Archive for March, 2007

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9014621

Once virtualization takes hold, it can grow rapidly in many directions and become difficult to manage — a phenomenon that Matt Dattilo, vice president and CIO at PerkinElmer Inc. in Waltham, Mass., calls “VM creep.”

“You have servers here, servers there, but there’s no overall management or function in place. No one is keeping track of what is going on,” says Bruno Janssens, senior architect of infrastructure architectural services at The Hartford in Hartford, Conn.

Check out this article, it’s discussing problems with virtualization. In my experience, they were mainly non-technical, the ownership thing, charge back, support and being able to deliver, which although is a regular thing, is more so with virtualization as often promises about roll back, rapid deployment etc are made, those not being met can easily detract from your successes.

http://www.networkjack.info/blog/archives/35

Intel MacMinis - The OS X Blade Server

A really good client of ours has been colocating with us since late 2003. They’ve grown their web application from running on a Xserve 1.0Ghz DP G4 to an Xserve 2.0Ghz DP G5, then moving their database off to a separate big hardware RAIDed Dell server.

They came to us about a year ago (May 2006) and said they were getting a big new client who wanted to run their entire site on their system and they were going to need a load balanced system with plenty of power and scalability. Earlier in the year (Feb 2006), Apple had introduced their second generation MacMini that now sported the new Intel Core Duo chips along with Gigabit Ethernet. At that time, we were also concerned about increased power usage in our cage, so we picked up an Intel Mac Mini 1.66Ghz Core Duo, had it upgraded to 2GB of RAM (the G4’s could only handle 1GB) and started to really put it through it’s paces.

It turned out to be a real winner.

In terms of power consumption, no matter how hard I tried I could not make that Mini use more than 0.37A of power. I blasted that thing with multiple concurrent CPU and disk bound processes, getting really heavy loads and disk read/writes.

How cool is this? I’m glad to see someone’s tested it!

Mac Mini, the grid engine of the future? I’ve been thinking recently that Mac Mini’s or the tranquil pc would be more effective grid engines, they’re low maintenance, low initial cost and disposable, when the drive fails/memory fails etc a year or two down the road, home pc anyone?  The solution for your development/uat grid?

http://issj.sys-con.com/read/315218.htm

IBM and Intel are holding hands now over an initiative to push virtualization on multiprocessors, saying larger, more expandable MP servers deliver the best return on investment.

To prove their point, they’ve come up with a new virtualization benchmarking methodology called vConsolidate that runs multiple instances of consolidated database, mail, web and Java workloads in multiple virtual partitions on IBM’s industry-standard servers that’s supposed to simulate real-world server performance in a typical environment.

It’s supposed to help buyers compare processor platforms and system configurations and pick Intel over AMD.

This sounds fantastic, and might be an ideal way of scoping vmware machine capacity on set platforms. The larger multi processors servers are good, however, I do like the idea of blade servers for vmware, the volume aspect is what attracts me, coupled with the farm idea, the rackmounts you see could easily be cut up and allocated to a business line, give me a blade farm, generic shared infrastructure owned by IT for business service delivery.

http://www.siliconrepublic.com/news/news.nv?storyid=single8045

29.03.2007 - Earmarking server virtualisation as one of the key technologies to adopt in 2007, analysis firm iReach estimates that a third of Irish organisations will go down this route this year.

“IT buyers are becoming more and more aware of the benefits a virtualised environment can bring and with this in mind will invest in such technologies,” said Neil Brennan, an analyst with iReach said.

Very cool, virtualization is a fantastic tool for consolidation, or as another way of providing your server/desktop infrastructure for carbon neutral business, or in order to maximize the benefit from your hardware. Whether you use virtual iron/vmware or xen source, think about the strategy, the way you do business, virtualization can bring real benefits but only if your organizational processes are set up to do so, manage the delivery, users perceptions and focus on using the technology for the maximum benefit within your organizational constraints. Check out the article, it’s an interesting read.

http://www.edie.net/news/news_story.asp?id=12816&channel=0

Britain’s ‘biggest landlord’ to go carbon neutral (28 March 2007)

One of the United Kingdom’s largest property developers has pledged to become carbon neutral by 2008/9, according to a report published on Wednesday.

In its new Corporate Responsibility Report, British Land PLC outlines its initiatives aimed at reducing energy and associated CO2 emissions in landlord-controlled areas.

In 2006, energy usage reduced by 4% across the portfolio and water by 16 per cent. The biggest CO2 improvements came from the London Offices portfolio. Meadowhall Shopping Centre, one of British Land’s largest assets, reduced energy consumption by 11%. The report also sets ambitious targets for 2007 in areas including biodiversity, waste management and community involvement.

Very cool, moving towards Carbon neutral business is great for British Land and should encourage others to follow suit.