Bladewatch.com

Guardian

Google has issued its clearest challenge to rival Microsoft so far, by announcing its plans to create a new computer operating system aimed at laptop users.

The Californian internet company said it is working on a lightweight system that is based on the Chrome web browser it launched last year.

“It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be,” said the company on the Official Google Blog.

The first version of the system, which will be targeted at netbook computers – the small, portable laptops that have become popular in recent years – is due to be made available in the second half of 2010.

“Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS,” said the announcement. “We’re designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web.”

It added that there would be a heavy focus on creating a system that would not require users to worry about security holes and virus warnings.

It will be interesting to see what the specifications for the new operating system is, could it be used for thin clients in a virtualization solution? I’m off to read up more.

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Chris was asking me about storage energy efficiency, one of the architects was saying how he was seeking to switch storage platforms to reduce power usage in the data center, as the new array they were looking at required more power.

“…We were thinking of switching from ******* to ******* having looked at the energy footprint of their array, we wondered what impact that might have in terms of SAN/NAS and wanted your opinion.”

Went the email (thanks Chris) who’s been watching the rain today in Canary Wharf.  Anyway he was asking me what I  thought.

Emm. Well before switching array shelves, storage platforms from EMC to HDS, from HDS to HP to NetAPP to Sun, Dell or IBM, can we look out our core?

• What are our current and projected utilizations and requirements for storage
• What applications/services are using the most storage
• What rules/procedures do we have for storage in the enterprise
• Do we have any best practice/rules for tiering storage where we offline data that’s not needed online?
• What architectural standards are in place for applications in relation to storage
• What de-duplication techniques, best practices or technologies do we use across the enterprise or application? Are we duplicating data, results, workloads and functions within related or different applications
• What combination of virtualization and storage processes/technologies are we using to our advantage? Are we creating separate C drives for all virtual machines, rather than one gold image and creating a change file per virtual machine?
• How are we addressing the real issue of data growth – the concept that the next EMC storage solution purchased is full before it’s delivered and connected.

The prime example I was using with a client yesterday during an interview (which is being published tomorrow) was:

The backups didn’t work, rather they worked, but the lead time to a restore felt like forever. This resulted in data being kept on the servers, which caused the backups to take longer to complete, which caused interference with some specific applications and at the same time caused the SAN storage solution to get full.

We can look at switching platforms/technologies at anytime, that’s the easy bit, we need to look how the business, the operational issues are acting as a barrier to success, above it was that the tape recall process was to slow, at another organization, their cross charging caused an issue. Teams were billed different amounts dependent on whether the storage was ‘Tier1′ (99.999%) available or ‘Tier2′ (99.9%) available, therefore to reduce individual application and business line costs, everyone went on Tier2 storage, “You sure it’s only Tier2?” IT would ask, “Oh yes, we’re sure”, suddenly two things happened, Tier2 got full within a few months, secondly a number of business lines turned around and said “That’s got to be Tier1 now, our application’s now Tier1, you can move us but we can’t have downtime”.

Address the non-technical, billing and operational issues and everything else will follow, in essence identify the issues and address them, not the resulting issues.

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Eweek

Cisco and VMware are working on a proof-of-concept around the idea of using VMware’s VMotion technology to move live virtual machines between multiple data centers, a capability that would aid in such areas as load balancing, data center maintenance and disaster avoidance. The two companies demonstrated the proof-of-concept during the Cisco Live show. However, VMware officials warn that more work needs to be done to make the concept a reality.

Cisco Systems and VMware are developing ways that enterprises can use VMware’s VMotion technology to move live virtual machines from one data center to another.

The two companies showed off a proof-of-concept at the Cisco Live 2009 show in San Francisco, and demonstrated the capabilities during Cisco CTO Padmasree Warrior’s keynote address July 2.

The project is still in the proof-of-concept stage, but VMware official Guy Brunsdon said in a recent blog post that moving live virtual servers to other locations over a WAN holds promise for businesses in a number of areas.

In particular, the capability would help enterprises in load balancing compute resources over multiple sites, Brunsdon said in his blog posted June 29. Businesses also could save power and cooling costs by being able to dynamically consolidate VMs to fewer data centers, he said.

This is very cool and is another step towards what we’ve written about here and here before; the next generation infrastructure, moving to that ideal where we can move the IT around following the sun or the business activity. The concept being that I can take New York’s data center down, patch it and update it whilst New York’s services run from London, Singapore or Tokyo, or even better wherever the carbon cost or energy costs are lowest. With a truly mobile virtualized infrastructure, we can free the business and the IT to work around each other, that I need to upgrade all my servers service packs, with co-ordination might be done during the business day rather than at weekends, we simply switch users around the infrastructure, managing the load, managing the outage, doing changes on a global or local level as needed.

On an operational level, just how cool would it be if I could have the reserve and the capacity to have true resilience, that London’s data center looses power isn’t an issue, we can fail it to Tokyo as they’re offline, that the data center can go offline to save power and carbon footprint and have the data move wherever the business is.

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Version One

The findings of a survey by document management software company, Version One, has revealed that 41% of senior IT professionals admit that they “don’t know” what cloud computing is. Version One carried out the research with 60 senior IT professionals (IT directors and managers) across a range of UK public and private sector organisations. This research follows-on from a similar survey carried-out by Version One which highlights that two-thirds of UK senior finance professionals (finance directors and managers) are confused about cloud computing.

Of the remaining 59% of IT professionals who profess to know what cloud computing is, 17% of these understand cloud computing to be internet-based computing while 11% believe it is a combination of internet-based computing, software as a service (SAAS), software on demand, an outsourced or managed service and a hosted software service. The remaining respondents understand cloud computing to be a mixture of the above.

I wonder if cloud is one of those things that means different things to different people. I wonder if this is one of these technologies or processes that could transform how we provision and deliver the IT within the enterprise. We’ll have to see it, I like to think it’s the start of moving to the next generation infrastructure, the next generation business, in which the IT runs in the most efficient location, a follow the sun support model where we can fail over the data center, not the IT.

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PRNewswire

Patch Downloader v6.0 Eases the Pain of Downloading Patches for Various VMware ESX Versions – For Free

MOUNT ARLINGTON, N.J., June 24 /PRNewswire/ — PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the pioneering esXpressdata protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, today announced availability of Patch Downloader version 6.0, a new freeware solution to simplify patch downloading for various VMware ESX versions. Patch Downloader is the fifth free virtualization utility to be offered by PHD Virtual as part of its longstanding commitment to the virtualization community.

Patch Downloader v6.0 eases the pain of downloading patches for various ESX versions from the VMware support site by automating the process for users that cannot use the VMware Update Manager. Now, rather than downloading each patch manually through a Java Download manager, VMware administrators can simply select the version of ESX from the Patch Downloader drop down menu, and select the file repository (including folder, drive map, SMB share, etc.) to download the patches to. The new freeware solution will list all of the available patches and information about the patches including severity of the problem it corrects, what the impact on VM/Host uptime is, and a description of the problem fixed.. Downloads of selected patches are performed with a simple click making it easy to keep the ESX patch repository up to date.

“Performing manual ESX patch downloading can make it easy to miss a needed patch and it can also be painfully slow to locate and select the patches you need,” said Alex Mittell, director of engineering, PHD Virtual. “As part of our ongoing commitment to the community of virtual enterprise users we’ve added the new Patch Downloader to our set of freeware solutions designed to enhance the management of VMware ESX environments. As a result, anyone can easily ensure that their ESX patch repository is current.”

This looks interesting, I’ll need to read up more, but anything we can do to make patching the ESX environments easier, or even indeed to highlight the need to patch your ESX environment has to be a good thing, do check it out, that it’s freeware is to be commended!

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Environmental leader

A new online calculator allows companies to estimate the carbon footprint and related costs from their data centers, as well as from co-location facilities.

The Eco-IT Monitor is a project between SGI, Intel and BPM Forum.

The online tool is designed to help IT professionals and data center managers learn how to cut emissions and expenses by suggesting specific best practices.

These tools can be useful and highlight elements of green computing which has to be a good thing for the end user community and environmental community alike, we need to move towards a more big approach to Green IT, to a Green business (if there is such a thing). Just because I take the big picture, doesn’t mean we can’t compartmentalize it to a set of small achievable projects which can run in parallel to achieve a reduced operating cost or energy footprint. For example in the SMB:

• Set screensaver to blank on all pcs
• Set desktops to power pc on and off (this can be done in the bios on some pcs)
• Turn on power management options
• Replace computers with thin clients/energy efficient desktops
• Unplug devices that aren’t in use

These might be done in parallel and might vary between long term and short term in terms of project goals and what’s achievable. More long term examples might be:

• Virtualization of the application and infrastructure, combined with consolidation of server roles and applications to what we need, combining functionality or features where possible.
• Data design and usage patterns combined with application design – stop data duplication and create feeds where possible, to avoid data being duplicated throughout the network for specific roles, centralize data/batches where possible.
• Move to a shared infrastructure common platform pay on use IT delivery system
• Look at cloud solutions in which you can buy in the functionality you need for specific requirements – email/storage

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Eweek

Dell officials are announcing that two of its PowerEdge server platforms, the R610 and R710, now meet the requirements needed for the EPA’s Energy Star program for servers, which was instituted in May. The Energy Star label means the systems are energy efficient and environmentally friendly. The federal specification comes at a time when businesses and the federal government are pushing vendors for more efficient data center products.

A month after the Environmental Protection Agency issued Energy Star guidelines for servers, Dell is unveiling two system platforms that meet the federal criteria.

Dell officials are announcing June 25 that the PowerEdge 610 and 710 serverlines qualify for the new EPA Energy Star specification, which the federal agency put into effect May 15.

Daniel Bounds, director of enterprise solutions in power and cooling for Dell, said the vendor was the first to offer entire platforms that meet the criteria and qualify to carry the Energy Star logo.

Well done to Dell for it’s new R610 and R710 servers meeting the EPA’s Energy Star program for servers.

The EPA rating for servers will continue to be something which is either fantastic, or doesn’t go far enough, regardless that the scheme exists, that the debate on energy efficiency and that innovation continues remains important in moving towards a more energy efficient infrastructure reducing our energy costs in doing so.

The rating is a star, we now need to move the debate onto the next generation data center, where we start moving the infrastructure around the globe in line with our business requirements, whether it’s the IT infrastructure following the sun or the IT running in the cheapest operational and environmental cost.

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Govtech

Pennsylvania has long recognized the importance of using IT innovation to improve service delivery to its citizens. Every day almost 12.5 million citizens rely on our government to educate their children, protect their communities, build and maintain roadways and transportation systems, steward natural resources and much more. More than 80,000 public-sector employees in more than 45 agencies, boards and commissions across the state are responsible for delivering these services. To support these employees in their various duties, Pennsylvania invests approximately $1 billion annually in IT.

An interesting read, whether it’s outsourcing, grid, virtualization, consolidation or something as simple as a new server, that you achieve your objectives is all that matters. Being more innovative with technology, to do more with less, to reduce the barriers to success or communication has to be a good thing for the end users of your service or business.

Before looking at any technology as a solution though we need to identify the issues, the barriers to success (politically, organizationally technically), before we can start seeing what changes can be made to aid delivery.

Even simple steps like consolidating roles and functions within an enterprise can transform your cost and delivery base, having one area provide one aspect of the infrastructure rather than different business units putting a range of technologies together to deliver their technology. At the same time though, we need an IT that’s centralized but flexible enough to allow specific business lines or applications live or operate in the way that meets their cost or operational requirements. Regardless, check it out, it’s impressive reading about the state’s achievements.

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Reuters

The first involves the creation of the Green Sigma Coalition to integrate IBM’s Green Sigma consulting service with the products and services of several big-name partners. A second project will take aim at the development of tomorrow’s lithium ion batteries.

IBM unveiled its Green Sigma consulting service last summer to address environmental impacts of a company’s operations, ranging from the data center and office facilities to retail space and manufacturing plants. The service is based on the Lean Six Sigma management strategy.

The company will incorporate the service with the products of other charter members of the newly formed Green Sigma Coalition, which includes Johnson Controls, Honeywell Building Solutions, ABB, Eaton, ESS, Cisco, Siemens Building Technologies Division and Schneider Electric. The coalition will give customers a range of expertise to tackle energy and water consumption, waste and carbon footprint.

IBM will also embark on a long-term research program that will focus on next-generation lithium ion batteries for use in electric vehicles while also lending support to smarter power grids. The batteries have the potential to store 10 times the energy as today’s batteries.

Anything IBM can do to help with the carbon footprint of the data center has to be a good thing for the end user community in terms of best practice and choice in assistance with data center strategy and design. I’m off to read up more about their Green Sigma service, I’m hoping this might further the discussions that are already taking place and further innovations and best practice within the data center carbon footprint space to help reduce our environmental impact and operations costs simultaneously.

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Dell UK

Help increase your productivity and watch movies, games, videos and images come alive with HD on an affordable 20″ (viewable) widescreen.

• High Definition+ 1600 x 900 resolution• 16:9 aspect ratio, the international standard for HDTV
• 1000:1 contrast ratio (typical)

I’ve been buying some pcs for a local business and saw this monitor £99.00 including VAT and delivery. There are of course other vendors/manufacturers but resolution and wide screen are very cool!

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