BladeLogic has virtualization management software

The Lexington, Mass.-based company last week released BladeLogic Virtualization Manager, a systems management application focused on virtual machines (VMs). The new software works with VMware ESX and has a single interface to handle provisioning, deleting and managing of VMs.

RLE Technologies releases data center monitoring equipment

RLE’s new Falcon F110 is a data center monitoring system that allows for 11 different points where thresholds for temperature, humidity, and water leaks can be detected. When the limits are breached, the system can automatically notify the necessary people through email or messaging alerts. The F110 is the first of six products that RLE plans to release by the end of July.

Opsware updates online security and compliance subscription service

Opsware Inc., a data center automation software company, has updated its online subscription service, called The Opsware Network, for data center compliance and security. The company says the upgraded software has more than 2,000 new compliance and security checks to help meet regulations such as HIPAA and Sarbanes Oxley (SOX), as well as online community forums and access to additional downloadable content.

21st Century Software updates mainframe DR software; adds Unix DR software to the mix

21st Century Software has upgraded its DR/VFI data recovery and backup software for the mainframe, as well as announcing a new version for Unix systems. The mainframe product has new features such as the ability to now simulate a disaster recovery event before going offsite to perform testing. The Unix version is focused on backing up and restoring critical files and applications.

MySQL AB and IBM announced a joint technology and reseller agreement this week to bring support for the MySQL open source database to the IBM System i business computing platform.The two companies will offer the MySQL Server for i5/OS, the flagship operating system for System i, and plan to deliver DB2 for i5/OS as a certified MySQL storage engine on the System i platform. This will allow System i customers to implement online and transactional MySQL applications while storing all data in a single, easy-to-manage DB2 database.

In addition, MySQL Enterprise subscriptions — a comprehensive offering of MySQL database software, services and support — will be made available to IBM clients worldwide through IBM’s reseller network and System i sales team. Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

With the planned DB2 storage engine for MySQL, System i customers will be able to run MySQL applications while managing their DB2 for i5/OS databases. It will plug into the MySQL Server and be managed as any other storage engine within the database server, IBM reports.

The DB2 storage engine will provide superior storage management, transaction support, and database management for MySQL developers and DBAs — and enable sharing of data between MySQL and DB2 applications.

MGE has built new automated test bays at its North American headquarters in Costa Mesa, Calif. The new bays are for MGE’s smaller three-phase UPS devices, the Galaxy line that ranges from 10 to 75 kVA. I took a tour earlier this month and took some photos of the MGE UPS facility.

The testing allows MGE to produce a certificate that can ship out with equipment so customers know it has been certified as working properly. The testing can include steady-state load and step load tests, as well as shutting down the utility feed to see how the UPS batteries handle the power load.

In MGE’s case, the old way of doing it was with an operator jotting down figures in a notepad.

I grew up in the Midwest, Tornado Alley, so when someone starts talking about data center trailers I automatically think tornado bait. It would be ugly to see what an F5 tornado with 300 mph winds would do to one of those things. And we’re getting right into the thick of tornado season for a lot of the country.

But people in the Great Plains aren’t the only ones that have to worry about tornadoes. According to the Insurance Journal, New Jersey actually tops the list as the state with the biggest projected losses per 1,000 square miles from tornado and related weather events. That would make me think twice about data center trailers if I were a financial firm getting ready to spread out across the Hudson River.

Beyond the tornado issue, a much more mundane disaster lurks on the horizon. Microsoft and Sun have pitched their data center in a box offerings as “lights out” environments — no staff needed. Just put it up on blocks in the front yard (or an oil platform) and let it run. But how often is somebody going to have to reboot one of those Windows servers, or worse replace them?

In a recent InfoWorld article, Microsoft’s Windows Live architect James Hamilton said companies can eliminate head-count in data centers as by switching to a “detect/reboot/replace” approach to server failure, rather than servicing malfunctioning hardware. Hamilton goes on to call Windows servers “unreliable components”.

So what happens when you have disposable servers going belly up across multiple, unmanned distributed locations? I know data center managers who can’t tell you how many servers they have running in one data center because it’s too complex. Can you imagine how hairy it could get if you had to guess which trailer needed help? It’s like a shell game.

Check out our review of the the Sun BlackBox.

IBM recently announced a chip-stacking technology that paves the way for three-dimensional chips.

The technology – called “through-silicon vias” — allows different chip components to be packaged much closer together for faster, smaller, and lower-power systems.

The IBM breakthrough enables the move from horizontal 2-D chip layouts to 3-D chip stacking, which takes chips and memory devices that traditionally sit side by side on a silicon wafer and stacks them together on top of one another. The result is a compact sandwich of components that dramatically reduces the size of the overall chip package and boosts the speed at which data flows among the functions on the chip, IBM reports.
The new chip eliminates the need for long-metal wires that connect today’s 2-D chips together, instead relying on through-silicon vias — essentially vertical connections etched through the silicon wafer and filled with metal. These vias allow multiple chips to be stacked together, so more information can be passed between the chips, according to IBM.
The technique shortens the distance information on a chip needs to travel by 1000 times, and allows for the addition of up to 100 times more pathways for that information to flow compared to 2-D chips. 
IBM is already running chips using the through-silicon via technology in its manufacturing line and will begin making sample chips using this method available to customers in the second half of 2007, with production in 2008.

The first application of this through-silicon via technology will be in wireless communications chips. The 3-D technology will also be applied to a wide range of chips, including those running now in IBM’s high-performance servers and supercomputers. 
This is the fifth major chip design announcement in five months from IBM.

For further information about IBM Microelectronics, visit http://www.ibm.com/chips/
This is pretty interesting, since many software developers are still figuring out how to write applications for quad-core processors.

It seems data center managers are more attuned today to overall systems management than they ever have been. At the recent AFCOM Data Center World conference in Las Vegas I attended last month, it seemed to be a more popular track than in past years. Facing audits with piles of papers and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets just isn’t cutting it anymore.

Part of it all is log management, which involves examining log files to see what actions and changes in your systems might affect how you run your business. Vendors include Splunk, LogRhythm and LogLogic, which just released a new version of its log management software yesterday.

SmugMug CEO Don MacAskill has amazing hardware reviews on his blog. If you’re looking for very candid feedback on how server vendors stack up at a growing Web 2.0 company, you need to read these posts.

According to MacAskill, Sun’s hardware engineering is awesome, but the sales cycle still sucks. Sounds familiar.

Here are the greatest hits:
SmugMug review of the SunFire x2200 M2 server: Two months after SmugMug dumped Rackable for Sun, MacAskill says he’s still starry-eyed in love. Pie in the sky, he’d like to see dual power supplies, DC-power servers and a liquid cooling option.

x86-64 Server vendor bakeoff: Server vendors vie for SmugMug’s newly minted Web 2.0 dollars. HP doesn’t fit the bill, passes them off to a VAR; Dell is quick on the draw but not paying attention to what they actually asked for; IBM doesn’t return phone calls (Tell me about it!); Rackable is “cheap in every sense of the word” and its once “cool” server business is in some sort of freefall. And the winner by default: Sun.

SmugMug details Amazon’s S3 performance flaws: Amazon’s storage offering, S3 had some major issues according to MacAskill. “Customers were at our gates with pitchforks and torches. Our paying customers were affected and they could tell there was something wrong. Not good.” SearchStorage.com also reported on customer problems with S3.

A review of Sun’s T1000: Why SmugMug didn’t go with Sun’s T1000 server.

Blog company Wordpress has beefed up its server farm and spread out into three data centers according to Barry at Wordpress. The company has spent the past month moving out of a facility in San Diego and moving into two facilities in Texas and one in San Fran. The company has standardized on HP’s rack machines, the bulk of which are AMD-based HP Proliant DL145 servers.

The new racks will also power Wordpress’ sister company, Askimet, a blog comment spam filtration tool. Interesting note: Askimet predicts that 95% of all blog comments are spam — I estimate that I delete a spam comment about every two hours.

Northern California utility Pacific Gas & Electric announced an incentive program today for high-efficiency data storage hardware. The technology is called Massive Array of Idle Disks, or MAID, and it stores rarely-used data to hard disks that are normally turned off, saving energy compared to typical systems.

PG&E is offering a rebate on MAID systems manufactured by COPAN Systems of Longmont, Colorado. PG&E customers that are interested in pursuing the financial incentive need to apply prior to implementing projects. For more info on PG&E’s data center energy initiatives, check out our recent interview with PG&E’s Mark Bramfitt.

Yesterday I was talking to Christian Belady, a technologist at Hewlett-Packard. Belady is the brain behind the Green Grid’s power usage effectiveness (PUE) ratio, an energy efficiency metric for data centers. I asked him what he thought was driving the growth of IT energy use, and his answer was surprising.

He said IT efficiency is driving IT energy consumption. The more efficiency we get out of our systems, the more we will use them. Which is why data center efficiency is never going to drive down IT energy use.

“The cost of computation is going down,” Belady said. “Performance per watt doubles every two years. If you look over an 8 year period, a typical platform is 16 times more efficient than it was 8 years prior.”

Belady used gasoline as an example. If the price of gas went down sixteen times in eight years, what would you expect to happen to gasoline demand? Instead of buying electricity we’d have a generators in our backyards. “My air conditioner would run on gasoline, not electricity.”

The irony according to Belady, is that by improving the efficiency of IT systems, we’re driving the cost down even faster — therefore driving up consumption.

Funny side note: Belady is headed to Denver next week for a Green Grid Technical Summit. I was looking into heading out there to cover the event and called the Green Grid’s PR team at Blanc & Otus to see if that would be possible. The representative left me a message saying that the event was closed to the press, and I wouldn’t want to go to a boring conference with a bunch of engineers anyway.

My thoughts exactly. Who would want to watch a bunch of mad scientist engineers duke it out over competing approaches to energy efficiency? I’d much rather hear the outcome summarized by non-technical, media-trained IT execs after the fact. Thanks for looking out for me.