for even existing apps when it comes to customer acquisition.

Apple Pay is baked into iOS, MacOS, and iPadOS, remember?

Meanwhile, customer retention for Apple is as easy as releasing a new product.

A veritable masterstroke, this is, Padawans.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-13/apple-goldman-plan-buy-now-pay-later-service-to-rival-paypal

 © 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow John Obeto on Twitter



HPE Discover 2021: HPE Silicon On Demand

Shades of the mainframe era, no?

According to Antonio Neri, CEO of HPE,

“This is unique. None of the cloud providers—public cloud or other competitors—are offering what we call Silicon on Demand. What that means is with a single click I can turn cores on and off. If I need more cores, I turn it on. If I need less cores, I turn it off.

Today we go at this at the virtual or container level. Now I am taking this to the silicon level. That is a significant improvement because we know there is a lack of utilization trapped in your infrastructure.

We believe we can take it to the smallest amount of unit you can think about—the core level. So we are introducing what we call Silicon on Demand, which is a partnership with Intel. Intel is doing that just with us at least for now because they know we are a unique vendor that has a huge advantage in as a service with software and metering capabilities nobody else has in the market that allows us to measure at the core level. Therefore in a true pay per use we can turn on and off cores.”

I dunno.

Based on what I have been able to glean so far, it reminds me of something AMD or Intel tried to bring to market a while back, and it doesn’t see worth the buzz/hype/expended ink.

I’m not feeling it.

Here is Neri talking about it.

As that lunkhead Kanye might say, “Ima need more info.”.

I do.

Still not feelin’ it.

Q.E.D.

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow John Obeto on Twitter

This article originally appeared in the July 2021 issue of The Interlocutor.


Blackgrounder 9-300px.png

HPE Discover 2021: HPE Alletra & Data Services Cloud Console

While HPE did not release something specific about storage at Discover 2021, they had released both Alletra and their Unified DataOps product  dubbed Data Services Cloud Console earlier in May.

According to HPE’s Calvin Zito, these products are the fruits of a new vision for storage.

  • Unified DataOps takes a holistic, data-centric approach to managing data and infrastructure across the data lifecycle. Policies including how data is stored, accessed, protected, and mobilized and should be data centric policies and automated.

  • Unified DataOps should be cloud-native – abstracting the management of data and infrastructure from physical infrastructure through a cloud-native control plane. This eliminates the complexity of keeping on-premises software maintained.

  • Unified DataOps should be AI-driven – True autonomous operations requires AI-driven insights and intelligence to watch over your data and your infrastructure to make your operations invisible.

  • Unified DataOps is a game changer across your organization: for line of business, IT management, data innovators, and data managers – to deliver a better data experience and drive more value. It will eliminate the silos and complexity across organizations.

He explains more in the video below.

Sources

Absolutely John: HPE Alletra & Data Services Cloud Console

HPE: Introducing HPE Alletra: Flipping the switch to the cloud experience

StorageReview.com: HPE Alletra unveiled.

NetworkWorld: HPE kicks off software-defined storage-as-a-service

Calvin Zito, ‘The HPE Storage Guy’ forever!: Huge news! Welcome to the age of Unified DataOps

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow John Obeto on Twitter

This article originally appeared in the July 2021 issue of The Interlocutor.


Blackfriars - verbiage white -300.png

HPE Discover 2021: HPE GreenLake for Microsoft Azure Stack HCI & Microsoft SQL Server

Azure Stack HCI is Microsoft’s Azure cloud delivered in on-premises hyperconverged software-defined hardware, software, networking, and APIs delivered in Microsoft-certified Windows Server boxes from Microsoft partners.

Just ahead of Discover 2021, HPE announced the availability of both Azure Stack HCI and Microsoft SQL Server for HPE GreenLake.

HPE GreenLake, as we all should know by now, is a subscription service that delivers infrastructure as-a-service for your workloads - on premises, fully managed in a pay-per-use model at the edge, in colocations, and in your data center. <- HPE

This is huge, allowing for the creation of cloud-native solutions within a customer’s premises. Customers can run Windows workloads with the confidence that their environments can be hybridized on their whim and expertise, with coexistence with Linux and other virtualization schemes.

HPE says that GreenLake Azure Stack HCI and SQL Server will be a user-operated point-and-click service utilizing a per-core, pay-per-use model for pricing. It also aims to eliminate the costs associated with overprovisioning.

Sources

HPE: HPE GreenLake Edge-to-Cloud Platform

Block & Files: Azure Stack HCI and SQL Server set sail on HPE’s GreenLake

Search Cloud Computing: HPE bolsters GreenLake with support for Microsoft Azure Stack

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow John Obeto on Twitter

This article originally appeared in the July 2021 issue of The Interlocutor.


2019-11-18 - Dagma REMIX logo.JPG

HPE Discover 2021: HPE Project Aurora

HPE is that company that does their thing so well, one tends to take them for granted because all aspects of your engagement with them seem to be humming along splendidly.

HPE Project Aurora is HPE’s zero-trust security scheme that utilizes cloud nativity to deliver security from the edge to the cloud.

According to HPE’s Keith White, General Manager for HPE GreenLake, Project Aurora would be tasked to deliver an impactful results in helping secure computing environments by constantly verifying all assets in that same environment, from all hardware, all software, and all connected devices all the way to all workloads.

Project Aurora will initially be embedded within HPE GreenLake Lighthouse to automatically and continuously verify the integrity of the hardware, firmware, operating systems, platforms, and workloads (including workloads from security vendors as well), enabling HPE to swiftly detect advanced threats in seconds compared to a reported average of 24 days, minimizing the loss, and possibly, the unauthorized encryption (and corruption) of valuable data and intellectual property.

Futurum’s Steven Dickens sees a 3-pronged hardware approach taken by HPE Project Aurora:

  1. Increase data value through attestation and verification.

  2. Accelerate innovation by laying a zero trust foundation.

  3. Identify attacks and protect investments.

Project Aurora is being built both for HPE and its customers to measure, test and verify every piece of technology in their environments.

According to HPE, Project Aurora is a cloud-native, zero trust security from edge to cloud. That means, as we know, SASE is one aspect of the edge implementation with security. The other one is zero trust. Zero trust means you trust nothing, but ultimately it is how we attest that everything in your environment is secure from the user to the application to the operating system to the firmware to the hardware.

You are very familiar with our Silicon Root of Trust. We have taken that to the next level with our cloud-native zero trust integration of SPIFFE [the Secure Production Identity Framework for Everyone] and SPIRE [the SPIFFE Runtime Environment] in a cloud-native deployment of open source. But then what we do is connect to these endpoints and in between to attest that everything is secure with a zero trust approach, which I think is revolutionary because it fortifies all your investments. Without changing anything, we actually make it more secure in a modern, open way.

We are making that introduction tomorrow as a preview. By the end of the year it will be fully integrated with both Lighthouse and with HPE GreenLake. So it comes with a platform and it comes with the solution you are deploying—one less thing to worry about.


2-The-I-black - 475px.JPG

Tech Field Day 23 flashback: Shattering the limits of connectedness with Vcinity

Vcinity’s corporate motto is “Shatter the Limits of Connectedness”.

Remember it, for we will revisit.

At Gestalt IT’s Tech Field Day #23, I had the privilege, as a delegate to the event, of listening to a briefing by some VITOs from Vcinity.

* VITO: Very Important Top Officer.

What does Vcinity do.

Vcinity delivers users the ability to work on data-in-place over distance.

This came about from the challenges of having to collocate data with applications and users.

Mind you, the moving, caching, and copying of this data, has increased the cost of insights, reduced productivity, delay in decision making, and exposed organizations and people to unintended liabilities.

What Vcinity does is facilitate the consumption of data from wherever it is needed without network infrastructure constraints, and remove restrictions of latency caused by physical/network distance.

How does Vcinity do it?

The Vcinity Data Access Platform, or VDAP, enables applications to process data anywhere over any WAN (Microwave, IP, Satellite, 5G), such as video rendering, explain our approach to eliminating the effects of latency.

This is how Vcinity sees the ‘connected enterprise’.

Screenshot 2021-05-23 222105.png

Vcinity also operated via these “ground rules”:

  • No manipulation of data

  • No changes in application

  • No compression, no de-duplication

  • No software or agents to install

  • No WAN accelerators

  • No multi-site caching appliances

  • No changes on physical LAN

  • No copies of data

In order to do this, Vcinity possesses 32 patents covering the delivery of advanced capabilities critical to applications consuming data over WANs. (From their presentation.)

Moreover, this technology is well baked, having being in production for over ten years in the service of the US federal government, and evolving from a requirement to help high speed file movement to what it does now.

Screenshot 2021-05-23 225524.png

What it does

Vcinity users are able to access their data remotely without needing to make a copy of that data at the remote location, effectively removing the need for data and compute colocation.Users are also able to use cloud-based compute against local data, or vice versa.

And Vcinity works even over satellite links; for instance, sustaining 90%+ throughput over a 500 Mbps link that had a 500 ms latency!

Literally “shattering the limits of connectedness’!

Vcinity’s mission.

  • ·        Access data in real-time

  • ·        Accelerate cloud adoption

  • ·        Reduce cost and complexity

  • ·        Increase infrastructure ROI

  • ·        Deliver value – faster

  • ·        Keep data secure

As I see it

Vcinity enables new agility for firms using the product.

Users no longer have to be worried about the time to deployment of data access: it is always available. Heck, even compute is always available as the user can leverage cloud compute.

Security of data is now a breeze, and several scenarios come to mind for this product.

By allowing users to decouple data from compute, Vcinity allows enterprises to keep their data safe. This is a boon

The military must love it, as data can reside in their secure locations while users in stressful locations can act against that data.

Film producers no longer have to worry about copies of their products in the wild or in the hands of counterfeiters, as the data doesn’t move anywhere.

For companies deploying VDI solutions, Vcinity should provide both speed and security.

Even if data mobility is a must, Vcinity currently has the only known solution that would allow for the movement of 1 petabyte of data in less than 24 hours.

Connection utilization is also vastly improved, as pipes are actually filled at high capacity.

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow John Obeto on Twitter


Ka Iwe logo - 003-300px.jpg

HPE Alletra & Data Services Cloud Console

Storage “needs intelligence”, we are told, as HPE unveils Alletra, their offering which promises to help speed up enterprise transformations by unleashing data, rather than just managing storage.

As it stands right now, the complexity of current enterprise infrastructure tends to greatly hamper transformation while by creating bottlenecks to agility and innovation.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (1).PNG

And with research data showing that 93% of IT decision makers view complexity as impeding digital transformation, 95% of them viewing better data utilization as a Top-10 priority, and 94% of them wanting the smoothness of their cloud experiences on-premises.

HPE’s aim is the following: simplify the data infrastructure, integrate data management, globally protect data, and eliminate disruptions.  

AI. AI. AI!

To do this, HPE is introducing AI into the mix.

The vision here is to use AI-driven global intelligence to deliver a new set of cloud data services, crowd infrastructure services, and cloud-native data framework.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (2).PNG

HPE Alletra and HPE Data Services Cloud Console

HPE Alletra & DSCC (74)

HPE is delivering a hardware+software solution to deliver on their vision.

The hardware component is HPE Alletra.

HPE Alletra

Alletra is HPE’s hardware component.

It consists of two models, the Alletra 6000 developed for business-critical workloads. It comes with a ‘6-nines’ availability as standard, delivering up to 1 million IOPS, and flexible scaling.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (47)

Mission-critical workloads are the forte of the high end Alletra 9000, utilizing NVM Express, delivers all-active, multi-node parallelization, comes with a 100% availability standard, and is also certified already for 96 SAP Hana nodes in a 4U configuration.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (45)

HPE Data Services Cloud Console

The power of Alletra is unleashed by the HPE Data services Cloud Console.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (3).PNG

The Data Services Cloud Console – which I will call DSCC going forward – allows for the deployment, management, upgrading, and optimization of Alletra hardware.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (43)

Using the DSCC, users can access data, protect it, search that data, and use it from anywhere.

HPE Alletra & DSCC (98)

 This video here tells more about these products.


Blackfriars

TFD23: Vcinity

My favorite - by far! - presenters at Tech Field Day 23 were from Vcinity.

Their product is very innovative, and completely ready for Prime Time!

I will crib the descriptions from Gestalt IT’s Vcinity TD+FD23 page here, as I reached out to Vcinity for an in-depth briefing*.

Harry Carr, Vcinity CEO, re-frames the problem statement around compute over WAN. Meet the best kept secret in the industry, Vcinity. Harry will set the stage for the presentation; he will highlight common challenges in today’s data driven world. The inability to access data at the speed of relevance. Data is created everywhere and getting data to the application is throttled by network latency and inability to use compute resources best suitable for the job. This time lag prevents the use of cloud compute resources, real-time AI/ML analytics, and data informed operations. Harry will also introduce Vcinity’s approach to solving these challenges and creating a truly connected enterprise.

And that is just the first of the videos you will enjoy on Vcinity.

https://techfieldday.com/appearance/vcinity-presents-at-tech-field-day-23/

*Vcinity is ready to talk, but I am quite constrained timewise right now, as we exit our nationwide coronavirus COVID-19 lockdowns. Please bear with me.


Blackfriars.png

TFD23: Hazelcast

Hazelcast presented at Tech Field Day 23.

Hazelcast provides in-memory compute solutions.

CEO Kelly Herrell provided an overview of Hazelcast, beginning with some background information on the company mission and the sectors where Hazelcast is active, including Kubernetes, micro services, hybrid cloud, edge computing, and machine learning.

Next, Terry Walters presented a vehicle telemetry demo showing real-time in-memory technologies from Hazelcast.

Dale Kim then dove into use cases by  Hazelcast customers.

Field CTO, Neil Stevenson, will showcase how Hazelcast Jet, a real-time streaming engine, can be used by banks and investors to monitor trades. The financial industry must monitor trades in real time, but traditional solutions delay analysis for batch processing. Hazelcast Jet can process streams of data in real time for near-real-time visibility with a simplified processing pipeline.

Please follow the presentations here. https://techfieldday.com/appearance/hazelcast-presents-at-tech-field-day-23/


fg

I will be at Tech Field Day 23

Tech Field Day 23 is upon us.

And I will be there.

It is virtual, and all are welcome.

It is going to be quite the do, with companies such as Riverbed, Vcinity, Micron, Hazelcast, Xilinx, BlueCat, and Pure Storage presenting.

Delegates are ready, and the convos are sure to otherworldly, as usual.

Here’s the full schedule:

•        Wednesday, April 21

o            8:00-10:00 - Riverbed Presentation

o            10:00-10:30 - Riverbed Breakout

o            11:00-12:30 - Vcinity Presentation

o            12:30-13:00 - Vcinity Breakout

o            13:30-15:30 - Micron Presentation

o            15:30-16:00 - Micron Breakout

•        Thursday, April 22

o            8:00-10:00 - Hazelcast Presentation

o            10:00-10:30 - Hazelcast Breakout

o            11:00-12:30 - Xilinx Presentation

o            12:30-13:00 - Xilinx Breakout

o            13:30-15:30 - Possible On-Premise IT Roundtable Recordings

•        Friday, April 23

o            8:00-10:00 - BlueCat Presentation

o            10:00-10:30 - BlueCat Breakout

o            11:00-13:00 - Pure Storage Presentation

o            13:00-13:30 - Pure Storage Breakout

Already, the swag is flowing.

dadsc.gif

Join us.

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow John Obeto on Twitter

Celebrating Black History Month 2021 Day #6: Astronauts

The Spaceriders

Blacks have always been there.

Whenever anything happens on Earth, we are there.

Even in space, we are there.

Today is dedicated to Black astronauts and astronaut-candidates, from Ed Dwight who was unceremoniously cashiered out of the astronaut corps, to those who lost their lives for it: Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr, Ronald McNair, and Michael Anderson, and all of those in waiting.

We, especially I, hold you all in highest esteem!

Ed Dwight; Michael P. Anderson; Michael E. Belt; Charles Bolden; Guion Bluford; Yvonne Cagle; Robert Curbeam; Alvin Drew; Jeanette J. Epps; Victor J. Glover; Frederick D. Gregory; Bernard A. Harris Jr.; Joan Higginbotham; Livingston L. Holder, Jr.; Mae Jemison; Robert Henry Lawrence Jr.; Ronald McNair; Leland D. Melvin; Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez; Robert Satcher; Winston E. Scott; Jessica Watkins; Stephanie Wilson.

The Wikipedia page below will take you to an index of each of our astronauts.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_African-American_astronauts

- - -ooOoo- - -

Blaxploitation movie of the day is that masterpiece in Afrofuturism “Space Is The Place” (1974) starring Sun Ra & His Intergalactic Solar Arkestra.

The eponymous soundtrack to the movie is a sublime ode to the genius of Sun Ra.

Celebrating Black History Month 2021 #5: Michael Lee-Chin

Michael Lee-Chin

R91a0fd7737477f92b2ae4e5df22dbcffe.jpg

The first non-American Black billionaire.

Michael Lee-Chin has been inspirational just because he showed that billionaire Blacks were going to be, as we are, population-wise, global.

Lee-Chin made his fortune in investments, a field I am particularly fond of.

Plus, he’s from Jamaica. The Island, Mon!

- - - - oOo - - - -

Blaxploitation Movie of the Day: “Car Wash” (1976); starring Richard Pryor; Franklyn Ajaye; Ivan Dixon; Bill Duke ; Antonio Fargas; DeWayne Jessie (a.k.a. Otis Day); Garrett Morris; and the Pointer Sisters

© 2002 – 2021, John Obeto II for Blackground Media Unlimited

Follow John Obeto on Twitter


Blackground TV 2 300px.jpg