Bladewatch.com

FinChannel

The FINANCIAL — Luton Borough Council is working with Dell to upgrade its server and storage environment and virtualize its IT infrastructure. The deal is designed to reduce annual IT expenditure across the council and deliver more efficient and flexible service delivery for its local constituents.

Luton Borough Council has worked with Dell for over 10 years and is one of many councils in the UK that has invested in Dell storage solutions. Under the terms of the new deal, Dell will replace the council’s existing CX700 with CX3-80 storage systems and implement VMware virtualization solutions to reduce the number of existing servers within the organization from 180 to 120.

According to Dell, the infrastructure upgrade has been implemented in response to the growing amounts of data the council has to handle, including online payment and service requests. Ongoing innovation within the council, such as the implementation of a new website with graphical mapping data, has also increased demand on existing systems, resulting in connectivity problems and forcing the council to increase its annual infrastructure spend by 25 per cent. The updated storage and server environment will fully support the council in addressing these issues, improving operating efficiencies, staff productivity and the ongoing delivery of high-quality, innovative public services.

An article illustrating how this local council is implementing virtualization as a platform for it’s IT services, it’s always great to see what benefits they seek to achieve, in this case improving flexibility and reducing costs.

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Bmighty.com

If you work at a small or midsize business, you probably haven’t seen a so-called “thin client” for a long, long time. If you’ve ever even heard of them, you may have thought they were almost extinct, living on only in the dusty corners of huge bureaucratic organizations that never got the memo about personal computers. Well, Wyse Technology says they’re ba-a-a-ck! Sort of.

According to Jeff McNaught, Chief Marketing Office for Wyse Technology – the number 2 thin-client maker behind HP, they never really went away, they just changed their role in the computing world. And now, he says, they’re coming to an SMB near you.

Why? For the same benefits thin clients, or terminals, have always promised: low per-user costs and complete control of what happens on the desktop.

Check out this article about thin clients, I was speaking with a colleague who’s currently deploying thin clients in a virtual desktop project and they’ve had great success, it will be interesting to see if this becomes more popular in the small/medium sector.

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http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20090224-35-percent-guarantee.html

Sunnyvale, Calif.—February 24, 2009—In an effort to help customers maximize the value of their existing storage investments, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced the industry’s first-ever Guarantee* Program for installed third-party storage. As an addition to NetApp’s existing Virtualization Guarantee Program, which was introduced in September 2008, NetApp is offering a guarantee that customers will decrease their non-NetApp primary storage capacity for virtual server environments by 35% using NetApp® V-Series and deduplication technology.

Now customers have more ways to save with NetApp’s Virtualization Guarantee Program. Customers can take advantage of NetApp’s guarantee that they will use 50% less storage in their VMware®, Citrix, and Microsoft® virtual environments with NetApp storage compared to traditional storage arrays. Alternatively, for customers that already own EMC, IBM, HP, or HDS storage systems, NetApp will reduce redundant copies of their primary data by at least 35% with NetApp V-Series.

“Customers are stretching their budgets and looking to lower their overall infrastructure costs while minimizing the risk of their IT investments,” said Jay Kidd, chief marketing officer of NetApp. “While server virtualization is a way for customers to achieve greater efficiency in the data center, NetApp further fulfills this promise with our storage efficiency capabilities that help not only save space and cost but also minimize risk of their storage investments. Now we’re assuring customers that they can realize efficiencies with our competitors’ storage using NetApp V-Series. No other storage vendor is willing or able to match this guarantee.”

Now NetApp customers can achieve greater storage capacity utilization on inefficient systems that they already purchased and deployed and tap into the unrealized potential of their existing storage infrastructures. NetApp provides the most complete storage efficiency technologies for virtual server environments so that customers can improve protection of their data assets, buy less storage, and reduce their overall power, space, and cooling costs in their data centers.

I had a chat with the guys from NetApp today about this announcement it does sound cool. I’ve played with and supported filers before, this deal furthers the possibilities and opportunities of their existing platform. The data deduplication, Snapshot and their FlexClone are all technologies (amongst others) that can aid in being more efficient with your storage capacity, important both in terms of the ‘green IT message/practice’, as well as the issues surrounding the growth in the demand and volume of storage required.

I can certainly see the benefits of using NetApp’s technology in front of your storage to further enhance the possibilities of your existing storage, that I might reduce the time it takes to allocate more storage, or have the facility to clone an existing volume using SnapShots all makes storage more flexibile and agile to meet the business need. The offer does sound interesting, I’ll need to read up more about it.

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Macworld

Apple on Thursday released the first security update of 2009, the aptly named Security Update 2009-001. The update, which is available in versions for Leopard, Leopard Server, Tiger for Intel Macs, Tiger for PowerPC-based Macs, Tiger Server for PowerPC-based Macs, and Server Universal addresses a number of flaws in OS X. Security Update 2009-001 is recommended for all users and is available via Apple’s site or Software Update.

An article to remind you about the importance of applying security patches/updates to your Apple computer, to stay in line with Apples’ recommendations and resolve known issues.

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Managing during a downturn

Does it take caution or courage to manage through a downturn?

Tiger Woods and Accenture have been urging us business folks to “Be a Tiger” for a few years now, but when it comes down to the crunch, isn’t that easier said than done? I’d venture many managers would instinctively prefer to head for shelter than face a crisis head-on, but of course the actions executives take in situations like those (and times like these) are what distinguish leaders from followers. No doubt America’s new President would not have been taking the oath yesterday if he had avoided addressing the tough issues on the campaign trail.

“It takes courage to make the decisions that good economic times allow us to postpone,” says Rob Lloyd, Cisco’s head of North America and Japan, in a podcast posted today to the Cisco newsroom. In it, he reflects on the bold moves Cisco made in the downturns of 2001 and 2003 to become pioneers and then leaders in VoIP and Next Generation Networks.

This article got me thinking about the whole cost cutting articles I’ve been reading as well as those discussions I’ve been having with managers and colleagues in the industry.

Managing your IT, your business in a downturn is always a challenging activity and it differs between sectors, what works in an auction house, will be different to an investment bank, a real estate office. The commonalities are in reducing operating costs, in being more efficient with the infrastructure, the IT you have, whilst managing to deliver service or add value. There are a number of ways to do this, often it can come in the form of simply reducing costs, slashing budgets, stopping unnecessary investment etc. What’s often need is a number of things:

Consolidation of roles – can we consolidate applications/infrastructure roles on to fewer servers, do we need one or two applications per web server – could the DNS server not also be a print/file server?

Rationalization of systems – what range of business applications/tools are actually needed globally, and what business units/teams need what applications. Could the admin teams use OpenOffice or something similar rather than Word? Could we be smarter in the way we use the IT?

Virtualization and investment – by not spending what effect will it have on our operating costs, our data center space? By replacing the 7 year old servers with newer ones will we save any money through hardware support costs, gain capacity through more energy efficient systems? Could we spend a little money now and save real money in months? 

Inventory analysis – do we use the servers/desktops we actually have? How many idle systems are there sitting around the office either powered off or doing nothing? Could we decommission/recycle systems and be more efficient? How many of our systems are out of support and therefore going to contribute greater to our hardware/software support costs? Are we paying to support systems that either aren’t in use or do not need formal support?

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3tera

ALISO VIEJO, Calif., Jan 29, 2009 (BUSINESS WIRE) — 3Tera, Inc., the leading innovator of cloud computing technology and utility computing services, announces HostReview, a top-rated online resource for the Web hosting industry since 1998, named 3Tera to both its 2008 Top 10 Web Host Awards’ Best Cloud Computing Service and Best SaaS Provider lists. 3Tera received the prestigious honor for a second consecutive year, confirming its leadership role as an innovator and enabler of new services to the hosting market.

The Best Web Hosting Awards are based on the overall product offering, value, customer service and users’ reviews of the selected companies. Winners were at the forefront of technological innovation and exemplary customer service in the previous year and are the companies to look at in 2009.
Since 2006, the HostReview Annual Web Hosting Awards have grown to be one of the most prestigious hosting awards of its kind. The categories for the annual awards are updated every year, in order to reflect the changing technological and business landscape. Cloud computing is transforming the industry, and the current Annual Awards take this fact into consideration by presenting a new category for 2008 – Best Cloud Computing Services.

Well done to 3Tera for this recognition, anything we can do to highlights the possibilities and opportunities for Cloud computing has to be a good thing, the more we illustrate this, the more opportunities for vendors and end users alike.

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Computer Weekly

How secure is the current practice in virtualisation?

The stampede to employ virtualisation sees no sign of waning in 2009, writes Raj Samani, vice-president of communications at ISSA UK.

Gartner has ranked virtualisation as the number one strategic technology for 2009 and many corporations have already implemented it on the back of green datacentres (reducing footprint and power). This trend will continue, with a recent survey of 200 IT decision makers stating that 90% of respondents will be using desktop virtualisation within five years.

However, by employing virtualisation within your organisation are you “absolutely deluded, if not stupid,” as OpenBSD project leader Theo de Raat claims? Such delusion is apparently borne from consumers assuming that software engineers, who are unable to produce operating systems or applications without security holes, can suddenly produce virtualisation layers without security holes.

We should be seeing virtualization as another platform, something that has to be managed and secured as you would another platform like Linux/Unix or Windows. We should be considering not only security patching and applying hot fixes, but also locking down the infrastructure, just because I virtualize my Windows server does not mean I do not need to secure it the ways I did in the virtual world.

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SNS Europe

QLogic has announced availability of an innovative, cost-effective suite of end-to-end 8Gb Fibre Channel networking solutions for IBM BladeCenter™ that includes the QLogic® 20 Port 8Gb Fibre Channel SAN Switch Module, QLogic 8Gb Fibre Channel Intelligent Pass-Thru Module and the QLogic 8Gb Fibre Channel/1GbE combo mezzanine card. With support for up to 128 virtual servers per chassis using N_Port ID virtualisation (NPIV), the QLogic modules allow IBM BladeCenter customers to better leverage VMware capabilities by deploying more server applications and virtual machines in their existing chassis. The QLogic switch solutions enable NPIV or E_port connectivity to any standards-compliant fabric, including edge and director switches from QLogic and other leading Fibre Channel switch vendors. This means customers can confidently add BladeCenter server and I/O resources throughout the enterprise, with complete interoperability.

Anything we can do to improve performance and capacity in the storage field has to be a good thing, particularly in terms of virtual infrastructure solutions like VMware on blades. I’ll need to read up more.

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Orielly.com

While other IT sectors may be struggling, one area that will likely be quite hot will be in the cloud computing/hosted services market. This particular market has been the subject of a great deal of hype over the last year, but it is likely that the overwhelming factor in cloud adoption this year will less be promotional marketing than it will simply be cost.

IT plants are expensive – they take up signficant real-estate, require a significant amount of air conditioning and electrical hardening in order to take power loads and properly disipate heat, they require system administrators monitoring and repairing these systems and have to be replaced and reconfigured periodically as systems go down.

The principle benefit of cloud computing (or at least of hosted services) is that much of this cost is effectively offloaded to the hosting service. Combine this with the development and deployment of hosted applications (which are increasing both in capabilities and reliability), either VPN or web-based, and what emerges is a very compelling story for many companies that are struggling trying to contain IT costs while tightening their belts.

Most cloud setups typically consist of “supercomputers” that are built as hundreds or even thousands of commodity server units that share memory and processing power and that are in turn tied into large scale storage arrays. Within this sea of memory and processing power, its possible to launch various “instances” – virtual machines that use the resources of the host system but exists as its own, for the most part independent “computer”.

What’s more, because these machines are effectively software only computers, they can be saved as if they were computer documents, then can be reloaded later, starting off once reloaded at precisely the point where they were saved. This means, consequently, that it becomes possible to create templates that can be stored then automatically loaded later whenever a given application (such as an operating system or configured database) needs to be restarted. These applications are known as appliances, and appliances make possible all kinds of interesting computing within the cloud.

Going forward the IT is going to switch from a technical to a more service delivery technical role. I need people that understand the platforms, know what to request from the vendors, how to manage them, how to work with the application teams to manage service delivery etc.

There remain challenges not least in the technology, there are many business units writing and supporting applications that might not be too pleased at the concept of buying-in the IT, the ‘loss of control’, in deciding the nuts and bolts of the infrastructure not to mention issues of doing business. Let’s not forget in a cloud scenario there is no one to blame, an external vendor can state, the lights are on, the engine was ready to receive workload unfortunately your application was not.

We’re beginning to see the starts of the process, the consolidation and commoditization of roles, the days of an application and infrastructure engineer, the guy that does everything (in the enterprise anyway) is reducing, your a Windows, a web site guy, a database guy, as we strip down the components of the infrastructure and virtualize them, we can remove the barriers to success. That a Windows server might cause as issues, not a problem deploy a virtual machine which I can re-deploy in minutes fixes that, or that my Citrix server might get slow due to an application issue or the workload involved, not a problem, deploy a Citrix farm and share the workload. Commoditize, simplify the infrastructure to it’s base components, rip and replace – the days of keeping a physical or virtual infrastructure until the end of time is over. Configure your application or workload to be grid or cloud compatible, where we buy in the capacity, the platform we need and you submit your tasks to deliver the functionality you need.

In all, I wonder how much our internal processes, the way we provision and charge out IT continues, are we not set to see a deeper integration of IT with the business units? A topic for thought, we’ll have to see, do check out the article though.

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CNN

SAN FRANCISCO -(Dow Jones)- International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) is trying to persuade customers in a range of industries to bring digital capabilities to old-style infrastructure.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based computer, software and services giant is launching an initiative this week to highlight how it is tailoring existing software services and adding some new capabilities such as smart-meters and radio-frequency identification, or RFID tracking systems, to target new industries.

The company wants to persuade customers in sectors such as the oil and gas industries, utilities and manufacturing, who historically have been less up to speed with I.T., to revamp their systems to digitize decades-old infrastructure.

IBM, the world’s largest I.T. services organization by revenue, already sells automation, information management and analytics tools to a wide range of industries. But Steve Mills, who heads IBM’s software business, said there are new and untapped opportunities in these industries.

“Banking and money [are] highly electronic industries,” Mills said in an interview. “I.T. has a strong footprint in banking. It has a much more modest footprint in utilities, transportation, chemicals and manufacturing.

There are many opportunities available to empower or enhance organizations ability to earn revenue or add value using new technologies like virtualization or grid, establishing what those technologies could bring to your business will depend on you, but exciting times are ahead.

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