ShadowRAM: April 17, 2006
“A .308-caliber bullet traveling [40 feet at] 2,900 feet per second barely slows down as it punches through a piece of metal. But what happens when you put a refrigerator-size piece of computer hardware in its path?” Admit it, you’d watch that video too, even if you know if the bullet creamed the array, HP wouldn’t talk about it.
The test was performed by professionals and the video, on HP’s StorageWorks site, ends with a disclaimer warning folks not to try this at home (or in the office). It also cautions that the video does not constitute an update to HP’s standard warranties. Ha!
To prove the demo is for real, a water-filled fish tank was placed on the other side of the hardware. And sure enough, this was a through-and-through shooting, as they say on “Law and Order.” Luckily the fish was scooped out in advance.
“This is the first request we’ve ever received to shoot a storage system and a fish tank,” says David Mann, GM of NTS, Camden, Ark.—the official marksman.
First it was Bono. Now the first couple of American business is hanging with Oprah. Bill and Melinda Gates took the talk show priestess to San Diego’s High Tech High where there are no textbooks—only computers. Oprah praised the Gateses for their $1 billion investment in creating the liberal arts school, where children get a hands-on education in subjects ranging from technology to biology. Oprah confessed she might not be among those who would want to attend a PC-only school but had no doubt this was Bill’s brainchild: “This is right up your alley, right?” Oprah kidded.
More people are watching Salesforce.com’s downtimes—planned and unplanned—very carefully.
One longtime customer said the unplanned outages are bothersome, but the bigger issue is all the planned downtime. Granted, said downtime takes place during off hours, but the whole point of on-demand is being able to access the system at will, no?
The planned maintenance used to be monthly but recently has been weekly, said an exec for this tech company. This weekend’s planned outage? It’s slated for Saturday, April 15, 3:00 p.m. EDT to 6:00 p.m. EDT. The company said its “service will be generally available, but users may experience a few, brief service disruptions.”
April 8’s scheduled maintenance slot ran from 11:00 a.m. EDT that day until 5:00 a.m. EDT the next day. During that time, Salesforce.com noted in advance that the service “will not be available for a portion of the window.”