Data Center Management Articles
The Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) made its presence known at the recent Red Hat Summit. The OVA, a Bronze Sponsor of the event, hosted a networking reception for the 27 participating members, and the Open Virtualization Alliance booth allowed many OVA members to promote their company's success stories around KVM, as well as highlight the benefits of being an OVA member.
Posted July 30, 2012
During his Red Hat Summit keynote, Robert LeBlanc, senior vice president of IBM Software Group, spoke about the impact of open source technology on business decisions in the past, present and future. IBM was a Premier Sponsor of the Red Hat Summit, and LeBlanc's long experience with Linux, along with his leadership of the original IBM Linux strategy team, enthusiastically engaged the more than 3,000 audience members at the event.
Posted July 30, 2012
LinuxCon is the leading annual technical conference in North America. Launched in 2009, LinuxCon has become known for offering top speaking talent, a cross-section of the leading players in the Linux community, innovative and timely content, a wide variety of opportunities for attendee collaboration and a place for smaller groups to co-locate for topic-specific mini-summits and workgroups. Co-located with CloudOpen, the Linux Kernel Summit and the Linux Plumbers Conference, LinuxCon North America 2012 will take place August 29-31 at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego.
Posted July 30, 2012
Mike Day, distinguished engineer and chief virtualization architect, Open Systems Development, IBM, dispels some persistent myths about KVM in his new blog. "KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) is gaining traction in the enterprise as a virtualization solution that provides high performance, scalability, and cost efficiency," writes Day. "But misconceptions still abound about this open source hypervisor. Some falsehoods continue to be perpetuated by organizations offering competing products, and others because KVM is maturing quickly and the up-to-date, correct information is not yet widely known. Here, we tackle some of the most persistent myths about KVM - because it's time to set the record straight."
Posted July 30, 2012
Google recently announced the Google Compute Engine, a service running on KVM that enables developers to have quick access to vast numbers of virtual machines. Cade Metz writes about the new service in an article on for Wired Enterprise in which he interviews Google's Urs Holzle. "Compute Engine was built using the KVM hypervisor, open source software that was built to run virtual machines atop the Linux operating system. KVM, or Kernel-based Virtual Machine, is a little different from the XEN hypervisor that underpins Amazon's service or the VMware vSphere hypervisor that drives applications inside so many other data centers," writes Metz.
Posted July 30, 2012
The oVirt Project develops and distributes an open source virtualization management platform that combines the KVM hypervisor with advanced capabilities for hosts and guests, including high availability, live migration, storage management, system scheduling, and more. As part of its community's efforts to provide education about oVirt and to bring more contributors into the fold, oVirt is hosting workshops at LinuxCon North America and LinuxCon Europe. Interested parties are invited to attend these workshops free of charge, and all workshop participants are eligible for a $200 discount on their LinuxCon registration courtesy of The Linux Foundation.
Posted July 30, 2012
Casio in Japan wanted to optimize the global IT infrastructure within its business development department and create business models to gain a competitive advantage in its industry. Casio installed Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to enhance optimization of its IBM BladeCenter for increased efficiency and to develop IT systems tailored to specific sections of its business.
Posted July 30, 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 July 30, 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 July 30, 2012
Compuware Corporation has launched a free online cloud service enabling organizations to compare the speed of their website's performance against leading competitor sites. SpeedoftheWeb.org provides a series of industry-relevant indexes with categorized collections of 1,000 of the world's most trafficked websites - as ranked by Alexa and Compuware Gomez benchmarks. As end-user expectations become greater, the cost of poor website performance also grows, both in terms of lost revenues and brand loyalty. In addition, end users are showing less patience for slow-performing websites, according to Compuware. In response to these heightening requirements, organizations need to ensure performance along every spot in the web application delivery chain, Alois Reitbauer, Compuware APM's Web 2.0 and Mobile Performance Expert and author of Java Enterprise Performance, tells DBTA.
Posted July 25, 2012
IBM announced its second-quarter income and revenues, stating that while hardware and systems revenues were down from the same time a year ago, software sales held steady or grew. Overall, IBM's net income for the quarter was $3.9 billion, compared with $3.7 billion in the second quarter of 2011, an increase of 6%. Total revenues for the second quarter of 2012 of $25.8 billion were down 3% from the second quarter of 2011. Currency fluctuations negatively impacted revenue growth by approximately $1 billion.
Posted July 23, 2012
CA Technologies announced new releases of its CA Database Management Solutions for DB2 for z/OS and CA Mainframe Chorus role-based workspace to help customers as they upgrade to the latest release of IBM DB2 for z/OS. "We estimate that 75% of customers haven't upgraded to DB2 10 for z/OS," Mark Combs, CA distinguished senior vice president, Mainframe, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "Given the benefits of the new version, and with an end-of-support date set for the previous version, customers need to move critical business applications to DB2 10 for z/OS within the next 18 months."
Posted July 23, 2012
Providing additional tools to managed service providers, Symantec Corp. announced several new cloud capabilities, including the availability of the Symantec Partner Management Console, which is designed to simplify the management and monitoring of Symantec Endpoint Protection.cloud and Symantec Backup Exec.cloud. "The Symantec Partner Management Console provides resellers and emerging MSPs the ability to remotely manage all aspects of their customers' services, including trials, subscriptions, policy updates and customized reporting for Symantec Endpoint Protection.cloud and Symantec Backup Exec.cloud," Dan Nadir, senior director product management of SMB and .cloud for Symantec, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted July 23, 2012
HP introduced new IT management tools intended to help provide organizations better control of their IT services through meaningful insight between software and infrastructure relationships. The new software, HP Configuration Management System (CMS) 10, provides users greater automated discovery capabilities. CMS 10 also introduces new capabilities specifically for service lifecycle design and operations, notably within both business service management and IT service management.
Posted July 23, 2012
ManageEngine, an IT management tools provider, is shipping a new version of its flagship network monitoring software, OpManager. OpManager 9.2 adds features and functionality, including agent-based log file monitoring, discovery rule engine, faster discovery, IPAM plug-in, tab customization and mo
Posted July 23, 2012
GT Software, a provider of technology solutions for enterprise modernization, announced that it has become the primary marketing, sales, and technical support organization for the NEO Suite of solutions. GT Software intends to provide direct support for current and future customers, as well as all existing partnerships and distributor relationships.
Posted July 23, 2012
Maintec Technologies has launched a service that offers corporations a capability to outsource their Linux environment to Maintec Data Center. The service, zLinux-in-a-Box, enables users to take advantage of Linux on System z, which offers combined core strength of mainframe along with the openness and stability of Linux platform.
Posted July 09, 2012
The rise of heterogeneous systems in addition to mainframes makes a cross-platform solution essential, George Faucher, president and CEO of CorreLog, tells 5 Minute Briefing. "First, with more and more organizations deploying security information and event management systems, data for IT security is becoming more centralized. So the question isn't so much 'should we focus on mainframe security less because it is more secure?' It's a matter of collecting all log data from all sources and centralizing it within the systems."
Posted July 09, 2012
CA Technologies has extended its recently launched CA Global Partner Program to include mainframe management solutions. Available now to partners in North America, the mainframe offerings are expected to be rolled out globally to all partners by the fall. The mainframe plays an important role for companies seeking to deliver reliable, high-quality services at low cost through a complex mix of computing platforms and cloud technology, notes David Bradley, senior vice president, Global Channel Sales, CA Technologies. With the addition of mainframe solutions, the CA Global Partner Program enables partners to deliver CA Technologies' mainframe management software to their customers to help reduce costs, sustain critical skills, and increase IT agility in the hybrid data center and the cloud.
Posted July 09, 2012
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
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