Bladewatch.com

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/newsroom/press/2011/110927b.html

PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 27, 2011 – HP today announced that Airbus, one of the world’s largest aircraft manufacturers, has doubled its usable supercomputing power with containerized HP Performance Optimized Datacenters (PODs).

In the final phase of a four-year high-performance computing (HPC) deployment, Airbus has taken delivery of two HP PODs, making this the world’s largest industrial HPC system and one of the first confirmed commercial HPC container contracts. This deployment is the 29th biggest computer in the world according to the official TOP500 Supercomputer list published on June 20.

Manufactured and tested by HP, the modular HP PODs were delivered to Airbus sites in Toulouse, France, and Hamburg, Germany. Each POD contains all the elements of an HP Converged Infrastructure, including servers, storage, networking, software, management, and integrated power and cooling. A total of 2,016 clustered HP ProLiant BL280 G6 blade servers enable the two 12 meter-long containers to deliver the equivalent of nearly 1,000 square meters of data center space.

The HP PODs have enabled Airbus to quickly expand data center capacity, boosting computing performance for aircraft development while saving space and energy. Compared to an installation in a nearby customer data center, the water-cooled HP PODs consume up to 40 percent less power. With a near-optimum Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) rating of 1.25 from The Green Grid™ consortium (1), Airbus decreased operating expenses while delivering power capacity in excess of 15 KW/m².

It’s great to see how Airbus have benefited from using a range of HP technology including their POD containerized data centers and Converged Infrastructure to deliver double its usable supercomputing power. I’m off to read up more about the announcement.

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After writing about the HP MicroServer and Fujitsu MX130 S1, I’m off to look at buying one to test. As I understand it, I’m after a Dell T110. Off to www.dell.co.uk for more information.

What I’d be after is:

• 2GB RAM
• Pentium/AMD processor
• DVD drive
• Windows 2008 R2 Foundation
• 250GB hard drive

Now the competition is offering:

HP MicroServer bundle with 2GB RAM/250GB disk and DVD type drive is:

• Server – £209
• Memory 1GB extra – £29
• Windows – £148
• Total: £386

Fujitsu MX130 S1

• Server – £207 including 2GB memory and 250GB bundle (DVD is standard)
• Windows – £129
• Total: £336

Dell appears to be offering me:

Dell T110

• Intel Pentium processor 2.8GHz
• Windows 2008 R2 Foundation (included in price with model selected)
• 2GB RAM (included in price with model selected)
• 250GB hard disk (included in price with model selected)
• Total – £372

A very impressive offering from Dell, and the options to scale up or down the configuration online is very cool, I’ll need to think about a name for our new Dell T110 if we buy and review it. All prices are at time of purchase, subject to change and I accept can be discussed and subject to end user adjustment to meet individual needs.

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http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=22968

• Reduce complexity of the applications – fewer applications doing more sharing data feeds and resources where possible
• Reduce and commoditize the infrastructure – more x86, more commodity operating systems, refresh and renew hardware – it’s cheaper than buying a support contract, switch to a three year or less model where we replace the server more regularly and stop getting tied to specific systems
• Virtualize where possible and key have dual projects, one that deploys new infrastructure and new applications, with another that analyzes it, commoditizes it and virtualizes it, re-deploying the physical hardware for ESX or for future projects.
• Consistent spend – less surprises, less of the situations where we can’t deploy something or from a business standpoint do something because ‘we haven’t got capacity’
• Where possible remove finance from the debate – capacity, application as a service – you tell us what you want and we will handle it
• Streamline back end processes – help desk tools, databases, inventories and cross business tools, why does IT use a different purchasing tool to the business, why do we have separate support wiki’s and tools
• Commoditize the offering to small/medium/large and approval. An application team select their capacity requirement from our s/m/l offering anything else needs sign off so we discourage people from selecting non standard platforms.
• Integrate the architecture and engineering functions into production support. All those high level automated functions and features are great, but do they align with the business need, do they work in the real world, and could these functions be delivering value as part of the production offering? Automation is invaluable, but can we clear down the 400 incidents and fix the backups which keep failing?
• Running IT as a business, operating at the lowest total cost – why are architecture testing and supporting the desktop build on Dell Optiplex GX240s? Are my architecture team costs being increased for the sake of a few thousand pounds on desktops or servers, for that remote branch in Renfrew?

• As one CIO had put it, my guys were spending three days a week adapting a build because one branch didn’t want to go Windows 7 as it meant buying new PCs, it was simple, either they upgraded or they paid the build development costs, £300 a PC or £12,000 a month in FTE and man day costs.

Or as another had told me, we got ‘graduate girl’ to go off and request a server, we gave her the specs and told her the budget line, everything else she had to work out, and that way we identified how crazy it really was when trying to request a server, some examples follow in this post.

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One of my good friends has started at a new enterprise and has taken over IT with some stated goals about improving delivery and making IT more agile. The company has previously being buying in IT services from a series of vendors and an in-house IT department. The goal was to re-establish IT, re-invest and make it deliver for the business otherwise the business were seeking to outsource as it just isn’t working.

It was interesting hearing his thoughts about the server request process. The following was unscripted and over the phone with me just asking what he was working on and what his drivers were.

So what’s going on?

Well in my first week we had those meet the business guys and I did what I always did, ask them what’s going on, what our problems are, the first one? It takes years to get servers built here, the second, nobody knows what the standards are and who to talk to.

So what did you do?

I was actually quite sneaky in this respect, I asked one of our new graduates and said “there’s £5k, go and buy me a server. I want Windows 2008 with IIS on the standard network, any spec will do, the cheapest and the results were fascinating, I’d never thought it could be so difficult”. I asked her to document every email, every question she got asked, I want to know what we’re actually asking the end user, what they actually experience.

The comments included:

• You’ve selected a new physical server, is there a reason it’s not virtual?
• So it’s physical, we offer three types, which one did you want?
• What kind of RAID did you want?
• You’ve put 73GB for C, but the server comes with 146GB drives, shall I email it back to you, you can change it and resubmit it.
• You’ve selected RAID 5 for Data and IIS – that’s not supported, can you change it and re-submit it
• What network did you want – the standard one was the reply, can you put in the subnet and send it back.
• You’ve specified Windows 2008 32bit, we don’t build that OS on physicals, can you change it and we’ll then take a look.
• You haven’t selected R2, did you not want R2? Also with or without SP1?
• What backups and backup technology did you want – what’s the normal – you choose came the reply.
• Did you want an ilo – do I need one? Yes, you’ll need to request it and re-submit, ok how do I do that – select the speed.
• Oh, sorry we haven’t processed your request yet, we hadn’t got the budget code and we weren’t sure you actually needed it, we have other projects ongoing.

So how do you plan to address this?

• Firstly remove the questions  and the nonsense – how is it I can select a drop down for RAID 5 for data if it’s ‘illegal’, how is it that I can choose Windows 2008 32 bit or whatever if we don’t do it, why do I need to know the network subnet  – does the head of trading know what network it is, no and I wouldn’t expect him to. Why do I get asked AMD or Intel, how many cores?
• Secondly create established offerings – remove the complexity – Small, medium and large offerings based on individual applications and work streams, so you can ask for a “smallweb”, that’s “2x IIS, 2x Com+ and a SQL database”, medium gets clustering etc.
• Thirdly introduce independent thought based on standards combined with an end to email – I actually sent a rather terse email, anyone caught sending computer says no emails would be noticed. Of course ask questions, but we don’t need to be sending back and fourth emails/documents to outline requirements or correct mistakes.
• Centralize the data for build and billing – you fill in one web portal  – that emails the business sponsor and your line manager requesting acceptance, by either clicking the accept email link, they get a simple web page displaying the details, the items requested, the capex and opex cost, approve builds it, park it, allows the details to be changed, reject it’ cancels the request.
• Create a service delivery manager for each department that works alongside the manager, in fact for that manager with the stated aim of improving service level agreements and crucially end user perception, not just the ability to close calls within SLA.

Agree set procedures and standards with the business, establish a how to and frequently asked site which explains our standards in easy to digestible format:

• Development servers are not backed up
• Windows 2008 R2 64 bit Standard or Enterprise are the only supported Windows operating systems – anything needs a complex and emotional conversation as approved by security and the business sponsors involved.
• All servers are RAID 1+0 for OS, everything else goes on SAN – no debate.

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http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/security/bulletin/ms11-sep

This bulletin summary lists security bulletins released for September 2011.

With the release of the security bulletins for September 2011, this bulletin summary replaces the bulletin advance notification originally issued September 8, 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 September 14, 2011, at 11:00 AM Pacific Time (US & Canada). Register now for the September 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.

It’s time to check that you have applied any Microsoft patches that have been released for the Windows and Office platforms keeping in mind that this helps secure your infrastructure and ensure that you remain in support, that vendors/service providers will tend to ask “if you’ve applied all the patches” when logging a call. Remember to deploy on your test/non production systems to prevent unnecessarily causing outages/service disruption and validate no impact to your in-house developed/purchased applications.

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After using both the HP MicroServer and the Fujitsu MX130 S1 with Windows 2008 for a few weeks, (I’ve just published the articles) some thoughts then.

The HP MicroServer is very well designed, I have a few hesitations:

• The DVD drive needs to be standard – yes you can get around without it possibly. But I can imagine if I shipped one to dad, the first thing he’d say is where’s the DVD where do I put in my Windows CD? In future you might get away without it, or if you’re network booting it or using ESX it’s not essential, handy nonetheless.
• 1GB RAM isn’t that much these days, we should be looking at 2GB these days.
• Fitting memory isn’t particularly easy due to form factor – but then how often were you planning to do this?
• VGA video – should we be thinking about DVI these days? I had to look around for a vga screen

The Fujitsu is equally well designed though I have a few hesitations:

• No hard drive on the entry edition – something should really be standard, even if it’s 200GB enough to get started
• Questions over scaling up additional storage in terms of internal neatness
• DVI video port – shouldn’t it be VGA -but then an adaptor is included so I can’t really complain
• Is it a re-badged desktop? Do I care?

The winner then – the FUJITSU MX130 S1

If you’re wanting an all round starter server, something to get you going as much as it pains me saying this (I am afterall a massive HP fan), get the Fujitsu, get a hard drive, get Windows 2008, a monitor (if you can’t borrow one) and you’re set.  I can sense my colleagues talking about expansion and the ability to neatly add more drives, but for the average SMB that I and colleagues meet, where the server sits under Jenny’s desk, occasionally has server guy reboot it once a month or patch it, the Fuitsu is ideal, for a number of reasons:

• DVD drive is standard
• Keyboard as standard (in the box shipped to us from reseller)
• Form factor is familiar – it’s like servicing a desktop
• DVI to VGA adaptor standard – so you can use either type monitor
• More powerful cpu – fine for a file server it’s not entirely necessary but it makes Windows just that little bit smoother or it certainly feels that way
• 2GB RAM, so out of the box it will run Windows and your anti virus software nicely

I don’t know if it’s a perception thing or of perceived value, it’s the feel of the Fujitsu, the nice easy to recycle cardboard box which felt like it contained everything. In the box I had:

• Spare hard drive SATA cables (as there was no hard drive in the unit we ordered in it’s defence)
• Keyboard – really a keyboard? But then the company recognizes that you might need one
• Manuals, driver dvds and instruction booklets.

It felt like the Fujitsu guys had thought “right we’re shipping our customer their first server what will they need?” Something that no doubt HP did, but they then thought did you need/want a DVD drive? Did you want 2GB RAM, and I take it you have a keyboard? They’re giving you scalability, but does the target market want that?

It’s often the little things that matter, the keyboard, the DVD, all designed just to make life that little bit easier.

A colleague had got into a long debate with me comparing the two as I ordered both in the same week. He praised the custom nature of the MicroServer, the attention to detail they had made with the design, with the form factor, pointing out that the Fujitsu had a silly name, that it was just a desktop with an old processor with server written on the case. “Indeed” I replied, “indeed, but I think you’re missing something. The spec is actually quite good, the form factor is fine, it’s not massive in size, and I’d argue it’s form factor is something of a benefit in some respects.”

Many times in the past working with remote clients, sites asking them to ‘fit a new hard drive in the server’ resulted in unnecessarily complex “oh a server you say, Bonnie is a desktop engineer, she doesn’t do servers” conversations, sending them something that looks like a desktop might have made that life for me just that little bit easier. Asking them to fit a replacement disk and network boot it might not seem as scary as a thing on the front with a key and many drive bays.

Is it scalable, is it a server in it’s industrial strength and purest form?

No, but as a device to bridge between Ken’s desktop being the server, and having a ‘server’ and following the server mindset, it really is good enough.  Lights out? Well it’s invaluable but then if I were deploying these in bulk, I can live without it, there will typically be someone that I can phone allowing me to ascertain if it’s game over or power cycle it type activities to restore service.

What would I like to see? HP/Fujitsu and Dell go the extra mile and bring me ‘their Genius’

With the extra attention to detail Fujitsu have made, it’s a compelling offering and I think HP need to pay attention, I wonder if they need at the same time to establish if the MicroServer is for the server guy lab, for Gerald to let him have his garage back, or if it’s for the millions of micro businesses around the world that might want their own in house Active Directory, file server or even baby intranet/application server where the economics might lead to cloud but where the confidence, where the comfort is still in having a box under the desk which they reboot ‘every now and again’ or when ‘Fred comes in’.

A small business starter bundle – server + hard drive(s) +Windows + Anti Virus or HP MicroServer + DVD + 2 or 4GB RAM + Windows + Anti Virus each with a free keyboard and mouse as a non cost option again with or without monitor, for around the £400 price mark. Businesses will pay for something that helps them, you need to illustrate the value, whilst there can I also highlight the anti virus updates for three years please, or don’t bother, as my brother had said to me 90 days anti virus is like someone giving you Office and neglecting to give you the license key, almost useful.

Most of all I’d like to see a server as a service, £65 a month gets you a version of Marjorie or a Bernard with everything you need and a guy once a month to turn up, check it looks ok, check there’s no errors, no weird disk type noises and that the back up as a service is working as the lord intended it so. What vendors forget is fix the problem first and everything else later, can I have a ‘Genius on the road’ that pops in for a tea, biscuits and checks that Bernard is working, checks if I need anything else and then goes off. Think of the opportunities, assistance with social media, with blogging, with a website or ecommerce, with the desktop with the laptops or even thin clients? Own the offering is owning the customer – it’s what Apple have in such an effective way, when my Mac makes me emotional, the phone dials Apple, I then turn up speak to Matthew who helps me and makes ever so polite hints that my MacPro from 2007 may be getting a little bit old and I should consider a new one, white possibly, but let’ me continue seeing how long I can keep a computer for, record with G5 was five years….

At this point I can sense any number of my colleagues eager to jump in to say virtualization, cloud, application or infrastructure as a service, indeed, absolutely, but for the car mechanic down the road, the estate agents or the mini PR company, who at the moment runs his email, browses the web and runs his apps on the one ultra cheap five year old PC cranking along, to offer a cheap device where he can store the database,  contacts, keep the invoices independent of the PC and then have them backed up to the web is an incredible exciting concept. Of course moving them to the cloud is the ideal goal for many, but let us all individually operate in our comfort zone, if that’s cloud great, if it’s our first server great, and if it’s a virtual infrastructure down a wire, there’s plenty of opportunity, capacity and choice for all of us. Let us not forget that as we journey along the IT road that is discovery.

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I’ve been running Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Foundation on Bernard, our Fujitsu MX130 and I have to say it’s been a pleasant experience so far, Windows 2008 out of the box is very easy to use, the automated installation which is adapted for our server as it’s the reseller kit was very good, and it runs smoothly.

So what’s the spec?

• 4GB RAM (probably more than you need for Windows 2008 as a file server)
• DVD drive was fitted as standard, we just had to add a hard drive, so we ordered a 1TB drive from amazon

So how is it setup ?

Simple, we installed Windows 2008 R2 Foundation Server, joined it to our network and it’s now a mini file server on demand, linked to our Mac (where I do my main work) and our HP MicroServer (Marjorie).

So what would my first server cost if using the Fujitsu offering:

• Fujitsu bundle which included 2GB RAM and an internal dvd drive – £148
• 4GB memory bundle to make Windows a bit smoother – £35
• 1x 1TB hard drives – standard SATA ones from Amazon – £45 each from Amazon.
• Windows 2008 R2 Foundation – £130
• Acer 19 inch widescreen TFT monitor – £54 – it was the cheapest/most price and function accessible one and I love it.

So total cost for a Fujitsu server for the SMB space, where you want your own offline server would be £412 which is slightly cheaper than the MicroServer, though there are numerous ways to calculate the costs, and this excludes the current cash back offer.

Top likes:

• DVD drive is standard (it’s not in the HP MicroServer – though you could argue that it’s not necessary with USB/network boot)
• There is something quite procedural about the setup, you load Windows, run the driver cd, all very normal.
• Familiar format and quiet – you hardly know it’s on
• Everything is ready out of the box (except the hard drive in the version we bought)
• Windows install (as with the HP MicroServer) which we wrote about here, was about six mouse clicks and then you had to set a password, effortless.
• Deploy as a file server now, when you run out of space, or it’s time to upgrade, make it your ESX test platform or baby NAS with FreeNAS. It could also be re-deployed as a desktop if a separate video card were purchased for Windows 7 – though I’m not sure that’s officially supported.

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So it was time for us to install Windows 2008 R2 Foundation on Bernard our beloved Fujitsu MX130 S1 which I have been using with VMware in our labs.

Windows 2008 as a small business or a normal end user is not exactly cheap, however the vendors are offering Windows 2008 R2 Foundation Server, which is an entry level version of the Windows Server operating system which you can read about here. It is locked to a vendor specific bios, so if you have a Fujitsu server, you buy the ‘Fujitsu edition’ or the HP edition for HP servers etc.

So how long did it take?

About 40 minutes from putting the dvd in to completing the configuration.

How easy?

It’s very easy and automated to a large degree. You insert the dvd, follow the setup, selecting the language and the drive the setup then does the rest, finally prompting you to set an administrator password.

What’s next?

You will need to run the driver dvd labelled drivers, manuals and utilities – it loads a utility which does the rest.

I then installed Microsoft Security Essentials (the free anti virus and spam software. Completed Windows Update and started setting up our shares, very, very cool.

The pictures:

• Starting Windows setup – (booting off the cd) http://twitpic.com/6igyqg
• Loading the Windows files from cd – http://twitpic.com/6iga9z
• Select language – http://twitpic.com/6ih063
• Press the install button (there is an upgrade option as well) – http://twitpic.com/6ih0mz
• Read and accept the license agreement – http://twitpic.com/6ih0v6
• Select the install you want to install – http://twitpic.com/6ih1hk
• Drive partition created and formatted – http://twitpic.com/6ih2dd
• Copying files and installing Windows 2008 R2 Foundation Server – http://twitpic.com/6ih2u0
• Now set the password – http://twitpic.com/6ih372

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I’ve been running Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Foundation on Marjorie, our HP MicroServer and I have to say it’s been a pleasant experience so far, Windows 2008 out of the box is very easy to use, the automated installation which is adapted for our MicroServer as it’s the reseller kit was very good, and it runs smoothly.

So what’s the spec?

• 4GB RAM (probably more than you need for Windows 2008 as a file server)
• 1x 160GB drive for the OS
• 1x 500GB drive (this is our data drive)
• 1x 500GB drive (this is for our shared backup/dump drive)

So how is it setup ?

Simple, we installed Windows 2008 R2 Foundation Server, joined it to our network and it’s now a mini file server on demand, linked to our Mac (where I do my main work) and our Fujitsu MX130 S1 (or Bernard).

So what would my first server cost if using the HP MicroServer:

• HP MicroServer bundle which included the 4GB memory + DVD writer drive – £274 (before £100 cash back)
• 1x500GB hard drives – standard SATA ones from Amazon – £32 each from Amazon.
• Windows 2008 R2 Foundation – £129
• Acer 19 inch widescreen TFT monitor – £54 – it was the cheapest/most price and function accessible one and I love it.

So total cost for a MicroServer for the SMB space, where you want your own offline server – £489 (before the £100 cash back at retail price) a stunning deal! At this point we could mention the numerous bundles on offer that are available, the ESX test bundle, the NAS device bundle offering the opportunity to configure your MicroServer to your testing or business need (a micro-NAS). Regardless if it’s your first server, or something to do some testing with, the MicroServer really is recommended.  Top likes:

• Ease to fit hard drives (though in the next edition can we replace the screws with clips)
• Compact and quiet – you hardly know it’s on
• Everything is ready out of the box (except we had to fit the DVD drive as our one came from a reseller and we didn’t want to pay fitting)
• Windows install as we wrote about here, was about six mouse clicks and then you had to set a password, effortless.
• Deploy as a file server now, when you run out of space, or it’s time to upgrade, make it your ESX test platform or baby NAS with FreeNAS.

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http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-fusion-091411.html

PALO ALTO, Calif., Sept. 14, 2011— VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced VMware Fusion® 4 – the best way to run Windows on a Mac. Available now at VMware.comfor a promotional price of $49.99, VMware Fusion 4 makes it easier than ever for users to run Windows applications with Mac simplicity.

“Enhancements to VMware Fusion® 4 make it a breeze to run Windows and Mac applications side by side on a Mac,” said Pat Lee, director, client product management, VMware. “Offering full integration into Apple OS X Lion, VMware Fusion 4 builds on our proven, award winning platform to provide an easy, fast and reliable way to run Windows applications on a Mac.”

Very cool and exciting announcement, anything they can do to enhance the end user experience of running virtual machines on the Mac has to be a good thing for the end user community and create further opportunities for revenue across the pc and Mac space, I’m off to check it out.

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