Bladewatch.com

Chris called me up to tell me what he was working on and ask me what I was up to. Chris is currently continuing to save servers in his role for one of the investment banks in Canary Wharf and he has been learning DataSynapse (one of the technologies which I remain a fan of). Anyway he had to put together a wiki page talking about the benefits of Grid as the IT team were trying again to explore Grid computing and more effectively see how it could be utilized to reduce IT costs and improve utilization of the platform. With that in mind as he asked me what I was up to (unracking servers, you’d be surprised what you can learn about server, kvm and cabinet design doing that) and I thought in response I’d blog my comments, which as ever were of the top of my head with no pre-planning.

Share compute resources – achieve more with less, have your batch run on systems which might otherwise be idle when you need them

Avoid further capital expenditure – improve the utilization of your server estate, have 300 servers run at 90% utilization rather than 800 running at 24%

Consolidate workloads around the application based on capacity and geographical requirements – you might have Singapore run their end of day just before London opens for business

Improve reliability – this is more around the shared and distributed engine/workload space – with the right infrastructure and application code in place, there should be no reason why server 19 failing should result in disruption to service, to your SLA or your end user

Achieve what might not be possible without shared processing – that batch which takes 24 hours to run could (with the everything in place) run in four hours if we could distribute workload more effectively.

http://www.quest-software.co.uk/newsroom/news-releases-show.aspx?contentid=12101

ALISO VIEJO, Calif., Aug. 26, 2010 – Quest Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: QSFT) today announced the release of Quest^® Cloud Automation Platform 7.5, its next generation of enterprise-class cloud automation and management technology. Originally developed by recently acquired Surgient, Quest Cloud Automation Platform enables IT to maximize the utilization of cloud infrastructure, fully automate the delivery of complex IT services, and automatically reclaim unused infrastructure, driving down IT costs and delivering unmatched productivity gains across the enterprise. The Surgient acquisition is part of Quest’s greater virtualization and cloud strategy, which will be formally unveiled Aug. 31 at an invitation-only event for media and analysts during VMworld. Those interested in attending should contact Daphne Kent at daphne.kent@quest.com or Ken Montgomery at ken.montgomery@quest.com.

“The Quest platform (formerly Surgient) is designed to work alongside a customer’s in-place helpdesk system, IT service catalog, CMDB, runbook automation framework, and so on. It assumes the presence of virtual infrastructure from VMware or Microsoft, and plays nicely with physical provisioning and automation from the likes of HP and Symantec,” said Rachel Chalmers, research director of infrastructure management at The 451 Group. “What it adds to these is a self-service portal backed by automated service delivery and recovery, just-in-time self-service and scalable, user-centric services. In practice, this means that IT operators can configure resources and policies, users can request services as needed, and [the platform] manages the provisioning, use and recovery of the underlying resources. Presto—private cloud.”

Automating day to day activities has been something that CIOs have been talking about, the concept of self service portals where the user can create their platform, whether it’s a virtual machine or provision their next generation application as we have seen with HP’s BladeSystemMatrix, I’m off to read up more about it, anything vendors and service providers alike can do to improve the accessibility of the technology, to hand more control to the end user whilst enabling the facilities and functionality needed for securing the platform and monitoring utilization and capacity has to be a good thing, I’ll need to read up more.

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20100824005711/en/CORRECTING-REPLACING-Self-Service-Private-Hybrid-Clouds-Enterprise

Coalition Brings Process and Automation Maturity to Private and Hybrid Clouds; Responds to Independent Research Firm Report—“You’re Not Ready for Internal Cloud”—with Enterprise-Ready Offering at VMworld 2010

* Analyst sees coalition as an example of how enterprise clouds will be realized
* Complete, enterprise-ready cloud helps transform IT into an internally-managed version of Rackspace or Amazon EC2
* System integrator to fuse vendor technologies into industry’s first integrated, self-service private cloud offering

Download an overview white paper at http://bit.ly/bl5wMW; read a Q&A at http://bit.ly/cpgEC4; access an on-demand webinar at http://bit.ly/bsKZWs; view two-minute video at http://bit.ly/a0aWH2

It’s always great to see what solutions are being offered in the cloud space, a coalition can only strengthen their offering, both in terms of opportunities for new users, for evolving the platform and in encouraging the cloud space, that we can move cloud either internally to realize business benefits or subscribe to the concept of a private cloud, Martin’s cloud to which only I and approved partners have access could create more opportunities in the cloud space for revenue and answer some of the existing concerns around ownership of data and control over it. I’m off to read up more about the announcement.

http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=21729

The unencrypted tape, containing data on policyholders, including bank account and credit card information for some, went missing in August 2008.

It was lost by the firm’s South African business during a routine transfer to a data storage centre but a lack of proper reporting lines meant the issue was only discovered by the UK unit a year later.

Imposing its biggest ever fine on a single firm for data security failings, the FSA says Zurich UK failed to take “reasonable care” to ensure it had effective systems and controls to manage the risks relating to the outsourcing arrangement with the South African business.

An article to highlight/remind us of the importance of managing user data both in terms of protecting our customers and in preventing unnecessary loss, disruption to service or fines as a result of breaching regulations. I wonder going forward if cloud services such as backup or data hosting for remote working might bridge the gap in offering a secure platform for business use whilst meeting the cost/regulation issues, everyone wants secure data, effective backups and to meet regulatory requirements up until the bill arrives or until it results in delays to processing or earning revenue.

I have just downloaded the new iTunes and subscribed to ping, Apple’s new social networking solution, of course the interface is fantastic and easy to use, I just wonder how it will work in the UK, I can hear my older brother ask aren’t we too British? Do I want people to know that my music library comprises of a varied range of music from dance to alternative, from hip hop to classic, Jay-Z side by side to Yo-Yo Ma or Radiohead?

The people going to the concerts, are they not too busy doing that to write about it, do the individual artists have enough to write about, do they have the time?  Also there’s the challenge of fan perception and what we are able to deliver. As a fan of artist x, I imagine they love music, they’re listening to so and so, downloading this and mixing that, to find out that their profile is blank, that they don’t link or mention who I listen to might loosen those artificial brand and PR barriers, that they actually live outside of their career and that their art might be a living all be it one more chosen than others.

I could be accused of being high maintenance and missing the point, don’t get me wrong I applaud the concept I just wonder how it will work going forward, and how it integrates to the artist’s brand .com, blog feed, online store and everything else, we’ll have to see, well done Apple anyway.

Super Micro

SAN JOSE, Calif., August 17, 2010 – Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), the global leader in server technology innovation and green computing, today announced the latest addition to its Double-Sided Storage™ family, the SC417, that supports up to 72 hot-swap 2.5-inch SAS2 hard drives in a single 4U chassis, and up to 88 in upcoming JBOD configuration. While the previous maximum in the market was 48 drives in the front, Supermicro has added 24 more hot-swap drives in the rear of the SC417 to deliver nearly double the storage capacity. With over 14 new chassis models now available with 6Gb/s SAS2 expanders, Supermicro’s high-performance storage solutions port seamlessly into existing or new IT deployments and can cascade up to 240 hard drives. Featuring the industry’s highest efficiency Gold/Platinum Level (94%+ efficiency) 1400-watt redundant power supplies, these high-density storage solutions deliver superior performance-per-watt and per-dollar.

I was doing some research for a local storage solution and found this, it does sound very cool and I can certainly see the appeal for something like this in the SMB and the enterprise space, do check it out, I’m off to read up more, well done to Super Micro.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2010/100728b.html

HP today announced that Purdue University is using the container-based HP Performance-optimized Data Center (POD) to expand and speed its ability to deliver research projects.

Known for its world-leading research in nanotechnology, structural biology and atmospheric chemistry, Purdue is committed in its strategic plan to doubling current research efforts. To this end, Purdue has been adding server clusters to its data center every summer for the last three years.

Constrained by budget, power and space limitations, Purdue has now turned to the HP POD to deliver a cost-efficient, containerized environment that can be quickly deployed. HP POD also integrates multiple vendors’ hardware into interoperable pools of resources that can be tapped on demand.

I visited the HP Factory Express facility over in Texas earlier on in the year and it was amazing to see how everything was put together, the processes and the technologies involved to achieve this. I did see their Performance-Optimized Data center (their POD), which I remain a fan off for a number of reasons, both in terms of accessibility and in adaptability, accessibility in bringing the data center to markets and customers that might not have previously felt that they could afford it or fit it within their operational constraints. In terms of adaptability, I just love the concept of a virtualization team for the enterprise, going around their regions/data centers, POD in hand virtualizing, consolidating and improving the capacity and efficiency of the data centers, think how wonderful it would be to have a temporary data center so that we could properly scale out and improve the data center, virtualize on to temporary servers whilst we upgrade the lan, or upgrade to newer more efficient ESX servers and have everything configured as it should be. Anyway, this article is talking about how this university is using HP’s POD, very cool.

http://content.dell.com/uk/en/corp/d/press-releases/2010-8-5-Double-Negative-selects-Dell.aspx

Double Negative, Europe’s largest provider of visual effects for film, today announced it has selected Dell to provide an x86 standards-based blade server solution to drive the computing power behind render farm operations at its London headquarters.

As the provider of special effects for major motion pictures, including Iron Man 2, Prince of Persia and Sherlock Holmes, Double Negative relies heavily on server clustering to render computer-generated imagery (CGI). As rendering involves the computer-generated construction of a three-dimensional digital image from a model and contains geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information, Double-Negative requires its IT infrastructure to have the capacity and power to meet project demand.

To support its business objectives, Double Negative deployed an architecture consisting of more than 300 Dell™ PowerEdge™ M610 blade servers and 19 Dell™ PowerEdge™ M1000e blade enclosures. As Double Negative has a mixed hardware environment, the Dell solution was the perfect fit as it is developed on standards-based technology, allowing the business to quickly integrate the solution into its IT investments without disrupting existing render farm operations.

It’s always interesting to see how people are using the technology, whether it’s blade or rack servers alike, the more we can illustrate technology as an enabler the better for the platform, the industry and the end user. Using appropriate technology in the right way within your operational constraints is the key, evaluating how using the right range of hardware and software even grid technology to obtain the maximum value with the capacity, the infrastructure we have is just one such way. Do check it out.