Bladewatch.com

PR Newswire

HERNDON, Va., July 15 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — SteelCloud (Nasdaq: SCLD), a leading integrator of embedded computing and server appliances, today announced that it will work with Dell’s OEM division to manufacture and support its next generation of SteelWorks((R)) Mobile appliances for BlackBerry((R)) Enterprise Server 5.0.

SteelCloud recently announced a significantly upgraded SteelWorks((R)) Mobile appliance incorporating its new EverAvail(TM) High Availability Suite. EverAvail(TM) is a suite of applications that leverage the high-availability features of BlackBerry Enterprise Server 5.0 to provide robust, self-contained automated fail-over and facilities for disaster back-up/recovery and patch management in a hardened Microsoft Windows Server platform.

It will be interesting to see the range of products and solutions that arise as a result of this announcement, anything we can do to further organizations ability to host and deliver their email platforms has to be a good thing in terms of end user choice. I’m off to read up more.

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http://arunmanansingh.wordpress.com/2009/07/16/green_it_agenda/

Has your firm incorporated a Green IT agenda into their business strategy? Today, Green IT is being driven by business strategy and a sense of corporate responsibility to the environment. So it is important for CIOs to keep this in mind when planning.

Some firms are already taking steps by:
• Establishing a company wide Green plan
• Establishing a ROI calculation and business case for going green
• Video conference and web meetings replacing travel when appropriate
• Engage a recycling company to dispose of its e-was

Check out this post which talks about Green IT, it’s always great to see what people are writing in the Green IT space, the more we discuss and debate the issues, the more we can develop a Green IT solution that works for my business. Do check it out.

Considering the Green IT message within the support message, can not only benefit the organization in terms of corporate social responsibility but implementing configurations, or refreshing hardware can reduce the overall support cost – the pc that’s powered down overnight shouldn’t have the overheads of those that are left on for months at a time in terms of patching and performance. Refreshing the hardware to newer more energy efficient pcs might not only reduce our energy costs, but might also reduce our exposures to warranty claims and support issues. How you deploy Green IT within your business, whether it’s desktop virtualization, more efficient printing or switching off the pc’s will depend on your IT, your business, but consider making small changes can be just as effective as the big ones, it’s often easier to move forward at a few steps than transform everything overnight.

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GridWiseTech

This paper describes a methodology for improving database performance based on GridwiseTech’s extensive experience of dealing with the ever-increasing data demands facing its customers. The author clearly explains how inefficient processing can lead to losses, and how can a well implemented IT enhancement project bring significant savings to a company. Using realistic examples, he describes several commonly used techniques for building reliable data architectures that are faster and more efficient.

Check out this paper whis discusses methodologies for improving database performance. It’s always great to see what best practice or processes can be put into place in order to improve and maintain grid performance. That the database is scaled in line with your grid can be the difference between the grid platform ‘working’ from an end user perspective and not, I’m off to check out the document.

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As ever, it’s important to keep your drivers and firmware up to date as it’s the first thing your service provider/vendor will ask when logging a call.  I’ve updated the number of servers covered in the IBM firmware pdf/spreadsheet, including more blades/rack servers, do check it out.

The information contains system bios/array/network and other firmware that is applicable to the IBM blade/rack servers, but do check the IBM website for more information, and remember that the firmware update might require a driver upgrade or settings to be backed up first.

The HP and Dell pages were recently updated, check them out as well.

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IT Pro

Dell’s sleek new PowerEdge R710 aims to beat HP’s mighty ProLiant DL380 on all counts can it match up?

When we took an exclusive look at Dell’s PowerEdge R610 at the end of March we were bowled over by this 1U rack server innovative new features, slick design and value.

Now we move up to the latest 2U PowerEdge R710 and see whether it has what it takes to stand up to HP’s ProLiant DL380, which HP claims is the world’s best selling server.

The R710 as a system includes everything the R610 has to offer. This means it has a sharp focus on reduced power consumption, delivers Dell brand new centralised system management tools and, of course, has the Lifecycle Controller, which makes the eleventh generation PowerEdge servers quite unique. This delivers features such as build level audits, firmware version recording and options to transplant the servers settings to others for swift deployment.

I’m looking forward to a Dell event that I’m attending this week, the R710 certainly got great feedback, and it might be an ideal platform for virtualization or as an application/web server. I’m off to read up more about it, I’ve posted the firmware for it here.

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Information Week

Uptime Software has released Up.time 5, a systems management application that can monitor both physical and VMware-based virtual environments.

Up.time 5 relies on close collaboration with VMware’s virtual machine management system, vSphere 4 and its vCenter Orchestrator, to come up information needed for reporting on joint physical/virtual environments in a single management console. Up.time 5, for example, can track virtual machines moved by VMware’s live migration tool, VMotion, from one physical server to another.

Anything the vendors can do to aid systems management has to be a good thing, that we can move towards managing the physical and virtual servers has to be the way forward, but we need to couple that with the inventory tools, to understand from a business perspective what is running what application or service, for all those in-house reports, billing and process requirements we have – “how many web servers do we have running Windows 2003…”

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IT Pro

Virtualisation and cloud computing are key aspects of the storage, server and networking industries today.

Many companies are now providing technology to enable a virtualised environment or encouraging people to move into a cloud, pushing the energy as well as hardware savings.

For a business this can be great. The less hardware you need the lower the cost, be it power and cooling, the staff to manage it or the initial outlay to buy a product.

But for the vendors both big and small this will also mean less hardware is being purchased.

Are cloud/virtualization solutions/projects affecting sales? In many ways yes, but let’s step back for a second, the market for servers can be challenging this year as a result of economic conditions, many might be holding off on buying more servers/IT equipment until they see how sales/revenue is, or maybe trying to get a little more ‘value’ than simply refresh their hardware.

We’ll have to see, for the SMB market we need to evaluate whether they need a server, or could use a cloud service to provide their email/backup/file server solutions – though the data protection and ownership issues might present a challenge. There’s still the tactile element, I like to see/own the systems that run my business, handing it over can seem a step to far – though it depends on your relationship with your IT.

In the enterprise market, sales will be down probably, but those buying servers will be ‘filling their boots’, those organizations migrating data centers, integrating new businesses all need new servers either for their virtualization projects, to standardize on ‘standard platforms’ or simply to ensure we’re not moving a server when we can provision and supply one already in place in the new data center.

Cloud/virtualization changes the server market from one of application teams buying servers for their need, to application teams buying service they need within the enterprise. The IT within the enterprise is therefore becoming indirectly a service provider, once that happens, I wonder how long the server as an asset will be kept – will we not keep refreshing the hardware because the applications aren’t tied to the server? That the barriers to doing so are removed – I’ll keep buying the latest and most efficient servers every 18-24 months and bin/recycle it rather than keeping the server for a thousand years, because it’s just too much to move that application off it.

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Venturebeat

Advanced Micro Devices is launching two new versions of its chips with six brains today. The AMD Opteron HE and SE server microprocessors have six cores, or processors, on a single chip. The introduction is the latest volley in the ongoing tennis match AMD is playing with Intel.

With these two new versions, AMD is spreading out its product line and executing better. It launched its first six-core chip on June 1, about six months ahead of schedule. Now it’s adding more flavors for customers who have slightly different needs. These ones offer 18 percent better performance per watt of power than the company’s previous models.

But the market remains extremely competitive. Analysts note that Intel’s Nehalem family of server processors has been extremely well received this year. AMD has to keep on the treadmill just to make sure that it doesn’t lose ground to the world’s biggest chip maker.

It will be interesting to see how the new AMD chips perform, anything we can do to improve performance and manage or reduce the energy footprint has to be a good thing in terms of energy efficiency and extends the possibilities of the platform.

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This is Staffordshire

GO GREEN: Environment-conscious students have helped a high school win a green technology award.

Painsley Catholic College in Cheadle is the latest school nationwide to receive education company RM’s Green Technology Award, which recognises schools that are using energy-saving computers. Martin Cliffe, head of IT support at Painsley Catholic College, said: “It is a reflection of our commitment to using the most environmentally-friendly technology on the market.

An example of how it’s not only the enterprises looking at ‘Green IT’, using energy efficient hardware, with effective configuration can transform the way you provision and supply the IT. Not only can Green IT reduce your environmental impact, it can reduce your support costs, we need to look at the supply and demand chain of the IT service – what is it we need and how can we deliver at a lower cost and more effectively? It will be interesting to see what technologies/best practice were used.

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Business Wire

CUPERTINO, Calif. & TOKYO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Neterion, Inc., the industry pioneer of I/O Virtualization (IOV) in 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GbE) adapters for server and storage environments, and its exclusive partner in Japan, Hitachi High-Technologies (HHT), the leading Japanese distributor of technology-based products, announced that they will supply the Hitachi BladeSymphony 2000 line of servers with its third generation I/O Virtualized 10 GbE adapter. The option is available to the general public immediately, across all geographies.

The BladeSymphony 2000 is Hitachi’s most advanced blade architecture so far, with world-class reliability features, designed for mission critical applications. The new high-end, enterprise blade system features dual-socketed Intel® Xeon® Processor 5500 Series, which have been created using Intel’s CPU microarchitecture codenamed Nehalem. Its high-density design hosts up to 8 blades and 16 I/O slots in a 10U chassis. A high-bandwidth, hybrid I/O subsystem leverages both industry-standard PCIe Gen2.0 slots and integrated switches, allowing configurations to share a common switching infrastructure and unique I/O interfaces per blade, enabling the most I/O-intensive workloads and consolidation through virtualization.

Furthering the possibilities of connectivity for the Hitachi Blade offering has to be a good thing for the end user community in terms of choice and competition. I’m off to check it out.

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