Bladewatch.com

BBC News

Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor’s algorithm – a well-known quantum approach – to solve a maths problem. The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers. This kind of factoring is the basis for a wide variety of encryption schemes. The work, reported in Science, is rudimentary but could easily be scaled up to handle more complex computing. Shor’s algorithm and the factoring of large numbers has been a particular case used to illustrate the power of quantum computing.

Very cool, an interesting read, I’m off to check out more information, I wonder what uses the chip could be put to.

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vmware.com

VMware View Customer Momentum Accelerates Across Industries with More than 1 Million Seats and Over 7,000 Customers Worldwide

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – September 2, 2009 – Today at VMworld 2009, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, announced broad customer adoption of VMware View™, the leading desktop virtualization solution.  With more than 1 million seats estimated across 7,000 customers, VMware View is establishing itself as the standard of choice to centralize desktop management, lower costs and deliver rich, personalized user experiences.  VMware View™ has been widely adopted across industries – including financial services, healthcare, education, manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications and the public sector.  In addition, organizations are accelerating large scale deployments across broader use cases as they may realize strong total cost of ownership (TCO) savings of $600 or more per end user in less than six months.

“We have deployed 600 desktops and are planning to deploy about 6,000 in the next 18 months to meet the needs of our employees across our 700 branches,” said Phil Sinquefield, deployment service manager at Woodforest National Bank.  “VMware View provides us with a solution to support end user mobility within the branch while cost-effectively addressing complex compliance and security requirements to restrict data access based on user and device.”

“VMware View has helped us improve the efficiency of desktop provisioning, management and support so we can best serve our employees,” said Chris Renter, manager, IT architecture at TELUS. “VMware View centralizes our desktop management enabling us to protect corporate assets while delivering effective personalized desktops to TELUS teams wherever they are working. Traditional solutions couldn’t offer the same level of data protection and application performance while streamlining desktop management.”

An article illustrating how virtualization of the desktop is helping empower businesses to not only improve end user mobility and functionality, but reduce their support costs, being able to offer a more dynamic platform for provisioning and hosting the desktop.

Virtualization of the desktop is the next target as we complete the first phase of infrastructure or server virtualization. As we abstract the end user from the server and the desktop, we’re only a few steps away from application and infrastructure virtualization where the user is platform and infrastructure independent of the application, may it continue, it might not happen overnight, but exciting times are forecast me thinks. Watch this space.

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Dell.com

• OEM agreements with Brocade, Scalent and VMware position Dell to uniquely offer open, standards-based foundation for virtualized enterprise computing – from the desktop to the datacenter
• In keynote address, Dell outlines the future of open, efficient data centers

Addressing the desire to simplify and standardize the data center, Dell today unveiled additions to its efficient enterprise portfolio at the VMworld ‘09 conference. Dell announced new desktop, networking, and virtualization management partnerships that can allow businesses to reduce the cost and time associated with the deployment and ongoing management of desktop and data center virtual environments.

“The growing desire for increased enterprise efficiency, combined with the rapid evolution and adoption of virtualized, standards-based architectures is changing the way enterprise technology is built and deployed,” said Praveen Asthana, vice president of Dell Enterprise Storage and Networking, in his presentation at VMworld 09. “The future of enterprise computing does not lie in a proprietary, monolithic stack. Businesses are looking to drive efficiency and innovation and products from Dell help drive these gains while avoiding vendor lock in. The next-generation datacenter – or the Efficient Datacenter – will be standards-based from the compute to the networking fabric, fully virtualized and cloud enabled, and highly automated.”

Anything Dell can do to extend the possibilities of the infrastructure, of the platform has to be a good thing, particularly if we involve open standards including all the elements of the IT function, from the desktop to the server, from the application to the middleware going forward. Exciting times ahead, I need to read up more, and wonder what possibilities/products and services might result from this announcement.

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HP.com

At VMworld 2009 today, HP announced innovative management and service solutions that extend the benefits of virtualization beyond servers to the entire infrastructure.

As a result, customers can maximize resource utilization, improve administrator productivity and drive business growth.

HP also announced the first virtual desktop infrastructure solution for under $1,000 per user seat.⁽¹⁾ The solution was demonstrated during VMware Chief Executive Officer Paul Maritz’s keynote presentation today.

Virtual desktop infrastructure is a server-based computing model that gives users a PC desktop experience, while securing all applications, management and processing in the data center. The HP Virtual Desktop Reference Architecture for VMware View specifically addresses the performance bottlenecks and management complexities of other offerings. Customers can test the solution in select HP solution centers worldwide.

An interesting read, and it’s great to see virtual desktop solution coming down in price, anything we can do to increase the accessibility of the platform, whilst reducing the cost and the overheads in terms of systems administration and ‘time to live’ has to be a good thing, I’m off to read up more.

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http://management.silicon.com/careers/0,39024671,39506212,00.htm

IT graduates are leaving UK universities without the business and technical competencies that employers need, according to silicon.com’s CIO Jury.

The majority of the jury said they believe universities are not producing IT graduates with the right skills for their businesses – bad news for graduates competing for the diminishing number of IT jobs.

Only four of the 12 IT chiefs said they feel tech graduates are finishing university with the expertise their companies are looking for.

An interesting article, one of the things I was saying the other day to a colleague was that I wonder if univeristies could not do more, by aligning their courses in line more with support functions? By that I mean my IT course comprised of IT process and theory, about java programming, flash design and information systems, but there was not much on this ITIL thing, on helpdesk or the ‘basics’, being on call, that there might be a reason that an enterprise runs on legacy systems. It’s something I’d love  to see going forward, how cool would it be as a student if you could opt in to do oncall for the university? Do helpdesk for a month? Even if the oncall was staged, come on site and re-install Windows or Solaris for example, understanding, going through an incident, resolving it and writing a report might add invaluable experience in preparation for your first role. It might not be for everyone, but I wonder if students might not enjoy the concept?  Could you offer the opportunity to link your university course with an industry approved certification one which might be more affordable or educational?  An ECP (Educationally certified person) rather than a MCP?

Some example topics to cover:

• ITIL – could a student come out with ITIL certification?
• On call
• Rapid application development
• Economics of not investing in IT
• Blades vs Servers
• Unified fabrics and virtualization
• Economics of investing in IT
• Economics and not of green IT – is green IT the way forward?
• The data center – how important it is – the air flow, the power etc
• The organization – How it all fits together
• Cloud computer
• Hardware/software certification – maybe not official, but approved concepts, what RAID is, what industry best practice is, basics, swapping a power supply/replacing a system board with credit/cerfication?

Just think of the possibilities of fresh ideas, not only from those working in the industry, but of those that haven’t got the emotional or organizational baggage in solving issues.

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One of the things you regularly get asked as a server guy is the specifications of your server, as well as the age of your server – more relevant if you want to move/refresh your estate. It might also be useful if you’re seeking to virtualize anything with ‘no capex’ or older than 2005 for example.

With this in mind, I’ve put together the data below, please note the actual age will depend on the specification as well as the purchase date.

The dates noted are the dates listed relate to the different versions/updates to the ‘quickspecs’. on the different parts of the HP support and quickpecs site.

Please note this is meant as a guide, I’ve been careful, but there could be mistakes so do double check before quoting me.

The ‘averaged date’ is where I’ve set an average age of the server or manufacture year.

• For example the DL360 G1 quickspecs were updated between late December 2000 and 2002, for this server, I’ve set the averaged date as 2002.

You’ll see what I mean below. I’ll upload this to the documentation site later today.

I’ve just done HP, I’ll need to work on Dell/IBM.

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http://www.bmc.com/en-GB/news/press-releases/2009/important-new-research-IT-innovators.html

LONDON, September 2, 2009 — Businesses that continue to invest in IT are better positioned to weather the economic downturn, and will be better equipped to capitalize on any future economic recovery, according to a new survey of 300 European enterprise IT decision makers and research from the London School of Economics (LSE).

Results of the 2009 European IT Survey 1, sponsored by BMC Software (NYSE: BMC), reveal that one in four companies – the Thrivers — are beating the recession by focusing on improving their IT organization’s operational efficiency and reinvesting those cost savings into strategic IT projects that drive new business. Many of the surveyed CIOs highlighted their belief that sustained IT investment is strongly linked to overall business performance.

The survey also reflected interesting differences between the approaches to IT investment and innovation in the three countries. For example, German companies are the most consistent in their approach to innovation. They typically spend 24 percent of their IT budgets on innovation with a drop in spend of only 8 percent on average. In comparison, French companies are the most cautious; with innovation spend decreasing by 17 percent in the downturn. The UK has the most enthusiastic sentiment towards innovation, with 67 percent prioritizing innovation and 77 percent innovating in good and bad times.

An interesting article from BMC. To be the leader in your field you need your applications available, have everything set up ready for business. Priorities therefore should be in eliminating the barriers to entry, the time it takes to set up a new user, the issues surrounding inventory/patch management and application support, so that your teams have the tools they need to quickly and effectively recognize and issue and resolve it. Of course we need to be proactive, preventing issues before they happen, but first of all, we need to work on identifying the applications and systems, identifying typical issues, understanding and sharing their resolution, and then moving towards a permanent fix.

In terms of innovation, we need to be innovating to new solutions, new platforms but we also need to have ‘retrospective innovation’, looking at what we have and making it the best that it can be. That the Windows 2000 servers are brought up to spec with the latest drivers/firmware, with the page file, services and the configruation all optimized. That the way we build a server, or deploy an application though manual or scripted is done in the best way possible at the least marginal cost, the phrase I’ve used before stabilizing the core. That you have NT servers need not be a problem, technically yes it’s out of support and theefore a risk. But optimized, simple tasks like disk space, drivers, turning off services that aren’t needed, defragmenting the file system, setting the network card to 100/full, or tuning your monitoring can change your high maintenance platform to one that’s an issue, but operationally acceptable.

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VMware.com

HP Insight Control Is the First Integration with VMware vCenterâ„¢ Server to Provide a Single Solution for Managing Both Physical and Virtual Infrastructures

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., September 1, 2009 — Today at VMworld 2009, VMware and HP announced a solution that will enable customers to manage both physical and virtual infrastructure through the VMware vCenter™ console. This solution will increase administrator efficiency. HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter™ Server, the first integration of its kind, was unveiled during HP’s Super Session keynote at VMworld 2009. It is also being presented at demonstrations throughout the event and at the HP booth in the Solutions Exchange (Booth No. 2023).

Customers are demanding tighter integration between virtual and physical environments to simplify the user experience and provide greater infrastructure control in a simple, familiar interface. HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter Server will enable administrators to more efficiently and easily manage both the physical and virtual components of their virtualized infrastructure through the VMware vCenter console. Customers can streamline day-to-day monitoring and management tasks while freeing up IT staff to focus on more strategic projects that better align technology to business needs.

“VMware and HP have joined together to help customers maximize their return on investment in virtualization, continuing our longstanding relationship of deep technology collaboration,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president and general manager, Server Business Unit, VMware. “The new HP Insight Control for VMware vCenter™ Server combines two industry-leading management solutions to offer customers the best of both worlds through ‘single-pane-of-glass’ infrastructure management. The solution will help customers manage virtualized environments more easily, with familiar tools that their IT staff has been trained on. At the same time, customers will be able to improve operational efficiencies by spending less time on maintenance issues and more time building out solutions that will help increase revenue.”

This is great news, anything we can do to make support and management of the virtual and physical infrastructure has to be a good thing for the end user, being able to move between environments can reduce support costs and improve delivery. That I can have a unified viewpoint of the infrastructure might also enable us to further move towards the application specific or infrastructure specific customer viewpoint – where are we in terms of utilization on both the physical and virtual server estates. Interesting, I’ll need to check it out.

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PC Pro

IBM announced support for Intel’s new Xeon 5500 processors at the same time as Dell and HP, but it’s taken noticeably longer to deliver them to market.

Build quality is up to IBM’s usual high standard, and it has upped the storage stakes. The x3550 has room at the front for six 2.5in SFF SAS or SATA hard disk in hot-swap carriers, putting it on par with the A-Listed PowerEdge R610, but it’s beaten by HP’s new DL360 G6, which has room for eight SFF drives.

IBM offers a good range of RAID options and you can start without a controller and upgrade to the ServeRAID-BR10i PCI Express card, which delivers support for stripes and mirrors. Next up is the ServeRAID-MR10i in the review system, which brings in support for RAID5 and dual-redundant RAID6 arrays, plus an optional battery backup pack.

Check out this review of IBM’s new System x3550, it’s always great to see what people are writing about in this space and what they think about the products. It’s great to see IBM’s new server based on the newer Intel processors, I’m off to read up more.

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PC Pro

HP certainly isn’t shy about its ProLiant servers, since it claims the DL380 as the world’s most popular rack server, and the ML350 as one of the world’s most flexible tower servers. In this exclusive review, we take a closer look at the sixth generation of this pedestal server and see why HP is so excited about duality.

With the new ML350 you get two dual processors sockets supporting the latest 5500 Xeons, room for two power supplies, dual redundant cooling fans and a pair of Gigabit network ports. Also, HP claims the chassis is dual purpose since it supports either 3.5in or 2.5in SFF hard disks, SAS and SATA variants and you can fit two drive bays in it.

The chassis has good expansion potential, offering a quintet of 5.25in bays with one occupied by a DVD-ROM drive, while below is a large hard disk cage with versions available for eight SFF drives or six 3.5in models. The lower pair of expansion bays can be taken over by an optional second eight-slot bay for SFF drives, or you can add a dual-slot bay for the larger drives.

Check out this article which is reviewing HP’s Proliant ML350 G6, it’s one of their flexible tower servers, it’s always great to see what different people think about the servers. The ML350 G6 might be an ideal file server, or even as a virtualization platform for that small/medium business, it all depends on you and your business, as ever an interesting read, do check it out.

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