I have to admit, being back in the IT world has been better than I’d feared. Working for a big company (>100 employees) for the first time has also been good. Am I finally seeing the light? Who knows. But for now, this gig is good.
Recently I built a FreeNAS box to refresh my knowledge on BSD, and for a place to store all those legally obtained “large multimedia files” which have been clogging up my POS HP desktop. After figuring out how many more of these files I could store before I would need to expand the box, I started dreaming. I remembered a company called Equallogic that one of my former employers was big on.
Who are Equallogic and what do they do? Well, unfortunately they got swallowed up by Dell a few years ago, so effectively they are Dell. As for what they do, they make SAN appliances – Storage Area Network boxes. Basically, really smart, really fast special-purpose computers with a whole bunch of hard drives to store lots of stuff, keep it safe, and serve it out as fast as possible.
I had a look at the current offerings from Equallogic, and one box in particular stopped me dead in my (virtual) tracks. It’s got the catchy name of PS6500E. Luckily what’s inside is more interesting. How about 48 1 terabyte hard drives? Mmmmm… the possibilities….
Dell Equallogic PS6500E 48TB
Is this something you could possibly justify as a “step up” from a FreeNAS server at home? No. But it’s fun to dream. What’s the damage on one of these bad boys? Oh, about $100k. Just imagine this box with 2TB drives!!
Thanks to Tony Gonzales at Federal Appliance for giving me the lowdown on this bad boy.
by Rob on January 13, 2010
Well that went quickly – I’m back in Canada. Two weeks in the Philippines – and barely a wasted day.
Some highlights – taking Rose ice skating at Mall of Asia (a happy disaster), spending the night at Rose’s family’s home (it DOES get cold at night in the Philippines – who knew?), a day trip to Pundakit, and watching Rose win an impromptu drinking competition (Rose is so petite that she gets goofy after 1 drink, so luckily for both her and I it was a single glass challenge).
After taking the plunge and marrying someone with so many differences, I thought by now I would have found something to make me question my sanity, or at least something that was mildly irritating. I’m happy to report that no such irritation exists, and my sanity, at least in this respect, is not in doubt. Rose, you’re the girl for me!
Only one lowlight – the journey there. Thanks to the ultra tight security at YYZ on December 27th, my barely bearable 24 hour trip was turned into a hellish 49 hour ordeal. More on this later. At least I got a business class upgrade for the first of my 3 legs back, and got to fly 2 hours earlier on the last leg. That my suitcase didn’t come along for the enhanced ride was barely noticed.
