APC BR900GI UPS tips

As the proud owner of a Synology DS415+ NAS (network attached storage) device, I thought I had better protect the large amount of data accumulating on it by also becoming the proud owner of a suitable UPS (uninterruptible power supply). That way, when the power fluctuates or goes off unexpectedly (as is quite common in rural Australia, where I live) the NAS is protected and will have time to shut itself down in an orderly fashion. So I purchased a Schneider (APC) BR900GI UPS. This article is about how I set things up.

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A voice for heterogeneity

In a recent email conversation, the relative virtues of Hyper-V and VMWare were being discussed. I stuck my hand up to suggest going with both. Why? Because heterogeneity is a good thing. In this post the topic is two competing hypervisors, but the arguments are the same for almost any technology. And they mostly apply to open technologies as well as to closed, proprietary technologies. Continue reading

Fibre? Don’t make me laugh.

Apparently some people at University College London (UCL) have achieved data transmission speeds of greater than a terabit per second to a single receiver:

http://www.smh.com.au/technology/innovation/breakthrough-enables-downloads-50000-times-faster-than-superfast-broadband-20160211-gms3bd.html

To which I say – phooey!

It’s on fibre – but copper is the future.

Copper is faster, cheaper, and can be installed more quickly. That’s why all the really top-shelf research is concentrating on getting super high speeds over copper. Apparently people are already pushing tens of gigabits over inch-long snippets; it’s just a simple matter of scaling that up. And Australia’s world-class broadband network will be ready and waiting when they do!

UCL? Fibre? What a pack of amateurs. Sheesh.

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