Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

Desktop virtualization will get too many hides and it might get increasingly difficult to choose the right ones from the right ones, you know what I mean. Moshe Bar, who helped raise XenSource, wants to do something whacky with SolidICE. Do I again hear that huge sucking noise from IBM towers...they have this thing for Israeli outfits :-) A startup is looking to tackle desktop virtualization by leveraging an open-source hypervisor and building management tools to help keep track of an entire fleet of PCs. The company, called Qumranet, is leveraging the virtualization technology found in the open-source KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) hypervisor to create its first commercial product, dubbed Solid ICE (Independent Computing Environment). The new desktop virtualization is available now. Qumranet, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has its roots in open-source virtualization. The company’s co-founder, Moshe Bar, helped create XenSource, which uses the Xen hypervisor for its own virtualization

The Syscon guys RSS me all the time so we will linkback to the guys with this post ;-) Virtualization Journal: Starting at 35,000 ft…where does the Xen hypervisor fit in the virtualization universe? Simon Crosby: The Xen hypervisor is the industry’s most strategic code base for virtualization. Why? First, it is a tiny, optimized, open source reference standard hypervisor for a wide range of CPU architectures, with extensive support for high performance virtualization-enhanced CPUs and I/O subsystems. Because it has multiple routes to market in any given year, the hardware manufacturers ensure that Xen has “first and best” support for the latest hardware, ensuring that it always leads the industry in scalability and performance. In addition: It is collaboratively built by the industry’s leading IT vendors, led by Citrix and including Intel, AMD, IBM, HP, Novell, Red Hat, Sun, VA Linux and many others. The Xen security architecture is contributed by the security community, includin

Provision Networks, a division of Quest Software, is jumping into desktop virtualization this week with its Virtual Access Suite, a desktop virtualization system that supports Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT)'s Hyper-V. That makes Provision Networks the first vendor to make Microsoft's Hyper-V hypervisor the focus of its desktop virtualization efforts. Hyper-V is available in beta form at the Microsoft Web site and will soon to be part of Windows Server 2008. Provision Networks is emerging as another company that is a close partner of Microsoft when it comes to desktop virtualization. Provision's Virtual Access Suite is integrated with Microsoft Active Directory, a key component if you want to provision hundreds or thousands of employees with their own desktop in a way that meshes with the enterprise infrastructure. Provision has also been able to add extensions to Microsoft's Terminal Services protocol that speeds it up, a necessary step for delivering a desktop user experience

Proliferation of access levels and number of highly sensitive transactions has brought to fore the importance of identity management in the corporate world. Regulatory requirements are one of the critical factors providing impetus to market growth. Laws such as GLBA, HIPAA, California SB 1386, Sarbanes-Oxley, the USA Patriot Act, and the EU Data Protection Directive require businesses to establish authentic users by employing realistic methods and monitor access to resources, while also protecting user privacy. To meet growing demand, vendors are focusing on end-to-end identity management products to enable businesses to manage identity security issues. Integration of meta-directories and password management into provisioning and tighter integration between Web single sign-on and provisioning solutions are some of the key product trends. Federated identity management (http://www.strategyr.com/Identity_Management_Software_Market_Report.asp) is also fast gaining market acceptance. United

And do also note that I will be speaking there as well :-) Santa Clara, CA » 4/14/2008 » Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTXS), the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, gave a sneak peek at its highly anticipated Citrix XenDesktop™ product line this week and revealed that it will officially begin shipping to customers worldwide at the upcoming Citrix Synergy™ 2008 event on May 20. XenDesktop, which will be co-marketed with Microsoft ( see related announcement ), is a groundbreaking new desktop delivery solution that allows companies to virtualize Windows desktops in the datacenter and deliver them on-demand to office workers in any location. Unlike first-generation virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) technologies, XenDesktop is a comprehensive end-to-end desktop delivery system that offers an unparalleled end-user experience, dramatically simplifies desktop management and reduces the cost of traditional desktop computing by up to 40 percent 1 . Deploying and manag

When Citrix first acquired XenSource it wasn't immediately obvious how the company's NetScaler line of application accelerators was going to be relevant to the deal. But this week Citrix took some folks by surprise with the announcement of a new MPX line of accelerators that leverages virtualization technology to allow the MPX devices to dynamically provision the server assets in the data center based on the traffic demands that the application accelerator sees on the network. In effect, Citrix has stolen a march on Cisco's evolving data center strategy be leveraging XenSource software to allow networking devices to manage the rest of the data center. As virtualization continues to evolve it is becoming clearer that the convergence of networking, server and storage assets is going to happen a lot faster than previously thought. This will present some management challenges for senior IT people as fewer IT people are required to manage a broader array of devices. The immedia

SAN JOSE, CA, Apr 29, 2008 (MARKET WIRE via COMTEX News Network) -- Secure Computing Corporation (NASDAQ: SCUR), a leading enterprise gateway security company, today announced it is working with VMware to provide customers with security gateway virtual appliances for organizations of all sizes. These security gateway appliances for VMware environments will provide customers with an easy way to implement and manage security for multiple virtual machines, or multiple applications within a virtual machine, through a single gateway. This enables customers to capitalize on the business benefits of VMware virtualization -- such as reduced capital and operating expenses, assured business continuity and a "greener" carbon footprint -- while ensuring security across the datacenter in ways not possible in a physical environment. According to leading research firm Gartner Inc.'s report "Virtualization Changes Virtually Everything" (by Philip Dawson and Thomas J. Bittman, M

The VMware Community Source program allows members to access and contribute to the source code for the VMware ESX hypervisor. The program is part of a set of co-development initiatives fostering the creation of new value-added products and functionality optimized for VMware virtualization. The deep, source-level collaboration also yields enhanced interoperability between VMware virtualization solutions and third-party vendor solutions. As a VMware Community Source Program member, NetEffect is working closely with VMware to leverage the synergies between the VMware ESX hypervisor and NetEffect’s multi-GbE adapters. Optimizing virtualization efficiencies will further enhance the adapters’ proven hardware-accelerated, multi-NIC performance, increasing application productivity with even fewer server resources. “Both NetEffect and VMware are committed to enabling enterprise users to optimize their use of and results from data center resources,” said Rick Maule, CEO of NetEffect. “The VMware

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Veeam Reporter Enterprise is the first enterprise-level reporting solution specifically designed for large VMware Infrastructure 3 virtual environments. Designed for professional use by ESX administrators and datacenter managers, it provides unattended or ad hoc reporting, as well as configuration change management. Major features: * Client-server architecture (web access) * Microsoft SQL database back end * Scheduled or on-demand data collection * Remote administration and reporting Go to Veeam and get that beta!

SAN DIEGO – April 22, 2008 – Nirvanix, the premier “Cloud Storage” platform provider, today announced a 30-day “fee holiday” for all uploads from any source including Amazon S3 to a new account on its Storage Delivery Network (SDN), making the decision even easier for companies considering the integration of this acclaimed web-based storage service into their applications or storage environment. “We found that there are many companies that experimented with cloud storage when there were only one or two choices on the market. They have built up a substantial amount of data online and are looking for ‘best of breed’ now that enterprise-class solutions are available,” said Jonathan Buckley, Chief Marketing Officer with Nirvanix. “For a company with just 50 Terabytes of archived data, for instance, this holiday can mean a setup savings of well over $9,000 to move to the world’s fastest, most reliable cloud storage platform in the world.” Additionally, Nirvanix announced the availability o

BOSTON – April 23, 2008 – Gear6, accelerating I/O for real time application performance, will showcase the benefits of scalable caching appliances for bioinformatics at the Bio-IT World Conference and Expo, April 28-30, at the World Trade Center in Boston. The company will demonstrate how these new solutions enable significantly faster completion times for common sequence-search algorithms such as BLAST, while simultaneously lowering total storage costs by boosting the performance of existing storage systems. Gear6 will be presenting its innovative centralized storage caching solutions in Booth 202. Resource-intensive, sequence-search bioinformatics applications typically run on large server clusters with tremendous computing horsepower. Despite this computing power, the performance limitations of disk-based storage infrastructure routinely cause significant bottlenecks resulting in: * A need to over-provision memory across individual clients to compensate for suboptimal performanc

San Francisco, CA—April 23, 2008— 3Tera, Inc., the leading innovator of cloud computing technology and utility computing services, announced today at the Web 2.0 Expo its Cloudware architecture for Cloud Computing without Compromise, a flexible architecture empowering customers to build and run large-scale applications in the cloud without compromising their choices of operating system, middleware, security, location, architecture and vendors. Cloudware is based upon technology proven in 3Tera's award winning AppLogic™ grid operating system. The Cloudware architecture incorporates the fundamental building blocks used in developing today's most popular applications: storage, computing, connectivity, security, and how they all relate to each other in a far reaching architecture for building an open cloud computing system. Cloudware is intended to be vendor agnostic so that any third party vendor’s software can be incorporated in a Cloudware-enabled system. The new architecture wi

LOS GATOS, Calif., April 28, 2008 – Hifn™ (NASDAQ: HIFN), the catalyst behind storage and networking innovation, will feature its new Unified Storage Bundle, a complete go-to-market secure iSCSI solution for OEMs, the award-winning Swarm, an encrypted iSCSI SAN/NAS appliance and the Express DR data reduction accelerator cards at the Microsoft Management Summit 08, April 28 through May 2 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, Booth #111. Attendees are encouraged to stop by the Hifn booth and test drive the Swarm™ iSCSI software. Highlights of the software include storage consolidation, centralized management, remote replication capabilities, advanced data protection and seamless integration with Microsoft Windows environments. The company will also have on hand experts to discuss the role of encryption for compliance. Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) is the premier event for Windows Systems Administrators. For nine consecutive years, MMS has built a leading reputation by offering attende

Parsippany, N.J. – April 28, 2008 — RELDATA, the leading provider of unified storage solutions that deliver iSCSI SAN, NAS and WAN replication from a single virtualized storage platform, today announced YellowFiber is now a customer for RELDATA’s 9240 unified storage solutions. YellowFiber is a hosting company that provides managed high availability clusters for ebusiness and web infrastructures. “Previously we had a series of disjointed storage islands,” explains Zak Thompson, CEO of YellowFiber. “Storage pools were connected to different machines in the same cluster for load balancing and redundancy, and it became painfully complex to keep these in sync. This complexity was compounded by a lack of scalability in the file system. As the capacity requirements of some clusters grew, we were forced to constantly break out applications onto a new file server.” Faced with individual customers demanding 10 to 50GB of storage growth per week and an overall demand for as much as 900GB of new

Santa Clara, Calif. — April 29, 2008 — Woven Systems™ Inc., the leading innovator of Ethernet Fabric switching solutions based on its patented vSCALE™ technology for data centers and high-performance computing (HPC) clusters, today announced that the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics (Albert Einstein Institute, Hannover, Germany) is using Woven’s EFX 1000 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) Fabric Switch and TRX 100 Ethernet Switch in a large HPC cluster to search for gravitational waves predicted by Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity. The Woven’s Ethernet Fabric provides access to more than one petabyte of data supplied by a worldwide network of gravitational wave detectors. The data is distributed to compute cluster nodes via the Woven all-Ethernet solution. “Gravitational wave research is one of the most exciting fields of science. It will open a complete new window to the universe, and requires very large-scale and sophisticated computing tech

Milton, Australia – April 29, 2008 –Moonwalk Inc., the Australian developer of all-inclusive data management and protection software, today announced that it has created a joint solution with Caringo Inc.’s CAStor™ clustered storage platform to enable the fast and easy data migration from expensive proprietary Content Addressed Storage (CAS) systems to a cost-effective, high-performance CAStor environment. Moonwalk’s data management and migration engine helps customers reduce capital expenditures by intelligently migrating data from expensive primary storage volumes, file shares and other CAS archives to a more affordable CAStor environment built around commodity hardware and a unique flat file address space. CAStor also does away with the complexities of hierarchical storage management with a single-tier architecture that treats all disks in a CAStor cluster as primary storage while delivering all the attributes of an archive. The result is a massively scalable clustered storage en

LAS VEGAS – April 29, 2008 – At TechWeb’s Software 2008, Stratavia ™, the leading provider of data center automation software for Fortune 1000 organizations, today announced the results of a study it sponsored, conducted by research firm, Enterprise Management Associates . The survey revealed insights from 169 IT professionals from organizations with over $100 million in annual revenues. The research results indicate the biggest single cost factor in enterprise data centers is staffing expenses, as companies experience skills shortages, difficulties attracting and retaining staff, high error rates from manual intervention and language issues when outsourcing offshore. Findings include: · The biggest single cost factor in enterprise data centers is staffing costs. Over 35% of respondents believe that this is the largest single cost in operating and managing their data center – more than hardware (26%), more than software (22%), and five times as much as a current ‘hot’

Just to talk about the technology trends and adoption in India. We will cover other sectors of the industry as well in the "Globalization India Tales Series" . So lets talk about virtualization here. Virtualization is hot. Virtualization is being discussed across the globe. But did you know that... India is adopting virtualization at a very fast pace? Indian virtualization solutions providers such as HP are virtualizing major clients in UK, US within half a day!!!!? Virtualization solutions providers are not just going for the U.S and EU customers but are beginning to already create and carve up their own niche? Many solutions providers are incresingly going after the models where European and U.S firms are spending too much time in their board rooms? Soon they are bound to out-wolf the rest of the market because they are constantly on move? Many large Indian firms are already going for a self-sufficiency model where they are training hordes of their employees for a bigger

After not having been in India for 10, yes TEN years, I was very curious to what has happened to the land of my origin. I do (BTW) speak fluent Hindi and several other dialects. So as it turns out, India is growing massively. A bit too fast for my tastes but still its growing alright. We had to go there as our sales pipe was rotund and aching. We needed people and we could get them here. We needed hardworking people but couldn't just keep them here. We needed people but were tired of retention, whining and all other things that come when the sourcing world starts to lure you away and east you go! So its not about the cash, that thin competitive edge is increasingly disappearing. Soon we may find our way to Africa (I also have trained and prepared some workforce in Africa, look for my other posts here), S. America and the Eastern Europe until all the jars (read continents) have leaked equally and the four legged elephant (read global economy) is standing stable on its four feet. S

LiveSync Peer-To-Peer storage technology enables Enterprise Grade features such as High Availability Backup VM Server with Automatic Failover and Live Migration. The EnSpeed LiveSync technology is also compatible with other standard Linux distributions such as RedHat 5.1 and CentOS 5.1. LiveSync is also included in EnSpeed VMM with LiveSync, stand-alone VM Server software that installs on bare metal. In addition, Thinsy Corporation also announced the availability of a new version of EnSpeed VM Orchestrator, their VM Management Server that provides an intuitive web browser GUI for managing LiveSync VM Servers. This new version of EnSpeed VM Orchestrator has been enhanced with support for Cloned VMs and full SSL secured connections. For additional information on EnSpeed VMM with LiveSync, please visit http://www.thinsy.com/ . Free downloads of the fully functional LiveSync rpm for Oracle VM Server 2.1.1 and RedHat 5.1, EnSpeed VMM with LiveSync, and EnSpeed VM Orchestrator are availabl

Smaller and agile integrators are realizing that revamping their strategy and going for strategic solutions framework will help them ride the recession wave and may be the only way to go for a sustainable growth in this increasingly competitive market. If companies don't shed their older skin and adopt newer models, they face several challenges and are likely to suffer from the " S-Belly Innovation Cramp " (I will detail that out in a seperate strategy article) : Losing qualified professionals to competitors Losing value Losing themselves (eventually) Ambitious integrator Nebulas has split into three divisions to shake off its specialist security image and has renamed itself the Nebulas Solutions Group. Although its core offering is security, the firm also covers other areas such as application acceleration and WAN optimisation, but these were being overlooked by customers, said managing director Nick Garlick. “We finished the year at the end of March with 50 per cen

Well I've always said that you were cool, guys. You don't need a Gartner to say that :-) This news further validates the strong interest that StackSafe Test Center has generated in the market in 2008. In the past two and a half months, we have accomplished numerous significant achievements: A successful launch at DEMO '08 Ranked #7 of the 72 DEMO companies by TheDeal.com Ranked #3 of 20 DEMO "Products That Matter to VARs" by ChannelWeb Listed as one of DEMO "Ten Favorite Products" by PC Magazine Positive analyst coverage of StackSafe Test Center Gartner First Take Enterprise Management Associates (EMA) Product Brief Ptak, Noel and Associates Commentary Winning the ITIL Innovation of the Year Award at the February ITIL Pink Elephant Conference

VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit VMware Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) is an open API / SDK to develop applications that create or access VMware virtual disk storage. VDDK supports virtual disk files (VMDKs) for both VI (Virtual Infrastructure Products) as well as Hosted products (Workstation, Server, Player). And lets take a look at what we have at hand: The Virtual Disk Development Kit is a collection of C libraries, code samples, utilities, and documentation to help you create or access VMware virtual disk storage. The kit includes: The Virtual Disk library, a set of C function calls to manipulate virtual disk (VMDK) files. C++ code samples that you can build with either Visual Studio or the GNU C compiler. Virtual Disk Manager utility to manipulate offline VMDK files on Windows or Linux (clone, create, relocate, rename, grow, shrink, or defragment). DiskMount utility to access files and file systems in virtual disks on Windows or Linux. Documentation about the Virtual Dis

Citrix Systems gave eWEEK a preview of its beta-level Citrix XenDesktop April 16, and if lack of latency in mouse movement relative to application performance is a key indicator of success, then this new product has made big-time progress toward solving that nagging problem. Latency between mouse movement and action on the screen—which often can be several seconds in length—has long been the biggest user issue with thin clients and other server-based workstations. However, Citrix and other established vendors, such as Hewlett-Packard, Wyse, and Sun Microsystems, along with relative newcomers VMware and nComputing, continue to improve their systems to make them act more like common PCs. Citrix, which acquired open-source virtualization vendor XenSource last year, uses a patented, high-speed protocol called ICA (Independent Computing Architecture) and has bundled the company's open-source hypervisor into the new XenDesktop. It will begin shipping worldwide May 20 at the Citrix Synerg

Industry leaders who have founded largest companies in the world and are still leading them successfully, even in these turbulent times, such as Larry Ellison , William Gates , Steve Jobs already knew how to do business . I had been wondering lately if B-schools like Wharton are really worth anything at all. In this age when we are looking at the East and South (Africa and S. America), we are not into any of those ivy cuddly alumni circles anymore. We are doing businesses with people who have learned the business the hard way. The real world way, the path the likes of Ellison, Jobs and the Gates took. So I will be writing these multi-part series where we'll do school to school analysis. I'll try to call up the PR per school and ask them simple questions as if I were applying for a admission and would like to have things like these answered: Why would I throw away 2 years and spend 100,000 to 200,000 dollars into a school? So expect this multi-part series to be a amalgam of r

The new UNIX enterprise server, Power 595, designed to extend IBM's leadership in the UNIX market, will be attractive to the existing IBM clients as well as Sun Solaris and HP UNIX users. "The high-value UNIX and supercomputer solutions opens up a whole new world of possibilities for our Power Systems clients," said Rajesh Saha, Country Manger -- Enterprise Systems, Systems & Technology Group -- IBM India/SA. "The world's most powerful enterprise UNIX server with virtualisation for workload balancing across UNIX, Linux and I applications and the water-cooled supercomputer represent major breakthroughs in innovation and energy efficiency for IBM clients and make the new enterprise data center a reality." IBM's new POWER6 "Hydro-Cluster" supercomputer, Power 575, is built to help users tackle some of the world's most challenging problems in fields such as energy, aerospace and weather modeling. More here... and if you want to buy Power 5

Datastor sales and marketing manager Dave Rosenberg says it will feature exciting sessions on the virtual desktop. “We’re putting together a heterogeneous environment involving a number of vendors around virtualisation, disaster recovery and data protection right down to the desktop level.” The event has grown in popularity and attracted approximately 350 attendees last year, says Rosenberg. “It will be a full day and it’s targeted at both resellers and end customers, so we encourage resellers to bring their customers along.” Link

SAN DIEGO – April 15, 2008 – Nirvanix, the premier “Cloud Storage” platform provider, today announced that it has received funding from European Founders Fund, a top tier German venture capital firm with an enviable record of success in launching Internet ventures and a strong network of business relationships throughout the continent. Nirvanix plans to use the investment money to fund its European expansion, leveraging its innovative Storage Delivery Network (SDN) platform. The market expertise and customer contacts of the European Founders partners are expected to accelerate Nirvanix’s visibility and business development in the European market. In January, Nirvanix announced the opening of an additional storage node in Europe, increasing its network footprint and enabling the intelligent storage and movement of files, guaranteeing the best performance and end user experience on a global scale. These new storage nodes have accelerated the Nirvanix performance advantage to the point w

MENLO PARK, Calif. – April 14, 2008 – Pano Logic™ today announced a major new software release for its innovative desktop virtualization solution. By leveraging existing virtual infrastructure and integrating hardware at the desktop with software in the data center, Pano Logic provides the most complete and easiest-to-use virtual desktop solution on the market. The new release, Pano Virtual Desktop Solution (VDS) 2.0, can be deployed in new environments and network topologies, providing support for wide area network (WAN) deployments, dual monitor requirements, and offering certified support for wireless bridges and USB devices. Also, as a further extension of the partnership between Pano Logic and VMware, Pano VDS 2.0 fully integrates support for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM), giving users even greater deployment flexibility. “Desktop virtualization solutions that leverage existing server virtualization infrastructure represent an opportunity for IT organizations to extend the

VMShield. Another vendor in the VM security space is Catbird, which launched VMShield in February to secure VMs from human management errors and threats from the network. "Some hacker in Uzbekistan is not the big problem in the virtual world; the problem is management change," said Tamar Newberger, Catbird's VP of marketing. "With VMware, one person has all access to the virtual environment, instead of the four people it takes to configure a physical server. Human error is the biggest risk." Catbird software can halt communications that do not comply with security policies, preventing security threats due to human error. The product includes change control and secondary control validation; automatic quarantine of unauthorized VMs; server sprawl management; and network data protection against vulnerabilities, known attack signatures and VM-to-VM attacks. VMware and XenServer are monitored, and when customers request Hyper-V security, CatBird will provide it, Newb

F5 Networks, Inc. (NASDAQ: FFIV ), the global leader in Application Delivery Networking, today announced that it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program as a Select Partner. Through this alliance, F5 gains the use of VMware testing software, marketing tools, and technical support for technology integration between the two companies. Through strategic alliances like this one, as well as its acquisition of Acopia Networks , F5 continues to add benefits for customers leveraging virtualization technologies. As IT organizations focus more and more on virtualized infrastructures, F5 encourages customers deploying Application Delivery Networks to leverage virtualization in providing secure, optimized, and highly available applications. "Virtualization platforms have matured to the point that they are now taking on enterprise class applications and workloads," said Chris Wolf, Senior Analyst at Burton Group. "Virtualizing critical applicati

This is live blogging from Mumbai ( Oh, BTW for my geographically challenged friends, it is in India :-)): This week I am coordinating a training for our staff (12 VMware trainees) with HP India for VMware 3.5 Install and Configure. As you may have known the instal and configure training has the coolest new features called: VUM (VMware Update Manager) Storage VMotion and lots more!!! Why you need to follow VMware training? - You get to take the hottest industry level standard certification program caled VCP (VMware Certified Professional) - When you have a VCP, you can also apply for the VCDE, which will soon be available. So go to the nearest educational institution and get your VMware training now! P.S: And you can be anywhere in the world, you'd be surprised how fast and quick VMware can get you in the training program. Check out VMware's educational site here .

Its time to make the customers the heros! They go through a lot after listening to nusts like us all the time, so they deserve to also share some limelight when they go virtual. PPH choose IBM's SAN virtualized storage. Why did PPH go through this migration and embrace virtualized storage? PPH knew it needed to go much further into digital hospital management. Paper-based file and record and booking systems just couldn't cope. It was going to add another hospital and move to fully digitised medical records for its patients. A $496 million bond issue had provided the finance for this. It also wanted to introduce a new and customized computerized physician order entry (CPOE) program, a digital physician bedside care system, in 2009. To do that it needed a better IT infrastructure than the inflexible one it currently had. It needed a storage system which would allow it to migrate files from one storage array to another without shutting down major parts of its IT infrastructure. Ce

The results were attained following structured interviews with Fortune 1000 storage professionals across a variety of vertical industries. Throughout the last 10 iterations of TheInfoPro ’ s Storage Study, spanning five years, Hitachi Data Systems has consistently led in customers ’ ratings for both in-use block-level virtualization and near-term deployments. “ The steady stream of positive customer feedback speaks to the strength of our storage solutions and our unique ability to deliver these in a services-oriented approach, ” said Hu Yoshida, CTO, Hitachi Data Systems. “ Hitachi is the only company to deliver storage virtualization in a scalable, enterprise-class, storage control unit, which in turn, provides the capability to aggregate the storage services of the control unit to enhance lower level storage resources. Combining storage services like thin provisioning i

Pingdom did some work on the GoogleMaps and we have some info on Google's Global DataCenter buildout schema. They (among IBM and Microsoft) are in talks with several data centers across Africa (as opposed to what Cade @ El Reg mentioned). I know it because I know those Data Center owners :-) See more here

I got this email and later the DVD of this 2 CD ESX Server training video, from David's team. I was prompted to chat up with David and ask about who he was and all the energy he puts in writing the video tutorials. David is a soft-spoken and a highly talented individual. It was fun chatting up with you, David! Who is David? David Davis (CCIE #9369, VCP, CWNA, MCSE, CISSP, Linux+, CEH) has been in the IT industry for 15 years. Currently, he manages a group of systems/network administrators for a privately owned retail company and authors IT-related material in his spare time. He has written hundreds of articles, six video training courses – including the Train Signal VMware ESX Server video training series. His websites are: VMware Videos.com and Happy Router.com Answers to questions- Tell us a bit about yourself, David? I have been in the IT industry about 15 years and have served as a network admin, server admin, and Infrastructure Manager. In my spare ti