Mac Minis in military-strength datacentre?
January 2, 2009
a couple of related stories here in which a colocation host has replaced its datacentre application servers with mac minis

Jigsaw's data storage buzzwords for 2009
January 2, 2009
Jigsaw's top four predicted hot topics for IT professionals in charge of data storage...

Jigsaw is one of three UK Boxx Technologies resellers
January 2, 2009
Jigsaw is pleased to announce its authorisation as one of only three UK resellers to sell workstations and renderfarms from BOXX Technologies.

Time Machine compatible Home Server from HP
December 30, 2008
HP's EX485/7 version of their MediaSmart Server comes with remote music and photo streaming capability, and is the first non-apple NAS product to support Time Machine.

Lawsuit against Apple, Google and Microsoft
December 30, 2008
US company, Cygnus Systems, files lawsuit against Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Another article about Macs in the Enterprise and user-demand
December 30, 2008
The rumble about Macs in the Enterprise continues to gather momentum. User-demand is driving change through the need for corporates to be dynamic.

(Continuous) Data Protection...
December 23, 2008
Continuous Data Protection (CDP) is a term that has become rather popular with backup hardware and software manufacturers alike, and it's a term that I'm worried is being used and misused rather too often.

Macs in the enterprise? Apple strategy change?
December 22, 2008
A blog style post on deploying Apple in the enterprise and whether Apple is undergoing a change in strategy.

Sun VirtualBox 2.1 released - more virtualisation on OS X
December 22, 2008
Free for personal use and evaluation, VirtualBox 2.1.0 is a major update with exciting new features such better 64-bit support, hardware virtualization on the Mac, 3D acceleration, easier networking on Windows and Linux, plus full VMDK/VHD support including snapshots.

Norton Dual Protection is Bootcamp aware
December 22, 2008
We've heard that Macs aren't prone to malware quite as much as their Windows cousins. But what if you run Windows on your Macs? Or, what if you have compliance requirements for all your computers?

Cisco Blade Servers
December 19, 2008
Rumours abound of Cisco's 2009 Blade Server release. This will mark quite a shift for the networking giant – up until now, Cisco have been happy to provide networking blades for IBM and HP, but introducing a competing server line will be their first direct confrontation, and their first toe in a potentially lucrative market.

Apple withdraw from Macworld Expo
December 18, 2008
Apple withdraw from MacWorld Expo... as a result BBC wonder what is wrong with Steve Jobs... I'm sure it is all rather more mundane than that. Times are hard and I personally choose trade shows very carefully these days: there has to be a very compelling reason to attend.

Jigsaw appointed LANrev reseller in UK too
December 18, 2008
Jigsaw has also been appointed as reseller of LANrev in the UK. This emphasises the fact that Jigsaw is one of the foremost integrators of Mac workstations into Windows-based networks in the UK.

Jigsaw appointed Centrify reseller in UK
December 18, 2008
Jigsaw appointed as reseller of Centrify in the UK. This echoes Jigsaw's position in the UK as one of the leading integrators of Mac workstations into Windows-based networks.

Overland solace of quantum promotion
December 15, 2008
Buy an Overland tape autoloader and get entered into a competition to win all 22 James Bond movies in the James Bond Ultimate Collection. Nice pun as well.

Infortrend Announces Hyper-V Compatibility
December 11, 2008
Marrying up some of our favourite topics here (stonking great RAID arrays, virtualization), Infortrend has announced their RAID storage line, Eonstor, to be fully compatible with Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.

Kerio cloud-based email archiving
December 10, 2008
Alternative provider of email server systems, Kerio, announce partnership for the provision of compliancy-friendly mail archiving

Universal Type Server Point Release
December 8, 2008
Extensis, a brand of Celartem, Inc., today updated Universal Type Server by adding plug-in based font auto-activation for Adobe(R) Illustrator(R) CS4 and InDesign(R) CS4 for their Macintosh and Windows clients.

Mac software not "Open"?
December 8, 2008
A contentious article on the Reigster last week suggested that Apple is putting Commerce before Right. We suggest that this is an emotive rather than a pragmatic claim.

SSD (slight return)
December 5, 2008
Samsung announce fast resilient (SLC flavoured) SSD drives for the Enterprise

Microsoft releases Vista, Server 2008 SP2 betas
December 5, 2008
Microsoft have released betas of Vista SP2 and Server 2008 SP2 via a Customer Preview Program (CPP).

802.11n 300/600Mb/s Wireless and 3Com SMB products
December 4, 2008
3Com release SMB wireless products compliant with IEE 802.11n draft 2, offering speeds up to 300Mb/second

Apple Advising Antivirus Software - Or Are They?
December 2, 2008
Apple Advising Antivirus Software - Or Are They? What is Apple's stance on the security of the Mac OS? Confusion follows article posted to official support site...

Seagate fixes 1.5TB barracuda drives on Mac/linux
December 1, 2008
Problems with OS X and Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB drives fixed.

Entertaining with spam
November 26, 2008
Hospitals brought down, cooking with spam, getting blacklisted, a spammer is blocked at source, and getting rich quick with spam: we look at some recent spam-related news items and contribute a few personal observations of our own on unsolicited bulk email.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) in the news
October 20, 2008
Fibre Channel over Ethernet won't push iSCSI out of the storage market but will pose a threat standard Fibre Channel. Today posts from The Register reaches a similar conclusion, and Storage Networking Europe announce the first native FCoE storage product .

IBM Does a Facebook
October 10, 2008
Facebook for business? IBM has announced their new business networking tool, Bluehouse. Web 2.0? Check. Cloud computing? Check. IBM have certainly ticked boxes that fulfil the current IT themes. Click through for a light-hearted look at their latest project...

Jigsaw Becomes Premier UK Reseller for ExtremeZ-IP
October 6, 2008
Group Logic, the leading provider of Mac/Windows connectivity solutions, announces Jigsaw Systems as its only Premier UK Reseller.

HP buys LeftHand Networks
October 1, 2008
HP has announced their purchase of storage specialists LeftHand Networks. This convergence of two of Jigsaw's partners should serve to strengthen LeftHand's primary product, known as SAN/iQ - itself already a standout product, offering scalability, redundancy and outstanding storage capabilities.

Terminal Services on your XServe
October 1, 2008
Aqua Connect opens the door to Terminal Services on the XServe. Banish Windows from your workplace, cut the costs of new machine purchases, and enjoy the creative advantages of the Mac environment, with the guaranteed security of Terminal Services.

Sonnet F3 RAID for A/V, Music etc
September 11, 2008
Sonnet Technologies today launched the Fusion™ F3, a versatile hardware RAID storage system that encloses a pair of high-performance 3.5" SATA RAID drives to achieve 1TB, 2TB or 3TB configurations in a stylish aluminum and steel case that fits equally well in recording studios, high-end A/V racks, and desktop or portable video editing systems.

HP releases high-density virtualization blade
September 4, 2008
Hewlett Packard have announced the imminent release of their new BL495c Virtualization Blade. Couple this with VMWare’s tight integration with blades, and you have a uniquely powerful virtualization route…

VMware releases ESXi for free
July 30, 2008
VMWare has announced a free version of their ESX hypervisor product, labelled ESXi

Hyper-V ships ahead of schedule
July 8, 2008
Microsoft has shipped the final release of its eagerly anticipated virtualisation component for Server 2008. Dubbed Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, this is a separate product to Microsoft Hyper-V, which is itself shrouded in secrecy and due by the end of this year.

Are SSD Drives as Green as they Purport to be?
July 4, 2008
SSD (Solid State Disk) drives are finally filtering through to retail after years of speculation and hype. Their key advantages are said to be their resiliency, power savings and performance, compared to traditional platter-based hard drives. However, as the newest wunderkind of IT storage has actually solidified, so have some worrying cracks in the façade.

Processor speed versus disk access for optimal rendering?
June 26, 2008
Having spent time researching RAID systems for rich media editing, I know that often it is just a case of "suck-it-and-see". Often a factor that will speed up one workflow will have a negative performance impact on another. Our friends over in the 3D team have written an article about which hardware resources are most important for optimal 3D rendering.

SSD or 20000RPM the way forward?
June 25, 2008
Some of the significant boxes to be ticked with the corporates and datacentres at the moment concern green issues, and SSD should help make inroads into acheiving objectives to lower power consumption and cooling requirements, not to mention the possibility of clawing back some of that premium-cost physical space in the datacentre. However in seems an interesting move away from the rest of the storage industry Western Digital are rumoured to be developing a 20,000 rpm drive to compete against SSD.

Parallels Server shipping
June 20, 2008
Parallels Server for OS X now shipping. Plus we have some news on possible applications for it. Now no longer restricted to Xserve hardware platform. For more information please read the full news item.

DIY IT with Home made renderfarm
June 20, 2008
Our colleagues over in 3D, with whom we share a fondness for big power computing systems, have featured an article about Janne and his home made renderfarm, built out of an IKEA cabinet, and some other bits. Interesting reading and a bit of fun.

BL2x220c
June 4, 2008
New HP Blade perfect for rendering and other high density server farm applications puts 1024 Xeon processor cores in a single 42u rack.

Cross-platform SAN storage partnership
May 9, 2008
Tiger Technology metaSAN/metaLAN software on Infortrend EonStor arrays offers cross-platform SAN management and server virtualization to Microsoft Windows, Apple Mac OS X, and Linux Red Hat users

OS X Server virtual machines?
May 7, 2008
Virtualisation is big news in the corporate IT world. But those running Apple's OS X Server have been out in the cold until now. In the very near future it will be possible to run OS X server inside a virtual machine with Parallels Server for OS X, which recently won Macworld 2008 Best of Show.

Bakbone plugin module for Sharepoint
April 25, 2008
Bakbone has released a Sharepoint plugin module for its Netvault: backup application. This complements the existing suite of plugins which includes Exchange, MS SQL and Oracle plugins.

Jigsaw now a Qlogic Signature Value-added Reseller
April 25, 2008
Qlogic have awarded Jigsaw their prestigious Signature VAR status. Being a specialist supplier of hardware and software into a number of vertical Creative markets, we're quite proud to have made the grade.

Virtual backups
April 25, 2008
A few comments on backups and virtualisation. Why we went for a Virtual Tape Library. Overland options that are compatible with VMWare ESX.

Archiware PresSTORE 3 released
April 25, 2008
PresSTORE 3 is released, adding data-encryption and continuous data protection to its backup, archiving and synchronisation system.

Global Warming or Planet of the tapes?
April 25, 2008
As demand for data storage continues to escalate, many businesses face a problem coping with the heat and cooling costs of adding more and more disk-based archives. But there is a better way...

VMWare backup & recovery issues resolved by HP
April 25, 2008
HP release backup tools for integration into their suite of virtualisation tools, meeting the needs of businesses with high availability requirements.

Data recovery for Mac users
March 7, 2008
Ontrack have been verified by Apple as the only data recovery supplier for all Apple products, from iPods all the way up to servers. Amongst other things, this means that you do not invalidate your warranty if you have to undergo the recovery process.

Parallels Desktop for Mac Premium Edition
February 27, 2008
A Premium edition of Parallels Desktop 3.0 for Mac, virtualisation software for the Mac desktop allowing the running of Windows and Linux virtual machines, has been released.

Macs prone to cyber-crime?
February 25, 2008
Sophos recently commission a security report on cyber crime. The findings indicate that Mac users could be targeted, and that exciting new mobile technologies such as the iPod Touch and iPhone could be potentially lucrative platforms for attack, since flaws have already been found in the Mail program and the implementation of the Safari browser.

Kerio 6.5 released featuring CalDAV support
February 23, 2008
Kerio email server version 6.5 was released today. Amongst the new features is CalDAV support and enhanced support for Outlook on Windows PCs.

Jigsaw partner Zen is the best ISP for 4th year running
February 23, 2008
Jigsaw's partner, Zen, who offer broadband, hosting, internet backups, web design and other related services, have won the PC Pro "Best ISP" award for the fourth year running.

Internet - unlimited bandwidth or just fair usage?
February 23, 2008
Last year there was considerable noise claiming that broadband is doomed and that in a year or two there will be so much white noise from spam and marketing fizz that the Internet will be unusable.

Terrablock v3 and iSCSI
February 23, 2008
We've been touting Terrablock for some time as a premium shared storage solution for production workgroups. It's fibre based and therefore very fast. Additionally the hardware is optimised for editing.

Techtool Pro update
February 23, 2008
The updated version of Techtool Pro is now fully Apple OS X 10.5 Leopard Compatible.

Bakbone updates
February 23, 2008
NetVault: Backup Standard Edition is the ideal backup and restore solution for individual Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux servers and very small heterogeneous UNIX, Windows NT/2000, Mac OS X, Linux and Netware environments. A modular architecture allows NetVault: Backup Standard Edition to combine with BakBone’s plugin modules for enhanced features such as application data protection, disaster recovery, NDMP and open file protection.

Filemaker and Leopard compatibility
February 23, 2008
ATTENTION! - Filemaker Pro and Advanced versions are now Leopard compatible with the 9.0v3 update

SME Broadband for Mac users
February 23, 2008
We’d already partnered up with Zen for provision of all sorts of broadband and related services.

Have you got the power?
February 23, 2008
Those of us with a background that involved hours locked in a dank basement slaving over a hot Windows or Linux server will tell you that APC has long been the industry standard when it comes to anticipating and dealing with potential power failures, or conditioning the electricity supply to our computer systems.

No big DLT?
February 23, 2008
In case you missed it, Quantum, who are ultimately the driving force behind DLT and SDLT tape technologies, announced at the end of August that they would no longer be developing the technology.

Faster cheaper better storage is the Holy Grail?
February 22, 2008
Rob, from our Education team commented that one technical holy grail in eductaion is reasonably priced shared storage, able to move large files around quickly, such as required for editing HD video.