Blade Watch

Day 2 was great, it had some great topics, discussion and a chance to be shown around their factory, to see a blade being built, very, very cool.  The day started with an overview of desktop virtualization, something we have covered many a time at Bladewatch. We saw a demonstration of the work is doing in this area, including in their lab, and some interesting conversations about desktop virtualization admittedly I commented on this quite a bit. There is still a degree of perception for and against, to some up, against it is the cost, is the fact that our desktop infrastructure might actually work ok. The benefits though, of abstracting the user from their individual desktop, of breaking down the end user requirements to the core applications and services that they actually need, rather than providing a one size fits all approach, combined with the savings and distractions around the desktop support, not always about direct or indirect cost, but more to a disposable reliable desktop solution that meets user requirements. Is it a desktop I actually need or just the ability to check the online phonebook, check my email and book meeting rooms, is it therefore a pc I need, or a thin client with a web browser and everything stored online.

We then got a tour of the HP Factory Express and HP POD facilities. I’ve published pictures, apologies they were all taken with my iPhone, but nonetheless you’ll get the idea. On the POD it was great to see the two demo units that they had and discuss the opportunities and uses for the different form factor (sizes) of POD, there is the smaller more portable and the standard larger one, both could have specific benefits dependent on their size and scale. I remain a fan of the POD concept and remember writing about it being a perfect solution for those data center virtualization projects, deliver one, virtualize on to it, then once you’ve decommissioned and removed the legacy estate, P2V migrate back into your existing data center – virtualization in a can if you like.

Back to the HP Factory Express center which was great, walking around seeing how the servers were built to customers specifications, then tested, verified and packaged ready for shipment was very cool. Check out the pictures on flickr.

My first day was spent at the HP Campus speaking with the team and learning about a number of things including Data Center trends for 2010, HP servers being used in the production in the film Avatar, and an interesting presentation from Nth Generation Computing. Following that was a presentation about HP Virtual Connect, something that I have been interested in amongst other things.  The BladeSystem sessions in the lab was very cool, we went over the different HP blade offerings and there was a demonstration of HP’s Insight software, in particular their Dynamic Power Control. Dynamic Power Control is part of their Systems Management technologies which allows you to adjust the power utilization of the server by adjusting the clock speed of the processor, so for example in the event of a power or air conditioning failure, you could select to reduce the power consumption of the non production or non client facing systems to reduce your power load and therefore cooling requirements. System administrators can create groups of servers by platform, location or specific values and then apply rules to those groups, furthering the ability to manage remote sites or plan for specific events, like a data center power down.

Over lunch I had a conversation with some of the guys from HP about their support, about making things easier, it was great to hear their feedback. We then had a walk through discussion about BladeSystems Matrix which is an innovative solution for improving deployment times something many a CIO speaks about, and then the competitive discussion, discussing the features of each of the blade vendors and how HP is different, or what their competitive advantage is, it’s an interesting topic – though I have always wondered about comparing features, it can do one of two things, turn off your audience, or preach to the converted, but then that could be me being emotional. It was interesting nonetheless and reminded me about the different features and concepts around blade technology.

I’ve published more photos on flickr.

I was having a chat with Danny last week asking him about the backup process, I have a theory which applies from the SMB right up to the enterprise. Now at this point I must highlight, this is without formal research, could be seen as generalist, and that for Danny I have removed any references to his organization. Anyway, accepting this here we go, Danny I am an end user, I require data from 2006, a spreadsheet containing some accounts information, and have logged the call below, what happens?

Please can I log a call to restore martins_accounts_yearend_2006, it should be in the backups for March 2006, can you restore it please?

Regards

Martin

A call gets logged to the desktop team, they check the restores and see if the tapes are available. If not then they need to pass the call to operations who formally carry out an inventory of the backup system, establish what tapes are required and then recall the tapes for delivery normally the next day.  Operations then load the tapes and perform an inventory of the tape in order to scan what indexes or files are on that tape syncing it with the backup tape system library.

The tape scan complete (it can take up to 24hrs to index), we then perform the data restore to one of the shared servers which has large drives for this purpose and ask the user to check.

Great Danny, thanks for that, but what’s the lead time?

Oh probably at best 48 hours, unless we have the tapes on site.

With this in mind, does this behaviour not encourage me as and end user to keep everything online? To never archive data that I might just need to keep for future reference? Therefore from an energy efficiency standpoint how much are the backups costing us directly?

An email from Bill about a problem he had with his Compaq DL580 G1, a midrange server that he uses for his PeopleSoft application.

Hi Martin,

I wondered if you could help me with our DL580 G1. I know the server has an onboard array controller, the Smart Integrated Array controller, however we use a Smart Array 5300 to host the array, the onboard controller is disabled.

Anyway, the 5300 controller has failed, any ideas how I can get the server back up? It boots doesn’t load the 5300 controller and goes to a blank dos screen.

Can I just swap the controller and would I need to reload the drivers, will I loose the configuration?

Regards

Bill”

Hi Bill,

Great to hear from you. We’ll answer each issue separately to keep thing simple, and hopefully I will cover everything.

1. You could try using a floppy disk with the array controller firmware on it, or the HP Firmware disk to see if the array controller will work after a firmware refresh – though it does sound like it might have failed.
2. Enable the onboard array controller – providing the existing driver is loaded in the operating system you should be able to boot from that controller and that should be able to read your existing configuration (it depends what the disk configuration is like a disk shelf etc)
3. Replace the existing controller with another Smart Array 5300  is easy, just switch off the server, remove the SCSI cable and the controller, plug in the replacement controller, connect the cable and power on the server. You would not need to reload the drivers. Pressing F8 when the controller is loading will allow you to view the configuration.
4. Replacing the controller with another one, or using the onboard controller should not result in any data loss as the configuration is retained on the controller and the disks.

Let me know how you get on, my number is below in the email signature.

Regards

Martin

There’s an article about an array failure on the Compaq Proliant DL580 here.

http://www.finextra.com/news/fullstory.aspx?newsitemid=21129

Co-op and Nationwide outshine rivals online – research

The Co-operative Bank and Nationwide outperformed rival UK banking Websites in an accessibility study conducted by Keynote Research.

Increasingly the way you interact with your customers, online, in person and over the phone is going to be a differentiator as much as your prices, your interest rates for example.  The end user experience therefore whether it’s performance, security or user interaction can be the difference between profit and not, I wonder though if we could not utilize these technologies more to change not only the way we provide our core services, but how we manage the customer experience level the opportunities – could we not be using communication to see what it is the customer wants and how we as an organization can deliver that, or explain why our alternative might meet their expectations.

http://www.realwire.com/release_detail.asp?ReleaseID=1718

London and Buenos Aires – 25 February 2010 – A new report by international consulting firm BroadGroup forecasts space growth averaging 61% across 7 key markets by 2014. Yet this is still likely to leave a space shortage following significant enterprise outsourcing.

In a new report published today, Data Centres Latin America – Competition, Demand Drivers and Growth, (http://sales.broad-group.com/sp/ecom/?cmlc=DCLatinAmerica ) BroadGroup forecasts sustained sector growth across the region. This is the first report that assesses the Latin America marketplace for data centres and identifies key trends across the seven main markets: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Panama and Peru with a total of more than 200 data centres (excluding enterprise data centres).

Check out this artilce talking about data center growth in developming markets, certainly as economies grow and new opportunities for bringing online businesses and end users to services, the demand for data centers grows accordingly. I wonder if we might not find similar activities and developments in the middle east? I’m off to check out more.

Had an interesting day so far at HP’s facility in Houston, Texas, will be posting some content later today including some pictures of their blades. It was great meeting some of the HP team and asking them a few questions and comments.

My photos are here – all taken on my iPhone.

Cisco

SAN JOSE, Calif. – Feb. 23, 2010 – Cisco today announced the findings of a retail banking study that suggests banks have an opportunity to increase revenues up to 10 percent by embracing Generation Y consumers. Conducted by the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group (IBSG), Cisco’s global consultancy, the study surveyed 1,055 U.S. consumers to better understand their financial priorities, service expectations from banks, video adoption, and interaction preferences. The study’s results are wide-reaching, revealing that Gen Y consumers trust their banks and, despite recent financial setbacks, are seeking their help in making important financial decisions.

A great article talking about the research on retail banking and how it needs to keep up to date with customer communication requirements, continue innovating the way they interact with their customers. Indeed on that topic where is my HSBC iPhone application? NatWest have one, as more and more data goes online and becomes multi-streamed, banking over the phone, online and in person, being told its not in a specific format can seem alien and olden days. How we manage the security and compliance issues with the ever expanding possibilities brought by faster connectivity and improved technologies will always be a challenge.

MarketWatch

PALO ALTO, Calif., Feb 24, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — HP today introduced a range of services for small- to midsize data center operations that help improve efficiency, increase the flexibility of IT budgets and ensure service-level commitments.

With this portfolio of services from HP, owners of small- to midsize data centers can maximize business return on existing assets and drive rapid change with current staff resources. These services simplify management of multivendor environments, enabling clients to take advantage of innovative service-delivery models such as virtualization and cloud computing.

HP also introduced flexible procurement options for custom technology services that benefit clients and the reseller channel.

“Data center teams are challenged with managing increasing complexity and sprawl, especially as they implement virtualization across multiple vendor platforms and operating systems,” said Ron Silliman, principal research analyst, Gartner, Inc. “For businesses with small- to midsize data centers with economy-impacted budgets and limited staff, these challenges are amplified. Organizations should take a whole-environment approach to operational efficiency to reduce risk and drive better business outcomes.”

The Small and Midsize businesses continue to be areas of interest not least because they are less averse to change and are also more willing to think outside the box when it comes to how they provision and deliver their IT services, is it an email server, a spam and SharePoint server they need or is this something that they could buy in?

Anything the vendors can do to make the technology and the services more accessible has to be good for the industry and the end user community alike. Making the technology more accessible operationally and financially can not only lead to onboarding more users, but create opportunities that were not previously there, so you want an email system, do you need SharePoint, disaster recovery, storage?

This post follows on from the previous one about the BAU and investment split.

What are the benefits?

Removal of excuses on both sides – either resulting from workloads or poor planning/resourcing

Establish centers of excellence for each path:

• Projects continue to develop their own processes and best practice – engineer the build, continue improving the way we deploy servers, allocate storage or network connectivity
• Support teams do not get de-railed from their core task which is limiting outage and disruption to existing user base, focusing on stabilising the existing infrastructure

Establish clear lines of ownership and responsibilities for evolution of process or best practice

Manage workloads and identify issues in the project lifecycle in terms of budgets, resourcing or preparedness

What are the challenges?

De-skill team members in some repsects and can lead to complacency, server is down, but I’m investment, I don’t do support.

Can be inflexible at busy time periods from a resourcing viewpoint – I can only book the engineers I have access to even if Mike in the support team isn’t busy.

It can be easy for layers to occur in the team only Mike does DNS, Bill does hardware configuration and John does operating system load.

Different standards and ways of doing things – what is acceptable in the projects world might not be in production.

Easy for the two paths to go off in different directions due to different goals or objectives – projects don’t do support, support don’t do builds so neither know what the other do and what issues they are experiencing.