I’ve updated the HP spreadsheet which lists servers current supported firmware versions, keeping your firmware and drivers updated is one of the first questions you get asked when logging a call.

The spreadsheet is here.

Documents on how to update the firmware online are here for system and here for array.

Do double check the HP support site for more information/details about individual updates.

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vmware

With groundbreaking new memory management and expanded resource pooling capabilities, VMware vSphere 4.1 promises to accelerate the evolution of datacenters and service providers into cloud computing environments, setting the standard for key tenets of cloud computing:

* 2X larger resource pools with 3X the management power. Already the most powerful virtualization platform on the market, VMware vSphere 4.1 includes dramatic scalability enhancements, enabling customers to aggregate twice the computing resources within a single pool. VMware vCenter Server can now manage up to 10,000 concurrently powered on VMs – three times as many as before.
* Up to 25% better performance and reduced cost per application. With the addition of new memory compression technology, VMware vSphere 4.1 preserves the performance of systems under heavy load, resulting in up to 25% better performance over previous approaches. Memory compression also contributes to further increased consolidation ratios in VMware vSphere. Already the highest consolidation levels in the market, this increase reduces customers’ cost-per-application, a critical measure of value delivered through virtualization.
* 5X faster virtual machine migrations for increased agility. Speed and scale enhancements to VMware vMotion™ deliver superior platform response and availability by migrating virtual machines up to five times faster and enabling up to eight concurrent vMotion events per server pair.
* New network and storage I/O controls deliver Quality of Service guarantees. VMware vSphere 4.1 introduces new controls that allow better alignment of storage and network I/O resources to business priority. VMware vSphere network and storage I/O controls provide granular control over how applications access shared storage and network resources. Administrators can set quality of service priorities per virtual machine and VMware vSphere 4.1 automatically manages resource allocation accordingly.
* Increased performance through open integration with storage environments. VMware vSphere 4.1 already supports more operating systems, devices, applications, and service providers than any other virtualization solution. With the introduction of new VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), VMware vSphere 4.1 enables tighter integration with solutions from VMware’s storage partners to increase the efficiency and performance of the platform in cloud environments.

It’s great to see VMware continue to innovate their offerings and the possibilities with virtualization as a platform. Anything we can do to improve the scalability and the performance whilst at the same time, maintaining accessibility and reducing the barriers to entry has to be a good thing. The more we can onboard users, directly though concepts like the pc down the wire, or in cloud services, where I can buy in my data center in a cloud, the more opportunities for revenue generation and in genuine end user innovation for the business and IT. Exciting times are ahead, I’m off to read up more.

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Check out this interesting article talking about HP furthering their offering in the on-demand magazine. It also talks about how the iPad might bring new opportunities in the magazine area, it will be interesting to see how this progresses.

The great thing about these kind of opportunities are the revenue and chances for innovation or competition that result, as we make publishing more accessible, we might see more opportunities for revenue, for community and at the same time recognize new markets that might not previously been economical. An interesting read, do check it out here.

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NetApp

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC.—July 14, 2010— NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced that its dynamic data center located at the NetApp technology center in Research Triangle Park (RTP) has earned the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA’s) prestigious ENERGY STAR®, the national symbol for protecting the environment through superior energy efficiency. The RTP data center, which opened in 2009, is the first data center to achieve this distinction from the EPA.

EPA’s ENERGY STAR energy performance scale helps organizations assess how efficiently their data centers use energy relative to similar data centers nationwide. A data center that scores a 75 or higher on EPA’s 1–100 scale is eligible for the ENERGY STAR. The RTP data center achieved a near perfect mark by scoring a 99…

..To earn the ENERGY STAR, NetApp implemented the following features in the RTP data center:

• 74°F average supply air temperature: Using a higher temperature threshold on supply air (74°F instead of 55° to 60°F) allows NetApp to dramatically reduce cooling costs.
• Airside economizer: The data center is cooled by using just outside air (free cooling) 67% of the time during the year.
• Pressure-controlled room: Modulating fans, based on NetApp’s proprietary technology, supply pressure-controlled rooms and regulate the volume of air to avoid oversupplying air and wasting energy.
• Cold aisle containment: The cold room separates the cold and hot air streams to protect supply air temperatures from being affected by hot air returning from the racks.

I remain a fan of the NetApp storage platform, well done to them for their achievements with their dynamic data center, it does illustrate the possibilities when evaluating all the aspects of the data center for efficiency. It mentions some interesting concepts used including increasing the temperature of the data center as well as fresh air cooling things I have spoken about with people before, an interesting read, do check it out.

Overhead air distribution: Instead of pumping cold air up through the floors (raised floors), overhead air distribution takes advantage of cold/hot air buoyancy and eliminates ductwork, reducing the energy needed for fans.

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There has been a lot in the press and blog world about the iPhone 4, the issues around the signal loss reported if you hold it a certain way.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-10665424

Apple boss Steve Jobs unveiled the offer at a press conference called to tackle the ongoing speculation about the iPhone 4′s antenna problem.

The case will help overcome a widely reported issue in which phone signal strength was drained when the phone was held a certain way.

Declaring “We’re not perfect”, Mr Jobs said reception problems were endemic throughout the smartphone industry.

Apple remains an interesting company to me both in terms of marketing, product design and business. The debate is set to continue and I wonder how much this will really affect Apple in the long run, I suspect that there are still enough consumers out there that want the phone regardless of the analysis, the youtube videos and the commentary, including myself. What Apple needs to contend with is maintaining two things, the message Apple is good, secondly the concept of product differentiation and why their product is better. Ultimately as much as my colleagues discuss the ‘need’ to jailbreak their iPhone, and the fact that the iPhone is too locked down, they forget that the thing Apple does well is the user experience. There is no experience that quite matches plugging in my iPhone, watching it sync when I compare it to the equivalent from the other phone makers. Yes I can sync my other handsets with iTunes, but it’s just that little bit more fiddly, the are you sure you want to do that type questions, coupled with the layered bits that I need. Until the other phone makers innovate not just what the phone can do, but how it syncs, how easy it is to switch or close a task, even kill an application that’s gone on it’s holidays, Apple will continue to do better. In the meantime, as an iPhone 3GS user with v.401 installed, may my iPhone 4 come soon…

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HP announced their latest revisions to their Proliant range, with some important improvements with a focus on scalability, energy efficiency and consolidation. There have been several improvements around the systems management (ILO3) and further enhancements to their energy efficiency including their Intelligent Power Discovery technology, which does look cool. Anything that can be done to make remote management of the server that little bit easier, the console performance and experience, or in the way the virtual media is managed has to be a good thing, I can’t wait to play with ILO3.

That HP continues the platform innovation with a focus on both the server and the related technologies to bring it all together is welcome, the more innovation and improvements we see both in terms of performance, energy efficiency and ease of deployment has to be a good thing for the end user community and the market place in terms of competition and possibilities.

The key points of interest for me were the DL580 G7, it looks like an ideal platform for virtualization or as a database/application server, as well as the return of the 8 socket Intel server, and the DL980 G7 an ideal powerhouse application or consolidation server (I’ve played with 8 socket x86 servers since the Compaq Proliant 8500R and was a bit of a fan of them then). It will be interesting to see the response to these new products, there’s more information here.

In the meantime, I’m working on updating the firmware spreadsheets for Dell, HP and IBM alike.

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An interesting article from finextra talking about new banks finding it challenging to recruit new customers, it raises an interesting set of challenges for the industry both in reaching out to their customers and into how the banks manage and communicate with their customers.

http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=21607

New entrants to the UK banking market will have a fight on their hands to woo customers away from the security of their existing banks, with just 38% of consumers prepared to consider switching their current account to a brand new bank, according to research by financial comparison site uSwitch.

I wonder how much of this could be countered by a move back away from the sell everything you can to the customer, towards a more hand held, private way of banking? I don’t mind paying a little more for my banking, or dealing with interest rates if the bank is doing all it can, or being perceived to be doing all it can to assist me.

Could we be doing more with social media? More with direct user communication, not the automated text messages, the understanding bit, so Martin, what’s going on, only then might you find out what products, what services I might actually want to buy but do not know who to talk to about it, or how to go about it. A non billable activity, but an important one, whether it’s IT, selling cars or financial services, only through understanding where your customer is, where they want to be and what the possibilities are can you identify revenue and opportunities, the more we act on this, the better for the business, the user community and financial services as a brand and market.

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http://www.netapp.com/us/company/news/news-rel-20100713-virtual-storage.html

SUNNYVALE, Calif.—July 13, 2010— In support of the new VMware® vSphere™ 4.1 release, NetApp (NASDAQ: NTAP) today announced new storage management integration for greater performance and scalability of VMware vSphere environments. NetApp Virtual Storage Console enables customers to centrally manage all NetApp® storage for VMware environments directly from the VMware vCenter™ Server console and fully leverage the benefits of virtualized infrastructures.

Virtualized infrastructures are expanding the role of administrators and causing them to spend more time on storage monitoring and management. Although VMware® vCenter™ Server provides a powerful tool for managing and monitoring VMware vSphere™ environments, administrators also need a way to easily and efficiently manage associated storage.

Saw this on the NetApp site in the airport whilst waiting to fly home, looks interesting, anything that NetApp can do to further ease the management of their storage for their virtual environments has to be a good thing, I’m off to read up more, do check it out.

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I was having a chat with an IT Manager of the Windows server team for a financial multinational in the Canary Wharf area. We had dinner shortly before I went on holiday. We had been speaking about the BAU issues he’s going through, what his concerns are and his business drivers. The CIOs are often thinking strategy, thinking about costs, efficiency and delivery, the on the ground management teams often have different opinions and drivers.

Janet, (we’ll call her), was telling me about an unexpected consequence of a recent organizational shift with regards to next business day warranty and with that, I’ll leave her to do speak below, please note as usual, I’ve removed anything that might reference her organization or identify her, we get much better feedback that way, so over to Janet.

We used to have one single support contract that covered all servers regardless of age and platform, so if a system board in our x86 rackmount died, the onsite service provider engineers would get a call from us, they would look into it and liase with the vendor to obtain or repair the faulty components. However, the senior IT management team have been looking at the way we provision and manage the server environment and re-negotiated the contracts. Now what happens is that we buy new servers with a next day business warranty (as per normal) and for the crucial existing systems that we have, the unix stuff, some of the high end tier one wintel servers we have on a support warranty. This poses a number of operational challenges which we have started to experience:

• Internalizing the hardware support – not everyone has experience with server hardware, asking a guy who has previously looked after windows, or unix, to change a system board or a backplane on the servers can be quite a challenge/confidence issues.
• Different part numbers within one vendor platform – power supplies, backplanes, or common components which can make small tasks more complex, 2u rack server that means power supply 18724j not the 187913B, different system boards between the same server model type, the 2.8GHz against the 2.4GHz models.
• Different standards and ways of doing simple similar tasks, the way vendors treat hardware support process, logging a call, what information is mandatory, what isn’t, that firmware and drivers need to be at a specific level, has caused in fact some of the engineers saying that one vendors servers are ‘rubbish, and high maintenance’ simply because of the support process
• Next business day and warranty complication issues – we get mixed signals from the vendors when trying to log a call for a system out of business hours, which is on a next business day warranty, it seems to depend on the guy taking the call and the vendor we’re dealing with. I’ve got the example I gave you about this – see the end of this post.
• Concerns about the platform becoming the commodity with the old school training and ways of doing business – the just rebuild it scenario can be deskilling, in the respect that as the engineers and the end users get more used to rip and replace, when it’s three in the morning and the system dies, we become more reliant on external vendors, where does this leave us and IT going forward?

The example Janet told me was from a week ago, when they called out a vendor for a system with a tier2 server which had a hardware fault. The system was not on the corporate support contract and they therefore had to log a formal call ‘like an end user’ as Janet put it, the conversation was like this, I’ve removed the references to the vendor and the system to remove any cause for concern or concepts being taken out of context: (Janet’s engineer Neil is in italics)

“Welcome to vendor Technical Support, my name is Sammy, how can I help you today?”

“Hi, I’ve got a fault with our server, it’s a model type and number, with serial number 123456xjustmadeup. We rebooted it as part of a systems upgrade and the server powers up to the POST screen, but shows a blank screen. The lights are on, the disks are spinning and lit up but nothing is coming on screen.”

“Ok sir, that’s not a problem, we’ll get that sorted for you, let me get your details here.  It will take me a few minutes, can I have your name and telephone number/email in the meantime?”

Neil supplies his contact details.

“Right sir, that server is on a next business day warranty cover. That means we wont be able to progress this call any further. If you call back Monday morning at 9am, we can get a call raised and sent to our first line escalation team. Alternatively I see you have a support contract, we might be able to request this server be added to your support contract via your account manager.”

“Right, well the server is broken, I think it’s either the system board, or one of the cpus, I need to get the server back online as soon as possible, since it’s next business day, it’s Sunday at 4pm, can we log a call with the understanding that nothing will get done with the call until Monday?”

“I’m sorry sir, that’s not how the process works, we can leave your details on the system, but you will need to phone back and log a formal call.”

Result, the multinational waited. The engineer did not have the approval or authorization to add the server to the support call, the engineer escalated to the management team, who told the business account manager, that they weren’t able to log a call as it’s next business day support, and Monday morning a formal call was logged for an engineer to attend on Tuesday afternoon to investigate the failure. The server team, label that vendors platform as ‘high maintenance and earmark it for replacement’.

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http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms10-jul.mspx

Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary for July 2010

Published: July 13, 2010 | Updated: July 14, 2010

Version: 1.1

This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for July 2010.

With the release of the bulletins for July 2010, this bulletin summary replaces the bulletin advance notification originally issued July 8, 2010. For more information about the bulletin advance notification service, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification.

For information about how to receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft security bulletins are issued, visit Microsoft Technical Security Notifications.

Microsoft is hosting a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins on July 14, 2010, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register now for the July Security Bulletin Webcast. After this date, this webcast is available on-demand. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Summaries and Webcasts.

Microsoft also provides information to help customers prioritize monthly security updates with any non-security, high-priority updates that are being released on the same day as the monthly security updates. Please see the section, Other Information.

Microsoft have released their four patches and updates for July, it’s important to have all the latest security updates applied to your server estate, virtual or physical. Keep in mind that it can also be the first thing a service provider asks when logging a call.

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