Real Time View

I have just returned home to Boulder - a place that really does give me an opportunity to think. I suspect that all of us, particularly those in business that have to travel a lot, have one place that they really call home. That place where they can relax and feel comfortable. Back to the basics. My home field where I have the advantage - where I have all the local knowledge. I have really been appreciative of the emails I have received over the past few days. The early blog posting have all been part of an experiment - a prototype really. Can I develop the discipline to write every few nights? Can I get excited about opening this window to talk about NonStop and Tandem. The emails I have receive to date have been incredibly encouraging - and so I will continue. But to return to my opening remarks. For many of us, our comfort zone with respect to NonStop has a lot to do with availability, scalability, massively parallel shared nothing environments. This is solid ground for us - this...

I am slowly adjusting to a new place of abode. It's a long story and not something relevant to this posting - perhaps later. However, as anyone who has moved to a new location, getting set-up as fast as you can becomes a necessity, and minimizing disruptions to daily routines, a priority. For me, the urgent needs all centered around getting our audio / video equipment all sorted out and this meant going to the mall. Pretty routine, I thought - nothing much could go wrong with a task this trivial! Well, I experienced a crashed system first hand this weekend. My wife and I were at Best Buy purchasing DVDs when, after a wait in the check out line, the cash register simply crashed. I knew immediately it wasn't good when the cash register screen went black and I could follow the flow of NETBios data wrapping around on the screen. Eventually, the ubiquitous Windows icon appeared. But too late - the check-out clerk left his post for guidance and then took us to another line to stand a...

In my last blog entry, I asked for feedback on your experience at the recent HP Technical Forum and Expo (HPTF&E) and I have to say I was pretty pleased to see a couple of comments. Margo Holen observed that the option to view the greater HP - to see a more complete picture - was a big benefit. This was reinforced for me when one long-standing supporter of ITUG came up to me and said "now I can bring my management! I may even be able to convince our CIO to come - there's now enough content to make it worthwhile for them to come!" Wil Marhsman's observations interested me as well - going forward, it may not be just bricks and mortar style venues - and that with newer technology, I fully expect to see a growth in essentially virtual events and gatherings. As we all become familiar with new ways to communicate and embrace new products and methodologies, we will see many more options open up where we can get first-hand info from our peers as they roll-out new applicat...

Welcome to RT Writer's blog - for all things related to the ITUG Community. In particular, to topics consistent with the theme of my colum "Real Time View". As you may recall from the first column I wrote back in the July - August 2007 issue, then: "I am writing it with the expectation of presenting a slightly different view of NonStop than might be presented elsewhere and I am writing it to generate further discussion. I am openly soliciting your feedback and I can assure you I will be reading all correspondence that I receive." By way of introduction - for some time now I have felt that there was opportunities to open more a direct dialogue with the community and so this is very much a prototype that I am looking at to market to a wider cross section of the community. Most of you know me - I have been involved with the NonStop server since my early days at Netlink Inc out of North Carolina. The company's R&D center was in Sydney - but as we loo...