Archive for June, 2007
BMW uses HPC to improve results
http://www.silicon.com/retailandleisure/0,3800011842,39167668,00.htm
The BMW-Sauber Formula One team is making good use of its very own supercomputer, Albert 2, as it moves up the Formula One pecking order.
The team has been using Albert 2, developed in association with Intel, since the end of last year to develop the aerodynamics for its 2007 car using computational fluid dynamics (CFD), a complex simulation process which requires considerable computing power.
And the hard work is paying off on the track with the team currently at third in the 2007 World Championship after a fifth-place finish last term.
Very cool, it’s always interesting to hear how the different businesses are using the technology, I know BMW were talking about grid at some point, check out the article.
HP is the number 1 supercomputing provider?
PALO ALTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced that it ranks as the No. 1 supercomputing provider on the TOP500 Supercomputer list,(1) which catalogs the world’s 500 most powerful installed technical and commercial computer systems.
With 203 entries, representing more than 40 percent of the posted sites, HP has more installations on the TOP500 list than any other vendor.
Due to the strong momentum of the powerful HP BladeSystem c-Class servers, HP increased its share on this exclusive list by nearly 10 percent compared to its November 2006 ranking. HP Cluster Platform 3000BL and 4000BL systems based on HP BladeSystem c-Class servers accounted for 152 entries on the list.
Check this out, granted it’s a statement from HP, but it’s always interesting to see what’s going on, what kind of things HP are up to using blades to deliver a solution for their customers, it mentions a Swedish government agency has deployed 2000 or so C-Class blade cluster, very cool.
Open Solaris to get clustering support
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-06/sunflash.20070627.1.xml
SANTA CLARA, Calif. June 27, 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc., (NASDAQ: SUNW), announced it will release the Solaris Cluster source code through the HA (High Availability) Clusters community on the OpenSolaris site. Sun is releasing the Open High Availability Cluster in response to interest and feedback from the OpenSolaris community. For the first time, developers will be able to participate in the evolution of the software itself, as well as leverage the open source cluster technology to develop and support highly available application services.
“Sun is releasing this code to the community to accelerate innovation around clustered solutions, in a world moving quickly to scale-out architectures. When applied to Solaris or other technologies, the Solaris clustering code is a great base to support clustered and HA systems innovation throughout the community,” said Rich Green, executive vice president, Software, Sun Microsystems, Inc. “The Open HA Cluster code allows open source developers to use the same Solaris HA infrastructure that powers enterprises’ most mission critical applications with their open source and network facing applications and services.”
Sun’s first contributions are application modules, or agents, which enable open source or commercially available applications to become highly available in a cluster environment.
Very cool, this brings extra functionality to the Sun Open Solaris operating system which has to be a good thing for the customer, it will be interesting to see how it evolves as a technology as well as from a features standpoint once it becomes part of the open source - might new features/enhancements be added that customers need?
RBS to press ahead with the deal it says
http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1004162007
THE consortium led by Royal Bank of Scotland is believed to be considering a revised bid for ABN Amro which does not involve its US arm - if the group’s original bid collapses following a court ruling in Holland next month.
Sources close to the firm say the bank should not be ruled out of the bidding battle for ABN, and a lower bid for the bank without US arm LaSalle may be on the cards.
The talk comes after Dutch Advocate General Vino Timmerman advised the Dutch Supreme Court yesterday to sanction ABN’s disputed £10.5 billion sale of LaSalle to Bank of America without allowing ABN shareholders a vote on the matter. If the court takes his advice, RBS’s £48bn consortium bid, will collapse, with Barclays, which has an agreed £45bn takeover bid for ABN, holding the initiative.
We’ll need to see what happens in the next day, the interesting thing is that RBS seem to be prepared to proceed if the original deal is not successful, very cool. Check it out.
Backing up a virtual infrastructure
http://weblog.infoworld.com/virtualization/archives/2007/06/virtualization_28.html
For those of us living and breathing the datacenter life day in and day out, we know the value of our last good backup of data… you know the one, the one right before a major catastrophe strikes and someone in the organization decided it was “OK” to delete payroll data or source code.
Check out this podcast, backing up the virtual machines, and the ESX servers is something you need to think about when considering virtualization. Consider it’s only a few mouse clicks to delete the data, but quite possibly a lot more work to restore it.
HP and Microsoft are clustering windows
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/26/ms_hp_hpc/
HP and Microsoft have decided to hold hands as they go after the high performance computing (HPC) market.
Already the tightest of chums, the two vendors have extended an existing sales and marketing pact to the HPC arena. That means HP and Microsoft will whack you with a double-sided hammer, touting the wonders of HP’s clusters and Microsoft’s Windows Computer Cluster Server (CCS) 2003. The channel will have a chance to join in the fun as well, according to the vendors.
Very cool this should aid the adoption of Windows Compute Cluster Server, and makes sense if you’re using Windows as the operating system for your grid/hpc platform. By adding this operating system to the HP offering, it allows HP to offer the associated licensing discounts that are offered if the machine is dedicated to one task and 64bit. Check it out.
Sun Grid (Network.com) releases new CDOsheet application
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2007-06/sunflash.20070627.2.xml
AC Capital Partners Limited Selects the New CDOSheet Application Available from Network.com for Structured Credit Portfolio Management
SANTA CLARA, Calif. June 27, 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced the availability of a Dynamic On Demand financial risk simulation and pricing service from Network.com offered by CDO2, a provider of innovative pricing and risk technology for organizations trading structured credit products.
The new version of CDOSheet application, available from Network.com, delivers the latest pricing models and risk analysis technology to AC Capital Partners Limited and other customers in a secure and cost effective way. Financial modelers can now run simulations directly from their desktops without any awareness of the advanced grid computing technologies powering the service as the application utilizes newly introduced Sun Grid Compute Utility features, including programmatic access to the grid and secure bidirectional data transfers over the Internet, that make grid applications easy to deploy and transparent to the end user.
Very cool, granted not every financial institution is going to switch to network.com, but the additional application brings opportunities to the service which has to be a good thing. There has been a lot of excitement in the CDO/risk analytics arena in the investment bank sector, so adding this function might open new opportunities for network.com and show Sun systems/solutions running a CDO application.
The iPhone has GPRS right?
http://www.smstextnews.com/2007/06/the_apple_iphone_-_predictions_before_the_rush.html
I’ve been watching the iPhone commentary with interest, and was pleased to see smstextnews mention it and what they thought of it. I’d love to play with one, to see what it’s like, compare it (for email etc) to my Nokia E61, I sense it would sync effortlessly and just be a bit more reliable than Symbian - it sometimes gets emotional with me.
The only thing I’ve noticed after reading the article and checking the Apple site is it lacks GPRS. Their site says WiFi, Edge and bluetooh.
Isn’t that olden days? Is this just a US thing or are we going to have the iPhone GPRS-less, not being funny, but having had GPRS, dial up seems a bit olden days, a bit boring, and saying you’ve got wireless is fine, but not everywhere has wireless in the UK, and many places continue to charge for it.
Blade.org announces Venture Capital Advisory Board
http://www.blade.org/pressrelease.cfm?RecordID=69
Avnet to support member companies with solutions and channel enablement consultations
San Francisco, Calif. , June 27, 2007 — Blade.org, the industry consortium driving innovation in blade-based solutions, today announced its new Venture Capital Advisory Board to provide strategic guidance to Blade.org members on the future of blade technologies and strategies. Founding members of the VC Advisory Board will consist of leaders and influencers from key industry VC firms including Accel, Intel Capital, Mayfield, U.S. Venture Partners (USVP) and Walden International.
Blade computers integrate servers, storage, networking and applications into one system. The blade server market is rapidly expanding as more customers look for the flexibility and ease of management blade computing offers, giving them a competitive advantage in the marketplace. With the blade server market predicted to grow from $3B to $11B by 20101, the global venture capital community has invested over $1B in the last two years to fund companies developing emerging technologies and solutions in this rapidly growing market.
Very cool, the more partners and solution providers that come to market offering blade and non-blade based solutions, the more we evolve the platforms, the more we can make the IT a genuine business enabler. On the blade front, having a venture capital advisory board allows blade.org members to gain valuable insight into the market place, the industry, maybe even where things are going, where your product/service might fit? How great would it be if this board was able to find companies like Teradici, help them with developing their products and moving them forward?
Why Vista is good for business - but they’re a secret apparently
http://apcmag.com/6458/dont_wait_for_vista_sp1_pleads_microsoft
Microsoft has launched a “fact rich” program to help customers understand why they should “proceed with confidence” in rolling out Vista across all their PCs.
“Some customers may be waiting to adopt Windows Vista because they’ve heard rumors about device or application compatibility issues, or because they think they should wait for a service pack release,” the company said in a newsletter.
Very cool, I’ve been speaking with a number of people in small/medium sized businesses and a few banks, and I hear that one of the challenges is justifying Vista as a platform, as a reason to upgrade.
Not that Vista is particularly bad, but many of the banks have recently completed a Windows XP migration, with it being completed only in the last few months, getting anyone to consider a new windows desktop roll out can seem like a difficult activity, but a necessary one, the sooner we upgrade, the less issues we’ll have with support, the less shock we’ll have when Microsoft downgrade XP support.
It’s a shame you appear to need to sign a non disclosure agreement to read the fact rich reasons for rolling out Vista, I think had Microsoft offered this more publicly it might give IT managers/architect the information/ideas they might need.
Thanks a bunch for your help on this, because I had totally forgot how to do it. Once I made ...
Can you tell more? 
Yes the iPhone does have GPRS, where the 3G, or EDGE logo is may sometimes switch to a little circle. ...
in my company we have had huge problems outsourcing, all the departments we have outsourced are now suffering and we ...
Hello everyone ! Can anyone tell me what is the estimated value of this green datacenter complex ? And when ...
Yes, outsourcing can bring challenges to us, especially for the owners. Even before there are lots of challenges in outsourcing. 
Internet protection is a must for business security and data integrity. Electronic Banking 
We are in the process of doing much the same; decommissioning our relatively old installations at Docklands in favour of ...