James M. Burke

I learned something new — apparently the founder of my company enjoys writing and even writes some touching poetry. In his recent post, Storage Haiku, Dave Hitz shares some of his “masterpieces” and mentions a storage haiku contest.

Check it out

Yesterday, Apple silently released yet another firmware update for the Intel versions of iMac, Mac Mini and MacBook Pro. On April 5, 2006, Apple released a Firmware Update 1.0.0 for these computers and then the very next day announced Boot Camp. I'm unable to find what was changed in this new Firmware Update 1.0.1, but my Boot ROM version changed from MBP11.0055.B02 to MBP11.0055.B03.

Download: iMac Firmware Update 1.0.1, Mac Mini Firmware Update 1.0.1, MacBook Pro Firmware Update 1.0.1

Yesterday, Dave Hitz discovered that Network Appliance made the Fortune 1000 list for the first time:

"NetApp just made the Fortune 1000 list for the first time, coming in at #929 with $1,598m in revenue for calendar 2005.

Since we have such a high growth rate, I've always found it more useful, when doing market analysis, to look at our annualized run rate, rather than our trailing full year. In our last quarter, we did $537m, which annualizes to $2,148m. That would have taken us up to #772. 

What fun! Can you tell that I'm proud of my baby?"

Source: DaveBlog – NetApp Makes Fortune 1000 

WOW! Apple has released a new (beta) product called Boot Camp. And, no – this is 4 days too late to be an April Fool's joke. A while back, there was a $13,000 bounty for the first person (or group) to get Windows XP to install on an Intel Mac. Well, that was accomplished, and the bootloader was posted on OnMac.net. Well, after the release of Apple Mac OS X 10.4.6, it appears as if Apple had something under it's sleeve too…Boot Camp:

More and more people are buying and loving Macs. To make this choice simply irresistible, Apple will include technology in the next major release of Mac OS X, Leopard, that lets you install and run the Windows XP operating system on your Mac. Called Boot Camp (for now), you can download a public beta today.

Boot Camp will even burn a CD with all of the Mac-specific drivers for Windows. This includes graphics, networking, audio, airport, bluetooth, eject key, and brightness control. This requires Mac OS X 10.4.6 and the latest firmware update. Visit http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/ to get the updates.

Download: Apple – Boot Camp

Today marked my six month anniversary with NetApp! It feels like only yesterday I was making my post about my three month anniversary… Time sure does fly when you’re busy (and having fun!)

Today, Apple released the much anticipated update to Mac OS X Tiger 10.4 — 10.4.6.

Apple’s Software Update describes this update:

The 10.4.6 Update is recommended for all users and includes general operating system fixes, as well as specific fixes for the following applications and technologies:

- login and authentication in a variety of network environments
- file access and byte range locking with AFP file sharing
- network access when using proxy server automatic configuration files
- connecting to Cisco VPN servers using IP/Sec
- using Bluetooth wireless devices
- searching iWork ‘06 and Microsoft Office documents with Spotlight
- saving Word documents automatically when using a network home directory
- creating Automator workflows for iPhoto 6
- synchronizing contacts and calendars to .Mac and mobile phones
- mounting and unmounting iDisk volumes
- compatibility with third party applications and devices
- previous standalone security updates

For detailed information on this Update, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n303411.

For detailed information on Security Updates, please visit this website: http://www.info.apple.com/kbnum/n61798.

Filer Jedi reported that one of his filer’s (running Data ONTAP 6.x.x) was up for over 1218 days. He noticed this when he had a colocation’s cooler fail and only 3 out of his 80 filers shut down due to high temperatures. I don’t have the luxury of looking at autosupports and don’t know what the average time is for one of these babys, but 1218 days is pretty impressive if you ask me. That’s over 3 1/3 years — almost a quarter of NetApp’s life as a company!

Link: Filer Jedi – Uptimes?