Bladewatch.com

http://www.cio.co.uk/news/3335263/government-sets-up-48bn-it-hardware-framework/

The Government Procurement Service has announced its plans to create a £4.8 billion framework contract for IT hardware and solutions.

The framework is intended for use across government, including central government, local government, UK public sector bodies and NHS bodies.

Under the two-year contract, the government expects to sign up suppliers to provide a range of hardware and solutions, including desktop devices, laptop devices, tablet devices, printer devices, server and storage hardware and services and other ICT related equipment.

Managing and delivering an IT infrastructure across government agencies, locations and lines of business or budgets and requirements is always going to be a challenge. It will be interesting to read about these plans and see where savings and service improvements can be made, ideally we want to be going for the following set of principles:

• Commodity in terms of hardware, using industry standard components and solutions to enable automation
• Common platforms, middleware and standards, a move towards standard tools and technologies to achieve common goals
• Data frameworks and common application design standards for the easy exchange of information between systems and applications, XML, database etc
• Support and rules of engagement – virtual desktop, renew and refresh rather than long term ownership to avoid the ‘dependent on’ Windows XP type scenarios.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dell-plans-to-expand-silicon-valley-staff-for-rd-2012-01-31

NEW YORK (MarketWatch) — Dell Inc. DELL +1.28% is growing its Silicon Valley staff in an effort to increase its influence in the rapidly changing tech industry hub.

The company will soon be expanding its operations in Santa Clara, Calif., after already reaching capacity with 700 employees in its research and development facility that opened in October. Dell, seeking to grow beyond its PC roots, opened the 240,000-square foot center for development of business technology such as storage, networking and cloud computing.

Dell also used the center to consolidate employees from several acquisitions in one area and hired about 200 new workers in the region. It will expand into the building next door this summer and will continue adding hundreds of workers each year through acquisitions and new hires. Dell expects to base about 1,500 employees in the Santa Clara facility within the next several years as it takes over the leases of other companies in the complex.

Anything Dell can do to continue the platform and product innovation has to be a good thing, and I wonder what new products both hardware/software as well as service we will see as a result of this announcement?

http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/rel_display.php?relid=69857

The LSS 200 can reduce data centre cooling costs by 80% or more and deliver a 40% or more decrease in overall electricity costs

London, UK – 31st January, 2012 – Boston Limited announced today the UK availability of the world’s first patented server with total liquid submersion technology – the LSS 200. By regulating server temperature more effectively than any existing server, the LSS 200 reduces power consumption and costs, maximises floor space and decreases a data centres’ carbon footprint. Boston is the exclusive UK reseller of LSS 200 systems, manufactured by Hardcore Computer, Inc.

This is great news both for competition and end user choice, it will be interesting to see which types of customers are deploying the Hardcore Computer offering, new start ups or people deploying new data centers, as well as existing customers seeking to deploy these new liquid powered systems alongside their legacy infrastructure in their existing data centers.

A big thank you to Mike Laverick and the team at VMware Press for sending me this complimentary copy of his latest book titled “Administering VMware Site Recover 5.0″, I’m genuinely very pleased to have been sent it, I wish Mike and the team all the very best of luck with this latest publication.

http://www.amazon.com/Administering-VMware-Recovery-Manager-Technology/dp/0321799925 or http://www.informit.com/store/product.aspx?isbn=9780321799920

I got sent this through the post to read and review and have just started reading it, I’m excited to see what’s covered and read more up on VMware Recovery Manager. Do check it out if you’re looking for a book about VMware Site Recovery Manager, as I complete more pages, I will update more, there are some pictures below in the meantime.

As I write this there are only 8 left on amazon.co.uk, so you might want to pay a visit sooner rather than later to get a copy:

The back of the book is as follows:

http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/solutions/datacentersolutions/pod/index.html

The HP POD 20c and 40c offer can be deployed within weeks instead of months or even years. The HP POD can ship with fully integrated and tested IT from an HP factory in as little as six weeks.

It comes to you as part of a complete data center solution, with services available for strategy and site planning to innovative products and comprehensive global support. For more HP POD information, go to hp.com/go/pod.

Whether it’s the HP offering or an alternative one, I’ve often thought that for me what the data center in a container is not only extra on demand capacity, but it’s also the mobility combined with capacity. It’s that as an enterprise running legacy data centers with immediate capacity and cost reductions requirements, being able to lease or buy one and deliver it to a specific location, virtualize and migrate workloads to it, freeing my teams to do the following:

• Rework the data center from a load and layout standpoint – move servers, storage and networks kit around to extend the capacity and lifespan of the existing data center
• Rework the patching in general and the patching frames so that we can better identify network routes, and at the same point reclaim cabling without causing an outage
• Decommission legacy platforms which are now running on the POD servers, un-rack and dispose, install new cabinets and start build out of rows or individual cabinets
• Verify the air flow, cooling and energy distribution to check it meets my requirements, guidelines and is as efficient as it can be
• Re-inventory and identify assets and fix broken kvm’s or even remove them to reduce power consumption and rely on lights out and crash carts as required
• Re-rack new infrastructure comprised of new servers, network and storage as appropriate
• Migrate workloads back from POD to improved data center and replicate in other locations or ship the container to other locations to do so.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/government/enterprise-architecture/232300936

Federal agencies are on track to close 1,080 data centers by the end of 2015, 280 more than the 800 data centers the Obama administration initially proposed to shutter under the Federal Data Center Consolidation plan, federal CIO Steven VanRoekel announced Tuesday, and the government is upping the ante.

Check out this article illustrating how Federal government agencies are planning to consolidate their data centers in order to reduce cost. It’s not only the cost savings that can be realized by reducing the number of data centers, it’s also evaluating what you have, and creating further costs by consolidating roles, applications and infrastructure. Could we for example virtualize all the servers in one data center, reducing the server count from 1000 to 150 or 200 physical servers or blade servers and then host them in another more energy efficient data center? I’m off to check it out.

I’ve put together a Whitepapers page to host Whitepapers that might be of interest or relevance, it covers hardware and software, platforms and technology concepts like cloud and virtualization.

This month I have put together a selection from:

Dell – www.dell.com

Emulex – www.emulex.com

HP – www.hp.com

IBM – www.ibm.com

Oracle – www.oracle.com

Qlogic – www.qlogic.com

If you have any suggestions or feedback, do get back to me, over the next day or so, I will discuss which Whitepapers I have selected and why, then link directly to it. In the meantime go to: http://www.bladewatch.com/documents/whitepapers/.

I haven’t got sponsored for these Whitepapers, I haven’t asked the PR companies or the vendors themselves, these are simply a selection that I found on their site and thought were interesting. Please note IBM refer to these as Redbooks, but the concept is the same if a bit more detailed.

If you want your Whitepaper featured, email me: martin237@gmail.com and we’ll discuss how we go about doing this (I like to read them first).

The last day of HP Discover was spent walking around the booths speaking to the different vendors and HP blogging team to discuss the event, it was great to provide feedback and discuss the highlights for me.

So what memories resound when discussing HP Discover?

• The Keynote from Meg Whitman – very much an introduction, from my standpoint a line under the sand, and a clear strategy moving the company forward with a focus on its core products/services and customer requirements.
• The presentation from Autonomy’s Mike Lynch – illustrating the power of using the information you have for your business – the examples were very compelling
• HP’s Storage announcements were interesting – their new Microsoft Storage offering the HP X5000 G2 Network Attached Storage System, as well as their backup solution, the B6200 StoreOnce backup system.
• The talk and demonstration of HP’s Cloud offering, the ability to setup up applications on demand in minutes using their interface illustrated the possibilities not only for the start up, the SMB but also the business, do I want to speak to IT and request a server, a wordpress instance, or just log on to the cloud, press go?
• Exploring Vienna both for Christmas decorations and mineral water
• Witnessing the live increased downloads of FindMyFirmware – our application for the end user community for server information on the go.

http://www.hp.com/go/discovervienna

Day 2 of the HP Discover Vienna event was well received with a mixture of keynote sessions, in depth customer sessions and an opportunity to meet some of the sponsors/vendors at their booths.  The highlights for me were:

• The keynote by Dr Mike Lynch which not only explained the background to the Autonomy value proposition and the mechanics but displayed the technology in the end user context which you can see here – it really is amazing.
• David Donatelli on HP’s Cloud System and how they are not only preparing the technology, but also helping customers with their transition into the cloud and using cloud technology as a real empowerment, both in terms of on demand capacity as well as using it as a vehicle to consume infrastructure as a service, reducing complexity and cost in the enterprise.
• Learning about HP Peer Motion was interesting and illustrated how with the right technologies in place we can reduce the complexity of storage as a platform and at the same time enhance the functionality and accessibility of it.
• Participating in a live demonstration of HP Cloud which saw us building out a dual hosted WordPress platform in minutes, comprising of the database and application load in a series of mouse clicks based on template configurations, stunning technology which looked easy to use and developed with the end users’ application requirements in mind.

It’s been great to attend HP Discover in Vienna this year, and I look forward to seeing how HP will continue to innovate their technology and solutions to meet the business need.

http://techcrunch.com/2011/11/29/cisco-google-ventures-vmware-put-8-5m-in-data-center-automation-startup-puppet-labs/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29

Puppet Labs, a data center automation company, has raised $8.5 million in Series C financing from new investors Cisco, Google Ventures, and VMware. Existing investors Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, True Ventures, and Radar Partners also participated in the round. This brings Puppet Labs’ total funding to $16 million.

A number of colleagues have suggested that I look at Puppet Labs tools, this article mentions the venture capital and interest from the likes of Cisco, Google Ventures and VMware. I’ll need to read up more.