Bladewatch.com

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100811a.html

HP Enterprise Services today announced it has signed a multiyear applications services agreement with Nissan North America (NNA) to develop a new Dealer Business System (DBS).

The DBS will be designed to improve Nissan and Infiniti retail dealership transactions. Through the system, dealers will have access to new features and improved functionality with a state-of-the-art platform using a service-oriented architecture. As a result, NNA’s sales, service, parts ordering, warranty claim processing and delivery reporting will be able to accommodate multiple access methods as well as near-real-time integration between the dealer management systems and NNA’s back-end processing.

“Today’s auto buyers have high expectations for customer service, and technology plays a key role in enabling a positive experience at the dealership,” said Stephen Mason, director, Automotive Sector, HP Enterprise Services. “HP will use its automotive industry and applications services expertise to provide a solution to help NNA and its dealers achieve their business goals with less risk.”

It’s always interesting to see how vendors are adding value to end users, whether it’s bringing online a range of services, providing cloud platforms or aiding in the sharing of information or transactions. The ability to enhance the accessibility and manipulation of information can transfer your decision making and the ability and way you do business, with everything accessible all of the time, we can transfer our supply chain and the delivery to the end users. Do check it out.

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http://blogs.rpath.com/wpmu/closing-the-gap/2010/08/20/what-to-expect-at-vmworld-2010/

What to Expect at VMworld 2010

August 20, 2010 · Posted in Jake Sorofman, Uncategorized by Jake Sorofman.

OK, I admit it: I’m looking forward to VMworld like a kid looks forward to camp. But for exactly the opposite reason: VMworld marks the end of the summer and the beginning of fall tradeshow season. Summer, despite its all-American goodness, is an odd time for our industry—no less busy due to fall preparations, but devoid of the big moves, vision and ideas that make it exciting. That’s saved for the fall, when everyone is back from the beach and ready to listen.

Check out this article talking about VMworld 2010, it’s set to be an exciting event and I’m looking forward to see what announcements, quiet talk and briefings they have around the virtual machine management tools, anything more in thin provisioning and improving the scalability of the platform. An interesting read, do check it out.

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http://saltwetbytes.wordpress.com/2007/07/17/the-ilo-firmware-is-in-a-network-flash-recovery-state/

My team mate handed over an issue with the HP iLO on a DL380. When trying to browse to the iLO web page, he got the following error:

The iLO firmware is in a network flash recovery state.
Refer to the iLO network flash recovery under the trouble shooting section in the iLO users guide.

The first thing as recommended is to try pulling out the cables in the server and see it the iLO recovers. No such luck, which is why my team mate passed it on to me!

Anyway, did a quick search on the internet and found the solution. I am sure this can be found in the iLO troubleshooting manual, but if google did not find it, it must be hidden quite deep.

You can perform a flash recovery via FTP to the iLO (assuming you can still ping the iLO).

1. Logon to the iLO via FTP
2. Logon using the flash recovery  credentials
3. put  the  iLO  bin
4. iLO will  reset  (and  hopefully recover after that!)

Here is a sample  of what you might do:

FTP 10.198.2.5

login: flash

password: recovery

put c:\temp\ilo189.bin

A great blog post which helped me last week fixing a problem with one of our test DL380 G3′s.

In that case upgrading or even using the same firmware didn’t seem to work, I had to download 1.55 (an older version) and upload that to fix it. I have found that shutting the server down for 30 seconds can also help with these errors, but flashing the firmware online using the ftp command above is a quick win without causing downtime to the server.

- updated – Also a quick note, I have found this error to happen if you perform an ilo reset, or click network settings and apply, in both cases using the ftp to recover and re-apply the flash worked without bringing down the server.  Try the same version of the firmware that you were running before, and if that doesn’t work, I normally try a newer version (the latest) and one below, if no success, 1.55 seemed to work great. The versions for ILO2/ILO3 will be different but the concepts the same – note, I haven’t actually tested it though so if in doubt ask HP or your service provider.

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http://hostwisely.com/blog/tower-vs-rack-vs-blade-servers-picking-the-right-server/

There are three basic types of servers to choose from: Tower, Rack, and Blade servers. They are all feature unique benefits and limitations that need to be taken into consideration when choosing which type is right for you. Common considerations that need to be taken into consideration include overall cost, space, power, cooling, and scalability. Each type of server excels and lacks in different areas, so making the right decision is essential to preventing problems in the future.

An article talking about the different types of servers within the server space, just because you buy one platform does not mean that it can’t co-exist with another, and not all servers are meant for the same purpose. Evaluating where you are in your IT space, where you are in terms of your comfort zone is just as important as price, energy efficiency and overall cost of ownership, if it’s a tower server under a desk that works for you, or a cloud solution, that’s what matters, everything else is just noise, do check it out.

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Cnet

Microsoft issued an advisory on Monday about a security issue that could leave many Windows applications vulnerable to attack.

The advisory deals with a type of attack mechanism known as DLL preloading, or binary planting. Although the attack mechanism is not new or entirely unique to Windows, Microsoft acknowledged that there appears to be a new remote-attack vector that could allow more systems to be attacked quickly.

Two researchers at the University of California at Davis published a paper earlier this year on how programs that were vulnerable could be automatically detected. In recent days, security expert and Metasploit creator HD Moore published more information about this issue and is adding the vulnerability to his Metasploit program.

Check out this article from Cnet, and also this Microsoft blog post talking about a vulnerability relating to DLL preloading, I’ll need to read up more about this announcement and wonder if this means security updates to the operating system and affected applications going forward.

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http://www.interop.com/newyork/

Register today for the most comprehensive IT conference and expo.

Featuring Enterprise Cloud Summit: Attend 2 days devoted to cloud computing: standards, infrastructure decisions and economics to transform your IT organization.

In just a few years, cloud computing has gone from a fringe idea for startups to a mainstream tool in every IT toolbox. The Enterprise Cloud Summit will show you how to move from theory to implementation.

At Enterprise Cloud Summit we’ll cover practical cloud computing designs, as well as the standards, infrastructure decisions, and economics you need to understand as you transform your organization’s IT.

It is interesting to see how cloud can be used as a way of meeting business needs, cloud can create opportunities for IT and the end user alike, whether it’s having IT focus on the strategy and the service delivery, rather than the operational nuts and bolts, or having a more regional or centralized platform, a cloud of compute resource within the enterprise rather than duplication of resources and services – London being the email cloud, New York being the grid cloud etc, having regional centers of excellence and delivery. How cloud works for you depends on where you are in your business, but like virtualization or grid or even desktop or server support, how you adopt it, how you deliver and fund it will determine the ultimate success of the implementation, it’s an ideal platform to investigate what your core business drivers and needs are. Do I want IT running my Exchange, my grid infrastructure, or do I want them doing development, value add support and service improvements. We’ll have to see, do check it out.

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MarketWatch

• Oracle today announced Dell and HP will certify and resell Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM on their respective x86 platforms.

• Customers will have full access to Oracle's Premier Support for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM running on Dell and HP servers. This will enable fast and accurate issue resolution and reduced risk in a company's operating environment.

• Customers who subscribe to Oracle Premier Support will benefit from Oracle's continuing investment in Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM and the resulting innovation in future updates.

An article talking about Oracle’s deal to work with HP and Dell to resell their Solaris, Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM on x86 based servers. This should bring further opportunities for exposure to Oracle’s offering in the operating system space, and allow further innovation and solutions for end users, providing the right mix of Oracle and x86 technologies as appropriate. I’m off to read up more about it, I wonder if this might mean further Oracle type bundled solutions, comprising of hardware solutions configured to run the Oracle platform of operating systems.

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http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2010/08/19/fusion_io_dell_oem/

Start-up Fusion-io has snagged Dell as an OEM for its ioDrive PCIe flash card accelerators.

Dell, via Michael Dell, is an investor in Fusion-io, a Salt Lake City-based startup, and now joins HP and IBM as an OEM for its products. The ioDrive technology provides a slug of flash memory for use by servers which accelerates application performance by acting as a high-speed memory resource, slower than DRAM but much faster than hard drives.

The ioDrive is available currently as a160GB single-level cell (SLC) product and in 320GB and 620GB multi-level cell (MLC) variants utilising 2-bit MLC technology. MLC flash is generally regarded as too slow, too unreliable and too limited in its write endurance for enterprise use, so Fusion-io has countered these problems.

Check out this article talking about Fusion-io, I’ve been keeping an eye on them for sometime ever since a few people had said to me that their offering was one to watch both in terms of technological achievements and in opportunities, the ioDrive could bring real opportunities in hpc and database platforms, not to mention offer more scalability for virtualization for those high performance or high memory/io intensive applications. I’m off to read up more about the announcement. Do check it out.

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http://www.itjungle.com/fhs/fhs081710-story01.html

Today, as expected, the AS/400, iSeries, and System i customer base is finally getting some machinery that is better suited to their needs and budgets than the larger Power7 rack and tower systems that IBM announced in February. And, given how relatively few OS/400 and IBM i shops deploy blade servers, the new Power 710, 720, 730, and 740 machines that debut today are also going to be a better fit than the new BladeCenter PS700, PS701, and PS702 blades that came out in April.

As I have explained in past issues of The Four Hundred newsletter, IBM had not planned to make Power7 server announcements until May, following up in October, and the only low-end rack and tower machine expected was the Power 720, a kicker to the current Power 520 machine using Power6 and Power6+ processors. IBM has been listening to complaints that OS/400 and IBM i shops do not always need as much oomph as even a four-core Power 520 has, so moving up to a 16-core Power 720 box (as it was originally conceived) was overkill. And to its credit, not only did IBM move all of the Power7 server launches forward to get boxes in the field faster when processor yields allowed it, the company also took a little extra time and expanded the entry Power7 lineup to include machines with capacities more in line with those that are needed among entry and midrange shops.

An interesting post talking about IBM developments in the Power7 space, anything that IBM can do to improve the accessibility of their platform both in terms of cost and in terms of blade/rack options has to be a good thing and create opportunities for end users and solutions providers alike. I’m off to read up more about the Power7 platform I’ve been hearing very good things about it from colleagues.

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http://www.businessweek.com/idg/2010-08-20/mcafee-inside-how-intel-bid-could-shake-up-it-security.html

If Intel’s bombshell bid last week to buy McAfee for $7.68 billion pans out, the companies pledge to bring an unprecedented level of embedded security to networked devices ranging from smartphones to servers, potentially changing the way in which security is delivered to enterprise IT shops.

Tech industry’s M&As in 2010

Intel and McAfee have been working closely on a host of projects for 18 months and expect to show the first fruits of their labor early next year. Among other things, McAfee technology could complement Intel’s existing hardware-based security and management technology, dubbed vPro.

While company officials wouldn’t reveal details on what products might result, they did say that their combined hardware and software could be used to protect Internet-connected devices — from handhelds to automated teller machines to cars — from growing cyberthreats in a consistent manner.

Check out this article talking about Intel’s purchase of McAfee during last week, it’s very interesting news and could prove to be the foundations for some interesting hardware and software solutions focused around securing the device and the software, covering everything from the core, through the stack to the operating system and application.We’ll have to see what developments arise from this announcement.

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