What happens to me in a classroom...

So, this week I'm taking a class with five others on how to manage the Sun 3510 disk array - basically a small SAN solution, hardware RAID, SCSI over Fiber Channel, so on.

What am I doing during this undoubtedly expensive course?

Writing game.

Oh, I'm learning, sure, and even injecting reasonably intelligent questions, but my notes aren't about the topic at hand.

Just like college.

*grins*

Today I learned...

A lot, strangely. I'm still trying to grasp concepts, because there're a lot tied into this stuff.

SAN - Storage Area Network - technology is pretty new, and it basically involves arrays of disk, with some kind of controller making it easy to make the disk do tricks, all of which is tied to Fiber connections to your big servers. Fiber Channel networks are both a step forward and a step back - they're faster, but they come in a couple of architectures, including a closed-loop, which we haven't seen the like of since never, I think, and generally is very like BNC stuff - coaxial cabling.

*waves hands vigorously* So anyway I feel like the kid in the Far Side comic: 'Sir, can I be excused? my head is full'.

And I'm reading up on basic SAN concepts so I can get a grip on the tech side of it, even after all that. Check the box marked 'Psychologically masochistic tendencies' on my Brain Damage Bingo board.

Technical Term of the day

The technical term of the day - the new acronym I'd never heard of before - is JBOD.

Background: RAID stands for Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks - basically a way to present a bunch of tiny disks as one big one. RAID arrays are often kept in their own chunks of hardware, slapped with a nice brain to do all the computational work involved, and made to cost $50,000.

JBOD is a chunk of hardware like a RAID array, but without the intelligence. Without a brain, it's Just a Bunch Of Disks.

who comes up with this terminology? and can I help? I could do that job...