Bladewatch.com

I’ve been thinking about upgrading the drives in my DL380 G1, it’s currently used for testing different things. It’s got the standard Integrated Smart Array with firmware 1.50B, and currently has 2x18GB and 2x36GB drives – the standard web server configuration if you like. I was doing some research as to what drives will work in it, the newer SCSI drives are called Ultra320 and can be 10k or 15k rpm drives ranging to 300GB. I was wondering if I can buy and plug in 300GB drives in a DL380 G1, (I know they’re getting on a bit), I’ve tried them and they work fine in my DL380G2 (which is shortly to be recycled), with this in mind I have been looking around and found this on the HP forum site. We’ll see, I’ll let you know how I get on.

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HP QuickSpecs

There are three main things a project manager/manager will want to know about the server, the model type, the upgrade path and the operating system. By that I mean, with these key facts, you can judge what role the server can play, how upgradeable it is, what operating systems are compatible and possibly if it is a candidate for virtualization. At this point I must stress that all servers should be judged as good for virtualization depending on it’s role and the application running on it.

With this in mind, I’ve taken six ‘legacy’ Compaq Proliant servers and summarized their specification. Please note this is a guide, it is not intended to replace the excellent QuickSpecs which are online, it was supposed to be the equivalent of a ‘post-it note summary’ with processor, memory, disk and pci slots.

A quick reference four line guide if you like.

I’ve done these servers to begin with, and dependent on the feedback, I was then going to do one for blades, and the following servers, DL360, DL380/385, DL580/585 and DL760/785′s in their different generations. If you thought this kind of thing is useful, do let me know and I’ll make a start on the next batch.

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I got a call from Chris who’s been continuing to work in sunny Canary Wharf, he was after some information about EMC reports. They’ve been having some issues with one of their servers and escalated it, during this point, Chris has been asked to download and run EMCRPTS_X86_V32.EXE. This is a tool that EMC sometimes ask you to run to help troubleshoot an issue. He had a few questions, and with his permission, I’ve blogged them:

You used this emcrpts thing, what does it do?

It basically puts together a zip file which contains your system log files and configuration for analysis, such as event logs/ms report information, fibre card configurations and the storage information. There is a version specific edition for different operating systems, for example x86 32 or 64 bit. You can run it with different options. It gathers the server and storage information so that it can be analyzed to aid troubleshooting the issue, on a cluster you would run the tool on each node in the cluster.

From the readme file:

"PURPOSE:
========
THE EMCREPORTS TOOL IS UTILIZED TO GATHER DETAILED INFORMATION REGARDING A SYSTEMS CURRENT CONFIGURATION. THE DATA COLLECTED WILL ASSIST THE EMC SUPPORT ANALYST WITH FAULT ISOLATION. 

THE REPORTING TOOL DOES NOT MAKE ANY REGISTRY CHANGES OR MODIFICATIONS TO THE OPERATING SYSTEM. PLEASE SEE THE SECTION FOR PACKAGE CONTENTS AND DIRECTORY STRUCTURE FOR DETAILS ON WHAT IS COPIED TO THE SYSTEM AND WHAT DIRECTORIES ARE MADE.

USAGE:
======
THIS PACKAGE SUPPORTS WINDOWS 2000, WINDOWS XP, AND WINDOWS 2003/2008 WITH 32-BIT OPERATING SYSTEMS ONLY. ON EXECUTION OF THE PACKAGE THE PRODUCT TYPE IS DETECTED TO DETERMINE WHICH COMMANDS WILL BE UTILIZED TO COLLECT INFORMATION."
NOTE: PLEASE USE VERSION 15 OF EMCREPORTS FOR THE WINDOWS NT 4.0 OPERATING SYSTEM.

Can I run it on a production server, does it reboot it? Would that be a change?

The tool does not change your configuration or cause an outage/reboot. However, if it’s a production or customer facing server you should be raising an appropriate change (dependent on your business). Personally, I’d run it out of core business hours and get the approval from the application owner of the server, (say 6pm with a change).

Chris was off to raise a change and was going to let me know how he got on in.

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The New York Times

SAN JOSE, Calif. — Within the next few months, Cisco Systems, the largest maker of networking equipment, plans to release a product that threatens to shake up the technology industry and put the company on a collision course with traditional partners like Hewlett-Packard and I.B.M.

The product — a server computer equipped with sophisticated virtualization software — is a bold but risky move by Cisco into an unfamiliar, intensely competitive market that typically produces far lower profits than Cisco makes from network gear. But it reflects the company’s ambition to grow beyond its roots as the so-called plumber of the Internet to offer everything from instant messaging software to digital stereos.

I’ve been hearing about this for some time and look forward to it. The more innovation, the more empowerment and competition we have in the market place, the more choice for the end user community and most importantly that I as the end user can choose the right combination of products to achieve my business goals. Anything Cisco can do to simplify and empower virtualization as a concept has to be a good thing, and it will be exciting to see what announcements are made this year?

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Business Wire

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–DataSynapse, a world leader in dynamic application service management (DASM) software, announced the addition of a dozen new organizations to its client base in 2008, including leaders in the telecom (top 5 global carrier), government (national and regional), high technology manufacturing, education and retail (top 5 global retailer) sectors. The company’s installed base now numbers about 100 worldwide organizations running DataSynapse application management software across approximately 1,000,000 CPUs. .

“Despite the difficult economic environment, DataSynapse continues to attract new clients because of our production-proven capabilities to substantially slash IT costs, control infrastructure growth and accelerate time to deploy applications,” said Peter Lee, CEO and Co-Founder, DataSynapse. “Notwithstanding our 30% compound annual growth rate over the past three years, this year we’ve reduced our aggressive growth objectives and moved forward with a targeted reduction in workforce, ensuring we will operate profitably. Our customers can be assured of the same level of innovation and service in 2009.”

Great news for DataSynapse. The more we are able to scale the infrastructure, the more we can manage user expectations, cope with ‘outage’s and provide a business aligned infrastructure. The concept that my infrastructure is online ready for business, and can be scaled to accommodate that important batch run for the equities guys, or be able to re-allocate workload in order to meet our service level agreements is invaluable and illustrates what can be achieved when we align the infrastructure and applications.

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BBC News

Infections of a worm that spreads through low security networks, memory sticks, and PCs without the latest security updates is “skyrocketing”.

The malicious program, known as Conficker, Downadup, or Kido was first discovered in October 2008.

Anti-virus firm F-Secure estimates there are now 8.9m machines infected.

Experts warn this figure could be far higher and say users should have up-to-date anti-virus software and install Microsoft’s MS08-067 patch.

In its security blog, F-Secure said that the number of infections based on its calculations was “skyrocketing” and that the situation was “getting worse”.

Securing the IT is ‘the cost of doing business’, what people tend to focus on is the costs of doing so, in downtime, service disruption or having the guy do it. What we should be focussing on is seeing the ‘patch’ process as the vehicle to achieve what it is we need to achieve – upgrading driver packs, layered components like SMS or system firmware, seeing what we can achieve, we’re rebooting the desktops to apply that Microsoft patch, could we schedule a chkdsk, upgrade the firmware etc. Security patching remains an opportunity as much as a cost, it’s all about what you deliver, if you’re patching or patching and moving forward…

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Computer Weekly

The number of job vacancies in the IT sector fell by nearly a quarter in the last three months of 2008, according to the latest research by SSL and Computer Weekly.

The drop is worse than the falls seen during the dot.com crash in 2001, and is quickly approaching the steep decline in the job market of the 1991 recession.

Compared to the previous quarter, there were 24.3% fewer jobs advertised from October to December than there were from July to September.

Some job roles saw larger drops in demand than others. Skills still in demand include Oracle, Java, SQL, C#, .net and SAP.

Salary levels also reflected the drop, with advertised salaries remaining at the same level as last year. This is the first time this has happened since 1992.

I have colleagues in the industry that have been saying there have been a lack of opportunities, some have even been made redundant or had their contracts terminated as organizations seek to reduce their costs or cancel projects. We’ll see, I still think within the banking sector anyway, the next year will be interesting:

 

• Numerous mergers and acquisitions need implemented in terms of operations and the technology – we need to consolidate applications, infrastructures and data centers, I really can’t afford to parallel run my bank’s IT and the IT that came with the bank we just bought/merged with. 

• More complex trading conditions need more accurate, more adaptable infrastructure – I need to be able to cope with market updates and announcements that might bring specific requirements for the trade floors. 

• The need to differentiate from our competitors through service delivery and (or) price – my trading web site, my application, my interface with the customer needs to be better, more reliable and scalable than anyone else. 

• The need to reduce costs and streamline not only the way we purchase and provision but how we supply and support the IT – can I really be continuing long term to support that legacy kit – isn’t it inefficient use of my resources, my shareholders budget? 

• The need to be more carbon/energy/environmental efficient – green is everything, in terms of provision, delivery and support – greener platforms tend to be more cost efficient, more responsive to change – look at VMware on blades or grid for example – using the hardware more efficiently means less power used, less carbon cost and less operating costs. 

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Microsoft Technet

This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for January 2009.

With the release of the bulletins for January 2009, this bulletin summary replaces the bulletin advance notification originally issued January 8, 2009. For more information about the bulletin advance notification service, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification.

For information about how to receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft security bulletins are issued, visit Microsoft Technical Security Notifications.

Microsoft is hosting a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins on January 14, 2009, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register now for the January Security Bulletin Webcast. After this date, this webcast is available on-demand. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Summaries and Webcasts.

Microsoft also provides information to help customers prioritize monthly security updates with any non-security, high-priority updates that are being released on the same day as the monthly security updates. Please see the section, Other Information.

It’s time to evaluate the security patches for January, consider patching your servers, or managing your risk and platforms involved, and remember that your service provider/vendor will ask are all the patches applied when logging a call. Applying security patches to your estate (desktop/server) need not be difficult, the key thing is organization, what’s being patched and when, what is in scope – how the communication to the end user/application developer or support community is handled.

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Green Tech Media

Samsung Electronics Co. is the latest company to promote solid-state data storage systems for their power-saving credentials.

Samsung’s new 100-gigabyte solid-state drive for data centers, introduced Tuesday at the Storage Visions 2009 Conference in Las Vegas, isn’t just fast. It also uses one-quarter to one-eighth of the power that competing hard drives use in active mode, the company said.

That will save companies on power costs, as well as the costs of upgrading power infrastructure to upgrade data centers at the limits of their capacity, Samsung said.

Solid-state drives, which rely on flash memory, have been touted as a replacement for standard spinning hard drives for the past few years. Solid state drives can retrieve relatively static data, like a Web page, faster than conventional drives and consume far less power.

This does sound very cool, I’ll need to read up more about it. Extending the capacity and improving the resilience of these new solid state drives could bring real opportunities and bring real savings to the end user community.

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Finextra

The UK’s Financial Services Authority (FSA) has called on the country’s banks to spend nearly £1 billion on new IT systems to speed up the process of paying out compensation to savers if they collapse.

The call comes in a consultation paper published by the regulator on strengthening the Financial Services Compensation Scheme (FSCS) – which acts as a safety net for depositors of up to £50,000 if their banks go bust – in the wake of the collapse of several lenders in recent months.

The new IT systems proposed – costing an estimated £891.8 million over five years – are designed to ensure banks can provide a list of all customers’ deposits within 48 hours of collapse, enabling the FSCS to ensure customers get compensation within seven days.

This will involve a £438.8 million investment to make sure banks have a single customer view (SCV) for each eligible depositor, pulling together information on their deposits within an authorised entity under a unique identifier. Deposit takers will need to be able to provide an SCV within 48 hours of being notified by the FSA or FSCS, to ensure quick payout to customers.

I wonder if this instruction from the FSA might bring real opportunities for employment in the financial sector? Something that could be well received in light of the recent job cuts in different organizations, at the same time, could this new IT platform bring new opportunities for revenue and business to the banking sector? We’ll have to see, do check it out.

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