Archive for August, 2007
August 31, 2007 at 11:09 am · Filed under Grid, Other things
http://www.informationweek.com/blog/main/archives/2007/08/gear6_aims_to_s.html
For most applications, the storage industry is fairly adept at delivering requisite performance. All, that is, except for large data set processing. Think: Financial market modeling, or digital image rendering, or seismic analysis for the gas and oil industry. For these applications, thousands of servers churn away for days before the job is finished. And when there’s a lot of data fetching, the speed of the storage system is critical, and in most cases, currently inadequate. Gear6 thinks it can help.
The company has been around since 2002 but has been focused on the problem of storage access speed since 2005. Announced in June, but shipping since January, its cacheFX products sit in front of NFS filers (CIFS and other protocols are on the road map)with lots of networking bandwidth and lots of cache memory. Lots.
This article is talking about Gear6’s CacheFX product, and the need for fast storage, an interesting read, check it out, this kind of thing is increasingly important in the grid/hpc solution where data manipulation and distribution can be a key part of the solution.
August 31, 2007 at 11:07 am · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.vnunet.com/computing/news/2197221/citi-build-green-centre
US banking giant Citi is spending €170m (£115.6m) on a new green data centre in Frankfurt, Germany.
The installation is due to be completed in March 2008, and will provide IT services for Citi’s operations in Europe.
‘We were able to create a green facility within the same capital cost as that of a conventional data centre. In addition the lower operating cost over the life cycle of the building is significant,’ said Sue Harnett, head of German operations for Citi.
The new centre will save 25 per cent on electricity consumption compared with existing data facilities, cutting 16,000 megawatt hours a year. And up to 11,000 fewer tons of carbon dioxide will escape into the atmosphere than from a convential data centre of the same size, said Citi.
Good data center design and management can bring real returns on investment, savings in energy costs, ‘your data center carbon footprint’ and your operating costs. Coupling that with energy efficient servers, SAN boot, maybe DC power and virtualization, and you could significantly reduce the energy required to power your server estate whilst meeting the busienss need.
August 31, 2007 at 11:05 am · Filed under Abn Amro merger
http://business.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1384782007
THE Royal Bank of Scotland consortium bidding 71 billion (£48bn) to take over ABN Amro is understood to have examined the implications the volatile debt market and equity market conditions might have on its bid - but has decided it does not threaten its offer, despite dramatic falls in banking shareprices.
It comes as City banking analysts said the odds still favoured the consortium’s bid not being derailed, although it was impossible to rule it out categorically.
A source close to Belgo-Dutch bank Fortis, RBS’s partner along with Banco Santander of Spain, told The Scotsman yesterday: “The current conditions have been taken into consideration, but they are not a concern at present.”
One banking analyst said: “You cannot categorically state there is no danger to the consortium bid, but I don’t think there is too much. Look at the size of the three banks combined, and that is a lot of financial firepower that lending banks will have confidence in.”
There’s been a lot in the news as a result of the subprime mortgage market failing and issues resulting in banks’ liquidity. We’ll see the stock market goes up and down, it’s part of the cost of doing business, going forward the shareholders need to decide which deal represents the best return on investment, at that point in time.
In the meantime, there was also this article:
http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2007/08/rabobank_attracts_abn_amro_cli.php
Tens of thousands of ABN Amro customers have switched to Rabobank because of the ongoing takeover battle for ABN Amro, claims Rabobank.
Rabobank says some 500 people a day, on top of the normal traffic, are opening an account with one of its branch offices.
Between April to July, 40,000 people opened a Rabobank account, chairman Bert Heemskerk was quoted as saying in the Financieele Dagblad.
Check out this article, it’s talking about ABN Amro customers switching to Rabobank, these kind of things are always debatable, it does highlight the point however, that the sooner the transaction is completed, the better for the ABN customers, employees and shareholders.
August 31, 2007 at 10:57 am · Filed under virtualization
http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,136617-c,nonwindowsoss/article.html
Hosted desktop pioneer Nivio has taken an undisclosed investment from AMD to help it work on its ambition of making virtual Windows XP desktops and software accessible from any connected device — even a Linux PC or a smartphone.
The Nivio service uses virtualization to provide users with a virtual PC, which they can configure and even synchronize with their own PC, if they have one. The virtual PCs are hosted on AMD servers at data centers in Geneva and New Delhi, and streamed out over broadband.
Nivio says it can stream a Windows XP desktop, complete with applications, to any device with a compatible web browser. Software — including Adobe and Microsoft applications — can be rented by the month, so users don’t have to purchase a package that’s only needed for the duration of a short project, said the company’s founder Sachin Duggal.
Very cool, virtualization of the desktop remains a great way to reduce your software support issues, as well as reduce the hardware purchase/leasing and energy costs. Interestingly though, with the ability to provide on demand applications in the example above, how does this leave the traditional client/server relationship? Bringing in new functionality often means not only do we need the processes to monitor, to license and deliver these applications, we need to be able to update our billing processes as well, that I could provide a user with a pc for a month, for a day is great, but only if my billing can accommodate it, if my infrastructure can manage who has access to what application, how much they are using it, and how do we license it?
August 31, 2007 at 10:48 am · Filed under blades
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/prnewswire/AQTH11430082007-1.htm
SUNNYVALE, Calif., Aug. 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — With a new CEO at its helm, SGI completed its fiscal year 2007 with the launch of a breakthrough blade system purpose-built for high-performance computing (HPC), while racking up significant customer wins across SGI’s server and storage product lines. The company also released financial results for the Fiscal Year 2007 today, http://www.sgi.com/company_info/investors/.
The company’s fourth quarter, which ended June 29, was SGI’s first fiscal quarter under the leadership of Bo Ewald, who was named CEO in April. Working with SGI’s leadership and global workforce, Ewald has focused on positioning SGI for sustainable long-term growth and innovation through delivery of uniquely competitive, customer-focused solutions.
New products and industry alliances
In June, SGI unveiled SGI(R) Altix(R) ICE 8200, the first in a new line of bladed servers designed to close the growing gap between performance and user productivity. Built to accommodate large and varied scale-out workloads, SGI Altix ICE delivers the advantages of blade computing without forcing users to accept compromises in price/performance, power and space efficiency, reliability and manageability. Its ultra-dense rack architecture delivers up to 40 percent more compute performance per floor tile than competing blades. Meanwhile, the Altix ICE system’s highly efficient design minimizes demands on the data center’s space and power, helping to relieve the growing burden of housing, powering and cooling today’s HPC systems.
Very cool, it’s good to see how the SGI blade solution is doing, the more alternatives in the blade landscape there are, the more effective the blade solution can be as the users can choose the right configuration and the right platform for their business, check it out.
August 30, 2007 at 11:46 am · Filed under Other things
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/08/29/announcing-the-windows-vista-service-pack-1-beta.aspx
Now is the time and the time is now: let’s talk about Windows Vista Service Pack 1 (SP1). Much has been made of what will or will not be included in SP1 and when it will be released (some accurate, some otherwise). I’m here to set the story straight: we’re in the process of developing and deploying a Beta version of SP1. This post will describe for you what to expect from that effort and how you can be involved in the process.
It wil be interesting to see what benefits the Vista service pack brings, it’ll no doubt feature bug fixes and enhancements as with any service pack, I suspect Vista adoption moving forward whether in the virtualized or physical desktop will increase once the service pack for Vista is released.
August 30, 2007 at 11:44 am · Filed under Other things, blades
http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/articles/marketwire/0296425.htm
IBM (NYSE: IBM) today introduced a new version of the breakthrough computing system based on the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell/B.E.) — the IBM BladeCenter® QS21 — that delivers twice the memory, density and I/O throughput as well as enhances power efficiency and the ability to work with existing IT infrastructure for both current and new customers. Also announced today is the IBM Software Development Kit (SDK) for Multicore Acceleration Version 3.0 — the cornerstone of the Cell/B.E. software ecosystem and developer enablement program.
The IBM BladeCenter® QS21 is the width of one blade computing system, allowing a customer to fit a maximum of 14 IBM BladeCenter® QS21’s per BladeCenter chassis as opposed to only seven with the previous version — effectively doubling the compute density. As well the QS21 offers an additional two gigabytes of I/O buffer memory, a feature that was not available on the previous version of the product. The I/O throughput of the IBM BladeCenter® QS21 — a measurement of the ability for data to travel in and out of the system — supports 16 lanes of single data rate Infiniband.
These new products — available in October — will bring the multicore acceleration technology made possible by the Cell/B.E. processor to clients and developers in a wide range of industries, including those that create and run highly visual, graphic and immersive, real-time applications such as 3D rendering, compression, and encryption. Multicore acceleration is the ability to harness the power of multiple computing cores to manage these specific types of applications with a high degree of power and cost efficiency.
Very cool, I’ve been reading and hearing very good things about the Cell processor, and IBM bringing out new Blades based on the Cell processor brings new opportunities, particularly in the grid/hpc and video processing areas, it will be interesting to see what user experiences there are with these blades.
August 29, 2007 at 9:12 pm · Filed under datacenter, environment
http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-28-2007/0004652897&EDATE=
LONDON, ON, Aug. 28 /PRNewswire/ - Government needs to take a leadership role to stem the excessive power consumption curve by data center operators in North America, says Info-Tech Research Group. A recent U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report predicting data center power bills will grow exponentially over the next four years is no surprise given that enterprises lack guidelines on acceptable power usage, the IT research firm said.
“Greening of the large enterprise data center is just a pipe dream at the moment because there’s no motivation or support for IT departments to change,” said Aaron Hay, research consultant at Info-Tech Research Group. “The U.S. and Canadian governments need to work with data center operators, vendors, and industry associations to facilitate setting practical and actionable targets for immediate eductions in data center power consumption.”
Check this out, it raises some interesting concepts about data center energy efficiency. Interestingly isn’t the cost of power and it’s availability already doing this? That for example in London there are only so many data center facilities with the space, power and cooling capacities available to meet modern requirements for grid, virtualization and hpc solutions. That the typical enterprise might already be at the 90% capacity route, and therefore they have to look at consolidation not just because of the environmental issues but to meet with the business need for an ever expanding IT need as and when the technology can earn revenue?
August 29, 2007 at 8:37 pm · Filed under environment
http://www.degreec.com/dc_press.htm
MILFORD, NH (USA) – Degree Controls, Inc. (DegreeC), a leading thermal management solutions provider, is pleased to announce the opening of a new CATT (Center for Airflow and Thermal Technologies) facility in Santa Clara, CA. The new CATT facility will offer West Coast companies the opportunity to utilize DegreeC’s experienced staff and custom hardware and software solutions for the design, manufacture, and sourcing of cooling subsystems for advanced electronic devices.
DegreeC’s diverse team of professionals includes thermal engineers, electrical engineers, manufacturing engineers, and test engineers who are highly experienced in packaging, housing, and cooling electronics. In addition to traditional initial thermal analysis consultation, the new CATT offers an array of services, from concept and design to manufacturing and cost reduction, as well as agency qualification.
Check this out, it highlights how important thermal management and good design is becoming not just in terms of your data center design, but your product design and life cycle, how your products operate with different configurations, it sounds very cool, and allows vendors to test their equipment in this new facility.
August 29, 2007 at 8:30 pm · Filed under blades, rackmounts
I got an email from Chris today asking for help, “you’ll know this, my ILO’s stopped working, it’s a production box so I can’t just reboot it, any ideas of stuff we could try other than replace the system board?”
So here we go, my top ILO recommendations:
- Try running an ILO firmware upgrade - this will ensure that you’re running the latest firmware, it’s also a reasonable diagnostic test of the ILO itself and will cause the ILO to reboot which might (or might not) resolve the issue.
- So the ILO firmware upgrade didn’t work, let’s try some basic ILO configuration, download the HP ILO configuration utility which you can get here: http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/server/us/download/26992.html, now expand the package to example c:\program files\hp, in dos go c:\program files\hp and enter the command hponcfg /w c:\martinconfig.txt to check the configuration of the ILO card, is the duplex right, the ip, subnet and default gateway etc.
- I’d reboot and power down the server at this point, removing power for a few seconds this should fix it.
It’s not something that happens that often, but since it’s production Chris wanted to see what he could do to show that the IT teams were trying to resolve the issue without a loss of service, in this case a new system board was fitted, but sometimes a power down fixes it fine.
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