How not to sound like you know what you are talking about
OK. This really torks me off. Normally I am a very calm and reasonable person, open to many viewpoints and ideas. A colleague whom I shall call “Ben” (his real name) was preparing a presentation for a military/intel customer regarding open systems and open source software. He was going to talk about Linux and insisted throughout our conversation on calling it “Lye-nix”. When I called him on his pronunciation he informed me that the matter was “in dispute”.
No it isn’t. The founder, creator, birther(?) of Linux, Linus Torvalds, says that it is pronounced Linn-ucks (it rhymes with cynics). And don’t give me any of that Finnish “lean-ucks” crap. This is America.
While we are on the general topic of how not to sound like you know what you are talking about, I want to warn you about “SAN’s”. I am going to break one of my steadfast blogging rules. I am going to tell you what “SAN’s” stands for. This blogging rule is called The Britney Spears Rule. The rule states that if you are reading this blog it is assumed that you are a serious technology person. If you are not, you should only surf websites that discuss Britney’s enormous problems.
A SAN is a Storage Area Network, emphasis on the word, network. It is a network that you can use to attach storage devices. It is not the box sitting in the corner of your server room. That is a disk array. You need a switch (could be in the box) connectivity between servers and storage devices (HBA’s, cables, etc.) and enabling software. That is a SAN.
There is additional confusion about fiber and fibre channel in the data center (and diet). Again, this is America, not the Commonwealth. Fiber in the data center is fiber-optic cable. Fibre channel is a data transfer technology often used in SAN’s.
Why are these distinctions important? Number one, it torks me off if you get it wrong. Number two, it would be embarrassing if you received a package with 10 kilometers of fiber-optic cable when you were expecting a fibre channel switch. And it is common courtesy to get it right. It would be like making a PowerPoint presentation to a Red Hat executive. They know all about Redmond. They want your help in promoting open source applications. Take the time to do it right. There. I am Finnished.
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