Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

When the decision was made to go with VMware at ManageNet Hyper-V was not ready for production environments. The company had also considered Virtual Iron, but was not confident in the level of local support compared with VMware. Dell wins in the end Despite their differences in virtualisation software selection, both companies at least have one thing in common - Dell. UXC purchased Dell rack-mounted servers and blades for its new infrastructure build out and ManageNet commissioned iSCSI storage systems from the Dell-owned EqualLogic. Rick Becker, Dell's vice president for software and Solutions, said internally the company migrated 326 PowerEdge 2650 servers to 21 blade servers saving an estimated US$800,000 in operating expenses. "We believe by adopting technology and negating the need for server space we will never need to build another data centre," Becker said. Source

While analysts are all fretting over the VMware vs Microsoft , which in my opinion is oh-so-boring by now, IBM stealthily penetrates the SMB market globally with its pre-cloud offerings. The Missing Link installed 42 IBM HC10 blade workstations, coupled with the IBM BladeCenter E Chassis and Cool Blue technology. Students can now access applications running from any one of the blade workstations across the campus, saving time and resources. The school runs the blades in a 1:1 set-up, with one blade for each user. Normally, one blade caters for multiple users. Patrick Skagerfalt, IGS facilities manager said the school needed the hardware power to run Photoshop, PremierPro (movie editing), SolidEdge and VectorWorks (3D design) software applications. Source

IT services provider HCL Technologies Ltd (HCL) has set up a new global development centre named Sydney which will help to accommodate over 500 members across the region. The Sydney centre is part of HCL’s global delivery strategy to offer customers support from various locations across the globe. The centre currently employs 50 people in support, maintenance and some custom product development roles. At present HCL has its delivery centres in India, China, Poland, Singapore and Ireland and has recently announced its plans to open the US delivery centre in North Carolina, a company release said. Source

And take a training before you do the standardization. Workshop program: DAY 1: Cloud Language : The Taxonomy of On-Demand Computing Clouds. Grids. PaaS. There are dozens of names to describe on-demand computing, and lots of confusion. This block brings some order to the chaos, offering a comparison of different on-demand computing models including hardware-as-a-service, custom platforms, and large-scale compute infrastructures.. Cloud SLAs How reliable is the cloud? Enterprises demand predictable service levels, reliable delivery, and committed availability. This block will look at what level of service we should demand - and can expect - from cloud computing infrastructure, as well as tools and best practices for measuring it. Running Clouds: What the Big Guys Know A very small number of companies generate the vast majority of today's web pages, from Facebook applications to hosted sites. With compelling economics, they may be running most of the world's computing in a sh...

”We are very excited about working with Virtual Iron to enable the Australian channel to greatly expand their market opportunity in the server virtualization market,” said Gavin Lawless, general manager, Avnet Technology Solutions, Australia. “Working with Virtual Iron gives us a foundation vendor for our server virtualization and storage practice. While we have just signed with Virtual Iron for virtualization, we have also announced a new relationship with Data Domain for storage. In essence, we are building a solution practice that will enable business partners to leverage the rapid growth in these markets.” A recent IDC Australia report titled Consolidation, Virtualisation, and Storage Strategies in Australia Small and Medium-Sized Business: The Quiet Revolution notes that "Cost considerations continue to be the strongest driver to the adoption of consolidation and virtualisation in Australian SMBs. This is due to operation costs decreasing as the ratio of personnel to number ...

After nearly a year of negotiations with the Council of Australian University Directors of IT (Caudit), VMware has agreed to license its virtualisation products and support for a three-year term. Caudit, which represents over 45 universities and higher education institutions in Australia and New Zealand, used its collective buying power to obtain an "all-you-can-eat" licensing model. "Instead of licensing fees for each piece of hardware running VMware software, we've agreed on a metric to calculate the price (for the VMware product)," Geoffrey Dengate, chair of Caudit's standing committee on procurement, said. And apparently HP is supplying the hardware ;-) Link

Milton, Australia – January 22, 2008 – Moonwalk Inc., the Australian developer of all-inclusive data management and protection software, today announced that it has been awarded General Services Administration (GSA) certification, allowing the company to offer its enterprise data management system for direct sale to U.S. government agencies. GSA is the premier procurement source for federal government employees and agencies. GSA works closely with federal agencies and industry partners to establish long-term, government-wide contracts that allow customers in the public sector to acquire a vast array of products and services directly from commercial suppliers. GSA certification is a process instituted by the government that requires potential government vendors to be recognized as credible and established. “By earning GSA certification, we are now positioned to offer government agencies the ability to purchase and implement Moonwalk software into their network computing environments wi...

Do you have a Sustainability Strategy ready? Australian share prices have plummeted since the start of 2008, driven by the exposure of local banks and financial institutions to the US credit crisis. It is becoming increasingly clear that the Australian economy as a whole is far from immune to the impact of a US recession, despite a prolonged local boom based on mining exports. By January 19, more than $147 billion had been lost from the value of shares since the beginning of the year, with the S&P/ASX index down some 9 percent. It was the 10th consecutive fall, the longest run since September 1990. The index had fallen 15.8 percent from its peak of 6828.7 points on November 1, also marking the weakest start to a calendar year for 17 years. Since the US sub-prime collapse began in the middle of last year, the market has now fallen twice by more than 10 percent. The latest price slide, which has been accompanied by large losses across East Asian markets, has exceeded the falls on Wal...

“At this time, Australia is the leading market for server virtualization in the Asia Pacific region, and we believe it is going to be a big one for us,” said Peter Thompson, vice president-Asia Pacific, DataCore Software. “Our experience, repeated in Europe and in the U.S., is that once a market becomes conversant in the benefits of server virtualization, both solution providers and end users quickly realize that the rest of the sentence is about storage virtualization.” The September activity follows on an equally busy 2007 calendar year to date during which DataCore inked its first distribution agreements in the region with value-added distributors Infotronics in Australia and Datastor in New Zealand, expanded its Australia solution partner network, launched a regularly scheduled, live, local webinar program that is free and available to the public, certified its first DataCore Authorized Training Partner in Australia and achieved major customer successes with Kingston City Council (...

Just pinged Matt, our openQRM mate ;-). He's is Australia and will be doing a presentation on openQRM. There are, however, a lot of other Virtualization sessions as well! Virtualize Unix Kernel ParaVirtualization The whole Virtualization program This is the place to be for any Linux geek!