Bladewatch.com

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cirrascale-qualifies-hypercloud-memory-on-blade-server-120849399.html

IRVINE, Calif., April 28, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Netlist, Inc. (Nasdaq: NLST), a designer and manufacturer of high-performance memory subsystems, today announced that its 8GB and 16GB HyperCloud™ memory modules are qualified by Cirrascale, a premier developer of build-to-order, independent blade-based computing and storage data center infrastructures. Qualified specifically on Cirrascale’s VB1325 blade server, HyperCloud supports memory intensive applications such as electronic design automation (EDA) and high performance computing (HPC) simulations. In addition, EDA and cloud computing thought leader Deopli Corporation benchmarked Cirrascale’s HyperCloud configured server showing significant performance improvements.

“With HyperCloud memory, we are now able to improve simulation productivity for our customers while supporting the increased test demands of memory intensive EDA applications,” said Dave Driggers, founder, CEO and CTO of Cirrascale. “HyperCloud ensures that we are maximizing server utilization, which in turn helps us to run more complex simulation models than ever before on a 2P server. The integration of HyperCloud positions us to support and develop new levels of HPC with increased performance gains for our customers on industry standard servers.”

It’s always great to see further innovation of the platform and vendors like Cirrascale develop next generation solutions for cloud infrastructures and virtualised data center solutions. It’s great to see innovation across the industry, the more each vendor continues to invest in their solutions, in making their solutions scalable and easy to integrate with industry standard technologies, the more innovation and competition in the marketplace which has to be a good thing for the end user and industry alike.

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http://www.itnewsafrica.com/2011/05/hp-nigeria-sign-29m-contract/

THE federal government of Nigeria has signed a multimillion dollar contract with Hewlett Packard (HP) Nigeria for the establishment of Government Integrated Financial and Management Information System (GIFMIS).

The contract valued at over $29 million (about N4.3 billion) is aimed at boosting the implementation of national budgets.

An article mainly to highlight the on going opportunities in developing countries across the world, that as one market changes in demand for good and services another comes on stream. It’s also an ideal time to remind ourselves about different standards and ways of doing business what works in one country, one region might easily not in another.

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http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/x/resources/mobileapp/index.html

Access key System x information — from anywhere

The free Quick Reference for IBM System x mobile app, now available for iPhone, Android and Blackberry, is designed to let you easily access the latest System x and BladeCenter product information, success stories and IBM experts.

This is very cool and it’s great to see IBM reach out to their end user community by making their information more accessible, I wonder when HP, Dell and the others will do the same?

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Some time ago, I put together a spreadsheet containing Dell firmware versions with the date and a link to the firmware on the Dell site. The pdf is here.

We use it on a day to day basis as a baseline, and I know it’s been popular with our readers/followers. I’ve updated it with the latest firmware and that we have tested with the servers we have, also adding a few more blades and servers that have been released or updated.

As ever, do read the release notes and check the Dell site before applying to your server to avoid any unexpected issues. We continue to talk drivers and firmware simply because it remains the first thing that a vendor or service provider will ask when logging a call.

We have recently started extending the times between updates (a few months), this is to allow our readers/subscribers) and ourselves to establish a baseline to where we should be, not always running the absolute latest version, but one we know that works and has been validated in our own labs.

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http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110509xa.html

HP today announced the HP FlexNetwork architecture, the industry’s only unified architecture for the data center, campus and branch, which enables enterprises to fully harness the power of media-rich content, virtualization, mobility and cloud computing.

A core component of the HP Converged Infrastructure, the HP FlexNetwork architecture converges network silos by ensuring protocols are implemented consistently across all networked devices performance an enterprise. As a result, clients are able to simplify and speed service delivery across the data center, campus and branch, driving increased agility and innovation.

HP continues to innovate their offerings in the network space, aiming to break down the barriers to convergence of storage and network connectivity as part of their continued investment and commitment to their Converged Infrastructure. It’s always great to see further innovation and opportunities for end users to reduce cost, it will be interesting to read what others think about this announcement and how it will allow the integration of new technologies whilst supporting legacy systems at the same time. I’ll need to read up more.

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http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110508005038/en/Dell-Expands-Enterprise-Solutions-Portfolio-Customers-Existing

ROUND ROCK, Texas–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Dell today expanded its networking, server and storage portfolios for enterprise and small-to-medium customers who require a scalable, flexible and high performance data center environment. These new product offerings from Dell are designed to utilize and extend a customer’s existing IT investment while providing a cutting edge approach to help drive business success in the future. Customers in the Virtual Era rely on Dell’s open, capable and affordable technology solutions to help them access, store and move mission-critical data and applications across physical and virtual resources.

“With ever-increasing user demands, enterprises are looking to manage growth by scaling bandwidth and delivering more virtualized services,” said Dario Zamarian, vice president and general manager, Dell Networking. “While complementing existing infrastructures, these new capabilities deliver seamless scalability and advanced virtualization features for a more efficient fabric and improved operational efficiencies.”

…

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http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/ms11-may.mspx

Version: 1.0

This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for May 2011.

With the release of the security bulletins for May 2011, this bulletin summary replaces the bulletin advance notification originally issued May 5, 2011. For more information about the bulletin advance notification service, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Advance Notification.

For information about how to receive automatic notifications whenever Microsoft security bulletins are issued, visit Microsoft Technical Security Notifications.

Microsoft is hosting a webcast to address customer questions on these bulletins on May 11, 2011, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register now for the May Security Bulletin Webcast. After this date, this webcast is available on-demand. For more information, see Microsoft Security Bulletin Summaries and Webcasts.

Microsoft also provides information to help customers prioritize monthly security updates with any non-security updates that are being released on the same day as the monthly security updates. Please see the section, Other Information.

Microsoft have released their patches for May which include one patch for Windows 2003 / 2008 as well as one patch for their Office suite, do check out the Microsoft site for more information and valid if your systems are in scope, as ever we say this to remind you that applying all the patches is what your service provider or vendor will expect before logging a call. For those of you running virtual machines in Hyper-V or VMware you might want to consider how and in what volume you apply the patches to reduce any overhead from patching virtual machines in volume at the same or similar times from a hypervisor/disk performance or virtual machine performance standpoint.

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Some time ago, I put together a spreadsheet containing Compaq and HP firmware versions with the date and a link to the online firmware on the HP site. The pdf is here.

We use it on a day to day basis as a baseline, and I know it’s been popular with our readers/followers. I’ve updated it with the latest firmware and that we have tested with the servers we have, also adding a few more blades and servers that have been released or updated.

As ever, do read the release notes and check the HP site before applying to your server to avoid any unexpected issues. We continue to talk drivers and firmware simply because it remains the first thing that a vendor or service provider will ask when logging a call.

We have recently started extending the times between updates (a few months), this is to allow our readers/subscribers) and ourselves to establish a baseline to where we should be, not always running the absolute latest version, but one we know that works and has been validated in our own labs.

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I’ve updated the feed file for FindMyFirmware, so it now has updated and (Bladewatch) tested firmware for a range of servers, additionally the specifications links have been updated adding a few servers to the list.

If you have any comments or suggestions do check it out. For those of you that haven’t had a look at FindMyFirmware, it’s $0.59 (prices in each region vary due , and it’s designed so when you’re in a meeting you can look up a server and get the following information displayed:

• Current firmware – Bladewatch tested and regularly updated
• Manufacture date – Bladewatch averaged, basically the date of release up until the last vendor specification update
• Link to the manufacturers specification html or pdf pages

The idea is it gives you the information you might need to hand in a meeting or walking around the data center, as the iPhone application downloads the firmware information from the Bladewatch server for offline viewing.

The url to see the application in use and find out more information is www.bladewatch.com/findmyfirmware or here on iTunes.

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http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22522

Algo trading and the growth of non-dealer and retail activity has seen the average spot FX ticket size fall from $4.3 million in 2004 to $1.8 million this year as the number of trades has grown from 86,000 a day to 498,000.

Meanwhile, electronic trading is gaining a greater share of transactions, especially among banks, who conducted 92% of transactions this way in 2009. The figures for asset management firms and corporate entities stood at 66% and 50% respectively.

It’s always interesting to see if it’s a certain market or part of a sector that is driving demand for infrastructure up and above the trends, do check it out, I wonder if these platforms also include investment in virtual infrastructure.

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