Millennium Issue - 2000
This version lets you dance around the porting tree long after the holiday ballet has closed.
A revolution is coming in the way computers access data. The last 30 years have produced incredible changes in computing technology, with accelerating innovations in hardware efficiency, memory capacity, and processing speeds. But one crucial computing link, storage and communication I/O connectivity, has failed to keep pace with the growing power of modern computers.
If you are reading this, those hairy-nosed, apocalyptic Y2K predictions from Nostrildamus can be discounted. Unless, of course, you are stuck in a stalled Manhattan elevator as the witching hour strikes. (Yes -- old joke: the Muzak plays "Miss Otis Regrets." May your fellow passengers be Cole Porter fans and/or embedded-chip debuggers!) Or, given the preemptive, prepublicational power of the mighty Miller Freeman (MaFIa) Inc. you may be early-birding this issue in November 1999, still beset with transmillennial angst.
With this, the New Millennium issue, it seems appropriate to consider where our industry may be heading in the near future. Although predictions are rarely accurate, I will gaze into my crystal ball to see if I can unlock some of the future's secrets that will have a direct effect on system administration.
In August 1999, a rare event for the computer industry occurred when the two major I/O bus gangs agreed to cease hostilities and work together on the next major system I/O connection architecture. The NGIO (next generation I/O) group, led by Intel with backing from industry heavyweights Sun Microsystems Inc. and Dell Computer Corp. (among others), agreed to merge their technology initiative with the Compaq-led FIO (future I/O) group supported by Hewlett-Packard Co., IBM Corp., and others.
While a plethora of reports have been issued regarding government and corporate Y2K readiness, I have yet to see an analysis of how much it would have cost to avoid the Y2K problem in the first place. What if, for sake of discussion, the consensus had been to not save the extra bytes needed for a four-digit year?
Do you ever get the impulse, even though you program computers for a living, to write a program just for fun? I try not to fight this impulse too much when it comes over me: it's good to do something a little different to stretch yourself, like a classical pianist trying out some jazz riffs. Often you'll learn skills that will turn out to be useful later by writing a program that you thought was completely unconnected.
Today, users want to look at the best application software regardless of proprietary hardware solutions, and they want to eliminate the cost associated with having different drivers for different databases. The answer is Distributed Relational Database Architecture (DRDA). The question is, will it be able to grow and fill important additional functions in the data enterprise?
Thanks to vendor efforts channeled through the IEEE, Ethernet has evolved into the LAN backbone of choice for many enterprises, challenging ATM. In addition, enterprise IT managers and service providers alike are turning to Ethernet to support server farms, thanks in part to new trunking standards and other enhancements to the technology.
Q.We have a new in-house application that runs on AIX 4.3 and Windows NT 4.0. It is now apparent that our disk-space purchase on both machines was not adequate. Rather than buy additional space for each box, we would like a SAN solution...
The first StorageTek SANapps partnership produces a combination of hardware, software, and services to optimize your SAN dollars.
We brought three new drives into our lab for testing -- Ecrix Corp.'s new VXA-1 drive, Quantum Corp.'s DLT 8000 drive, and Sony Corp.'s DDS-4 drive. All of the tested units were standalone external drives.
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