Bladewatch.com

Open Data Center Alliance Forecase 2012 event

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 23:35:46 +0000

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/open-data-center-alliance-announces-that-ubs-chief-technology-officer-andy-brown-will-keynote-at-forecast-2012-2012-05-09

PORTLAND, Ore., May 09, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) today announced that UBS Chief Technology Officer Andy Brown will be a keynote speaker at the Open Data Center Alliance Forecast 2012 event. Brown plans to address enterprise requirements for the cloud and comment on the progress of industry delivery of solutions based on the ODCA usage models. In his role as chief technology officer, Brown is responsible for advancing the investment bank’s group architecture, simplifying the application and infrastructure landscape, and improving the quality of UBS’s technical solutions.

It’s always great to hear what keynote speakers have to say, their perspective on things, in this case Andy Brown from UBS, the event is in New York in June, click this URL for more information, I’m off to read up more.

HP Discover 2012 – Session Catalog online With over 800 sessions to choose from, HP DISCOVER 2012...
Data Services Workgroup founded http://www.marketwatch.com/story/open-data-center-alliancesm-creates-data-services-workgroup-to-accelerate-big-data-and-content-management-solutions-to-enterprise-2012-04-30 PORTLAND, Ore., Apr 30, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Recognizing...
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Top ten reasons to attend HP Discover (business and technical ones)

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 23:30:19 +0000

The top ten reasons were put together over lunch and noted on my Blackberry, so even as I write them I suspect you might have more effective ways of putting the text together to get approval to attend or to justify your visit, regardless some initial thoughts from which you can build your case. Any thoughts, do get in touch.

So it’s HP Discover time again and it’s in Las Vegas from 4th to the 7th of June, some colleagues and I have been talking about attending, one of my colleagues asked us over lunch how he could justify it with work, so in the interests of declaration we put this list together, they’re random and might need adjusted for your line of business or role:

Keep up to date with HP trends, products and understand product or technical road-maps so you’re up to date with what is going on in the industry by visiting the keynotes.
Ask those questions that you can’t ask through a support call by speaking to one of the analysts in the meeting center or solutions areas or drop by to speak with the business/technical teams at the booths
Take part in an interactive demonstration at the different booths where you can see illustrations of the technology in place and understand how it could work in your environment, your business. Check out the latest HP products and solutions to see how they might help with your challenges or create opportunities for revenue or business empowerment.
Join in with the interactive sessions and learn not only about the technology, but best practices, deployment and support techniques, how people are using the technology and how you might make it work for you on cloud, on virtualization amongst other things.
Solve technical issues, understand how to deploy and use your technology more effectively, expand your connections and your horizons by talking with an industry expert, an analyst, a HP specialist and importantly a fellow customer – “you using this, great how did you over come this problem?”
Discover what HP and their partners have to offer combining the best of HP and partner technologies, such as Fusion-IO with HP Proliant servers for high performance computing solutions or VMware on HP Blade Systems.
Use HP Cloud live and for free during the event, play with it, explore the possibilities and see how it could work for you and your business and speak with an adviser to answer your questions and get it all set up for effective testing and sign off.
Leverage your skills and gain certification through the HP ExpertOne on site testing center with free testing during the event saving on exam fees.
Refresh your interest in technology, in the strategies, the opportunities and challenges ahead so that you’re thinking ahead of the curve rather than following it.
Learn all about the new HP Proliant G8 servers, their latest next generation of servers bringing and array of enhancements to system management, energy efficient and ease of deployment.

(Chris also highlighted to me that he might get a free pen – I agreed with this point but highlighted that might not assist with budget sign off for attendance.)

For the document then, the email for technical justification:

Dear …

I would like to attend HP Discover which is in Las Vegas June 4th-7th, I appreciate there is a cost of attending such an event but I feel that it would be invaluable to my role in particular with (insert a key technology to your role virtualization for example). Additionally I am looking forward to observing and learning about the latest HP technologies and participating in the learning sessions they have and seeing how the HP Cloud offering could be used in our business. There is an opportunity for certification during the event allowing me to meet my goals to further enhance my technical skills without necessarily encountering further cost above and beyond those of attending the event.

Regards

For the document then, the email for business justification

Dear…

I would like to attend the HP Discover event which is in Las Vegas, June 4th – 7th. I appreciate that there is a cost of attending such an event but I feel it will represent good value by furthering our understanding of what HP has to offer to meet our business goals and create opportunities to enhance functionality and reduce operating costs for our line of business or application. The additional sessions and offer of being able to trial HP’s Cloud solution delivers further value and opportunities to identify opportunity to add value through the appropriate deployment and use of technology.

Regards

Talking HP Discover 2011 http://www.vmware.com/company/news/releases/vmw-hp-virtualsystem-060811.html and http://www.hp.com/go/discover LAS VEGAS, Nev., June 8, 2011 —...
HP Discover 2012 – Session Catalog online With over 800 sessions to choose from, HP DISCOVER 2012...
Bladewatch goes to Vienna later this month for HP Discover 2011 https://h30406.www3.hp.com/campaigns/2010/events/discover/vienna/index.php Your organisation’s journey to becoming an Instant-On Enterprise starts...

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Gnodal shows us the low latency Ethernet Switch with few limits

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:46:27 +0000

http://www.gnodal.com/

Bristol, UK, May 9, 2012. Gnodal Limited, a network company delivering cutting edge Ethernet Switch technology solutions, today at Interop, announced the launch of the GS0072, the latest and biggest addition to the industry leading GS-Series with 72 ports of 40 GbE built into a sleek 2RU form factor. The GS0072 was recently awarded Best of Interop in the Networking Category this week in Las Vegas.

Gnodal’s adaptive switching technology is derived from a custom made ASIC and the GS0072 is the first multi-ASIC product from Gnodal. Consolidating the Gnodal Fabric has allowed Gnodal to have the highest port count of any 2RU switch. Such a high density switch not only means a small footprint in the data center, it also delivers benefits in terms of power consumption and efficiency, making the GS0072 a highly cost-effective alternative to more complex chassis-based solutions.

The GS0072 is an order of magnitude faster than most competitive switches with congestion management and dynamic load-balancing, allowing the switches to operate at near 100% bandwidth utilization (throughput). The GS0072 is targeted at Cloud and Big Data environments where 10GbE edge connectivity is required to accommodate very large numbers of virtual clients as well as High Performance Computing applications that may require native 40 Gbps capability to achieve extreme scalability and throughput.

This new switch from Gnodal delivers impressive performance results and could create real opportunities in the virtualization and low latency space for high performance computing and grid solutions, particular in terms of throughput and removing bottlenecks. I’m off to read up more about their switch, you can check out the product information here: http://www.gnodal.com/Products/GS-Series/GS0072/

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Reviewing the Dell PowerEdge R720

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:33:25 +0000

http://www.businesscomputingworld.co.uk/review-dell-poweredge-r720/

After much delay, Intel’s new Xeon E5-2600 processor finally got the official go-ahead in March with the big name vendors all pledging support for the new 32nm chips, including Dell which has started the product ball rolling with the new PowerEdge R720.

The first of a twelfth generation of PowerEdge servers, the R720 is a 2U rack mount server with sockets to take two of the new Xeons. As such it will replace the popular Xeon 5500/5600 powered R710, delivering greater processing power as well all a huge increase in memory, even more flexible storage capabilities and numerous management updates.

An article reviewing the new Dell PowerEdge R720, a server which colleagues have been praising (they’ve just started receiving them for in house testing and validation), it’s always great to know what the different vendors are doing and what others are thinking about them in the different publications reviews.

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Dell microserver announced with Intel Xeon E3-1200 v2 processor

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:28:16 +0000

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/dell-innovations-based-on-intel-xeon-processors-inspire-unique-customer-deployments-and-bring-world-class-levels-of-power-efficiency-to-emerging-microserver-market-2012-05-08

ROUND ROCK, Texas, May 08, 2012 (BUSINESS WIRE) — –Dell announces new microserver customers including Vibrant Media and Morphlabs

–The latest Dell PowerEdge C5220 is the world’s first microserver with Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor E3-1200 v2 product family based on latest 22nm manufacturing technology

Dell today announced that customers such as Morphlabs and Vibrant Media are using Dell microserver technologies based on Intel Xeon processors to power business-critical web 2.0, cloud, and content delivery networks (CDN), as well as high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Driven by the emergence of a growing hardware and application ecosystem, x86-based microservers are rapidly evolving from a niche solution to one with widespread awareness and value.

It’s great to see Dell innovate their microserver strategy including bringing us their offerings powered by Intel’s Xeon E3-1200 processor in their cloud optimized form factor (their C series cloud optimized offering). The energy statistics are impressive as are the storage and mezzanie options for expansion and scale out computing. I’m off to read more about it, this URL contains the product information.

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ARM powered servers to go mainstream?

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:19:30 +0000

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/processors/2012/05/08/arm-arrives-on-servers-with-calxedas-ubuntu-demo-40155169/

The Texas-based server designer demonstrated the technology at the Ubuntu Developer and Cloud Summit in Oakland, California on Monday. It used Ubuntu 12.04 — the most recent long-term support version of the Linux distribution, also known as Precise Pangolin — to run a LAMP stack, along with node.js and Ruby-on-Rails, off a server made of prototype ARM-based EnergyCard compute blades.

Check out this article, it’s talking about the Calxedas ARM powered server, I’m genuinely excited about the ARM processor as a concept, I wonder if this might not create markets and opportunities for alternate mini-servers and open up markets that previously might not have existed due to the economics. We’ll have to see, do check it out, could these ARM based servers be the next big thing like the Blade server was all those years ago?

Rumours on the new HP Proliant G8 servers http://www.itworldcanada.com/news/clues-about-hps-gen8-servers-leaked/144826 NEW YORK — Hewlett-Packard has let slip some details...
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Violin Memory continues to do well

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:15:19 +0000

MarketWatch

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA, Apr 17, 2012 (MARKETWIRE via COMTEX) — Violin Memory, Inc., provider of one of the world’s fastest and most scalable flash Memory Arrays, helped North Island Credit Union accelerate data processing by three times, providing faster and more efficient banking services to its members.

Business Critical Challenge North Island Credit Union, based in San Diego, California, understood its storage regime was antiquated and adversely affecting daily IT operations. As the credit union grew, so did nightly and month-end batch processing times, eventually spilling over into the next business day transactions, hindering the company from improving member services and preventing the IT department from meeting service level agreements. Solid state storage solutions, on the other hand, are made to solve the performance-critical data processing issues often encountered in the banking and financial services industries.

I’ve been hearing some very good feedback regarding Violin Memory’s flash Memory Array technologies, a number of colleagues have been deploying them in their solutions and reporting outstanding performance results. Interestingly they were saying that not only did the Flash Memory Array solutions meet their goals, but it resulted in discussions of possibilities, now that they had the delivery times, what else could be achieved, what extra functionality or features could be coded into the application or process to the end user community. In essence with the barriers removed, the application developers and business users started to think about what the possibilities were for their application, could it do this? How could it help with extra functionality to improve accuracy, reduce errors or improve opportunities for revenue generation.

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Sharetronix empowers the social enterprise

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 21:08:10 +0000

www.sharetronix.com

SAN FRANCISCO – Reflecting the growing demands of small and medium sized companies, Blogtronix announced today the launch of a new cloud-based platform that is specifically tailored to provide robust social enterprise functionality for free.

Operating under a new corporate identity as Sharetronix, the new platform combines more than five years of experience and development in social enterprise applications. At Sharetronix.com, employees and employers can now create comprehensive real-time communities on-the-go.

I wonder if this kind of thing is going to be leveraged more by businesses not only to improve communication between colleagues and departments, but also to innovate business processes and delivery. A common platform for discussion even in logging and managing faults in the support space, so we can retain knowledge and make known fixes more accessible. I’m off to check it out.

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ILO tips post to check out

martin237 — Wed, 09 May 2012 20:40:31 +0000

I got sent this link which is a blog talking about the ILO, it’s got some great content, do check it out – http://proliant.blogspot.co.uk/2006/11/ilo-management-tips-tricks.html.

It covers some of the functions and features of ILO, so do check it out. If you have some content to share or some things to add to our pages/posts do get in touch, the site is all about informing people and making it that little bit easier.

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Three top uses for the HP Proliant MicroServer

martin237 — Wed, 02 May 2012 22:32:09 +0000

I’ve been speaking to more and more colleagues who’ve opted to purchase the HP Proliant MicroServer for a number of reasons, if you haven’t come across one, think of a three Mac Mini’s sitting on top of each other, featuring an AMD processor, a few GB of memory and space for four full height 3.5 inch SATA hard drives with a network connection and some USB ports and a VGA port so you can switch it on and use it out of the box.

The specs are here. Officially there were two models, the N36 and now the N40, officially supporting Redhat Linux and Microsoft Windows Server products.

I emailed them over a few days asking them what they used their MicroServer for an here were the top three responses:

“Cheap NAS appliance – it’s got four 1TB drives and stores all my music/documents as a NAS drive, it was in fact better than buying one of those out of the box NAS solutions. I downloaded FreeNAS and then just plugged in 4x1TB drives and plugged it into my router – effortless and sits there humming away quietly.”

“Media Server – I’ve got it running Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 like a dream and we share our music and videos from it, put in a larger hard drive, and added a bit of memory, but it’s been great and love it”

“ESX in a box test lab – I’ve got ESXi running on it running five virtual machines happily and love it, it’s great for my home lab testing and has been quite an effective tool to learn VMware and go over a few scenarios. I had to buy some more memory and a larger disk, but it’s been working fine and nice and quiet in the office, could ask for much more.”

It’s great to hear how people are using their MicroServer, you can of course run normal Windows Server on it and have it as your first server, your file or application server and many people do. We’re going to be publishing more content about our MicroServer over the next few weeks and months.

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