Data Center Management Articles
Business pressures, including cost reduction, scalability, and "just-in-time" application software implementation, are just some of the requirements prompting businesses to "cloudify" at least some aspect of their IT infrastructure.
Posted May 19, 2015
Data preparation is gaining considerable visibility as a distinct aspect of data management and analytics work.
Posted May 19, 2015
Hadoop is contributing to the success of data analytics. Anad Rai, IT manager at Verizon Wireless, examined the differences between traditional versus big data at Data Summit 2015 in a session titled "Analytics: Traditional Versus Big Data." The presentation, which was part of the IOUG track moderated by Alexis Bauer Kolak, education manager at the IOUG, showed how big data technologies are helping data discovery and improving the transformation of information and knowledge into wisdom.
Posted May 14, 2015
With the influx of big data solutions and technologies comes a bevy of new problems, according to Data Summit 2015 panelists Miles Kehoe, search evangelist at Avalon Consulting, and Anne Buff, business solutions manager for SAS best practices at the SAS Institute. Kehoe and Buff opened the second day of Data Summit with a keynote discussion focusing on resolving data conundrums.
Posted May 14, 2015
These days, managing a data center can be like working inside a pressure cooker. Virtualization, dynamic computing, cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things—each major development turns up the heat, but budgets, staff, and skills often lag behind explosive growth in data center scale and complexity.
Posted May 14, 2015
Every now and then, somebody will raise the age-old question "How can I measure the effectiveness and quality of my DBA staff?" This can be a difficult question to answer. And it almost always hides the actual question that is begging to be asked, which is "How many DBAs do we need?"
Posted May 14, 2015
With all the cheerleading and the steady drumbeat of new features being released to Azure, it's easy to lose track of the many cool and valuable new features released in the on-premises version of SQL Server. One of the crown jewels of SQL Server, the cardinality estimator (CE), underwent a large redesign for SQL Server 2014 to improve performance. Cardinality estimates are an extremely important part of query processing. In a nutshell, cardinality estimates are what the relation engine predicts for the number of rows affected by a given operation, including intermediate row sets like those created by filters, aggregations, joins and spool.
Posted May 14, 2015
RevCon is Revelation Software's conference that covers a wide array of topics on Revelation Software. Revelation Software users' conference this year focused on Revelation Software's flagship product, OpenInsight, and the new capabilities of version 10.0.
Posted May 14, 2015
Capgemini is extending its long-standing strategic partnership with SAP, allowing Capgemini to act as a single point of contact for customers globally, and delivering SAP products and support services through one consolidated framework. By signing a global value-added reseller (VAR) agreement with SAP, Capgemini is among a select group of global SAP partners that are part of the global program, which has specific entry requirements that include global reach, reseller capabilities and revenue targets.
Posted May 12, 2015
Splice Machine is partnering with Talend to enable customers to simplify data integration and streamline data workflows on Hadoop. Through this partnership, organizations building operational data lakes with Splice Machine can augment Talend's data integration technology with its data quality capabilities.
Posted May 12, 2015
Pentaho users will now be able to use Apache Spark within Pentaho thanks to a new native integration solution that will enable the orchestration of all Spark jobs. Pentaho Data Integration (PDI), an effort initiated by Pentaho Labs, will enable customers to increase productivity, reduce maintenance costs, and dramatically lower the skill sets required as Spark is incorporated into big data projects.
Posted May 12, 2015
IBM today announced a combined package of new servers and storage software and solutions in a move to accelerate the development of hybrid cloud computing. The company also revealed flexible software licensing of its middleware to help clients speed up their adoption of hybrid cloud environments.
Posted May 11, 2015
Red Hat, Inc., a provider of enterprise open source solutions, announced Red Hat JBoss Enterprise Application Platform (JBoss EAP) 6.4 and expanded benefits for JBoss EAP subscribers deploying their Java applications in hybrid cloud environments.
Posted May 11, 2015
HP has made multiple contributions to the OpenStack Kilo release, including new converged storage management automation and new flash storage technologies to support flexible, enterprise-class clouds. HP's storage contributions to the OpenStack Kilo release focus on two strategic goals.
Posted May 11, 2015
Radware, a provider of cybersecurity and application delivery solutions, released a new managed, cloud-based Web Application Firewall (WAF) service that provides unmatched protection from web-based cyberattacks.
Posted May 11, 2015
Teradata has made enhancements to the Teradata Database's hybrid row and column capabilities to provide quicker access to data stored on columnar tables and drive faster query performance. Other relational database management systems store data tables in rows or columns, and each method offers benefits, depending on the application and type of data. However, they have been mutually exclusive. Teradata's new hybrid row and column capabilities allow the best of both worlds.
Posted May 08, 2015
Rocket Software has released Rocket Discover, a new self-service business intelligence solution that combines visual data discovery with data preparation.The new product also reduces the number of operations that can be performed on the data to the most fundamental ones that business users want to perform such as joining data, filtering data, and appending data.
Posted May 07, 2015
Software AG has made updates to its Terracotta In-Memory Data Management platform. New improvements to Terracotta Open Source Kit 4.3 include distributed storage and off-heap storage.The platform is used for boosting performance, scalability, and building real-time applications. Additionally, Terracotta helps developers leverage in-memory storage for current and emerging data workloads.
Posted May 07, 2015
Oracle has introduced Oracle Secure Global Desktop (SGD) Release 5.2, the latest version of the company's secure remote access solution for cloud-hosted enterprise applications and hosted desktops running on not only Microsoft Windows, but also Linux, Solaris and mainframe servers. SGD allows users to work securely from any device and from any location, while providing administrators controlled access to applications and desktop environments resident in the data center, providing a key benefit to large companies in a BYOD world.
Posted May 06, 2015
When databases are built from a well-designed data model, the resulting structures provide increased value to the organization. The value derived from the data model exhibits itself in the form of minimized redundancy, maximized data integrity, increased stability, better data sharing, increased consistency, more timely access to data, and better usability.
Posted May 06, 2015
Pivotal has made updates to its big data suite that include upgrades to the Pivotal HD enterprise-grade Apache Hadoop distribution, which is now based on the Open Data Platform core, and performance improvements for Pivotal Greenplum Database.
Posted May 05, 2015
The Pure Storage FlashArray 400 Series is now certified by SAP as an enterprise storage solution for the SAP HANA platform. The certification enables Pure Storage to participate in SAP's program for SAP HANA tailored data center integration using its certified solution.
Posted May 04, 2015
Cosentry, a provider of IT solutions in the Midwest, has extended its managed cloud to provide expertise in connecting to Microsoft Azure, with a focus on utilizing Azure for SQL Server testing and development, SQL Server backup and SQL Server disaster recovery environments.
Posted May 01, 2015
CA Workload Automation Advanced Integration 1.0 for SAP Business Warehouse has received SAP certification. Specifically, the SAP Integration and Certification Center has certified that CA Workload Automation Advanced Integration 1.0 integrates with SAP Business Warehouse to provide a unified view for jobs running in both SAP and non-SAP applications.
Posted April 30, 2015
Splice Machine, a provider of Hadoop RDMS, announced that it is partnering with mrc (michaels, ross & cole ltd), to allow Splice Machine's Hadoop RDBMS to be certified and integrated with mrc's m-Power platform. "Our partnership with mrc gives businesses a solution that can speed real-time application deployment on Hadoop with the staff and tools they currently have, while also offering affordable scale-out on commodity hardware for future growth," said Monte Zweben, co-founder and CEO, Splice Machine.
Posted April 28, 2015
System z revenues - which doubled in the first quarter of 2015 - proved to be one of the few positive line items in IBM's latest spate of downward numbers. Revenues from System z mainframe server products increased 118% compared with the year-ago period. Total delivery of System z computing power, as measured in MIPS (millions of instructions per second), increased 95%.
Posted April 27, 2015
BMC announced an operations console designed to monitor complex IT environments and analyzes diverse data sets to deliver IT insights that help solve business issues. The new release, BMC TrueSight Operations Management 10, provides a single view of applications and infrastructure from any device across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.
Posted April 27, 2015
Vectra Networks, which provides real-time detection of cyberattacks in-progress, introduced a threat detection platform that extends automated real-time cybersecurity into all corners of an organization, including previous blind spots such as remote sites and internal network segments.
Posted April 27, 2015
Puppet Labs, a provider of IT automation software, said that it is working with Cumulus Networks on a joint integration offering, so switches running Cumulus Linux can be managed as any other Puppet-managed device. Building on a previous partnership between Dell and Cumulus Networks, these new integrations provide customers with a stack solution of hardware, operating system, and configuration management.
Posted April 27, 2015
Broadcom Corporation, a provider of semiconductor solutions for wired and wireless communications, announced the next-generation of its StrataXGS Trident Ethernet switch portfolio, designed to help meet the bandwidth, scalability and efficiency demands of 10GbE virtualized data centers.
Posted April 27, 2015
ProfitBricks, a provider of cloud infrastructure for IaaS, has announced the release of a Node.js SDK and an SDK for Ruby, written against its recently launched REST API.
Posted April 27, 2015
Think administering z/VM will be difficult? Think again. With IBM Wave for z/VM (IBM Wave) with Oracle, IT organizations can unleash the power of z/VM virtualization, improve productivity, simplify management, and accelerate the cloud journey with innovative technology that helps reduce the barriers to management of virtualized environments.
Posted April 23, 2015
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 April 23, 2015
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 April 23, 2015
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 April 23, 2015
The future will flourish with machines. We've been told this in pop culture for decades, from the helpful robots of the Jetsons, to the infamous Skynet of the Terminator movies, to the omniscient "computer" of Star Trek. Smart, connected devices will be ubiquitous and it's up to us, the humans, to decide what's next. But the Internet of Things (IoT) is about more than devices and data.
Posted April 23, 2015
SUSE and Veristorm are partnering to provide certified high-performance Hadoop solutions that run directly on Linux on IBM z Systems, IBM Power Systems, and x86-64. Customers with IBM z Systems can team SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z with Veristorm zDoop, a commercial distribution of Hadoop supported on mainframes.
Posted April 23, 2015
Many DBAs are now tasked with managing multi-vendor environments, and handling a variety of data types. Increasingly, DBAs are turning to strategies such as database automation to be able to concentrate more on the big picture of moving their enterprises forward.
Posted April 23, 2015
To help ensure uptime and efficiency of key retail operations, while providing consistent, immediately available upgrades—and thus enabling internal IT groups to focus on differentiating the customer experience and driving growth, Oracle has introduced new Retail Cloud Services. The six new Oracle Retail cloud services are aimed at providing retailers with fast access to enterprise-grade applications for managing critical e-commerce, customer engagement, order management, order fulfillment, loss prevention, and brand compliance operations.
Posted April 22, 2015
There are actually many advantages to adopting or subscribing to a cloud-based data services infrastructure. For starters—and this may be the only reason companies need to make the move—there's the simplicity cloud and data as a service can offer. In many ways, cloud and data as a service free enterprises and their data teams from the technical intricacies of deploying systems and solutions.
Posted April 22, 2015
SUSE has improved high availability capabilities for deployments of the SAP HANA platform via SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for SAP Applications, the recommended and supported operating system for use with SAP HANA. The new version of the resource agents enhance the high availability component of SUSE Linux Enterprise for SAP Applications, with two additional scenarios for customers to automate their system replication of SAP HANA. In addition to the original performance-based scenario, SUSE now supports cost-based and multi-tier SAP HANA system replication.
Posted April 22, 2015
SAP SE has announced an Industry 4.0 implementation project with GEA to address condition monitoring and predictive maintenance. GEA, a supplier for the food processing industry and a wide range of process industries, will work with SAP to optimize the performance of its separator and decanter machinery with the SAP Predictive Maintenance and Service solution, cloud edition. Based on SAP HANA Cloud Platform, the solution aims to bring together technology, sensors, and machine data with business processes, applications, and practices.
Posted April 22, 2015
SAP has announced it has certified its products on Oracle Database 12c. "More than two-thirds of all SAP customers run their SAP applications on the Oracle Database today. There is a strong overlap," said Sohan DeMel, vice president, Product Strategy and Business Development, Oracle. "These joint customers are looking to leverage Oracle's best database technology."
Posted April 22, 2015