ZDNet UK Server platforms Toolkit

Google lifts the lid on its once-secret server

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Stephen Shankland) — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 16:08:02 +0100

The search giant designs and builds its own servers and, for the first time, it has publicly unveiled one, showing a surprise built-in battery

An up-close look at a Microsoft server container

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Ina Fried) — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 12:50:02 +0000

Microsoft gave PDC attendees a peek at a self-contained server unit from one of the company's datacentres

IBM cuts ribbon on portable datacentre

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Matthew Broersma) — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 14:16:02 +0000

The shipping container-based datacentre will support server, power and cooling technologies from multiple vendors, according to IBM

Sun sees server revenue sink in Q3

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Liau Yun Qing) — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 16:42:02 +0000

All top-five server vendors globally saw declines in revenue and shipment in the third quarter of 2009, according to Gartner

AMD takes top three places in supercomputer list

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (David Meyer) — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:46:02 +0000

Opterons have won all podium places in a global speed race, although Intel powers most of the remaining 497

Tough choices for supercomputing's legacy apps

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Andrew Jones) — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 15:44:01 +0000

The prospect of hundreds of petaflops and exascale computing raises tricky issues for legacy apps, says Andrew Jones

Inside Microsoft's biggest datacentre

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Ina Fried) — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 14:40:02 +0000

Take a look around Microsoft's 700,000 sq ft Chicago facility a datacentre the company says just might be the biggest on the planet

Intel seeks new 'microserver' standard

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Stephen Shankland) — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 08:31:02 +0000

Intel is aiming to standardise its design for the tiny servers, and will offer its design specification to the Server System Infrastructure Forum by the end of the year

Dell, Juniper hook up in networking alliance

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Matthew Broersma) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 09:53:01 +0000

Under a new deal, the partners will work together on products for virtualised datacentres and Dell will resell Juniper gear under its PowerConnect J brand

SAP and Intel team up for research

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:35:12 +0100

SAP and Intel Labs announced plans on Monday to enter into a strategic research collaboration into cloud computing and sustainable IT, located in Belfast. The SAP and Intel Collaboratory will be...

Europe initiates cloud community

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:32:14 +0100

EuroCloud, a trade group dedicated to networking and promoting European cloud and software-as-a-service providers, launched on Tuesday. The organisation aims to provide a network for software...

Fill that power gap: batteries or flywheels?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 13:53:16 +0100

Are flywheels better than batteries? I visited a datacentre a while back that had a flywheel to fill the gap between power outages and the diesel generator kicking in. The datacentre manager told...

Microsoft develops utility smart-grid software

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Martin LaMonica) — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 11:12:01 +0100

The software giant has developed an architecture that will give utilities companies a blueprint for modernising their IT systems

HP tailors datacentre tools for Oracle apps

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Matthew Broersma) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 16:39:02 +0100

New templates allow companies to automatically provision and deploy Oracle applications using HP's BladeSystem Matrix all-in-one datacentre package

IBM moves into cloud storage

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Matthew Broersma) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 17:54:02 +0100

The Smart Business Storage Cloud pulls together IBM technologies to allow businesses to set up private clouds where they can store and archive petabytes of data

Stratus to launch SMP high availability software

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 12:20:27 +0100

Did you know that keeping two multi-core systems in lock-step was hard? No, neither did I. But apparently it is - but one company claims to have gone and done it. Stratus is well-known for its...

Shuttleworth: Amazon will win cloud battle

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (David Meyer) — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 17:17:01 +0100

EC2 is the only strong contender to eventually emerge as the leading cloud platform because it has open-source implementations, according to the Canonical chief

Should programming supercomputers be hard?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Andrew Jones) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:41:02 +0100

Those who glibly argue for easier programming of supercomputers are broaching a complex issue, says Andrew Jones

Microsoft opens doors to new Chicago datacentre

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Ina Fried) — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 08:56:02 +0100

The software maker has opened what it says might be the world's largest datacentre in the outskirts of Chicago

Microsoft warns of delay to Home Server update

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Ina Fried) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 09:24:01 +0100

Compatibility issues with Windows 7 have delayed the planned Power Pack 3 update until later this year

Network boost from Windows Server 2008 R2

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 15:58:32 +0100

Just come away from a briefing and demo of Microsoft's newly-released Windows Server 2008 R2; it's much more than a minor update of the main release last year. We reviewed it briefly in July but...

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 22:10:30 +0100

The fourth update to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 operating system (RHEL 5.4) features the usual performance and scalability enhancements. Among them optimisations for Intel Xeon 5500 (Nehalem)...

IBM and Microsoft back Zend's cloud API plan

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Toby Wolpe) — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:02:02 +0100

The two firms have signed up to a Zend initiative to create an open-source application-programming interface for the cloud

AMD delivers its own server platform

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Sally Whittle) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 15:10:01 +0100

The low-power platform, formerly code-named Fiorano, offers server builders a combination of a six-core Opteron with a choice of three chipsets from AMD

Why open-source DNS is 'internet's dirty little secret'

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Toby Wolpe) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 14:35:02 +0100

Jon Shalowitz, general manager at Nominum's new Skye cloud-computing division, says legacy open-source DNS software poses a huge problem for the internet

Nominum's Skye puts DNS services in the cloud

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Toby Wolpe) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 13:00:00 +0100

The internet infrastructure company is offering hosted DNS services through its newly created Skye cloud division

Dell PowerEdge T710

editorial@zdnet.co.uk (Manek Dubash) — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 10:16:01 +0100

Dell's PowerEdge T710 is ideal for branch office or medium-sized business use, where performance, expandability and flexibility are key attributes.

Correction on Ubuntu Karmic GRUB Installation

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 07:56:45 +0100

To Moley, XWJ and others who might have been following the recent discussion of GRUB installation for Karmic, I have learned through a comment on my other blog that there is in fact a way to...

SAP waiting to build up steam for cloud

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:17:00 +0100

German software maker SAP said it is delaying a full-scale launch of its first Saas product, Business ByDesign. SAP has enlisted about 90 businesses to try out the ERP software, which is its...

Mozilla fixes bugs in Firefox 3.5 and 3.0

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 12:40:03 +0100

Mozilla on Wednesday released two new versions of its browser, Firefox 3.5.3 and 3.0.14, that patch three critical security holes and fix assorted other bugs. The updates can be fetched...

Dell's 11th generation PowerEdge servers for SMEs

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 16:53:30 +0100

There are plenty of servers aimed at small businesses and plenty of SMEs still using a beefy desktop PC as a server instead. Dell thinks that's because the average server is too complex to set up...

Snow Leopard Server: a first take

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 11:38:06 +0100

Most of the coverage following Apple's announcement that Snow Leopard (a.k.a. Mac OS X 10.6) will ship on Friday 28 August has concerned the £25 desktop version. But Snow Leopard Server will also...

Data centres get greener

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 09:27:58 +0100

Went to visit a new data centre last week. Built by Star, the 10,000 square foot facility has not much in it yet, but it's been built with the notion of high density blades crammed into every rack...

Creating a Multi-Boot Mini-Server

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 18:01:42 +0100

Because of an upcoming job interview (yes, I am still looking, unsuccessfully), I wanted to set up a system with openSolaris and perhaps CentOS. As long as I was doing that, I decided to set up a...

Hardware profile your Ubuntu machine

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 08:57:02 +0100

In the midst of some communication with J.A. Watson, I needed to say what my system was. I'm no big HardWare Fan-Boi, so I keep forgetting how fast (slow?!) my processor is and how much RAM I've...

Shouldn't your servers be sweating?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:38:27 +0100

Make servers that run hotter, is the demand from some companies. At least that's the view from Rumsey Engineers, a group describing itself as consisting of "uniquely qualified and dedicated...

Optical servers: at the heart of tomorrow's data centre?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 10:43:58 +0100

Servers of tomorrow will be optically powered, and consume a fraction of the power they do today. This means less heat, less energy consumption and, of course, data centres whose compute power is...

VMware aims for datacentre unity

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 16:34:40 +0100

VMware's vSphere 4.0, released just over a month ago, is aimed at helping VMware stay at least two steps ahead of Microsoft, now its biggest competitor in the virtualisation market; VMware's...

HP wants your data

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 15 May 2009 17:05:51 +0100

Just finished a day at HP's advanced data centre er, centre at Isle d'Abeau, near Lyon. It was useful to catch-up with HP's thinking with respect to data centres, and a chance to talk to one of...

Oracle wants to sell proprietary appliances? Fat chance...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 11 May 2009 15:49:04 +0100

So Oracle, having bought Sun, wants to retain Sun's hardware portfolio. How much sense does that make? Look at it this way. Server and data centre managers love the way that servers have become...

Rackable puts $25m offer in for SGI

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 17:08:02 +0100

On Wednesday, the storage supplier Rackable Systems surprised many people with the announcement that it wanted to buy the assets of Silicon Graphics International (SGI) for $25m (£17.3m). One...

IBM could buy Sun Microsystems

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 10:10:24 +0000

Talks are possibly underway for the systems giant IBM to buy Sun Microsystems, according a report in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal (WSJ) in what could be a grab for market share. However, the...

HP 2133 Mini-Note / Fedora 10 Installation Instructions

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 14:15:50 +0000

I have posted instructions for installing Fedora 10 on the HP 2133 on the Linux Laptop Wiki. It's not too difficult, and doesn't require compiling the openchrome driver, because the latest SVN...

Microsoft says it's a SaaS mistake

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 13:45:04 +0000

A Microsoft speaker at a conference on Monday came out with some interesting news that I reported on ZDNet UK. The news was that after it appeared that Microsoft wanted to cut resellers out of the...

Efficiency is key at Data Centre World

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 17:34:34 +0000

Power and energy savings and green IT in its own right are all by products of saving money, according to those running the biggest energy users in IT, data centre managers. At least that was a...

Intel plots the dynamic, scalable datacentre

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 12:12:32 +0000

Intels upcoming new chip architecture, code-named Nehalem had a design based on a straightforward principle of modern system design. To run a computer you need a microprocessor and to run a very...

Excellent high definition streaming of Obama inauguration

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:29:40 +0000

If you're in the UK and have a connection capable of around 4Mbps, have a go at Sky News' HD streaming converage. Windows only, alas, and you have to download a special client (boo), but it's the...

Everything needs permission...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 15:55:31 +0000

I have been hard at work on a Joomla! site, and was stumped for a while about why an image wasn't showing up. I copied it backwards and forwards, made sure I had the right folder, swore at the...

Six new AMD processors for business due Q3

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:06:07 +0000

AMD is reported to have announced six new 45nm processors to be launched in the third quarter of this year and aimed at business users. The announcement follows AMD's launch of its first 45nm...

Scaling in the Cloud - the secret pitfalls

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:44:29 +0000

As we move into the cloud, new problems are going to occur. That's standard issue for any new technology, as is one important aspect of the problem we always end up fighting the last war, not...

IBM beats up on HP, Sun, etc

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 17:28:41 +0000

The struggle for market leadership between IBM and HP burst out in the open on Thursday with IBM claiming that since 2004 it has replaced some 5,000 HP systems along with Sun Microsystems and EMC...

Ecma's history with Sun...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 13:00:27 +0100

I don't have good network bandwidth today, so I'll just pass on another link: nearly ten years ago, it seems Sun regarded Ecma as "accommodating" for its standards publishing requirements. ...

Lenovo's ThinkServer embargo farrago

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:10:44 +0100

Seen the news about Lenovo's entry into the global server market with its ThinkServer range? Well, we did, first thing this morning, on another website. We immediately called up Lenovo's UK PR for...

3G Cellular Success with Ubuntu!!!

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 11:01:20 +0100

Hooray! My Sierra Wireless AirCard 880 is working with Ubuntu 8.04.1 (Hardy Heron)! This is something I have been wanting to get working for quite a while. What it means is that I won't have to...

Best Laid Plans of a Man with a Mouse...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 14:04:57 +0100

I previously reported that I spent last weekend inside a VB2005 project. Well I discovered why things looked so good but just didn't seem to work right. I thought I had found an interesting...

Evidently there's a Rattled Cage in Redmond.

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 00:57:46 +0100

I received this email via the zdnet.co.uk webmail today and I thought it would be more appropriate to answer here so jayaram I hope you come back to read it... ...

DebbieToo, a new Serverbaby, is running.

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 03:58:31 +0100

Installed Debian 4 (etch) on Debbie's hard drive and this time I did it the easy way. My DSL line is twice the speed it was at the time I started this whole thing. So it loaded and installed almost...

The third strike finally landed. Debbie got hit.

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 11:54:36 +0100

I've run out of things I can do to fix her. I keep getting the same error message, #100. I still haven't found a way to manually or automatically patch what's busted with dpkg, apt-get, aptitude...

A $40 CONSUMER-class router has created SP-Update-Hell.

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 06:34:01 +0100

Believe it or not I don't work in IT, haven't for 7 years. Yes I work with Microsoft's Windows XP Embedded and as a result I have to know a lot about the OS, the kernal, Win API calls etc. But I...

UNIX is of course far more than just Linux

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 12:26:31 +0100

A couple of weeks back (28th May) I posted that I recommended an innediate trip to the Laughing Academy for anyone still doing work in a UNIX that was non-Linux. I had in mind the proprietary...

Cost and control key to server management for foreseeable

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:56:00 +0100

Took part in a fascinating debate the other day here at ZDNet.co.uk which we filmed and which will be on the site in the next few days. This was again exploring issues thrown up by the research...

A new threat from the datacentre: you're making your staff d...

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 11:59:28 +0100

An interesting side effect of datacentre growth has come to my attention, as part of this month's intense look by ZDNet.co.uk into server use in the UK (based originally into our poll of the ZDNet...

Microsoft in 'quite good' shocker..

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 16:25:16 +0100

I'm sure that the guys at ZDNet were debating whether to publish the video interview I did on their site or just post it to You've Been Framed. It's quite an odd experience being interviewed in...

Snapshot of UK server OS use 2008

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 12:43:04 +0100

UK organisations at both the enterprise and SME end are struggling with cost and support of their server operating systems, according to exclusive research carried out by ZDNet UK. When asked...

Join the server discussion on Uptime

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:45:38 +0100

Today we're launching a new group blog dedicated to servers--those essential but maybe unglamourous workhorses of the enterprise. It's called Uptime and you can find it here. (We reluctantly...

I broke Debbie and I don't know how to fix her.

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 11:05:16 +0100

Now I've done it. I've been using the update button that opens Synaptic package manager to keep Debbie (my Debian 4.0 Home Server) up to date. I haven't had a problem with her for over a year. But...

HP and IBM tussle in servers

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 30 May 2008 15:58:44 +0100

On Wednesday, HP launches a system that doubles the number of blades that can be fitted on one unit, less than a month after IBM introduced the iDataPlex range which also doubled the number and...

Citrix launch faster web delivery controller

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Fri, 09 May 2008 15:39:47 +0100

Citrix has given something of a boost to the performance of its web application delivery controllers with the addition of two NetScaler MPX controllers. The 17000 and 15000 slot in above the 12000...

Citrix goes virtual with Xen Desktop

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 16:53:36 +0100

Desktop virtualisation promises the ability for corporations to rationalise their huge farms of desktop PCs by switching users into the virtual world. Citrix is hoping that its Xen Desktop product,...

Top five hard drive mishaps

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 09:46:46 +0000

This comes off a press release from Kroll (surely a crap 80's sci-fi flick? hang on that might be Krull...close though) Ontrack - who claim to specialise in data recovery - but I think there's some...

Microsoft wants WAMP not LAMP?

editorial@zdnet.co.uk — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 21:54:03 +0000

I've been wondering what Microsoft is doing with open source. A few years back, when the company realised there was something viable happening in open source, that might challenge its own licencing...