Posts tagged "storage"

Ever since I’ve been using a Mac, I enjoy using Sparse Encrypted Disk Images for a variety of tasks, for instance securely storing data that can be backed up somewhere else, say on a hosting server.

In fact, most of my project/personal data on my Mac sits on sparse encrypted disk images that are regularly rsynced to an external storage service, Strato’s in particular.

The beauty of this solution lies in it simplicity:

Sparse encrypted disk images show up just like any other hard drive. But on the back end, they translate into a bunch of flat files that store all the data in an encrypted manner. By rsyncing the backing store, sparse encrypted disk images can be easily backed up across the net, while ensuring privacy and convenience.

Here’s how to do similar things with Solaris and ZFS, including some extra data integrity magic:

Last week during WorldHostingDays, I had the opportunity to visit Tom (@tomme), a former colleague of mine who came with Q-Layer to Sun, then to Oracle. Today, he works for a new Belgian startup called Amplidata (no link, amplidata.com no longer exists), a company that specializes in building storage clouds. He introduced me to Wim, their CEO and we discussed their optimized object storage technology, some parallels to ZFS and the newest trends in cloud computing storage. Amplidata is a spin-off of Incubaid, a technology incubator which is responsible for the success of two good old Sun friends: Innotek (VirtualBox) and Q-Layer (The company that powered the Sun Cloud).

Since November 1st, 2009, when ZFS Deduplication was integrated into OpenSolaris (no link, genunix.org no longer exists), a lot has happened: We learned how it worked, people got to play with it, used it in production and it became part of the Oracle Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System (no link, sun.com no longer exists).

Here’s everything you need to know about ZFS Deduplication and a few links to help you dig deeper into the subject:

After moving my blog to its new home and getting my hands dirty with Drupal, it’s time to continue my series of blog articles about setting up a home server. Remember? We talked about home server requirements (no link, sun.com no longer exists), then I presented to you my small and energy-efficient, still ECC-protected and powerful AMD-based home server (no link, sun.com no longer exists). Now it’s time to explore some different ZFS disk pool RAID strategies.