What a government crackdown on VPNs would look like, malware groups play the long game with browser extensions, a new major version of FreeBSD is released, and using a single database vs one DB per application or VM.

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ZFS Enabled Disaster Recovery for Virtualization

News/discussion

The VPN panic is only getting started

Stealthy browser extensions waited years before infecting 4.3M Chrome, Edge users with backdoors and spyware

FreeBSD 15.0-RELEASE Announcement

Free consulting

We were asked about using a single database vs one DB per application or VM.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

Google kept collecting sensor data even after bricking Nest thermostats, FreeBSD’s container support gets serious, and where to find cheap (or even dirt cheap) used hardware.

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How to Set Up a Highly Available ZFS Pool Using Mirroring and iSCSI

December Webinar: The 12 Days of ZFS: Tips, Tricks, and Treats

News/discussion

Google is collecting troves of data from downgraded Nest thermostats

FreeBSD Officially Supported in OCI Runtime Specification v1.3

Free consulting

We were asked about where to find cheap (or even dirt cheap) used hardware.

Tailscale

Tailscale is an easy to deploy, zero-config, no-fuss VPN that allows you to build simple networks across complex infrastructure. Go to tailscale.com/25a and try Tailscale out for free for up to 100 devices and 3 users, with no credit card required. Use code LATENIGHTLINUX for three free months of any Tailscale paid plan.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

Windows is becoming an “agentic OS”, some WD SMR drives are dying prematurely, backing up VMware with ZFS, and separating trusted and non-trusted devices on your network.

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Understanding Storage Performance Metrics

December Webinar: The 12 Days of ZFS: Tips, Tricks, and Treats

News/discussion

Microsoft is turning Windows into an ‘agentic OS,’ starting with the taskbar

Critics scoff after Microsoft warns AI feature can infect machines and pilfer data

WD launches investigation into problems with its controversial SMR hard drives

Free consulting

We were asked about backing up VMware with ZFS, and separating trusted and non-trusted devices on your network.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

Allan tells us about the recent OpenZFS Summit including inconsistent JBODs, more details about mixed disk sizes in ZFS with AnyRaid, an upcoming standard that allows you to keep using partially dead hard drives, Seagate’s roadmap for 50 and 100 TB drives, and NVMe connected mechanical drives. Plus using a separate mini PC for work.

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Building Enterprise-Grade Storage on Proxmox with ZFS

December Webinar: The 12 Days of ZFS: Tips, Tricks, and Treats

Free consulting

We were asked about using a separate mini PC for work.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

Why you should seriously consider buying refurbished hard drives, why drives might be lasting longer than they once did, Jim’s M.2 NVMe drive died at an inopportune moment, using multiple partitions on disks with ZFS.

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Advanced ZFS Dataset Management: Snapshots, Clones, and Bookmarks

November Webinar: ZFS Mastery: The Bits They Don’t Put in the Man Pages

News/discussion

Do Refurbished Hard Disks Make Sense For Your Home NAS Server?

Are Hard Drives Getting Better? Let’s Revisit the Bathtub Curve

Jim’s M.2 NVMe nightmare

Free consulting

We were asked about using multiple partitions on disks with ZFS.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

Why you should keep your Baseboard Management Controller off the network, ZFS is hard to defeat with a zip bomb, how bad the Internet bot problem probably is, and building a small home server cluster.

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Discussion

Supermicro server motherboards can be infected with unremovable malware

When a decompression ZIP bomb meets ZFS: 19 PB written on a 15 TB disk

Free consulting

We were asked about building a small home server cluster.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

It looks like the storage companies aren’t betting on the AI bubble lasting much longer, the arguments against self-hosting, and setting up a server for virtualization and containers.

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ZFS Performance Tuning in the Real World: ARC, L2ARC, and SLOG

Discussion

Expect HDD, SSD shortages as AI rewrites the rules of storage hierarchy — multiple companies announce price hikes, too

The Future is NOT Self-Hosted

Free consulting

We were asked about setting up a server for virtualization and containers.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

Windows 10 is officially end of life but Microsoft extends free updates for Windows 10 in Europe, it gets even harder to use a local account in Windows 11, and whether repurposing old server hardware is worth it.

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What the Future Brings – ZFS Features, Roadmap, and Innovations

News/discussion

Major backtrack as Microsoft makes Windows 10 extended security updates FREE for an extra year — but only in certain markets

Microsoft is plugging more holes that let you use Windows 11 without an online account

Free consulting

We were asked about repurposing old server hardware.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

A Red Hat breach leads to a leak of lots of sensitive customer data, Synology backs down on allowing third-party drives but they are removing features, and managing ZFS properties during replication.

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Optimizing ZFS for High-Throughput Storage Workloads

News

Red Hat fesses up to GitLab breach after attackers brag of data theft

Red Hat breach escalates as Crimson Collective recruits help

International Cyber Digest Twitter thread

Synology caves, walks back some drive restrictions on upcoming NAS models

Synology Removes Graphics Drivers and HEVC & H.264 HW Transcoding Support

Discontinuation Notice for HEVC (H.265), AVC (H.264), and VC-1 Transcoding on DSM and BeeStation OS Platforms

Free consulting

We were asked about managing ZFS properties during replication.

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.

The weird errors you see when your root partition is full, TikTok uses a lot of bandwidth by preloading videos, and dealing with a ZFS pool that won’t import.

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Keeping Data Safe with OpenZFS: Security, Encryption, and Delegation

News/discussion

Dark patterns killed my wife’s Windows 11 installation

TikTok video pre-loads cause ‘massive data wastage’

Free consulting

We were asked about dealing with a ZFS pool that won’t import.

Importing corrupted pool causes PANIC

Klara added additional diagnostics to ZFS to help investigate this issue, that shipped as part of 2.3.4

Klara also has a work-around to get past the errors, but it is likely to result in data loss if there are overlapping segments, or the leaking of free space when segments are not entirely removed (not to be attempted without a developer present)

See our contact page for ways to get in touch.