Bladewatch.com

Leostream

Rome, Italy and Waltham, MA – March 16, 2009 – NoMachine, award-winning provider of remote desktop and application delivery software, and Leostream Corporation, a leading developer of virtual hosted desktop software, today announced a partnership that will fully support and integrate NoMachine’s NX protocol into the Leostreamâ„¢ Connection Broker. This combined solution allows enterprises to easily deploy and manage Linux virtual desktops within their IT environments.

Leostream users can now leverage the power and speed of NX technology, connecting quickly and securely through the NX Client to a Linux VDI hosted on the NX Server, while using the Connection Broker to manage the connections of end users to their desktops, applications and sessions. Users are provided the most efficient way to access hosted environments on centrally managed servers. Outstanding compression, session resilience and resource management make NX the ideal solution for shared, dedicated and virtual services.

Virtual desktop solutions are continuing to evolve bringing new possibilities to the way we provision, support and manage the desktop. Virtual desktop solutions can not only bring savings in support, in the cost of deploying and re-deploying desktops, it’s the intangibile benefits, being able to move an end user’s location, to having them be desk or office independent without the associated delays that you might have in a physical world, the reduced overhead in terms of images and drivers etc.

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Nieuws van de wijnboer: “Nous avons effectué la mise en bouteille”. Ook rode wijn in halveflesjes nu!

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@ElroBe Een smartphone is life enhancing: ben ultra blij met mijn E71 dus zou zeggen: neem die in overweging. “Mythical battery life” NISM

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Cisco

SAN JOSE Calif. – March 16, 2009 – Cisco today unveiled an evolutionary new data center architecture, innovative services and an open ecosystem of best in class partners to help customers develop next-generation data centers that unleash the full power of virtualization. With today’s announcement, Cisco is delivering on the promise of virtualization through Unified Computing – an architecture that bridges the silos in the data center into one unified architecture using industry standard technologies. Key to Cisco’s approach is the Cisco Unified Computing System which unites compute, network, storage access, and virtualization resources in a single energy efficient system that can reduce IT infrastructure costs and complexity, help extend capital assets and improve business agility well into the future.

Today’s announcements extend Cisco’s data center portfolio and are a critical step in the company’s Data Center 3.0 strategy. To help customers accelerate the transition to the Unified Computing architecture, Cisco is paving the way with a comprehensive suite of new Unified Computing services. In addition, Cisco today announced collaboration with industry leaders on the Unified Computing System and architecture.

• • The Cisco Unified Computing System: Based on industry standards, the Unified Computing System is a new computing model that uses integrated management and combines a “wire once” unified fabric with an industry standard computing platform to optimize virtualization, reduce data center total overall cost, and provide dynamic resource provisioning for increased business agility.
  • • Reduces total cost of ownership: up to 20 percent reduction in capital expenditures (CAPEX) and up to 30% reduction in operational expenditures (OPEX).
    • Improves IT productivity and improves business agility: provision applications in minutes instead of days. Shifts the focus from IT maintenance to IT innovation
    • Increases scalability without added complexity: managed as a single system, whether it has one or 320 servers with thousands of virtual machines.
    • Improves Energy Efficiency: significantly reduces power and cooling costs
    • Provides interoperability and investment protection through industry standards-based infrastructure

The announcements today are very exciting and I look forward to reading up more about them, the new blade sounds very cool indeed. That Cisco are offering a unified computing system has to be a good thing to bring forward new standards and best practices, anything they can do to make management of the data center easier, and convergence of Ethernet and Storage has to be good news for the consumer and the industry. I wonder if we will see a build on the existing management protocols and tools, any further enhancements to energy efficiency would also be welcome?

In the meantime, we need to welcome Cisco’s blade to the stage, welcome their innovation of the platform, and the message towards virtualization and the data center as the IT.

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Zdnet

After a brutal year of cost cutting, layoffs, and unattainable MBO’s, many IT managers are expecting more of the same in 2009. But hey, it’s a brand new year, there’s always a chance that better times are on the way. And as the smoke clears on 2008 and 2009 comes into focus, there are reasons to be hopeful.

In 2008 — somewhere in between the recessions, bailouts, elections, gas price insanity, Fannie Maes and Freddie Macs — the “Data Center 2.0? vision reached critical mass. Personally, I blame it all on virtualization.

After speaking to hundreds of IT teams over the course of 2008, one thing’s for certain:  virtualization in all its forms – server, storage, and network – has taken root across the board. Granted, the depth and breadth of deployment varies from team to team, but virtualization changed the face of the data center in 2008. Given its cost benefits in terms of consolidation, IT managers have little choice but to drive virtualization hard and fast. That’s the good news. The bad news? How do we manage all this stuff?

It’s not just the day to day systems management, it’s the billing, the support models and structures. As we condense from sixteen servers to one physical sever, how do we grant access to these virtual machines, what level of access do they get, and how do we manage accountablility of these servers in terms of ownership and billing/support.

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HP.com

HP today announced the new, entry-level HP Integrity NonStop NS2000 server family, which delivers high performance and fault-tolerance at the lowest cost available for a multi-core Integrity NonStop system.

The NS2000 is ideal for small and midsized organizations in the healthcare, financial services and telecommunications industries, as well as customers in emerging markets. It allows organizations to cost-effectively meet the high availability and scalability of their business. Designed with the full benefits of HP NonStop technology, the NS2000 family paves the way for future growth without the worry of application compatibility.

“There is a large segment of smaller enterprise customers that tends to be priced out of the market for high-end, fault-tolerant servers,” said Jim Johnson, chief executive officer of the research company Standish Group. “For those customers, the NS2000 server offers significant value and additional choice for application availability and fault tolerance.”

Bringing a new entry level NonStop server should bring new opportunities and markets for HP and at the same time, bring new possibilities to the end user community, very cool. The more platform choice and options there are from the different vendors, the more innovation and competition there is which has to be a good thing for the end user community.

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SGI

SUNNYVALE, Calif. (Feb. 24, 2009) — The Department of Defense (DOD) selected Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) (NASDAQ: SGIC), through its wholly owned subsidiary Silicon Graphics Federal, Inc., for six of seven awards as part of the agency’s Technology Insertion 2009 (TI-09) High Performance Computing Modernization Program (HPCMP).

The multi-year $40 million agreement engages Silicon Graphics to provide world-class compute and storage solutions, along with options for service and support. The systems will be installed at leading defense research and development sites throughout the United States, including the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL), the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC), Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC), and the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC).

“Silicon Graphics is honored to provide these premier DOD facilities with the high-performance compute, storage and service solutions needed to handle some of the most advanced computing challenges in the world,” said Silicon Graphics CEO Robert “Bo” Ewald. “Securing these TI-09 awards required Silicon Graphics to prevail in a competitive evaluation involving numerous major HPC vendors. As we move forward with implementation and long-term support of these solutions, we’ll work to ensure that DOD researchers and programs get the most from them.”

Well done to SGI, it’s interesting to read about their solution, it’s always good to see what different organizations are doing with their technology, HPC as an example, do check it out.

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BladeLogic

Bladelogic’s automation software solutions helps IT organizations manage, control and enforce configuration changes to realize maximum business value from the data center. Our products – BladeLogic Operations Manager, BladeLogic Application Release Manager and BladeLogic Orchestration Manager enable IT organizations to improve data center stability and service quality, decrease application downtime, increase IT productivity and reduce data center operating costs.

I got a demo of Bladelogic a few days back, I was watching the guy go through it and was thinking it looks like a really powerful platform for managing your servers. Not just in security patching, but in the way you do systems management, being able to audit the infrastructure properly and bring your infrastructure to the same consistent level/configuration – as a systems administrator looked fantastic. As an example, just knowing everything is at the same hot fix, service pack can be the difference between that new application working and going live, or not. “Sorry, it’s not SP4″, why not? Didn’t you know?

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Computer Weekly

Security is a top priority for businesses despite the economic downturn, says Howard Schmidt, president and chief executive of the Information Security Forum (ISF).

“Many organisations have realised that data is the most important business asset in the modern world,” he told an ISC2 security conference in London today.

This is driving a move away from simply strengthening the security of IT systems to concentrating on the data itself and reducing the vulnerabilities.

Priorities for security professionals include developing and using applications that are more securely designed and written.

“As long as we are producing and using software with inherent security vulnerabilities we will continue to live in the past,” said Schmidt.

It’s data security not just in terms of legislation and exposing customer/private data, it’s the cost of loosing proprietory market or application data that could expose your business to unnecessary loss or damage to branding. I wonder if we’ll see this have any affect in the financial sector, particularly as I read the FSA (Financial Services Authority) in the UK are meant to be looking more closely at things.

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Sun

SANTA CLARA, CA February 26, 2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today highlighted new software updates and record-breaking performance of its chip multi-threaded (CMT) Sun SPARC Enterprise server family running the Solaris Operating System (OS). With updated virtualization software, a new world record on the SPECjAppServer2004 benchmark, and double-digit revenue growth, Sun’s CMT server portfolio continues to provide customers with competitive advantage while reducing cost and power consumption. The numerous advantages of Sun CMT servers over IBM Power systems are at http://www.sun.com/coolthreads/migratetosun/ibm/realitycheck. Sun is also extending free 60-day trials on Sun servers with CoolThreads technology via its Try and Buy program at: http://www.sun.com/tryandbuy.

“Sun CMT servers pack in an incredible amount of innovation with UltraSPARC processors, Solaris and LDoms, giving customers a killer combination of performance, scale, and energy efficiency,” said John Fowler, executive vice president, System Group, Sun Microsystems. “This platform is a complete package built for virtualization and consolidation with massive cost savings in power, space and cooling. And with double-or-triple digit growth for 10 consecutive quarters, CMT servers are what customers want and need in these challenging times.”

Sun’s servers with CoolThreads technology feature built-in, open source virtualization at no additional cost via Solaris Containers and Sun Logical Domains (LDoms) software, making them an ideal platform for consolidating hundreds of existing enterprise class workloads onto a single system. Sun has released the latest version of its Sun LDoms software, which features the following advanced capabilities:

Check out this article from Sun talking about their achievements, very cool and fantastic results. I’m off to read up more.

As with any statement about environmental things, do remember to consider your environment and the way the application is coded. The server is only as efficient as the application which runs on it.

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