How fast is your storage?

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...

Green data centers the way forward

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...

Nivio and AMD enhance desktop 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...

SGI blades do well

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...

Updates about the Vista service pack

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...