Bladewatch.com

http://home.businesswire.com/portal/site/google/index.jsp?ndmViewId=news_view&newsId=20070122005406&newsLang=en

DALLAS–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Today, SoftLayer Technologies announced the addition of a new datacenter designed to create maximum automation, efficiency and control in all facets of the outsourced environment. With over 500 watts per square foot and several hundred tons of cooling capacity, the new facility is created for mass deployment of infrastructure with a power rating of 12kW per rack. “Traditionally, legacy facilities average 80 to 100 watts per foot and are designed for 2kW per rack,” said Lance Crosby, President and CEO of SoftLayer. “Our new facility was engineered for mass scale hosting that includes a very dense server installation.”

Watching the next generation of datacenters is going to be interesting, which roads we go down, whether it’s energy efficiency, consolidation or virtualization, the standard questions to think about are, what temperature should the datacenter be? AC/DC? KVM or lights out?

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9009364&source=rss_topic52

January 29, 2007 (IDG News Service) — Virtualization software maker VMware Inc. is set to introduce a new version of its VMware Converter migration tool software, which facilitates setting up server virtualization on a computer.

VMware Converter 3 automates the physical-to-virtual (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion process for creating virtual machines from physical machines or from other virtual machines. It also works with virtual machines managed by other virtualization hypervisors.

Any tool/process/technology that can be used to aid the virtualization process, making physical to virtual migrations easier has got to be a good thing. The old process wasn’t difficult, but making it easier, breaks down the barriers to entering a virtual server estate, to moving towards a more dynamic on-demand type form of server provisioning, one where I can upgrade the virtual server memory without needing sign off, purchase orders, part numbers etc…  One where I can have the memory simply by reconfiguring the server and power cycling it.

The advantage of using blade pcs is that they provide a duality in purpose.  During the day 7-7, I can have the trader using them, getting the performance they need without complaints of warm legs etc, at night I can add them to my datasynapse grid, have low cost grid engines for up to 10hrs a day, with a pre-defined reboot at say 5am ready for the trader to log in and start work.

The beauty is that you’re already paying for the blades as desktops, therefore adding them to your grid need only be a license cost, and the loading of the grid application, activities that can be done out of hours, minimizing disruption to the end user. Indeed with the ClearCube dual processor, dual core Xeons or the HP workstation blades, you can get powerful grid engines, which will be great for your trader during the day, yet just as effective as grid engines overnight.

http://www.exchange-handbook.co.uk/index.cfm?section=news&action=detail&id=64636

GMP Securities Chooses ClearCube To Enhance Security On The Trading Floor And Benefit From Centralizing PC Resources – New PC Clients Provide End-Users The Power They Need While Maximizing Uptime
24/01/07

ClearCube Technology, the market leader in centralized computing solutions, today announced that investment dealer GMP Securities L.P., a subsidiary of GMP Capital Trust (TSX:GMP.UN), has selected ClearCube’s solutions to power its institutional sales and trading desktop computing environment. GMP Securities will now centralize its PC resources in the data center, eliminating security issues related to traditional PCs, which could be easily moved. In addition, the ClearCube solution provides the institutional equity sales and trading department with the desktop power it needs to do its job. The ClearCube solution provides 99.9-percent uptime and eliminates clumsy ergonomic issues related to multiple PCs on each professional’s desk.

Very cool, the article discusses ClearCube’s success in implementing a blade desktop solution in this investment organization.  It’s right, blade pcs provide significant improvements over the traditional pc. The ability to use the technology to reduce your costs, respond more quickly, be proactive and reduce downtime are key features of being a more responsive service provider; they are also key benefits of the blade pc technology, which I’ve written about before: http://www.bladewatch.com/2007/01/24/why-blade-pcsworkstations-save-me

http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=208059

New Program Represents ClearCube’s Move to 100 Percent Channel Sales and Enables Partners to Expand Revenues and Profit Margins While Addressing Rapid Growth for Centralized Computing Solutions

AUSTIN, TX — (MARKET WIRE) — January 29, 2007 — ClearCube Technology, the market leader in centralized computing solutions, today announced its Global Solution Partner Program, representing the Company’s move to a 100 percent focus on channel sales. The new worldwide program enables ClearCube solution partners to increase revenues and profit margins by capitalizing on the rapidly growing demand for centralized computing solutions. In addition, existing ClearCube customers will benefit from enhanced support from both ClearCube and its partners. “The enterprise is growing tired of traditional desktop computing and has begun to look aggressively at alternatives that provide better security, better reliability, lower cost of ownership, and produce less noise and heat in the office,” said Rob Enderle, president and principal analyst for the Enderle Group. “This, coupled with the need to provide employees with secure access to critical resources from wherever they are has shifted demand to new centralized computing solutions and away from traditional PCs. To stay competitive and grow market share, resellers and system integrators will need to quickly embrace these new centralized solutions or watch their customers move to other vendors who are being more responsive to these emerging IT requirements.”

ClearCube have been providing an excellent blade desktop pc, I know we’ve previously used them as the benchmark when carrying out testing on blade desktops to ratify them for internal use.  They’ve mastered a complete solution, and using blade pcs can provide your organization with a much easier and more cost effective way of supplying the desktop pc in a secure, scalable and reliable platform.

PRESS RELEASE BLADE Network Technologies Is Frontrunner in 10 Gigabit Ethernet Blade Networking With 15x Price/Performance Advantage Over Cisco

SANTA CLARA, CA — (MARKET WIRE) — January 29, 2007 — BLADE Network Technologies, Inc. (BLADE), the leading provider of network switching infrastructure for blade servers, announced the results of a Tolly Group test which shows that BLADE’s 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GE) native blade server switches deliver a 15x price/performance advantage over comparable Cisco Catalyst 6509 chassis-based switches. Test highlights for BLADE’s 10GE switches include:

– Up to 2x more throughput with 9x less latency than the Cisco Catalyst 6509 for all frame sizes at Layer 2 and Layer 3.

– BLADE 10GE switch achieves full line-rate, zero-loss throughput with 20 10GE ports in full-mesh configuration, for all frame sizes of 64 to 1,518 bytes.

– At just $24 per Gbps, BLADE’s 10GE switch offers by far the best price/performance value of any 10GE switch tested — compared with $375 per Gbps for the Cisco Catalyst 6509 equipped with comparable switching modules.

The 10gb ethernet can bring real benefits to the market, whether its for new media content streaming the latest movies, or for your monte carlo calculations application which needs super fast networking between the calculation engines.  It will be interesting to see this new technology put to real use.

Bladewatch.com web site flow diagram

A basic overview of the bladewatch site, how it works on a basic level. The web server makes a request to the transaction/application layer which then carries out the necessary tasks to access the data source to provide the content to the end user.
Bladewatch.com cluster diagram

I got an email from a colleague, talking about web services, and said that a couple of diagrams might be useful, so I published them as promised.

Check them out, if I’ve done anything wrong, apologies, email me and I’ll gladly update.

Obviously in the corporate world, their will be firewalls, network switches, load balancing tools/switches, and you’d probably find that the database/transaction server might be on a different platform, but the basic flow remains the same.

Is it time for Greenpeace and the other environmental groups to campaign for virtualization in organizations, and low power pcs for home/office?
Is it time for the large organizations to commit to virtualizing their server environments they can?  Is it time for the Corporate and Social Responsibility statements to include what their IT are doing to address the carbon footprint of their IT?

Is their such a thing as a green datacenter?

• True lights out
• Low power consuming servers?
• As much as possible in virtual sessions?
• Pay on use? / Pay per gigabyte?
• What do we do with blade farms? – those datacenters full of thousands of blades

Can the shareholders/consumers ask organizations what their datacenter strategy is? Are they going to continue leaving the lights and pcs on overnight?
Shouldn’t consumers be alerted to their own pcs energy impact on the environment?
That 1000w power supply for the gamer pc may make games ultra fast, but that’s nearly 4 ultra energy efficient pcs.

Shouldnt’ we be encouraging users to opt for the low power pcs?   (Look at the Dell Optiplex 745, it’s just as fast but also uses less power than the standard pc, check out their ultra small form factor.)

The question will be, for the next major upgrade, is this the opportunity to take away the desktop?  Is it the chance to go blade pc for those that need a pc, and thin client/citrix for those that don’t?Producing my own vista copy, consolidating and upgrading to blade pc, might be a little too much, but as with most things, when implementing new technology, new operating systems, new applications, then is often the time to change the way you do things, migrating a user from pc to blade pc with vista, is easier than vista upgrade (say one day rebuild time), then vista pc blade (1 day migration time or more).

Whether IT takes the opportunity to implement blade pcs or go down the citrix desktop is influenced by their budget, their datacenters and other limitations, it will be up to IT to see if Vista is their upgrade opportunity.

The banks tend to operate a year or more behind the latest desktop operating system because it’s proven and because the ‘desktop build’ process can take a long time.

Say you’re a typical investment bank, you’ve got branches all over the globe, you’ll have a central IT function with the responsibility of producing a ‘bank standard build’, that is windows with your own layered settings, themes, and office applications such as Microsoft Office, and your anti virus software. This version will need to include the drivers for the desktops out there, and the new ones you’re to adopt, it will need to be tested and benchmarked for performance, ‘the minimum supported desktop, and the  ‘standard desktop’ for deployments. Added to that you need to consider offering the 32bit and 64bit editions, both needing the same or similar or even different layered products, drivers etc.

This whole process might take a year or two, and once you’ve got a build, you then need it verified for different scenarios, beyond the firewall, on a laptop, in a trading room, in a remote site with a 64k link etc, and then verified for the different languages to support. All time consuming and cost creating exercises.

Vista might not be here for a while yet…