Data Center Management Articles
IBM has announced a world-record 4-processor result on Linux on the two-tier SAP Sales and Distribution (SD) standard application benchmark. This new result was achieved on the IBM System x 3850 X5, running IBM DB2 9.7 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.2, and SAP enhancement package 4 for the SAP ERP application Release 6.0.
Posted March 14, 2012
Quest Software said it has entered into definitive agreements with affiliates of Insight Venture Partners to become a private company. In the deal, stockholders would receive $23 per share in cash, valuing the company at approximately $2.0 billion. Upon closing, Quest will be a privately held company and will continue to be led by chairman and CEO Vinny Smith and the existing senior management team. "As a private company, we will have increased flexibility to drive innovation across our product lines and execute our long-term strategy," said Smith in a statement released by the company.
Posted March 09, 2012
For enterprises grappling with the onslaught of big data, a new platform has emerged from the open source world that promises to provide a cost-effective way to store and process petabytes and petabytes worth of information. Hadoop, an Apache project, is already being eagerly embraced by data managers and technologists as a way to manage and analyze mountains of data streaming in from websites and devices. Running data such as weblogs through traditional platforms such as data warehouses or standard analytical toolsets often cannot be cost-justified, as these solutions tend to have high overhead costs. However, organizations are beginning to recognize that such information ultimately can be of tremendous value to the business. Hadoop packages up such data and makes it digestible.
Posted March 07, 2012
SUSE has announced the general availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 2 (SP2), offering improved performance, enhanced file system support and virtualization capabilities. SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 SP2 is notable from two perspectives, Kerry Kim, director, Solution Marketing, SUSE, tells 5 Minute Briefing. First, it is the first platform release since SUSE was reorganized as an independent business unit after The Attachmate Group acquisition. Second, the platform was created with a forward-looking development model, which will make it possible to deliver open source innovation faster to enterprises, while maintaining application compatibility.
Posted March 05, 2012
Novell announced an update to its ZENworks suite, which includes integrated Mac device management, and full disk encryption capabilities. ZENworks 11 Support Pack 2 enables customers to lock out threats without shutting down IT access, the vendor says. ZENworks 11 now offers a more holistic approach to supporting Mac devices in the enterprise. With this release, Mac support is provided through Remote Management for Mac, Asset Management for Mac, Mac OSX Patching and Mac Bundles.
Posted March 05, 2012
STORServer, a provider of data backup solutions, announced STORServer Console version 2.0 (SSC), which simplifies management of the STORServer Backup Appliance and IBM Tivoli Storage Manager servers. In addition to providing a major upgrade of the console, SSC version 2.0 can now be purchased as a standalone product for TSM users or can be used in conjunction with the STORServer Backup Appliance. The new version is also offered as an upgrade to existing users.
Posted March 05, 2012
Serena Software, a software development lifecycle vendor, has expanded its partnership with Information Builders, a provider of business intelligence solutions, to extend BI capabilities to application lifecycle management and IT service management. Using the Information Builders WebFOCUS BI platform, Serena is enhancing its Serena Dashboard to provide higher-level intelligence across both its own solutions and third-party IT tools.
Posted March 05, 2012
BMC Software, a provider of enterprise systems tools, announced the availability of the winter release of its cloud-based Remedyforce Service Desk solution, which includes new capabilities for service request management and the integration of social media and external sources. BMC Remedyforce Service Desk solution is intended to help organizations manage the "consumerization of IT" phenomenon. Through the capabilities of Salesforce Chatter, a leading enterprise social network, BMC Remedyforce Service Desk helps IT professionals interact with each other, and archives Chatter feeds and other sources in the solution's knowledge management system.
Posted March 05, 2012
IBM unveiled new capabilities planned for its security intelligence platform designed to combine deep analytics with real-time data feeds from hundreds of different sources. This provides organizations the ability to help proactively protect themselves from increasingly sophisticated and complex security threats and attacks using a single platform, the vendor says.
Posted March 05, 2012
As virtualization becomes ubiquitous in enterprises, it's important to note that KVM in particular offers advantages that stem from its simple architecture. At its most basic, KVM is a feature added to Linux that allows Linux and other operating systems such as Windows to be virtualized - as opposed to a separate complete virtualized operating system à la the Xen model. This not only simplifies KVM, but allows KVM to leverage the world's largest and best development community (that's the Linux community in case you were confused...) instead of having to duplicate core operating system development work.
Posted February 29, 2012
SUSE announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 2, offering users improved performance, reliability and efficiency while maintaining enterprise quality and application compatibility. This release marks the first major update to SUSE Linux Enterprise since SUSE began operating as an independent business unit of The Attachmate Group.
Posted February 29, 2012
A new report on the Linux job market shows that demand for Linux skills is on the rise but finding talent is difficult for employers, thus creating an advantageous situation for Linux professionals. The 2012 Linux Jobs Report shares the results of a recent survey of more than 2,000 hiring managers. The research was conducted by Dice, the career site for technology and engineering professionals, and The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the growth of Linux.
Posted February 29, 2012
Red Hat has announced the general availability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 operating system with improved functionality for enhanced performance, flexibility, and security. Also introduced is the beta release for Subscription Asset Manager (SAM) that is available as part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. SAM is an application for on-premise subscription management, asset inventorying, and subscription usage reporting.
Posted February 29, 2012
Red Hat has extended the production lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 from seven to 10 years in response to enterprise customer demand. According to Red Hat, for some IT environments, upgrading to a new version of an operating system requires detailed advance planning. Red Hat extended the Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle so customers can remain on their current version longer. With the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle, customers will benefit from continued feature enhancements while Red Hat's ABI and API compatibility leverages their application investments.
Posted February 29, 2012
SUSE is planning SUSECon, its first annual global conference for SUSE customers, partners, and community enthusiasts. The conference will be held from September 18 to 21 at the Caribe Royale Hotel in Orlando, Florida. SUSECon will feature technical and business presentations, demonstrations, hands-on labs, advanced technical training, industry partner technology showcases, customer case studies, and keynotes from the brightest experts in the industry. The conference will also include sessions that will instruct attendees of all technical levels on enterprise computing, cloud computing and Linux management technologies.
Posted February 29, 2012
For the eighth year running, the Red Hat Summit and JBoss World will bring together engineers, developers, enterprise architects, and business decision-makers.
Posted February 29, 2012
The Linux Foundation has announced its 2012 event and onsite Linux training schedule. The organization is also opening the call for presentations for its remaining 2012 event lineup, which includes LinuxCon conferences in North America, Japan, and Europe.
Posted February 29, 2012
Greg Kroah-Hartman is joining The Linux Foundation as Fellow, becoming part of a distinguished group of Linux Foundation Fellows that includes Till Kamppeter, Janina Sajka, Richard Purdie and Linus Torvalds. Separately, The Linux Foundation also announced that the Linux Professional Institute (LPI), a Linux certification organization, has become a member of The Linux Foundation.
Posted February 29, 2012
]As virtualization becomes ubiquitous in enterprises, it's important to note that KVM in particular offers advantages that stem from its simple architecture. At its most basic, KVM is a feature added to Linux that allows Linux and other operating systems such as Windows to be virtualized - as opposed to a separate complete virtualized operating system à la the Xen model. This not only simplifies KVM, but allows KVM to leverage the world's largest and best development community (that's the Linux community in case you were confused...) instead of having to duplicate core operating system development work.
Posted February 29, 2012
USE announced the availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Service Pack 2, offering users improved performance, reliability and efficiency while maintaining enterprise quality and application compatibility. This release marks the first major update to SUSE Linux Enterprise since SUSE began operating as an independent business unit of The Attachmate Group.
Posted February 29, 2012
A new report on the Linux job market shows that demand for Linux skills is on the rise but finding talent is difficult for employers, thus creating an advantageous situation for Linux professionals. The 2012 Linux Jobs Report shares the results of a recent survey of more than 2,000 hiring managers. The research was conducted by Dice, the career site for technology and engineering professionals, and The Linux Foundation, the non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the growth of Linux.
Posted February 29, 2012
Red Hat has announced the general availability of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8 operating system with improved functionality for enhanced performance, flexibility, and security. Also introduced is the beta release for Subscription Asset Manager (SAM) that is available as part of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux subscription. SAM is an application for on-premise subscription management, asset inventorying, and subscription usage reporting.
Posted February 29, 2012
In addition to announcing Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.8, Red Hat has extended the production lifecycle of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and 6 from seven to 10 years in response to enterprise customer demand. According to Red Hat, for some IT environments, upgrading to a new version of an operating system requires detailed advance planning. Red Hat extended the Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle so customers can remain on their current version longer. With the new Red Hat Enterprise Linux lifecycle, customers will benefit from continued feature enhancements while Red Hat's ABI and API compatibility leverages their application investments.
Posted February 29, 2012
SUSE is planning SUSECon, its first annual global conference for SUSE customers, partners, and community enthusiasts. The conference will be held from September 18 to 21 at the Caribe Royale Hotel in Orlando, Florida. SUSECon will feature technical and business presentations, demonstrations, hands-on labs, advanced technical training, industry partner technology showcases, customer case studies, and keynotes from the brightest experts in the industry. The conference will also include sessions that will instruct attendees of all technical levels on enterprise computing, cloud computing and Linux management technologies.
Posted February 29, 2012
The Linux Foundation has announced its 2012 event and onsite Linux training schedule. The organization is also opening the call for presentations for its remaining 2012 event lineup, which includes LinuxCon conferences in North America, Japan, and Europe.
Posted February 29, 2012
Greg Kroah-Hartman is joining The Linux Foundation as Fellow, becoming part of a distinguished group of Linux Foundation Fellows that includes Till Kamppeter, Janina Sajka, Richard Purdie and Linus Torvalds. Separately, The Linux Foundation also announced that the Linux Professional Institute (LPI), a Linux certification organization, has become a member of The Linux Foundation.
Posted February 29, 2012
SAP application performance (speed and availability) is becoming a major focus as companies rely increasingly on their SAP systems to support employee productivity, partner collaboration, customer relationships, revenues, brand equity and growth. With many companies running their critical business processes on SAP, high availability and acceptable speed of the business software environment are essential requirements.
Posted February 23, 2012
Applied Software, Inc., a z/OS client/server software developer, has announced a new release of its mainframe-based encryption product for z/OS file encryption. Filegard version 5.0, currently available for beta test, is designed to provide centralized protection of encryption keys, and encryption support of multiple file formats and media.
Posted February 21, 2012
Rocket Software, Inc. has acquired Zephyr Development Corporation, a Houston-based developer of terminal emulation software. Zephyr's product, PASSPORT, provides links between the Microsoft Windows operating systems and critical business applications running on IBM System z, IBM i, UNIX, Linux, and OpenVMS servers. Users include hundreds of global organizations in sectors including banking, insurance, government and healthcare.
Posted February 21, 2012
HP announced a new offering that enables its partners to provide a branded solution to customers for application performance testing in the cloud. HP's LoadRunner-in-the-Cloud offering is intended to provide an on-demand service model of the cloud to help partner vendors deliver consumption-based performance testing of Web 2.0, AJAX, mobile and other applications to customers. The new offering complements HP's own solutions for performance validation, which span on-premise, software as a service and managed services.
Posted February 21, 2012
CA Technologies is offering new CA ERwin products and releases to help a wider range of users visualize data assets across the enterprise - from on-premise platforms to the cloud. The new solutions include CA ERwin Data Modeler for SQL Azure, ERwin Web Portal, and CA ERwin Data Modeler r8.2. CA ERwin data modeling tools are intended to provide a centralized, common view of business data in context to business and technical users.
Posted February 21, 2012
Compuware Corporation, a technology performance tools provider, is shipping an application performance management (APM) solution for IBM WebSphere Message Broker. The solution, Compuware dynaTrace 4.1, incorporates enhanced user experience management capabilities, and enhances visualization and integrates with Compuware Gomez Real-User Monitoring-Data Center.
Posted February 21, 2012
IBM has made several key enhancements to its XIV Storage System Gen3, including a new solid state drive (SSD) caching option that can increase system performance by up to three times, and a new Apple iPhone app that lets people monitor their XIV storage environment from virtually anywhere.
Posted February 21, 2012
UC4, a provider of IT process automation solutions, announced it is acquiring Ventum Solutions, a software provider specializing in enterprise release management. Application release automation is a key capability for organizations struggling with DevOps, IT as a Service, cloud and big data initiatives.
Posted February 21, 2012
Composite Software has introduced version 6.1 of its Composite Data Virtualization Platform. The new release offers improved caching performance, expanded caching targets, data ship join for Teradata, and Hadoop MapReduce connectivity. Composite 6.1 also provides improvements to the data services development environment with an enhanced data services editor and new publishing options for Representational State Transfer (REST) and Open Data Protocol (OData) data services.
Posted February 17, 2012
Compuware Corporation is making available the 2012 issue of its Application Performance Almanac, which provides 400 pages of in-depth guidance and actionable information on how to leverage application performance management (APM) solutions to help organizations optimize performance across production, test and development environments. The guide should be of interest to anyone concerned about performance in production, test or development, according to Alois Reitbauer, dynaTrace Technology Strategist.
Posted February 17, 2012
Oracle has introduced MySQL Cluster 7.2, which is designed to cost-effectively deliver high availability, high write scalability and low latency for demanding web-based and communications products and services. "The performance and flexibility enhancements in MySQL Cluster 7.2 provide users with a solid foundation for their mission-critical web workloads, blending the best of SQL and NoSQL technologies to reduce risk, cost and complexity," says Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL Engineering, Oracle.
Posted February 15, 2012
This year Data Security, Cloud Computing, Big Data and Data Integration and Unstructured Data are key areas that are defining competitiveness and investments in IT. Unisphere Research President, Thomas J. Wilson will outline concerns and new solutions for each of the four data trends, as well as help you assess your organization's priorities for the coming year in SHARE's upcoming webcast.
Posted February 06, 2012
Compuware Corporation has introduced enhanced mainframe products designed to help customers increase developer productivity and improve application performance management. Compuware Workbench, an open framework development environment, now includes easy access to MVS data, an enhanced Xpediter debugging capability, and new performance capabilities. In addition, the vendor's Strobe toolset, a mainframe application performance management solution, now includes greater visibility into application performance data.
Posted February 06, 2012
CiRBA Inc., a provider of data center intelligence software, announced support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0 in its latest release of CiRBA Version 7.0. CiRBA's new Control Console is designed to provide IT organizations with greater control within virtual and cloud infrastructures. "CiRBA 7.0 gives unprecedented control over efficiency and risk to organizations deploying Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. In a single glance at the console, users can see where attention is required at the VM, host, and cluster level, and CiRBA's new action system provides explicit instructions on what allocations need to change, which workloads need to move and to where, and where new capacity is required," Andrew Hillier, co-founder and CTO of CiRBA, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted February 06, 2012
Cleversafe, Inc., a storage management vendor, has unveiled a 10-exabyte storage system to meet the growing need to store massive amounts of data being collected in companies. In order to capitalize on the intelligence gained through big data analytics, companies must first find effective options for storing immense volumes of unstructured data. "Internet traffic volumes are increasing at a rate of 32% globally each year. It's not unrealistic to think companies looking to mine that data would need to effectively analyze 80 exabytes of data per month by 2015," says Russ Kennedy, vice president of product strategy, marketing and customer solutions for Cleversafe.
Posted February 06, 2012
Advanced Systems Concepts, a provider of workload automation and job scheduling software, announced a new series of upgrades to its business intelligence and data warehousing automation software. Service Pack 3 for ActiveBatch, now in Version 8.0, offers ActiveBatch support for a range of platforms, including IBM Cognos 8 BI, IBM InfoSphere DataStage, Teradata Integrated Data Warehouse and Data Appliances, and Oracle's PeopleSoft suite of business performance software. The new product support in Service Pack 3 adds to existing ActiveBatch support for BI and data warehousing solutions including Informatica PowerCenter, Netezza, SAP Business Objects and SAP Crystal Reports.
Posted February 06, 2012
CA Technologies is offering a new solution intended to enable IT to provide rapid, predictable and secure provisioning and delivery of cloud infrastructure and critical IT and business services. The product, CA Private Cloud Accelerator for Vblock Platforms, is the company's fifth solution certified for use with VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platforms, all of which are based on CA Technologies Unified Automation solutions. Many organizations are evaluating and testing converged private cloud architectures, such as Vblock Platforms, that enable IT resources to be dynamically pooled and shared across multiple physical and virtual computing environments.
Posted February 06, 2012
Attivio, creator of the Active Intelligence Engine (AIE), a unified information access platform, has introduced IT Knowledge Expert. The new solution aims to improve management of IT incidents by providing an aggregated and connected view into all relevant support information. By presenting unstructured content and structured data in one dashboard, IT Knowledge Expert helps to resolve IT incidents faster, reduces cost-per-ticket, number of tickets and service level agreement (SLA) penalties, and also eases the burdens of high employee turnover in the IT support industry.
Posted February 03, 2012
EMC Corporation today announced EMC Isilon scale-out NAS with HDFS, combined with EMC Greenplum HD. The company is also offering services, training and certification, and customer support to provide a seamless user experience and eliminate CIOs' need to integrate products from multiple vendors. "Enterprise IT managers want to take advantage of Hadoop, but they want it delivered at the same level of service that they get from the rest of their IT infrastructure," Brian Cox, senior director of product marketing, EMC Isilon, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted January 31, 2012
Big data and the cloud, two important IT trends, are fueling new deployments of Linux, according to The Linux Foundation. The non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux has just released its latest report on Linux adoption trends, which includes new data about Linux's role in supporting cloud computing, big data and new, greenfield deployments.
Posted January 25, 2012
Red Hat has announced the global availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0, with expanded capabilities for both its server and desktop virtualization management tools and its Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. With Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 3.0, Red Hat provides an open virtualization alternative to customers that offers performance, scalability, security, manageability and cost benefits.
Posted January 25, 2012
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) is organizing its next educational webinar: "Open Virtualization for Open Clouds." The webinar is free and open to any one interested in learning more about KVM.
Posted January 25, 2012
The oVirt project has announced that Canonical, Cisco, IBM, Intel, NetApp, Red Hat and SUSE have joined together to help create a new open source community for the development of open virtualization platforms, including virtual management tools to manage the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor.
Posted January 25, 2012
The clouds are rolling in. And, as more organizations move to evaluate and deploy cloud technologies, there are considerations to keep in mind to help avoid being buffeted in the future by winds of change across the IT landscape. Virtualization is a step on the road to the cloud - whether it is a public or private cloud. In order to build a cloud you need to have virtualization underpinning it.
Posted January 25, 2012