Welcome to The NAS Guy Blog
In the ever-evolving world of technology, where data rules supreme and innovations abound, finding your way through the digital labyrinth can be a daunting task. Whether you’re a seasoned tech enthusiast, a curious newcomer, or just someone looking to make sense of the rapidly changing tech landscape, “The NAS Guy” is here to be your guiding light.
Welcome to my tech-savvy haven where we unravel the mysteries of cloud computing, dive deep into storage solutions, explore the intricacies of data backup, and navigate everything in between. If you’ve ever found yourself lost in the jargon of terabytes, cloud migrations, or RAID arrays, fear not – you’re in the right place!
Recent Blog Posts
- Announcing AWS Well-Architected Agent, an AI-powered intelligence to optimize your cloud environment (preview)Today, we’re announcing the public preview of AWS Well-Architected Agent, an AI-powered service that analyzes your AWS environment to deliver targeted, contextual recommendations for improving your applications’ cost, security, performance, and resilience. The AWS Well-Architected Agent analyzes your infrastructure, understands unique business goals, and delivers contextual recommendations with ready-to-implement fixes. It delivers context-aware optimization without… Read more: Announcing AWS Well-Architected Agent, an AI-powered intelligence to optimize your cloud environment (preview)
- Start With What You Can Prove: Measuring the National Resilience StrategyEvery national strategy eventually runs into the same question: How do we know it’s working? October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and CISA has built this year’s campaign around “Securing the Next 250,” tying the country’s 250th anniversary to the work of protecting what comes after it. President Trump’s America First Resilience Strategy, released June 23,… Read more: Start With What You Can Prove: Measuring the National Resilience Strategy
- Amazon S3 Tables now support all Apache Iceberg V3 data typesAmazon S3 Tables now support all data types in the Apache Iceberg V3 specification. You can create V3 tables or upgrade existing V2 tables to take advantage of V3 features like deletion vectors, row lineage, and new data types such as variant, nanosecond timestamps, unknown, geometry, and geography. Apache Iceberg has become the open standard… Read more: Amazon S3 Tables now support all Apache Iceberg V3 data types
- Backup Software Hidden Costs Nobody MentionsKey takeaways Per-core licensing can charge more for the same job on denser hardware, while per-socket licensing penalizes spreading workloads across many small hosts. Storage and retention math, not the license line, is usually the most underestimated cost over a multi-year term. “Free” backup tools move the cost into setup, maintenance, and support, and those… Read more: Backup Software Hidden Costs Nobody Mentions
- Amazon S3 Vectors now supports metadata pre-filtering for higher recall on filtered searchesToday, we’re announcing metadata pre-filtering for Amazon S3 Vectors, which delivers higher recall on filtered queries by evaluating your metadata filter before the similarity search. You can filter on attributes such as tenant, category, status, or time, and pre-filtering adds prefix matching with $startsWith for paths, URLs, and hierarchical keys. Each vector carries up to… Read more: Amazon S3 Vectors now supports metadata pre-filtering for higher recall on filtered searches
- Stop Calling It Cloud Storage: What Actually Makes a Backup Copy Attack-ResistantOffsite, air-gapped, immutable, and recoverable are four different properties. Most backup strategies in Asia Pacific deliver one of them but assume they have all four. Ask an infrastructure team anywhere in Asia Pacific what their offsite backup copy protects against, and you will hear a different version of the same answer: A fire, a flood,… Read more: Stop Calling It Cloud Storage: What Actually Makes a Backup Copy Attack-Resistant
- From APL to STIG: What Government IT Leaders Need to Know About Backup Compliance and How to Stay Ahead of the CurveIf you’ve been managing IT infrastructure for a federal agency for any length of time, you know the U.S. Department of Defense Information Network Approved Products List (DoDIN APL). The APL has been the gold standard for procurement confidence: If a product was on the list, you had reasonable assurance it had been evaluated, tested,… Read more: From APL to STIG: What Government IT Leaders Need to Know About Backup Compliance and How to Stay Ahead of the Curve
- Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now supports direct querying of Apache Iceberg and Parquet data in your data lakeToday, we’re announcing a new capability for Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL that you can use to directly query operational data together with data stored in your data lake in Apache Iceberg and Apache Parquet formats, using your existing PostgreSQL applications and tools. By eliminating the need to extract, transform, and load (ETL) structured data from data… Read more: Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL now supports direct querying of Apache Iceberg and Parquet data in your data lake
- Celebrating Our Newest AWS Heroes – September 2026Today, we’re excited to introduce the newest members of the AWS Heroes program. AWS Heroes are a vibrant, worldwide group of AWS experts who go above and beyond to share knowledge, mentor others, and build thriving communities. These individuals make a real difference in helping developers and organizations succeed with AWS. This month, we welcome… Read more: Celebrating Our Newest AWS Heroes – September 2026
- Backup Features Small Business IT Admins Should DemandKey Takeaways Demand a full API (application programming interface) and CLI (command-line interface), not GUI (graphical user interface)-only operation. Scripting job creation, policy changes, and reporting keeps a one- or two-person team from drowning as the environment grows. One compromised admin credential shouldn’t be able to delete your backups. The control that prevents this needs… Read more: Backup Features Small Business IT Admins Should Demand
- Beyond OADP: What Regulated OpenShift Environments Need to Prove RecoveryThese days, it’s not enough to say an application is protected. Security, risk, and compliance teams want to know where a backup lives, who can access it, whether it can be changed or deleted, how consistently policy is applied, and when recovery was last tested. Backups are relatively straightforward, until someone asks you to prove… Read more: Beyond OADP: What Regulated OpenShift Environments Need to Prove Recovery
- AWS Weekly Roundup: GPT-6 Sol and Luna, Claude Opus 5.5 on Amazon Bedrock, Strands harness, and more (September 28, 2026)If there’s one theme that defined last week, it’s choice. The frontier models keep arriving, and the interesting question is no longer just “how smart is it?” but “which model fits this step, at this cost, at this latency?” That’s exactly what landed on Amazon Bedrock over the past few days: GPT-6 Sol and GPT-6… Read more: AWS Weekly Roundup: GPT-6 Sol and Luna, Claude Opus 5.5 on Amazon Bedrock, Strands harness, and more (September 28, 2026)
- Introducing enhanced custom event buses in Amazon EventBridge for enterprise-scale event-driven applicationsOrganizations building event-driven applications on Amazon EventBridge typically start with a single custom event bus in one account. This works well when a single team owns the architecture. As adoption grows across the organization, though, things get complicated. AWS best practices recommend a multi-account structure, which means each team runs in its own account. To… Read more: Introducing enhanced custom event buses in Amazon EventBridge for enterprise-scale event-driven applications
- Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Omni: collaborative AI-powered observability for your applicationsAmazon CloudWatch now offers CloudWatch Omni, an AI-powered observability experience for the applications and AI agents you run together. You reach Omni through a dedicated URL for your organization and sign in with the identities you already manage, so working in Omni does not require access to the AWS Management Console. Omni is built on… Read more: Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Omni: collaborative AI-powered observability for your applications
- Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Omni: AI-powered observability for generative AI and agentic workloadsToday, Amazon CloudWatch introduces CloudWatch Omni, a unified observability experience for application and AI workloads that is app-centric, AI-powered, built on open standards, and delivered off-console. CloudWatch Omni is a purpose-built observability, evaluation, and experimentation solution for AI agents. It helps teams design, evaluate, and operate AI agents across any model provider, framework, or runtime,… Read more: Introducing Amazon CloudWatch Omni: AI-powered observability for generative AI and agentic workloads
- AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS Builder Center mobile apps, Amazon Connect Talent GA, Amazon Corretto 27, and more (September 21, 2026)Living in the Netherlands, I spend a fair amount of time on trains, and that is usually where I catch up on what the builder community is writing. Until now, that meant opening a laptop or squinting at a browser tab on my phone. This week I found myself scrolling through trending articles and checking… Read more: AWS Weekly Roundup: AWS Builder Center mobile apps, Amazon Connect Talent GA, Amazon Corretto 27, and more (September 21, 2026)
- New low-cost burstable Amazon EC2 T8i instances are generally availableToday, we’re announcing the general availability of new low-cost burstable Amazon EC2 T8i instances powered by custom sixth generation Intel Xeon Scalable Processors (Granite Rapids), available only on AWS. T8i instances are among the lowest-cost EC2 instances and deliver up to 30% better price performance over previous generation T3 instances. These instances are designed to… Read more: New low-cost burstable Amazon EC2 T8i instances are generally available
- AWS Elastic Beanstalk introduces Cluster ModeSince the first launch of AWS Elastic Beanstalk in 2011, customers have deployed full-stack applications in Java, .NET, Python, Node.js, PHP, Ruby, and Go, trusting Elastic Beanstalk to manage deployment and infrastructure operations so they could focus on business logic. Fifteen years later, that trust has only deepened, and the service has been rebuilt to… Read more: AWS Elastic Beanstalk introduces Cluster Mode
- Backup Features Small Businesses Should DemandKey Takeaways A completed backup job isn’t the same as a verified recovery point. One confirms data was copied, while the other confirms it’ll actually restore. Immutability only holds if the storage layer enforces it outside the backup console an attacker would log into. AI-assisted detection and automated fix suggestions can stand in for the… Read more: Backup Features Small Businesses Should Demand
- AWS reimagines the getting started experienceAmazon Web Services (AWS) started with a handful of foundational infrastructure services such as Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS), so that anyone with an idea could start building. As the world’s largest companies and governments adopted AWS, they asked for features… Read more: AWS reimagines the getting started experience
- AI Agent Error Recovery: How to Detect, Protect, and Undo AI Agent ActionsKey Takeaways AI agents fail by taking the wrong action, not by throwing an error. The failure shows up as a change in your environment, not a line in a log. Controlling it breaks into three parts: Detect where AI and its risks live, protect systems with policy and access controls, and undo what slips… Read more: AI Agent Error Recovery: How to Detect, Protect, and Undo AI Agent Actions
- NetApp and Veeam Advancing Data Resilience TogetherEvery organization now runs on data it cannot afford to lose. As data estates expand and cyber risk grows, resilience strategies must simplify operations, reduce risk, and protect business continuity. Ransomware, outages, cloud migrations, and hypervisor changes all raise the stakes, but many storage and backup integrations are thin partnerships assembled after the fact. Veeam… Read more: NetApp and Veeam Advancing Data Resilience Together
- Silent Ransom Group: Zero-Encryption Cyber ExtortionAn employee takes a call from a friendly voice claiming to be internal IT. The caller is following up on an issue and finishing it should only take a few minutes. The employee cannot recall opening a ticket, and with work waiting, they download the “help tool” as instructed, approve remote access to the computer,… Read more: Silent Ransom Group: Zero-Encryption Cyber Extortion
- AWS Weekly Roundup: OpenAI GPT-6 Astra on Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Quick desktop GA, Kiro for students, and more (September 14, 2026)There’s a particular energy to mid-September in New York. Pumpkin spice lattes are flowing, temperatures are dropping, and it’s nearly sweater weather. The city is back at full speed, and so is the AWS launch calendar. This week that energy showed up in a new frontier model on Amazon Bedrock, a desktop app for Amazon… Read more: AWS Weekly Roundup: OpenAI GPT-6 Astra on Amazon Bedrock, Amazon Quick desktop GA, Kiro for students, and more (September 14, 2026)
- Veeam Expands Palo Alto Networks Cortex Integrations for Deeper Investigation and ResponseSecurity teams rely on signals from across the environment to understand and respond to cyber threats. But critical activity within the backup environment can remain disconnected from the tools and workflows used by the SOC. The Veeam App for Palo Alto Networks helps close that gap by bringing Veeam backup and security events, recovery context,… Read more: Veeam Expands Palo Alto Networks Cortex Integrations for Deeper Investigation and Response
- Introducing Amazon EBS Volume Clones across AWS accountsLast year, we introduced Volume Clones of Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), a new capability that lets you create instant point-in-time copies of your EBS volumes within the same Availability Zone. Today, we are extending Volume Clones with cross-account copy, so you can create copies of your EBS volumes into other AWS accounts and… Read more: Introducing Amazon EBS Volume Clones across AWS accounts
- Disaster Recovery You Can Prove, Not Just PlanEvery organization has a DR plan. It’s probably documented somewhere, maybe even recently updated. But there’s a question that most backup admins know the answer to and would rather not be asked: when was the last time you actually proved it works? That gap between “documented” and “proven” is where disaster recovery falls apart. Not… Read more: Disaster Recovery You Can Prove, Not Just Plan
- How to Upgrade to Veeam Data Platform v13.1 in Four Simple StepsYou’re here, so you already know V13.1 has landed and you want in. The only question left is how to get updated without giving up your evenings or weekends. Good news is, you can get things up and running in just four steps, and most of the work happens before you even run the installer.… Read more: How to Upgrade to Veeam Data Platform v13.1 in Four Simple Steps
- No Backup Gap: Introducing Veeam Backup & Replication-Native OpenShift ProtectionAvoid the protection gap – VBR has your back Picture this: You just migrated your first virtual machine (VM) from VMware vSphere to your Red Hat OpenShift cluster. You check the OpenShift console. The VM is live and happily serving production workloads. Looks perfect. Nothing seems wrong. But wait. Is it actually protected? What about… Read more: No Backup Gap: Introducing Veeam Backup & Replication-Native OpenShift Protection
- AWS Weekly Roundup: Claude Fable 5.1 on AWS, Amazon Linux 2027 preview, AWS Certified AI Business Strategist, and more (September 7, 2026)Last week, Claude Fable 5.1 became available on AWS. According to Anthropic, Claude Fable 5.1 delivers frontier intelligence for ambitious tasks across coding, scientific research, and enterprise workflows. Claude Fable 5.1 is built for long-running, high-stakes work that runs for hours and spans many applications. It can own more of a software project on its… Read more: AWS Weekly Roundup: Claude Fable 5.1 on AWS, Amazon Linux 2027 preview, AWS Certified AI Business Strategist, and more (September 7, 2026)