Data Center Management Articles
Town Sports International (TSI) operates fitness clubs in major United States metropolitan areas, including New York, Boston, Washington DC, and Philadelphia. TSI needed a high-availability, high-performance platform to host its updated Oracle E-Business Suite applications, but wanted to avoid the complex and lengthy deployment timelines typically associated with integrating servers, networks, and storage from multiple vendors, as well as the costs and data center space requirements associated with such projects. To meet its goals, TSI deployed an architecture based on two Oracle Database Appliances with the virtualized platform, one for test and one for production, as the platform for its deployment of Oracle Database with Real Application Clusters, Oracle VM and Oracle E-Business Suite.
Posted December 10, 2014
Luminex Software, Inc. has introduced a new line of mainframe virtual tape products, which it calls virtual tape vaults. Luminex's new MVT Vault is designed to store second or third copies of virtual tape data out-of-region for data protection.
Posted December 08, 2014
CA Technologies has announced what it calls its "Management Cloud" - a portfolio of applications, delivered from the cloud, that enable customers to make portfolio decisions, deliver service experiences and empower mobile workforces. "The Management Cloud portfolio was developed to manage complexity and transform IT investments into business value rapidly and effectively," said James Harvey, general manager of IT Business Management at CA Technologies.
Posted December 08, 2014
HP has refreshed its portfolio of midrange and flash-optimized systems to offer new workload-centric storage personas, including unified storage access as well as data protection for flat backup to HP StoreOnce. This announcement builds on HP's vision for HP Converge Storage to simplify storage through polymorphic architectures with a single platform built for the new style of IT, said David Scott, senior vice president and general manager of storage for HP.
Posted December 08, 2014
IBM and Docker, Inc., a provider of application container solutions, have formed a strategic partnership intended to help customers more efficiently build and run applications that can be moved between cloud and on-premises systems. "As enterprises demand tools that allow them to develop applications in a consistent and easy manner, Docker containers have quickly become the de facto building block for doing so," said Angel Diaz, vice president of open technology and cloud performance solutions at IBM.
Posted December 08, 2014
IBM has announced that the availability of a beta for Watson Analytics, a cloud-based, natural language-based cognitive service that can provide access to predictive and visual analytic tools for businesses.
Posted December 08, 2014
SOA Software is shipping EnVision, an API analytics platform intended to help enterprises obtain information on the reach and performance of their application programming interfaces. The solution uses MongoDB as its data store.
Posted December 08, 2014
Citus Data is releasing an open source extension, "pg_shard," that enables PostgreSQL to scale large datasets and operational workloads. "PostgreSQL continues to grow as one of the most popular databases in the world," said Umur Cubukcu, CEO and co-founder of Citus Data. "With pg_shard, CitusDB is making PostgreSQL horizontally scale in a simple way, while keeping the benefits of a mature, open ecosystem, and taking its relational advantages to the next level."
Posted December 04, 2014
With the new tools available that allow companies to monitor database resources, pinpoint the root cause of problems, speed up applications, and prevent crashes, some may wonder if companies will need DBAs at all in the future. However, the risk to DBAs and technology professionals as a whole is not that their jobs are going away, but that they may opt to not take the time to understand and use the tools and technologies that will allow them to be better professionals. This can place them at a disadvantage to their peers and curtail their ability to add value to the organization, therefore limiting their careers.
Posted December 03, 2014
Exploding data assets and the need for greater agility are helping to drive the move to virtualization. More than two-thirds of organizations in a recent Unisphere Research survey among members of the Independent Oracle Users Group indicate that the number of Oracle databases they manage is expanding. At the same time, many managers admit that their IT departments are sluggish when it comes to responding to new business requirements. For more than 50% of organizations, it takes their IT department 30 days or more to respond to new initiatives or deploy new solutions. For one-quarter of organizations, it takes 90 days or more.
Posted December 03, 2014
Oracle has introduced its latest-generation NAS storage system, Oracle ZFS Storage ZS4-4. Co-engineered with Oracle Database 12c, Oracle ZFS Storage ZS4-4 enables analytics for pluggable databases.
Posted December 03, 2014
To many observers, the cloud has been ill-defined and even hijacked as a viable term by vendors. However, all can agree on the solid definition of cloud provided by the U.S. National Institute of Standards (NIST). Recently, NIST came out with additional guidelines detailing what elements should go into cloud computing.
Posted December 03, 2014
DBmaestro, a provider of DevOps for database solutions, has announced the availability of an open application programming interface (API), enabling customers and developers to connect to any release management system and continuous delivery product. According to the vendor, DBmaestro TeamWork will now automate and integrate with IBM, Microsoft, CA and others, allowing any release management manufacturer to offer database build and deploy automation and adding functionality to its product.
Posted December 02, 2014
New cloud-based DevOps services, software and infrastructure from IBM is designed to help organizations develop and deliver quality software faster. "Software success is increasingly indistinguishable from business success," said Kristof Kloeckner, general manager of IBM's Rational Software Group.
Posted November 24, 2014
API management and cloud integration provider SOA Software rolled out a new release of its Lifecycle Manager, which offers new capabilities to assist and manage DevOps automation."The new release brings enhanced collaboration and shared metrics visibility across Dev and Ops teams, to ensure automated application deployment and enforce functional testing and product sign-offs," said Brent Carlson, SVP of engineering for SOA Software.
Posted November 24, 2014
A set of consulting and managed security service solutions from Big Iron Solutions is intended to enable organizations to rapidly identify, secure and monitor credit card data in order to meet PCI-DSS requirements. To date, many mainframe computer systems have not been meeting these requirements, according the company which states that this failure is due mainly to the fact that adequate technology, processes and effective standardized security practices have not existed on the mainframe.
Posted November 24, 2014
Syncsort has announced the latest release of its flagship mainframe software product - Syncsort MFX for z/OS - which exploits IBM's zHPF architecture, the most recent advance in optimizing mainframe I/O for storage devices.
Posted November 24, 2014
Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS), an Amazon.com company, announced the Amazon EC2 Container Service, a container management service intended to make it easier to run and manage distributed applications using containers on AWS. Initially, the EC2 Container Service supports Docker, enabling customers to easily launch, manage, and scale from one container to hundreds of thousands of containers across a managed cluster of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances.
Posted November 24, 2014
Host Analytics, a provider of cloud-based enterprise performance management (EPM), has completed a financing round of $25 million led by Centerview Capital Technology with participation from existing investors Advanced Technology Ventures, Next World Capital, StarVest Partners, and Trident Capital. The new funding brings the total capital invested in the company to $77M across five rounds
Posted November 24, 2014
IBM is bringing a greater level of control, security and flexibility to cloud-based application development and delivery with a single-tenant version of Bluemix, the company's platform-as-a-service. The new platform allows developers to build applications around their most sensitive data and deploy them in a dedicated cloud environment while avoiding the compliance, regulatory and performance issues that are presented with public clouds.
Posted November 21, 2014
SUSE has announced general availability of SUSE Linux Enterprise 12, the newest version of its platform for efficiently deploying and managing highly available enterprise-class IT services in physical, virtual or cloud infrastructure. New products based on SUSE Linux Enterprise 12 feature enhancements that more readily enable system uptime, improve operational efficiency, and accelerate innovation. The foundation for all SUSE data center operating systems and extensions, SUSE Linux Enterprise meets the performance requirements of data centers with mixed IT environments, while reducing the risk of technological obsolescence and vendor lock-in.
Posted November 20, 2014
IBM in collaboration with NVIDIA, and the Jülich Supercomputing Center, part of the largest research center in Germany, plan to launch a new competency center to advance the creation and optimization of research applications on GPU-accelerated OpenPOWER compatible systems.
Posted November 20, 2014
Before the OpenStack Summit held earlier this month in Paris, OpenStack operators and application developers were asked to provide feedback on their experiences. It was the fourth consecutive survey conducted by the User Committee prior to each Summit.
Posted November 20, 2014
LinuxCon Europe and KVM Forum were recently held in Dusseldorf. Adam Jollans, Program Director for Linux and Open Virtualization Strategy at IBM, attended the events and shares his reflections on what took place in a new blog on The Linux Foundation website.
Posted November 20, 2014
When IBM introduced the new POWER8 processor and next-generation Power Systems earlier this year, PowerKVM was also launched. Aline Fatima Manera, Christy L Norman Perez, and Paulo Ricardo Paz Vital, Staff Software Engineers, Open Virtualization, at the IBM Linux Technology Center, have written about the significance of PowerKVM and how the open source Kimchi and Ginger software make it easy to manage PowerKVM in a new blog.
Posted November 20, 2014
Security as it relates to the cloud technology is under the spotlight as concerns heighten about the need to safeguard users' sensitive personal information, as well as enterprise and government applications and data.
Posted November 20, 2014
Michael D. Day, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Virtualization Architect, Open Systems Development, IBM, describes the advantages provided by Docker, an open source project for container-based virtualization in a new blog.
Posted November 20, 2014
Government agencies in the U.S., China, and France are improving the lives of their constituents through increased transparency, robust services, and 24x7 access. And while they each differ in their approach to civic governance, they all have one thing in common: the IBM mainframe is their core infrastructure platform.
Posted November 20, 2014
IBM Enterprise Linux Server (ELS) can help save software licensing costs, while consolidating different kinds of workloads onto a single server, supporting CIOs in their today's budget challenges. ELS also helps to overcome server sprawl, by requiring less physical servers, less floor space, less energy, with increased flexibility due to IBM z/VM virtualization and simplified management based on IBM Wave for z/VM.
Posted November 20, 2014
IBM designed the Enterprise Linux Server from the ground up to add real business value without increasing IT costs. The Enterprise Linux Server's integrated combination of industry leading server and virtualization technologies provide a simple, efficient and trusted infrastructure foundation for businesses with growing Linux workloads.
Posted November 20, 2014
IBM Research and SCA are partnering to create a shared service cloud for the municipalities of New York that is predicted to eliminate 25% of government's IT budget by streamlining applications and connecting siloed municipalities. The IBM mainframe is the platform that New York trusts to host that cloud. In addition to its time-tested scalability, reliability and security, it offers the lowest total cost of ownership — supporting the state as it strives for reduced spending and a smarter, future-ready IT infrastructure.
Posted November 20, 2014
Challenged to do more with less, Dundee City Council identified IT as an area in which it could cut costs. The council consolidated its Oracle Database environment supporting critical services from distributed servers to an IBM zEnterprise BC12 platform, dramatically improving efficiency.
Posted November 20, 2014
IBM Business Partner L3C LLP focuses on three ways to help businesses across the UK increase profitability and reduce costs: consultancy, managed services and complementary IT resources. L3C deployed IBM System z servers running Linux to provide companies of any size — including small, midsized and very large enterprises — with scalable, cost-effective, high-performance cloud services.
Posted November 20, 2014
EVERTEC, Inc., based in Puerto Rico, offers a comprehensive suite of services for core bank processing, cash processing and technology outsourcing. EVERTEC relies on IBM zEnterprise EC12 system running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z to support key financial systems and Oracle databases.
Posted November 20, 2014
Whether your business provides big data and analytics to others, or you use big data and analytics to enhance your own products, research and marketing, it is necessary to have a fast, efficient and reliable infrastructure and architecture.
Posted November 20, 2014