Archive for July, 2007

http://news.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/0,1000000091,39288302,00.htm?r=1

Intel has teamed up with the Server System Infrastructure Forum group to release a new set of design specifications for blade server platforms.

Dubbed the Modular Server Specifications, it outlines details on designing the “compute blade, mezzanine card — also known as the I/O card — [and] system management”, said Patrick Buddenbaum, blades marketing director of Intel’s digital enterprise group.

The new set of design specifications will help to simplify and lower the cost of research and development of blade server products, built specifically for the small and medium-sized business space, Buddenbaum explained.

Excellent news, this should further standardize the blade platform and allow the platform to be evolved for the different markets which has to be a good thing for the market, check it out.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/Infotech/Hardware/Dell_starts_its_first_Indian_manufacturing_unit/articleshow/2244388.cms

NEW DELHI: World’s largest computer maker, Dell Inc Monday kicked-off its first manufacturing unit in Sriperumbudur, Tamil Nadu, with an initial investment of about $30 million spread over five years.

The new facility would have an initial capacity of producing 40,000 desktop computers a year that constitute almost 75 per cent of the company’s India business and then go on to make other products.

Great news for Dell, I keep reading about India and other countries in the region being the next big markets, by targeting these markets, Dell should be able to meet demand and better target its machines for the target market, very cool.

http://blogs.technet.com/josebda/archive/2007/07/27/a-core-install-of-windows-server-2008-has-no-explorer-or-mmc-but-it-s-not-character-mode-either.aspx

A Core install of Windows Server 2008 has no Explorer or MMC, but it’s not character mode either

Everyone that is experimenting with Windows Server 2008 is excited about the Server Core installation, which is a minimal install of the Server that can run specific roles (like DNS, Active Directory or File Server) with a much smaller footprint and attack surface. A Core install is indeed much smaller than a Full install both in memory and on disk. In fact, if you install both versions using Virtual PC, the difference in size between the two resulting VHD files is quite dramatic. Using the Windows Server 2008 Enterprise Beta 3 my VHD size was about 5.9 GB for a Full and only 1.6 GB for the Core install. Using the Windows Server 2008 June CTP release (also known as IDS3) the VHD size for the Full was around 4.5 GB and the Core was under 1.4 GB.

However, I see that some people expect to find a character-mode only interface and that’s just not the case. It is true that you get a command prompt after you log on and there’s no explorer.exe or iexplore.exe on the hard drive. However, it is still a graphical environment and you do get a logon screen that looks exactly the same as the Full install of Windows Server 2008. In fact, that command prompt appears to you in a window, and you can open multiple command windows at the same time by using “start /w cmd”.

Check out this post, it’s talking about the next version of Windows including the Core version which looks very cool.

http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,135233-c,companynews/article.html

Cisco last week unveiled its next-generation data center strategy along with a key product to support that vision at its annual Networkers conference.

Called Data Center 3.0, the plan is intended to enable customers to better utilize their data center resources, build less-expensive storage-area networks and enhance data security. Among other features, it involves melding disparate data center networking technologies — Ethernet, Fibre Channel and Infiniband — into a single fabric for connecting and virtualization of network elements.

Cisco launched Data Center 3.0 on the heels of HP’s US$1.6 billion acquisition of data center automation vendor Opsware. HP says Opsware will allow it to offer its customers a “comprehensive and fully integrated solution for IT automation.”

Anything Cisco can do to aid in the Data Center efficiency drive and with virtualization has to be a good thing, it will be interesting to see what the industry response is, and what goods/services Cisco launches as part of this strategy, check it out, an interesting read.

I met an IT Manager from one of the smaller banks, as with previous interviews, the manager and the company involved are not mentioned for privacy.

I wanted to talk to him about virtualization, what are his key issues at the moment, what are his objectives, and how do these objectives fit with the business need? We conducted the conversation over lunch last Friday and here are the results, it was informal and apologies to ‘Mike’ if I have missed anything we discussed.

Thanks for doing this, tell me about your server estate.

Sure, we’ve got about 600 windows servers which are running on Dell and HP servers, we’ve recently made the switch to Dell due to price and value, though I’m yet to be convinced, it’s not that there’s anything wrong with them, far from it, they’re working fine and haven’t given us any problems, it’s just that we’ve used Compaq/HP for years so the experience in supporting them is there, and the driver packs, the documentation from HP has always been very good.

We run Windows 2000, we’re about to start a Windows 2003 migration, and in the process tidy up any remaining Windows NT4 boxes, we’ve got a few print servers and a couple of domain controllers that are still in use, they really need replaced.

The servers we support are a mixture of application and infrastructure/market data servers, so we basically look after any Windows server that pings, ensuring that they conform (as close as possible) to the standard build, with the same kind of security/access configurations to ensure maintenance and support is less complicated.

What’s been a challenge for you recently?

Actually it’s been a mixture of things, firstly, security patching, we’ve got 600 servers to deal with, all running on different platforms with different layered components, managing the patching of several versions of Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and SQL is time consuming, it’s not technically difficult, just getting the downtime from everyone, doing adequate testing, and getting people on site can be quite challenging at times. Secondly, would be data center space, I’m not in the data center planning team, but I am aware that we need to be careful with the number of servers we’re putting in, at the moment we’re growing the estate by about 5% a month which we can cope with, but at some point we’re going to have to look at how we provision the servers in the near future, for now it’s not my problem.

What actions have you taken to deal with security patching?

We’ve established a patch window for every server an agreed day during the weekend when the server can be patched and an associated slot, morning, afternoon and evening; the business teams select a slot on a Saturday or a Sunday with morning/afternoon/evening, and the server is patched (ideally) within that time slot.  Also we’ve tried different ways of patching, we’ve ended up using a mixture of SMS and in-house written scripts to achieve this dependent on the server, for example internally SMS is fine, for the market data systems, we use a scripted cdrom, plug the cd in/mount the virtual cd image, and run a script which scans the box and deploys the patches.

You mention data center space not being your problem - is this really the case?

We need to be careful with data center space, but ultimately if we need more space, we’ll just need to get it. We’re driven by what the business wants.

Have you looked at virtualization?

I’m not a big fan of virtualization, I’ve heard too many disaster stories, I don’t like the shared ownership aspect, 1 server with 12 virtual instances? What about downtime/maintenance/changes to the ESX server?

I’d rather wait and watch the technology evolve to something more manageable and stable.

What are you doing to be proactive?

We’ve implemented monitoring of the server hardware using HP Systems Insight Manager (and the Dell equivalent), we’re also at the moment deploying the Microsoft MOM on the servers so that we can monitor the estate more effectively, to try and see where a fault is occurring, to respond to it and prevent it from happening if we can.

Have you been concerned with energy efficiency of the server?

I’m interested, but at the same time, I feel it’s just a marketing ploy to sell more servers and to be honest the business want the fastest systems they can get for their requirement, energy efficiency is a problem for the data center guys, we’ll help where we can, but I’ll leave those kind of issues to the CIO/Data Center guys.