Bladewatch.com

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/227967/microsoft_hyperv_now_supports_linuxbased_centos.html

Microsoft has added support for another Linux server distribution with its Hyper-V virtualization software, its latest move to compete better with virtualization market leader VMware.

Check out this article. It’s great to see Microsoft continuing the investment and extending the platforms supported under it’s Hyper-V. I’m genuinely pleased to see further innovation in the virtualization/hypervisor space, let us not forget the more competition and options available, the more we can find the right solution for me and my business.

That Microsoft expands its portfolio of supported virtual operating systems allows users more choice for testing or running the mixture of systems they need in their business and creates more opportunity for Hyper-V as a virtualization platform, as ever for my colleagues who remain aligned to VMware, Hyper-V might not offer the scalability and functionality that ESX might, but it’s getting just good enough for many which is all that matters going forward. May the innovation of the platform both in terms of open standards, enhanced scale and ease of use continue.

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I was discussing with a CIO friend who’s been evaluating getting rid of their hardware support contract and having their on site engineers do the first line/second line hardware support whilst relying on the standard warranty they buy with the servers to cover the rest.  This got me thinking as we discussed his drivers and how he saw it, and got me bullet pointing some thoughts below:

• Explore the scenarios and what procedures should be followed – for systems out of warranty do we rebuild/repair call out the vendor or simply offer a replacement
• What parts do we keep on site and therefore what is ‘supported’ and what is not
• What migration or handover period is there between now and when the support contract expires
• For applications that are not capable of running on newer platforms how do we accommodate business or application specific service level agreements
• How does IT respond to service level agreements and expectations, if it is in warranty the turn around might be in hours or days, if it’s out of warranty could the actual fix be weeks?
• How do we communicate this change of policy and gain user acceptance of the operational risk
• In environment where there are different teams with different ownership of the infrastructure, how do we handle a component failure, is it the server owner that deals with the repair or a central infrastructure team? Does the global Windows team fix the hardware of the Windows build validation team or not if they are separate cost centers?
• What perceived reduction or transference in costs is going to be realized and how do we equate that with operational risk
• Do we have a process or on going project that identifies systems that are about to go out of support and co-ordinate their replacement and migration on to the new platforms. If so, how is this handled or combined with an operating system revolving upgrade path?
• How do we manage the economically viable repair debate with that of disruption, my file server that’s on a DL380 G3 if the system board fails, is it really worth swapping it out if it’s not harming anyone and how do we explain or force this through?
• How is this managed globally and how do we manage the gold stock, what is the cost of the gold stock against having on site hardware cover?
• As we move to virtualized environments does a system failure not start to have bigger impact than when it was a simple standalone box, one ESX server with a faulty memory dimm could result in a platform or application outage.

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I got asked by a friend what major issues I would think about in the security patching space, as he was looking at introducing a new process for each region to ensure parity across the server estate, below are a few ideas:

• Reboot the server to verify that the server is in a known state before patching it
• Verify there is sufficient space to deploy and install the patches and layered products
• Determine servers in scope what schedules and operational requirements there are around the patch deployment and reboot process
• For servers not in scope (For example Windows 2000 where support agreements are not in place), do we reboot them anyway to clear down memory, or carry out maintenance during that time anyway, for example clearing down disk space or updating anti virus definitions
• Reporting – to what level do you report, for example patches outstanding before and after, individual application or services impacted as a result of patching or related activity.
• Clean up – how do we account for machines that were not in a state to be patched and what remediation plans are there to schedule the patching of those machines, or cleanse the inventory.

Key issues resulting in patch failure:

• Firewall or connectivity issues
• Insufficient disk space
• Patch dependencies incorrectly defined – .Net patch which needs another patch before it can be installed, or the install needs the original media like the Office CD to install
• Server was in an unknown state, out of memory/non paged pool or virtual memory errors, hanging or being generally unresponsive
• Component failures such as a disk failure or memory failure which results in the server not returning to service without user intervention

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http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110516005444/en/HP-Trusted-Advisors-Reduce-Complexity-Designing-Building

PALO ALTO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–HP (NYSE:HPQ) today announced a new consulting service that addresses the complexities and reduces the risks associated with the strategic direction, design and building of data centers.
“Our clients’ time and capital commitments can be staggeringly high and the margin for error extremely small when building or updating a data center”

The HP Trusted Advisor service offers HP consulting experts who work closely with clients to consider all aspects of business operations, IT infrastructure and facilities, as well as the enablement of technologies, such as cloud and green computing. As a result, clients can establish an aligned data center and IT strategy that meets business goals and objectives.

Demand for services and consultancy in the data center and IT infrastructure space continues, what customers want is not only advice on how to solve their current issues (be they data center space or support costs) but to also understand what the market leaders are doing, how others are doing the same thing and the question I get regularly “if it was your money, your IT, how would you do it?”

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I got asked in a meeting to list alternatives to the HP Proliant DL380 G7, off the top of my head and without prior planning I said:

• Dell PowerEdge R710 – though there is also their 810
• Fujitsu RX300 S4
• IBM System X3850 X5
• Sun Fire X4270 M2

There are many other options and vendors to consider, as well, from the likes of SuperMicro, Cirrascale, as well as Aberdeen or Servaris, ASA Computers or Systel to name a few.(thanks to google for the info)

In response to the next question which would you buy?

Which server you choose will depend on a number of factors from financial to operational, pricing or discount potential through to we’ve always used them and that’s what we buy.

My order of preference:

• HP Proliant DL380 G7
• Dell PowerEdge R710 / IBM System X3850 X5
• Fujitsu RX300 S4 / Sun Fire X4270 M2

Why?

Well I was raised and trained on Compaq/HP servers so I know how they work from the ground up, my exposure to the Dell/IBM continues and they do offer genuine effective alternatives.

You’ll find that every vendor has something that they excel at over the other, so it comes down in the end to price, what you already buy or what you as an end user are comfortable or used to. That said, don’t discount the less well known vendors, see what they have to offer and understand what solutions are out there.

Crucially though check what’s included in the price, what options are standard and not, the management software bits or the components you need, it’s fine saying the base price is cheaper, but what is it when you add on the extra bits?

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http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110516005667/en/Latest-Data-Center-Trends-Uncovered-Uptime-Institute

SANTA CLARA, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The sixth annual Uptime Institute Symposium came to a close on Thursday, May 12, with overwhelming feedback from delegates that it was the best to date. Following the event, attendees from over 30 countries will return to their organizations to begin implementing new strategies and best practices shared at Symposium by data center industry thought leaders, innovators and practitioners. The four days of programming, tutorials and master classes at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California included over 120 presentations and sessions led by industry experts and analysts from Uptime Institute, The 451 Group and Tier1 Research, with participation from the most cutting-edge enterprises and organizations in the global data center marketplace, including AOL, Deutsche Bank, eBay, Facebook, GE Energy Services, Google and Microsoft.

It’s always interesting to read about these events and to hear what was discussed, what things that I could be implementing in my business, I hope they manage to put up some slides or content for those unable to attend, the more we share information the more we can explore ideas and innovate as a community. Their blog is here: http://blog.uptimeinstitute.com/

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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/10/cisco_taps_yen_servers/

In the wake of its corporate restructuring last week, assaulted networking juggernaut and server wannabe Cisco Systems has tapped ex-Sun Microsystems executive David Yen to take over its Server Access and Virtualization Technology Group, which is responsible for its Unified Computing System blade and rack servers and its Nexus converged server-storage switches.

It will be interesting to see if this announcement leads to any further innovation of the Cisco UCS platform which I’ve been hearing good things about particularly with VMware solutions, this article also reminded me to walk over to Cisco.com and see what’s going on with UCS these days..

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http://www.servicemesh.com/

SANTA MONICA, Calif. – May 10, 2011 – ServiceMesh, a provider of enterprise software and services that enable Agile IT operating models for Global 2000 clients, today unveiled version 7.2 of its Agility Platform. With this product release, ServiceMesh extends its leadership position with the industry’s only enterprise cloud governance and lifecycle management platform which now includes a powerful drag-and-drop visual policy modeler, advanced reporting engine, and a range of expanded security and asset management capabilities. These new features, combined with the platform’s workload portability across heterogeneous clouds and comprehensive policy-based governance capabilities, are critically important for successful enterprise cloud adoption by providing robust governance and management controls that can be enforced across the enterprise. The resulting benefits include significantly reduced risk, costs, complexity, cycle times, and capital spending associated with IT operations, infrastructure, and platforms.

Industry leaders in financial services and other Global 2000 firms have relied on ServiceMesh to transform the way their IT organizations acquire and deliver IT services to the business. This includes leveraging the Agility Platform to manage and govern multiple pools of internal and external “as-a-service” offerings, so that IT can be more responsive and demand-driven, and to allow internal IT resources to focus on more innovative, high value activities.  The Agility Platform uniquely addresses enterprise requirements for a unified governance and lifecycle management layer that can optimize workload placement across multiple, disparate internal and external cloud environments while ensuring transparency, security, and portability.

Enterprises that undertake cloud computing initiatives without an extensible and auditable policy-based governance system risk exposure to security compromises, service failures, inadequate performance, violated service level agreements, and costly legal and regulatory penalties. Additionally, a lack of cloud portability and end-to-end workflow automation can compromise key benefits such as vendor contestability and lock-in avoidance, time-to-market improvements, workload placement and performance optimization, and operating cost reductions.

Unlike other offerings available today, the ServiceMesh Agility Platform provides a holistic solution that addresses broad aspects of an organization’s IT operating model to achieve strategic benefits. Agility Platform capabilities span the end-to-end lifecycle, encompassing application migration planning, assembly of fully portable and policy-compliant cloud workloads, automated deployment and run-time management, self-service access to services, and comprehensive cloud security capabilities that include federated identity management.

An interesting announcement from ServiceMesh, as we move into cloud solutions, we need to be thinking more about how we use and consume that service as well as fit it around our governance and internal IT policies. Anything the service providers can do to aid customers in the analysis and reporting of their usage to better understand their requirements and utilization has to be a good thing, the more we understand about the environment, the more we can tune and adapt our platforms to fit out unique requirements. I’m off to read up more about it.

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A quick request from one of my CIO colleagues to Dell/HP/IBM and the other server/equipment vendors:

Can we turn out those LED status light!

How much power is that using, on an individual LED basis on a per server or switch port basis, not much but put that across multi nodes, a thousand server data center and we’re using quite a lot of power for not much benefit. I get that the guy fixing the box might want a system status to show it’s on etc, but isn’t that just it, a system status the rest of the time our data center is lights out except for the equipment, is there not a bios option where I can turn them off except when I press a service button or something?”

Dell/HP/IBM you answers or response would be appreciated

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http://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2011-05-04/sun_cofounder_evangelizes_liquid_blade_server.html

What does a Sun Microsystems cofounder do with his spare time? Well, if you’re Scott McNealy, you spend some if it lending your expertise to promising tech vendors that are looking to break into the IT big leagues. One such company that he has taken a personal interest in is Hardcore Computer, which recently introduced a line of servers that use liquid submersion technology. HPCwire spoke with McNealy to get his take on the technology and to ask him why he thinks the company deserves the spotlight.

McNealy signed on as a non-paid advisor and consultant with Hardcore in January at the behest of longtime friend and former Stanford classmate Doug Burgum. Burgum’s venture firm, Kilbourne Group, has invested in Hardcore, a Rochester, Minnesota-based computer maker that specializes in high performance gear based on the company’s patented liquid submersion cooling technology.

“This is one of the few companies innovating on top of the Intel architecture — rather than just strapping a power supply on and porting Linux,” McNealy told HPCwire.

I remain a huge fan of what the Hardcore team are working on with their liquid cooled computers, it’s great to see them continue to genuinely innovate, offer real alternatives and illustrate how thinking outside the box can deliver great opportunities.

We often talk about how much we can fit in the data center if we reduced the power of the server, the disk, the storage and networks, Hardcore’s solution illustrates the possibilities of using liquid cooled systems in doing so reducing our dependency on air conditioning for cooling, empowering us to simultaneously reduce power utilization across the board and increase the density of the systems we deploy in the same space? Exciting times are ahead, do check them out.

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