Bladewatch.com

So we thought it only fair in the interests of independence having bought a HP MicroServer from ServersPlus that when we heard that the Fujitsu equivalent was available in stock we bought one of those.

This is the first Fujitsu server that we have ever had the chance to play with so I’m genuinely excited and inquisitive about how it will work.

Anyway as you can see, it’s arrived and has been duly named Bernard, the HP MicroServer is of course Marjorie, we’re hoping to complete reviews and setup guides by the end of the week.

http://www.itworld.com/server-and-data-center/142043/rising-it-productivity-numbers-show-drop-respect-it

March 30, 2011, 03:42 PM —

Productivity jumped in IT departments during the past three years as companies reduced staff, increased the amount of work remaining staffers had to do, and replaced labor-intensive systems with some that were more automated.

A survey from the Association for Computer Operations Management (AFCOM) shows 37 percent of data centers reduced staff, 29 percent kept them the same and 35 percent actually increased their headcount.

It’s great to see reports of improved productivity in the IT space it illustrates the achievements that can be made through technological innovation and improvements in working practices, at the same time I can appreciate the loss of headcounts and the impacts that has on the teams and individuals involved. What is key is understanding where we are in the IT life-cycle and where you fit, what you anticipate happening and how just like IT you can innovate yourself, your role and keep moving with or ahead of the pace of change. Whether this means becoming a low latency captain of industry, a founder member of the Powershell development community or the virtualization evangelist will depend on your role, but times are changing and with it so do business and individuals alike.

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/service-oriented/corporate-directors-were-in-the-dark-about-it/6822

Now a new survey of 204 corporate board members finds that almost half (47%) of corporate directors surveyed are dissatisfied with their boards’ ability to provide information technology (IT) risk oversight. A recent survey from Oliver Wyman and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) finds that, while virtually all board members acknowledge that IT will have a significant business impact on the companies they govern over the next five years, more than half, 51%, say they are not given enough information to perform their oversight duties effectively.

Not knowing enough about IT is a huge knowledge gap for the directors responsible for steering companies through today’s hyper-competitive global economy. Companies rely on information technology to squeeze
costs, streamline processes, leapfrog competitors, and even transform the business.

An interesting article talking about risk management, I wonder how much of this is about lack of effective investment and transparency both in operational issues and IT spend? How much as a percentage of the IT spend is as a result of keeping the lights on, and can we attribute those costs to a range of specific applications or services, or even one range of systems?

Linked to this though is understanding both IT costs, understanding how to play the IT game and explaining the corporate attitude to risk, and translating that into policy, on a simple level if the pc breaks do we fix it or replace it, if our 8 year old server breaks what is the policy a time and parts spend with the vendor? We need projects not only to be upgrading and renewing hardware, operating systems and middleware applications, but also to be analyzing infrastructure identifying savings and looking at what is being missed. Even simple things like going around the data centers and identifying the older kit, the systems switched off and getting them unracked can give the data center teams space to renew the data center, move things around to re-balance air flow and power distribution.

Start on the operational basics whilst working on the enterprise strategies and everything else will follow, it should be a self fulfilling project, the hardware refresh project will force operating system upgrades as the newer boxes work with newer operating systems, which might move storage to the new array allowing us to decommission the old ones. One project can make crucial savings across the IT landscape.

My view, as ‘irrelevant’ as the topic might seem to the board, but they often aren’t getting the feedback that they require or are not asking the right questions, crucially no one from the board has ever ‘logged a call and said can I have a server please, or can I have a recycled pc’. Therefore they don’t see the paperwork the back end non technical organizational issues involved, they don’t see that Mike’s manager wont sign off a new pc as he wants to save the £300 and therefore makes Mike wait five months for a recycled pc without considering the productivity or marginal cost of his time and the time in supporting a legacy pc. In the server space, they might see the savings in the hardware support contract being canceled but not realize the translation of those costs to having your engineers spend time on the phone with vendors discussing part numbers, co-ordinating parts collection and delivery, even courier handling.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110330xa.html

HP today announced the opening of a state-of-the-art research facility in Fort Collins, Colo., in which the company will advance sustainable data center technologies.

The new facility will expand on HP’s Converged Infrastructure architecture by developing technologies to eliminate IT sprawl, increase energy efficiency and reduce power consumption to help clients minimize their carbon footprint and reinvest cost savings into business innovation.

Built in collaboration with HP Labs, the company’s central research facility, the 50,000 square-foot site will enable HP to explore new strategies for reducing the environmental impact of next-generation data centers. At completion, the site will use technologies to help customers minimize power for the cooling of their data centers, while increasing their capacity with less equipment.

An interesting read about HP’s new research facility in the data center space, anything that HP Labs can do to establish best practices, optimum configurations or new ways of doing things both to reduce costs, extend capacity or reduce environmental impact has to be a good thing. Let us all appreciate the more research, the more discussion there is in this space, the more we can find the right range of solutions for me and my business.

http://content.dell.com/us/en/corp/d/press-releases/2011-3-24-mobile-forensics.aspx

Dell announced today that law enforcement and intelligence forensics teams can now easily access and collect digital evidence through the company’s innovative new Mobile Digital Forensics solution. Building on Dell’s original Digital Forensics solution for parallel processing of digital evidence, the new solution adds a mobile capability that can automatically and securely examine data in triage mode at the scene of the crime, allowing for the efficient analysis of time-sensitive, actionable information.

Law enforcement and intelligence forensics teams can now easily access and collect digital evidence through Dell’s innovative new Mobile Digital Forensics solution.

To avoid delays in evidence collection, the new solution uses the latest technology to provide quick and secure identification of evidence on PCs, laptops and mobile phones (including MAC OS and Linux), both volatile memory and hard drives, USB sticks and other external memory devices, and satellite navigation systems. Investigative organizations typically remove devices such as computers, phones, USB devices and other digital devices from a crime scene in order to properly analyze the information stored on them. The Mobile Digital Forensics solution now allows on-site investigation of any digital storage device using one piece of technology.

An interesting article illustrating the work that Dell has been doing in order to aid law enforcement agencies and intelligence forensics teams to collect the evidence and share the information they need in order to continue their work. It’s always interesting reading about the range of technologies used as well as the unique operating environments and requirements that different fields have and endure, what works in one sector might not in another, but equally might illustrate opportunities or issues that we might not have thought about or encountered, do check it out.

Chris called me up and asked if I had a pdf with the operating systems supported on each HP Proliant server, I informed him that I didn’t have one to hand and to go to the HP site,  anyway after some searching, I found it here. He was working with the architecture team to decide which systems were to remain in support for their migration to Windows 2008 and which were to be marked as ‘out of support’ and targets for decommission, it sounded quite interesting, he asked for any opinions which I have noted below. When looking at a server migration project it is important not only to consider minimum requirements but internal operating standards and constraints:

• Standardize and reduce the range of server types – for example anything older than a DL380 G5, DL580 G3 BL460c G1, reduce the varients and versions of the same platform
• Standardize components – Emulex LP11000 being the minimum for Fibre connectivity, say 72GB disks the smallest volume supported for the operating system drives
• Standardize configurations – minimum of 4GB RAM with so many PCI slots and dual power supplies or 1GB on board for example

What remains in support will be determined by a number of concepts:

• What needs to be physical and what can be virtual – what the buy in is, financially and operationally what is easier to get signed off or progressing
• Your internal standards for example how long you keep systems, if there is a set depreciation period and ongoing refresh project/workflow
• Energy efficiency standards, performance per watt or data center capacity – from an energy standpoint renewing hardware will be cheaper than upgrading or rebuilding an OS on legacy servers in terms of power and cooling – the return on investment
• The per server or marginal cost element – that file server which is a DL380 G5 with 2GB of RAM hosting the backups for a remote office might be old but it’s good enough for what it does
• Your standards when it comes to virtualization or any in house virtualization projects
• The internal drivers and your approach to delivery – is the aim to standardize everything, lower costs or is it to get everything off Windows 2000 and 2003 and fix it afterward?
• Whether you have a hardware support contract or available spare parts to keep the older servers running