Data Center Management Articles
BYOD, or "Bring Your Own Device," is a perq many employees enjoy; however, most studies and statistics say that companies should carefully evaluate security risks before allowing BYOD. In the final part of the three-part mobile blog series on the SHARE President's Corner, Erika Morphy investigates mobile security issues.
Posted July 09, 2012
IBM stepped up its smarter computing initiative with a broad range of performance and efficiency enhancements to its storage and technical computing systems - the engines of big data. As part of its ongoing smarter computing effort, IBM has announced a new strategic approach to designing and managing storage infrastructures with greater automation and intelligence, as well as performance enhancements to several key storage systems and the Tivoli Storage Productivity Center suite. IBM also announced its first offerings that incorporate software from IBM's acquisition of Platform Computing earlier this year. "Enterprises are dealing with data that is increasing exponentially in both size and complexity," said Rod Adkins, senior vice president of IBM Systems & Technology Group. The enhanced systems and storage solutions have the performance, efficiency, and intelligence to handle this big data, he added.
Posted June 28, 2012
SanDisk Corporation, a provider of flash memory storage solutions, has announced the acquisition of Schooner Information Technology, Inc., an enterprise software company located in Silicon Valley that develops flash-optimized database and data store solutions. SanDisk says that Schooner's products complement its growing portfolio of enterprise solid state disk (SSD) and flash-optimized software offerings.
Posted June 28, 2012
SAP marked the 1-year anniversary of the SAP HANA platform becoming generally available. To celebrate the occasion, SAP AG announced the launch of the SAP HANA Distinguished Engineer program. The new program is focused on promoting SAP HANA expertise in the market and is intended to support a new group of community-driven, hands-on HANA technical professionals.
Posted June 27, 2012
As part of its continued focus on working with startup companies, SAP AG is holding its second SAP Startup Forum. A gathering of select startups, the forum is a full day of collaboration, learning and competition around mobile technologies leveraging the SAP HANA platform to tackle "big data" challenges. This event follows the SAPPHIRE NOW conference where several startups took center stage in Orlando. The next SAP Startup Forum will be held at SAP Labs in Waterloo, Canada, on July 11, 2012.
Posted June 27, 2012
Atlantis Computing, a provider of storage optimization software for virtual servers and desktops, announced it will soon release a new software product intended to help enterprises to change the performance and economics of storage-intensive virtualized server and cloud applications such as databases, big data and custom enterprise applications. Atlantis ILIO FlexCloud 1.0, scheduled for availability this summer, is application-aware storage optimization software designed to complement virtualization solutions from Citrix, Microsoft and VMware.
Posted June 25, 2012
Red Hat, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source solutions, announced the availability of two new platforms for data center optimization and application deployment - JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 6, and Red Hat JBoss Data Grid 6, an in-memory data grid solution.
Posted June 25, 2012
Terma Software Labs Inc., a provider of workload automation and job scheduling technologies, says it is now shipping a mainframe-enabled version of its Workload Automation engine, which works alongside CA Workload Automation AE, Cisco Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Stonebranch Opswise Automation Center. The new release, JAWS for CA 7, is intended to assist mainframe sites address system size and data complexity that is overwhelming most traditional job-scheduling systems.
Posted June 25, 2012
Adaptive Computing announced it is upgrading its data center and cloud management system intended to automate the decisions and process of provisioning diverse resources, against diverse incoming workloads and changing conditions based on business policies and service level goals. The new solution, Moab Cloud Suite 7.1, provides on-demand user self-service resource requests for cloud environments with usage chargeback and an administrative dashboard.
Posted June 25, 2012
Quest Software unveiled NetVault Extended Architecture (XA), a platform unifying its data protection technologies, and enabling organizations to align backup and recovery directly to their service continuity needs. "The changing requirements of the modern business are forcing IT to shift from an infrastructure-centric view of backup and recovery to a services-centric view," says Walter Angerer, senior vice president and general manager of data protection for Quest Software.
Posted June 20, 2012
Adam Jollans, program director, Linux and Open Virtualization Strategy, IBM, provides answers to frequently asked questions about KVM. "In the early days of Linux, it was often the technical people in organizations who knew about it and were already implementing, while management had little awareness of Linux. We are seeing that same trend occurring now with KVM," writes Jollans. "To help further the overall understanding and awareness of KVM and fill in the information gap, here is a list of the most frequently asked questions that we at IBM have encountered in recent panel discussions, conversations, and interviews."
Posted June 20, 2012
Jean Staten Healy, director, WW Linux and Open Virtualization, IBM, writes about why KVM merits a closer look: Virtualization is all about sharing resources of IT systems to get better usage out of them — to lower costs and to make it a more productive environment, with a better return on investment. Of course, you need a sufficiently large server with enough power and capacity so it is worth sharing the resources between different workloads. But once you have decided to virtualize, a key issue to consider is how the source code for the virtualization hypervisor is developed. That brings us to the importance of open source hypervisors, and in particular, KVM (the Kernel-based Virtual Machine).
Posted June 20, 2012
IBM is working with Syracuse University to help college students build computing skills to manage traditional and new systems in large global enterprises. As business value creation increasingly shifts to software, the skills needed to tackle disruptive technologies like cloud and mobile computing, particularly for enterprise-class, large industrial systems, have become critical. Lack of employee skills in software technologies is cited as the top barrier that prevents organizations from leveraging software for a competitive advantage, according to initial findings in IBM's Institute for Business Value 2012 Global Study on Software Delivery.
Posted June 20, 2012
Quest Software, Inc. says it has entered into an amendment to a previously announced merger agreement with affiliates of Insight Venture Partners to add Vector Capital as a member of the buyout group, and for an increase in the offer from $23 per share in cash to $25.75 per share in cash. According to Quest, the increased purchase price represents a 33% premium to Quest's closing stock price on the day prior to the announcement of the Insight merger agreement on March 8, 2012.
Posted June 20, 2012
Virtualization is relatively new - but not for the IBM mainframe. In a new blog post, Gregory Lotko, vice president & business line executive, System z IBM Systems & Technology Group, reflects on the heritage and features of the IBM mainframe, including a refrigerator-size, energy-efficient footprint and ability to consolidate large numbers of servers into one: Here at IBM, we often smile when we hear some new buzzword around virtualization. The IBM mainframe has a long history of virtualization. We were doing it before there was a name for it.
Posted June 20, 2012
What is PowerLinux? In his latest blog post, Scott Handy, vice president, PowerLinux Strategy and Business Development, IBM, writes about the benefits of combining Linux and Power - including strong support for virtualization, performance, scalability, flexibility, support for clouds, efficiency, reliability, security and availability: When we talk about PowerLinux, what we mean is industry-standard Linux available on IBM Power Systems servers.
Posted June 20, 2012
Companies are scrambling to learn all the various ways they can slice, dice, and mine big data coming in from across the enterprise and across the web. But with the rise of big data — hundreds of terabytes or petabytes of data — comes the challenge of where and how all of this information will be stored. For many organizations, current storage systems — disks, tapes, virtual tapes, clouds, inmemory systems — are not ready for the onslaught, industry experts say. There are new methodologies and technologies coming on the scene that may help address this challenge. But one thing is certain: Whether organizations manage their data in their internal data centers, or in the cloud, a lot more storage is going to be needed. As Jared Rosoff, director of customer engagement with 10gen, puts it: "Big data means we need ‘big storage.'"
Posted June 13, 2012
Oracle has announced the Sun ZFS Backup Appliance, an integrated, high performance backup solution for Oracle engineered systems, including the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud and Oracle SPARC SuperCluster T4-4. According to Oracle, the Sun ZFS Backup Appliance delivers up to 20TB per hour full backup and up to 9.4TB per hour full restore throughputs, the fastest published recovery rates among general purpose storage systems for Oracle engineered systems data protection. Oracle's Sun ZFS Backup Appliance is available in two configurations, High Performance and High Capacity, and comes pre-racked and cabled, helping to eliminate hardware tuning.
Posted June 13, 2012
To help customers optimize the value of their technology investments, Oracle has announced Oracle Platinum Services. The Oracle Platinum Services are available at no charge as part of a standard support contract to customers with either Oracle Exadata X2-2 and X2-8, Oracle Exalogic X2-2, and SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 Servers with Exadata storage, Sun ZFS Storage or Oracle's Pillar Axiom 600 Storage. To access Oracle Platinum Services, customers install a patented, secure monitoring gateway that will allow Oracle to deploy quarterly updates on their behalf. With the new services, Oracle is delivering what it thinks is the highest level of service in the industry, says Larry Abramson, senior vice president and general manager, Oracle Advanced Customer Support Services.
Posted June 13, 2012
Ravi Pendekanti heads Systems Product Marketing for Oracle on a global basis. He has been in the Systems industry for more than two decades, working in the areas of servers, storage, software and networking. In this article, Exabriefing talks with Pendekanti about the Oracle engineered systems approach - what's been learned and why it works.
Posted June 13, 2012
Centrify Corporation, a provider of security and compliance solutions, announced availability of its Centrify Suite 2012 security and compliance solution for the latest Linux operating systems running on IBM z Series. "Today, Centrify supports more than 375 versions of UNIX and Linux operating systems," Tom Kemp, CEO and co-founder and CEO of Centrify, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 11, 2012
CiRBA announced Version 7.1 of the CiRBA Control Console, enabling IT organizations to optimize capacity decisions, VM placements and resource allocations for AIX-based IBM PowerVM environments. The PowerVM platform has very strong capabilities but it also some complexity over other environments, Andrew Hillier, CTO and co-founder of CiRBA, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "This is exactly the kind of platform that you don't want to take chances with," he notes.
Posted June 11, 2012
HP rolled out enhanced new offerings to increase collaboration between development, testing, infrastructure and operations teams, helping organizations break down IT silos so they can quickly deliver high-quality, applications for hybrid and cloud environments. The updated versions of HP Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) and HP Performance Center (PC) enable organizations to improve delivery of applications with new Lab Management Automation and Continuous Application Performance Delivery features.
Posted June 11, 2012
Vision Solutions, a provider of information availability software and services, announced the release of Double-Take 6.0, a solution for application and data protection in virtual, cloud and physical computing environments. Double-Take 6.0 provides affordable real-time asynchronous data replication, enabling rapid recovery from system outages. "Among the driving forces in today's marketplace beyond the need for business continuity and disaster recovery is operational excellence," Doug Piper, vice president of product strategy for Vision, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted June 11, 2012
Ericom Software, a provider of application access and virtualization solutions, is offering a beta version of AccessNow for Citrix, now part of Ericom's HTML5 RDP client product family. The solution is intended to enable Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop to deliver Windows applications and desktops to any HTML5-compatible browser on any smartphone device, as well as Windows PCs, Linux, and Mac. "This solution fills several gaps in the Citrix environment," Eran Heyman, CEO of Ericom, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted May 29, 2012
EMC has released the new EMC VMAX Family of enterprise storage arrays, a lineup that offers a range of solutions for organizations of all sizes. The EMC VMAX Family consists of the VMAX 10K, VMAX 20K and the newest member of the family, the VMAX 40K. The VMAX enterprise storage arrays are built upon EMC's Virtual Matrix Architecture, first introduced in April 2009.
Posted May 29, 2012
CA Technologies announced a new version of its IT automation solution that orchestrates IT operational processes across physical, virtual and cloud environments. CA Process Automation 4 is designed with a new user interface, improved integration capabilities, and support for dynamic forms. By making process flows more robust, easier to author and quicker to deploy, CA claims its updated IT automation toolset has enabled customers to improve service delivery, improve the speed for provisioning infrastructure, and reduce the time to spent on application release tasks. "At the end of the day it boils down to one thing: IT can't keep throwing more and more staff at its challenges," Steve DuBravac, senior product marketing manager for CA, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted May 29, 2012
AccelOps, Inc., a provider of integrated security information and event management (SIEM), and performance and availability monitoring for on-premise and cloud-based data centers, announced that it has added 150 customers and raised $15 million in new funding with USVP, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm, leading the round.
Posted May 29, 2012
Compuware Corporation has rolled out a major new release of its integrated application performance management (APM) solution. The Compuware APM Spring 2012 Platform Release includes innovations in four key areas across its dynaTrace and Gomez product brands that help customers optimize the performance and value of their business-critical applications. Compuware's Spring 2012 Release addresses the increasing complexity at the edge; the need for converged network and application performance insight; enterprise APM for cloud and big data applications; and faster time to value.
Posted May 29, 2012
Red Hat, Inc. and IBM jointly announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 with the KVM hypervisor on IBM Systems has been awarded Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL4+). The Common Criteria is an internationally recognized set of standards used by the federal government and other organizations to assess the security and assurance of technology products. This security certification is the first of its kind for an open source virtualization solution.
Posted May 24, 2012
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) has published a new white paper on the attributes of Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) that make it a compelling and cost-effective alternative to proprietary virtualization technologies for enterprise-class deployments.
Posted May 24, 2012
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA), which marked its first anniversary on May 17, sponsored a panel discussion at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC) 2012 in San Francisco. The discussion was titled "Virtualization for the 99%: Is KVM Set to Occupy the Data Center?"
Posted May 24, 2012
IBM is the premier sponsor at Red Hat Summit this year. A leading open source technology event, the Red Hat Summit will be held June 26-29 at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. Robert LeBlanc, IBM senior vice president, will be a keynote speaker, immediately following Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, on opening night of the conference. In addition, IBM executives will present seven sessions at the event focused on Cloud Computing, KVM, IBM PureSystems, System x, PowerLinux, System z and Information Management
Posted May 24, 2012