Bladewatch.com

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110215xa.html

SAN FRANCISCO, Feb. 15, 2011 – HP and VMware today announced their intent to collaborate on developing and marketing next-generation Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) solutions designed and optimized for VMware vSphere®-based virtual and cloud environments.

Extending HP’s Converged Infrastructure strategy, the collaboration is designed to build on the success of the existing HP TippingPoint IPS solution for VMware vSphere deployments, taking current integrations to new levels.

The companies aim to advance customer protection by integrating HP TippingPoint IPS with VMware vShield™ and VMware vCloud Director®. Integrating the products will help enable pervasive security in the cloud by delivering unified security management, and by automating the processes of scanning, identifying threats and blocking attacks. As a result, security policies will become easier to maintain while delivering greater protection for traditional, virtualized and cloud infrastructure.

“With the growth of virtualization and cloud computing, security requirements have never been more complex and critical to our clients,” said Alan Kessler, vice president and general manager, Security Products Organization, HP. “Building upon HP’s global strategic alliance with VMware, this expanded relationship is designed to deliver additional innovative security technology for a converged infrastructure, providing protection that is automatic and seamless for our clients.”

The companies also announced they are jointly marketing a hardware and software solution that combines HP TippingPoint vController with VMware vShield App and Edge protection to simplify enterprise security. The HP TippingPoint IPS vController and VMware vShield solution is a comprehensive firewall and IPS security offering that protects across physical and virtual environments.

Anything both HP and VMware can do to help secure and facilitate cloud virtual solutions should help not only cloud adoption and opportunities, but it might also alleviate or address and real or perceived concerns in this space, helping clients realize the benefits of cloud and virtual cloud solutions, very cool. I’ll need to read up more.

Faster, More Efficient, More Secure Local and Remote Deployment, Configuration and Updates –
Dell Lifecycle Controller simplifies server lifecycle management— from provisioning, deployment, patching and updating to servicing and user customization—for servers located both locally and remotely. It is delivered as part of iDRAC (Express, Enterprise and vFlash) in Dell™ PowerEdge™ 11G servers. Lifecycle Controller includes a managed and persistant storage that embeds systems management features directly on the server, thus eliminating the media-based system management tools and utilities usually needed for systems management.

I was doing some research on the Dell Lifecycle controller (it’s something I confess I should know more about and use more). It’s their solution and their tool to simplify and aid end users manage their servers in line with Dell best practice, there are some interesting articles on the site comparing the Dell and HP procedures for performing atypical functions illustrating the differences and underlying benefits of the Lifecycle controller platform. Do check it out, as ever it is published on the Dell web site, and of course I must point out that the reports were compiled by a third party Principled Technologies to avoid any unnecessary confusion. I must at this point praise two things about the reports, their detail and openness so as to avoid any issues resulting from the ‘that’s not how I would do it’, it references the steps taken, very cool and informative. I must also applaud the functionality of the Lifecycle controller, and the concepts that it was designed to address, anything that Dell can do to improve server management and maintenance has to be a good thing, may the investment and innovation in this space across vendors continue for the end users and vendor support teams alike.

These kind of things can always create an element of debate, even simple things like swapping a component or upgrading firmware can be done in different ways on different platforms using different tools dependent on your confidence with the platform. I’m always hesitant in committing myself as to which is better, both functionally and operationally, what the vendors says are the correct steps and what steps you actually take in ‘the real world’ can be quite different: Do we always upgrade the firmware when swapping components? I bet if you asked 10 colleagues of mine, four would say yes, two or three would say no, and the rest would expect that hardware that hardware guy does it but wouldn’t know versions or specifics, even procedures outside of the online firmware from the support site.

I like to think of myself as open to different vendors tools and different ways of doing the same activities, but as with anything you get used to the server vendor and platform that you work with day to day. Someone with more experience with HP or IBM servers is naturally going to be typically more comfortable with their solutions when comparing features and experiences, though opinions can so easily change, with that in mind, I’ll continue to remain neutral to the debate, what matters in this space is what works for you and your business, everything else is just noise.

Going forward what is important is not so much how a vendors product works with their tools, but how they can be managed independently lights out if you will, olden days style with the simple understanding being that many organizations are multi-vendor houses, that consistency or easiness and ideally interoperability is key – we’ve seen this with the MIBs the management traps and health statuses, combined with integration with SCCM and other tools and long may it continue. In the meantime, some interesting content including demos of the Lifecycle controller, do have a look.

UPDATE – Check out THIS URL for an interactive demo.

I was checking out the Tibco site and noticed a link about their tibbr product, it does look interesting, their product information is here, and there is a review here.  I love the concept of bringing everything together to make relevant information more accessible and empowering business and technical teams to engage with and empower end users, it’s something I’ve been discussing with the guys at work in terms of support and even architecture, a blog covering the simple concepts, I’ve posted some thoughts below in the support blog space, but in architecture it could be announcing end of life platforms or which feeds need to be updated, what IT or development are working on, what’s supported etc.

• Daily status update
• How many servers failed their backups – 8 click here to view – and their associated help desk calls to track them
• Number of calls/requests for assistance opened and closed today to that team
• Current project activities – go live of intranet, upgrading of SharePoint to the new version, Kevin is working with the storage guys to upgrade the SAN Switch microcode
• Current support activities – unracking servers in data center two, clearing down calls, working on processes and procedures, upgrading driver packs to version 7.30

It might also permit you to provide analysis or feedback with regards to incidents explaining helpdesk calls, explaining terms or workflows why it took three hours to get an engineer and the part on site to swap out the system board for example.

Not everyone will read it, but it shows two key things – interest in the platforms, in communicating and analysis/commentary the willingness to engage with the end user community – not just “those IT people..:

http://www.platform.com/news-coverage/2011/jpmorgan-wins-afta-award-for-best-green-it-initiative

Datacenters represent 20 percent of JPMorgan’s total energy bill and 80 percent of its carbon footprint, so it was a natural place to begin green investments. By implementing a global internal cloud for risk management, JPMorgan achieved a 50 percent reduction in the compute capacity required for derivatives risk computation. The 14-month project, which cost less than $1 million, allowed the bank to save $6 million in 2009 and reduce its carbon footprint by 4,500 tons of carbon dioxide per year.

One of my colleagues had sent me this reminding me about the conversation that we’d had many years ago, about harvesting compute resources both in a follow the sun capacity and by using the available compute capacity from nodes that were idle. It’s great to see JP Morgan achieving this, and fantastic to see some operational and financial benefits of doing so, think of the possibilities in an enterprise space, where we could harvest capacity from the non production or production systems that have spare capacity or aren’t being used outside of business hours, very very cool, do check out the pdf.

http://www.realwire.com/releases/Oracle-Unveils-Netra-SPARC-T3-Servers-

Oracle Unveils Netra SPARC T3 Servers New Carrier-Grade Blade and Rackmount Servers Deliver Better Performance, Density and Power Efficiency for the Communications Industry MOBILE WORLD CONGRESS, Barcelona, Spain – February 15, 2011 News Facts * Bringing the performance, scalability and power efficiency of the SPARC T3 to the communications market, Oracle today announced two new carrier-grade, NEBS Level 3- certified servers – Oracle’s Sun Netra SPARC T3-1 rackmount server and Oracle’s Sun Netra SPARC T3-1BA ATCA blade server. * The new Netra SPARC T3 servers further expand Oracle’s complete portfolio for the communications industry, which includes carrier-grade servers, storage and application software to run operations support systems and service delivery platforms with easy migration capabilities and unmatched investment protection via the binary compatibility guarantee of the Oracle Solaris operating system.

It’s great to see Oracle continue their platform innovation, anything they can do to further the connectivity and performance of their systems and the Solaris platform has to be a good thing, that they are Carrier-Grade creates further opportunities for those markets and end users, very cool. I wonder if the blades have 10GB Ethernet on board and if they have extended the platform scalability? I’m off to check out the Oracle site for more information.

http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/press-releases/2011-2-1-carnival-cruise-lines.aspx

• A leading cruise line selects Dell servers, storage, workstations and laptops to manage onboard data, offering one of the cruise industry’s most advanced floating datacenter and shipboard social networks
• With the help of EqualLogic storage and PowerEdge servers, Carnival can save approximately 7,000 hours/year for shipboard Information Systems managers

Dell is helping Carnival make its vacations as seamless as possible for its customers by providing the cruise line with high performance, reliable technology solutions to help manage all of their reservations and on-board experiences.

In order to support Carnival and its guests, the IT organization needed to consolidate its infrastructure to create a reliable, self-sufficient environment and to help reduce its physical footprint. Dell helped Carnival achieve this by deploying Dell PowerEdge servers and Dell EqualLogic storage arrays onboard the line’s 22 cruise ships and at their shore side data center in Miami, Fla. Carrying as many as 54,000 guests fleet-wide at any given time, Carnival needed an effective IT solution that would meet the unique criteria that comes with managing a self-contained cruise ship.

Each business line or marketplace has its own operational requirements and ways of doing business, it was cool reading about how this cruise line was using technology as an enabler to its business both in terms of maintaining a seamless end user experience and providing a platform for revenue generation.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2010/prod_120710h.html

RA’ANANA, Israel – 8 December 2010 – Cisco today announced that NICE Systems (TA: NICE, NASDAQ: NICE), the leading provider of intent-based solutions that extract insight to impact business performance, reduce financial risk and help ensure safety and security, has completed the first integration of Cisco® blade servers in Israel in its quality assurance and development lab at the company headquarters in Ra’anana. The newly integrated data centre architecture has enabled NICE Systems to develop a unified information centre to fully realize the power of virtualization.

The unified architecture has enabled NICE Systems to build a Cisco Unified Computing System^TM, combining computing, communications and storage connectivity capabilities with virtualization resources. By combining a number of independent server environments that had evolved within the R&D lab over time as new services were required, the Cisco Unified Computing System allows NICE Systems to deploy new services almost immediately. At the same time, this will reduce power and cooling costs, consolidate physical infrastructure and simplify management significantly.

This solution further enhances the long-standing cooperation between NICE Systems and Cisco in offering integrated solutions that help organizations improve their interaction with customers. The NICE Enterprise offering addresses the needs of customer-centric businesses with intent-based solutions that optimize customer dynamics. Driven by real-time cross-channel analytics, NICE provides solutions for increasing revenue, enhancing the customer experience, improving regulatory compliance, and optimizing contact center and back office operations. NICE Enterprise solutions are implemented by contact centers of all sizes, branches, trading floors and back offices.

Some great recognition for the Cisco Unified Computing platform from NICE Systems and an interesting read, illustrating how NICE has been able to deploy services on demand whilst achieving savings in their power and cooling costs, very cool, I’m off to read up more, it’s great to hear and read about organizations deploying the technology and understand how they have benefited in doing so.

http://www.datacenterinsights.com/

DCI 2011 is an invitation-only, hosted summit designed for senior IT and business executives who want to understand how current and future technology trends will impact their datacenter vision and strategies.

This summit will offer strategic level insights into what enterprise leaders should do to optimize their datacenters for maximum business value.

An interesting summit, do check it out. Its interesting to see that the summit mentions cloud, virtualization and business continuity, issues I know a lot of people are talking about at different levels, both in terms of compliance and delivery, the concepts remain relevant today, not everyone is at the same point in their IT life cycle, and the more we discuss where we are, where we want to go to, the more we can establish what range of technologies and best practice can help me achieve it, most importantly how we might help the next generation of users on-boarding to these technologies and best practices avoid the trauma that I and colleagues might have gone through. Interesting, I’m off to read up more.

http://www.bladewatch.com/2011/02/07/microsoft-patches-for-february/

Microsoft should be releasing their security patches for February, as we often publish be sure to check what’s in scope for your environment and apply the updates to some test/non production systems before going on to live, as having the latest drivers/firmware and security patches/service packs will be the first question when logging a call:

So having had a quick look at their announcement, Microsoft have released three critical patches MS11-06 / MS11-07 / MS11-11 covering Windows Server 2003 and 2008, as well as XP/Vista and 7, so be sure to see which systems are in scope and test as necessary, do check the releases to see how they might affect any applications, for example the MS10-49 was reported to have caused a few challenges to some of the organizations/developers I know in the SSO space due to the changes to secure channel.