Bladewatch.com

Business Wire

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ:JAVA) today demonstrated the robust performance, price/performance and density of its Open Network Systems with multiple record-breaking results on industry-standard Business Intelligence/Data Warehousing (BIDW) and e-mail serving benchmarks. These records highlight the significant infrastructure and management cost savings Sun’s Open Network Systems deliver through the convergence of compute, networking and storage. Sun also announced outstanding performance on the two-tier SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) Standard Application Benchmark and the SAS(R) Analytics grid test.

It’s always good to see what different technologies and configurations are being put together to provide a high performance solution for different applications, Sun have got some illustrations, it’s an interesting read and always good to see the technologies/comparisons used. As with any performance analysis, remember that the configuration is only as good as the application running on it, that for optimum performance you need to be looking at your infrastructure, the network, storage, server as well as the configuration of the operating system, the fixes/patches and firmware installed.

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Marketwire

PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwire – July 8, 2009) – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) — a unique feature of VMware vSphereâ„¢ 4 can boost total application performance by up to 47 percent.

VMware DRS, originally introduced with VMware Infrastructure 3 in June 2006, continuously monitors virtual machine utilization across resource pools and intelligently balances computing capacity to deliver optimal application performance and to align computing resources with business needs.

Recent lab tests were conducted with a mix of heavily- and lightly-utilized Microsoft SQL Server databases running in virtual machines on a VMware vSphere cluster with four VMware vSphere hosts. Using DRS resulted in a 47 percent higher aggregate database transaction throughput compared to an environment with no virtual machine load balancing. The results demonstrate convincingly that dynamic virtual machine load balancing is a must-have requirement, not only for greater hardware utilization through higher consolidation ratio, but also for virtualizing business critical applications.

“These tests demonstrate how VMware DRS optimizes efficiency while providing guaranteed levels of performance. This allows customers to maximize the potential of their datacenter resources, in an automated, controlled way,” said Dr. Stephen Herrod, chief technology officer and senior vice president of R&D at VMware. “VMware vSphere 4 is the only virtualization platform that includes a dynamic virtual machine load balancing capability. By optimizing resource use, DRS enables customers to achieve higher consolidation ratios, resulting in the lowest overall cost per application. DRS is one of the many features that make VMware vSphere the best choice for virtualizing all of your applications.”

Very cool, anything VMware can do to improve the customer experience, and scale of the virtual environment has to be a good thing, I’m off to check out more on vmware.com

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Microsoft

This advance notification provides the software subject (and possibly a number) as the bulletin identifier, because the official Microsoft Security Bulletin numbers are not issued until release. The bulletin summary that replaces this advance notification will have the proper Microsoft Security Bulletin numbers (in the MSyy-xxx format) as the bulletin identifier.

The following table summarizes the security bulletins for this month in order of severity.

For details on affected software, see the next section, Affected Software.

Check out Microsoft’s advanced notification for July’s security patches, what is actually in scope and to be patched can change right up until the last minute. Nonetheless, do check out if you might need to schedule and resource security patching you desktop/server estate.

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PC Pro

IBM is late with support for Intel’s Series 5500 Xeons but does this 1U rack server has the measure of Dell’s and HP’s new systems?

Despite Intel launching its latest Xeon 5500 processors back in March it’s taken until now for us to get our hands on one of IBM’s new System x servers that support these. Dell was one of the first to market with its slick PowerEdge R610, which set a very high standard in terms of new features – and in this exclusive review we see how well IBM’s latest System x3550 M2 stacks up against it.

Build quality of this 1U chassis is good and IBM has upped the storage stakes as the x3550 has room at the front for six 2.5in SFF SAS or SATA hard disk in hot-swap carriers. This puts it on a par with the PowerEdge R610 but it’s beaten by HP’s new sixth generation DL360, which has room for eight SFF drives – you can see our exclusive review of the DL360 G6 in our sister title PC Pro.

Check out this review talking about IBM’s new X3550 M2, it’s always great to see what people think about the hardware, an interesting read, I’m off to read up more about the server on the IBM site.

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Fujitsu

Fujitsu today announces the PRIMERGY TX100 S1, the successor of the Econel 100 S2. The TX100 S1 is the most affordable PRIMERGY server yet, perfect for small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) that need an entry-level server to increase their operational efficiency, performance and security. Now SMEs can afford to move away from using a PC in combination with an external hard drive for storage and upgrade to a proper business class server.

For SMEs that may be risking their data and losing efficiency by using a PC as their server, the PRIMERGY TX100 S1 is a cost-effective and dependable server solution. For the price of a PC, the PRIMERGY TX100 S1 provides a reliable infrastructure with up to 4 TB of integrated storage, combined with the performance and data security of RAID 0/1. An optional tape drive for backup and archiving system enables customers to further increase data security and comply with governmental rules and regulations. With the PRIMERGY TX100 S1, companies can improve operational efficiency and performance by centralizing file storage, coordinating print jobs, supporting billing or purchasing applications, and supporting e-mail and Internet server applications.

Anything vendors can do to reduce the entry cost and meet the SMB need has to be a good thing, whether it’s a small file server, something to run their Exchange or in house intranet.

At the same time anything we can do to also simplify the systems management is also important as we bring users online to ‘server ownership’ as needed, we need to provide resources, community on best practice, how to prevent and manage issues going forward.

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Computer Weekly

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) is to investigate whether exclusive distribution deals between mobile handset makers and network operators reduce competition and lead to higher prices for consumers.

The news came as Telefonica, the Spanish network operator, signed an exclusive deal to distribute the Palm Pre “iPhone killer” in Germany, Spain, the UK and Ireland.

Ofcom and the Office of Fair Trading, the two main regulators of the UK mobile sector, say no one in the UK has complained about exclusive deals.

It will be interesting to see what if any developments come from this announcement/investigation.

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Computer Weekly

Microsoft saved thousands of pounds recruiting technical staff through LinkedIn rather than hiring a headhunter. KPMG found its recruits through Second Life.

Social networking has meant that databases of potential job applicants, once the prize possessions of recruitment companies, are now public property.

Microsoft recruiter Declan Fitzgerald used that fact to his advantage when he was asked to find nine workers with niche IT skills to work on a security project.

“Finding nine techies with skills in the rare Assembly and X86 software languages is not that easy and traditional methods would not work,” says Fitzgerald.

By using social networking site LinkedIn he was able to find suitable people and saved about £60,000 in recruitment company fees.

Indian IT supplier HCL claims to have saved £300,000 in recruitment fees in a year, while brewer SAB Miller saved £1.2m in recruitment fees in a year by employing 120 people directly from LinkedIn.

There remains demand for recruitment agencies for traditional roles, but more and more LinkedIn is becoming a great way of finding people particularly for those niche requirements, and can be a way of getting reviews before even meeting them or calling them to say can you do this? You interested?

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BBC News

Google has announced which hardware firms have pledged to build machines that will run its Chrome OS.

The search giant said it was working with many firms on Chrome OS hardware including Acer, Asus, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, and Toshiba.

The software is designed to work with the web and Google said it was most likely to appear on smaller portable computers known as netbooks.

The browser-based operating system will be released to the public in 2010.

It will be great to see what the user experience will be like on these devices running the new browser based operating system, I’m sure it will be fine, I’m off to read up more.

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I was speaking with Chris again today, he was after some help with his HP blades he’s playing with, he was in a data center (a bit bored) deploying Windows 2003 on some Bl460c’s. Anyway, after asking me some questions about the C class enclosure, (firmware updates and resetting the ilo on the blade using the switch on the system board to disable login), he asked me two questions which though unimportant raise two issues indirectly, so I thought I’d post them.

What’s the first server that taught you a lesson?

It was an application server, a Compaq Proliant 2500R, I can still remember the host name and where it lived in the data center, we were applying Service Pack 6a and the Security Roll Up Package which requires that you have your Compaq drivers be up to a certain level, before it was installed.

So I did the following:

• Reboot server
• Install SmartStart 5.5 (that was the latest at the time) – it went through fine and rebooted the server
• The server booted then blue screened with some kind of stop error.
• After much playing about, we discovered that upgrading the array controller firmware fixed it
  • The firmware was ancient and not supported by the driver.
• Installed SP6 + the Security Roll Up Package and that worked fine.

Ever since then it is this server, this experience that has underpinned my firmware and driver upgrade love.

The second would have been any experience with a Windows cluster, desktop heap or Emulex drivers and SP1.

What barriers to entry can you see with upgrading servers to 1GB Ethernet in the typical enterprise?

• You would need to check applications for impact of the extra bandwidth – it shouldn’t be an issue but it will need to be done for due diligence, for example any rendezvous or tibco feeds.
• Not all the servers will be 1GB ready, anything older than a DL380 G3 might not have an integrated network card that is capable of this speed:
  • What do we do with these servers – virtualize them/hardware refresh/network card to be purchased – this can be significant work just outside of changing IP/network card speed.
  • Any legacy systems, really olden days ones might only operate at 10/half or 10/full and can’t be upgraded
    • What do we do with them in terms of the upgrade project?
    • Mark for decommission?
    • Rule them out of scope?
• Upgrading might require an IP address change, as you might need to physically relocate your server on a different network or network fabric – the feeds in and out of the application will need updated as will any ip specific code references.
• The core switches might need upgraded in order to cope with this and should be checked for capacity/impact.

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Bladewatch.com

I’ve updated the firmware information and added new rack servers/blades from Dell. The details can be found here.

As ever, it’s just to keep everyone up to date, and to remind you that the first thing a service provider/vendor will ask is if the following have been updated when logging a call:

• System/array/nic/lights out firmware updated
• Driver pack updated to the latest revision
• Operating system hot fixes/service packs and security patches applied

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