Next Order Machine

What Defines Retinal Display?

2011-11-17T11:35:00.001-08:00

21 Oct 2011 04:17 am

There's nothing *inherently* wrong with a PenTile-type display.

The same sort of patterning (and relative resolution of green to red and blue) is used in most camera sensors, and most video compression use an analogous reduction in color resolution.

That said: yes, of course, the effective physical resolution/sharpness will be less than a similar system with full RGB subpixels. Really, though, the problem isn't with the idea itself, it's that most images aren't produced with this form of display in mind, and for text a completely different set of subpixel anti-aliasing techniques should be used. Evidently Samsung's usage isn't quite up to par to compensate.

Regardless, Samsung is never going to call it a "Retina display", because that's a marketing term invented by Apple and although it doesn't seem to be trademarked, the rest of the industry is treating it as if it is.

Also: the qualifying factor for being a "Retina Display", as Steve Jobs defined it, is NOT possessing a pixel density over 300 ppi -- that number only applies for screens where the expected viewing distance is 10 to 12 inches. The real, underlying criteria is that the display have pixels whose apparent, angular size is less than 1 arc minute, when viewed from the minimum expected distance. (This translates into the screen being able to express an angular resolution of 30 cycles per degree, which is the typical number used to describe 20/20 vision. See more athttp://www.kybervision.com/Blog/files/AppleRetinaDisplay.html)

This might not be considered all that relevant for the Galaxy Nexus, since it's another phone and that same 10-12 inch viewing distance may also apply despite it's larger size.

But: don't be surprised when Apple announces a "Retina Display" iPad next year with a 264 ppi display -- which is plenty to meet the above criterion when viewed from 13 inches or further away. (And I daresay most everyone would find it uncomfortable to use an iPad at a distance of only 13 inches.)Westacular

HP's TopShot Printer Is All That and a 3D Scanner [Printers]

2011-11-03T10:07:00.000-07:00

HP's TopShot Printer Is All That and a 3D Scanner [Printers]:

A great way to spruce up your Etsy product page is with 3D models of the items. But, problem is the process of generating these models can be prohibitively time- and money- intensive. HP's new TopShot printer aims to change that. More »

Spreadsheet: kw/rack, watts/ft², amps

2010-04-13T09:39:00.000-07:00

GDocs spreadsheet showing for 3-35 kw/rack: watts/ft², amps for 120/208vAC & -48vDC
datacenter

Consistency in cloud / distributed systems

2010-04-04T13:27:00.000-07:00

Consistency in distributed systems <-search on "transaction"
Relevance to cloud.

"Hobbyist" computer water cooling

2010-04-03T08:14:00.000-07:00

"Hobbyist" computer water cooling #datacenter

Is optimal DNS TTL 1/2 expected Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)?

2010-03-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

Is optimal DNS TTL 1/2 expected Mean Time To Repair (MTTR)? [Wikipedia outage]

2010-03-25T16:03:00.001-07:00

Evan Osnos: Life Without Google - The New Yorker "like an addled Goliath" http://bit.ly/almCHK China googlecn

2010-03-25T15:43:00.001-07:00

Visualization: age, debt, credit score by email provider http://bit.ly/bUeCn0 SuspectButInteresting

2010-03-25T09:35:00.001-07:00

Google will provide censored search results to China contractual partners, but won't renew http://bit.ly/cy1B2A

Enumeration of the tech suite used in a major project: Garmin Connect

2010-03-24T15:56:00.000-07:00

Interesting enumeration of the tech suite used in a major project: Garmin Connect

Datacenter: Rack Kw; Watts/ft²; 110v, 208v, -48v Amps

2010-03-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Google Docs spreadsheet showing Rack Kw; Watts/ft²; 110v Amps, 208v Amps, -48v Amps for various rack power densities.

Datacenter - Fanless Servers, Liquid Cooling

2010-03-15T21:30:00.000-07:00

Datacenter - Fanless Servers, Liquid Cooling #HPC #HVAC

HUNTAIR Fan Wall Data Center HVAC

2010-03-15T20:51:00.000-07:00

HPC (150kw !) and conventional

FloVENT CFD Software for Data Center HVAC Modeling

2010-03-15T20:10:00.000-07:00

FloVENT CFD Software for Data Center HVAC Modeling

Pushing the Envelope of Data Center Energy Efficiency in HPC Data Center Design

2010-03-15T18:31:00.000-07:00

Pushing the Envelope of Data Center Energy Efficiency #HPC #datacenter

Energy Efficient Computing: HPC & Data Centers

2010-03-15T18:22:00.000-07:00

LBNL presentation (80 slides)

Rack and Roll Data Center Deployment with TOR Design

2010-03-11T10:49:00.000-08:00

Considering rack and roll deployment design; 50µm MMF OM3; IEEE 802.3ae 10Gb/sec top of rack (TOR)

Apps for Army Launches

2010-03-05T09:58:00.000-08:00

Apps for Army Launches - harvest latent intellectual capacity toward emergent rather than planned outcomes

Code review reviewed

2010-03-05T09:52:00.000-08:00

Code review reviewed - news from GitHub

Real time event management & traffic shaping in cloud computing

2010-02-19T09:37:00.000-08:00

Real time event management & traffic shaping in cloud computing

Marketing US Federal Hydro Electric Power

2010-02-18T12:30:00.000-08:00

Marketing US Federal Hydro Electric Power

datacenter design factor
which municipal power companies are customers of, for example, Bonneville Power Administration

What is Overlay Transport Virtualization?

2010-02-15T21:01:00.000-08:00

Conclusions

Right now, OTV looks like an attempt to rapidly deploy VPLS functionality without relying on MPLS transport. This is probably driven by the growth need for deploying large data-centers and interconnecting them across convenient packet-switched networks at customer edge. OTV reduces flooding in network cores but makes convergence process slower in the presence of topology changes. Multicast traffic is forwarded in optimal manner using core network’s multicast services. If OTV is a first step toward TRILL, then it looks like a very promising technology. Otherwise it is just a VPLS replica with some optimizations. Still, I hope that one day OTV and VPLS branches will be merged and TRILL would become implemented in one common VPLS framework!

(and further reading)

Rent or Own: Amazon EC2 vs. Colocation Comparison for Hadoop Clusters

2010-02-14T19:16:00.000-08:00

Rent or Own: Amazon EC2 vs. Colocation Comparison for Hadoop Clusters

Facebook Data Center, 1.15 PUE

2010-02-14T18:03:00.001-08:00

Energy Use
The Prineville Data Center will be one of the most energy efficient facilities of its kind in the world.
Energy use in the data centers is measured in terms of power usage effectiveness (“PUE”), which is determined by dividing the amount of power entering a data center by the power used to run the computers in it. A typical data center has an average PUE of 1.8. This means that for every 1.8 watts that go through the utility meter, one watt is delivered to the computer infrastructure.
Facebook’s Prineville Data Center will use a number of technologies to achieve a power usage effectiveness ratio of 1.15.
The new, energy-efficiency technologies Facebook will utilize here include:
• Evaporative cooling system – This system uses evaporation of water to achieve cooling as opposed to the more traditional chiller systems that requires more energy intensive equipment. It is anticipated this facility will use this process approximately 60% to 70% of the year. For other times, outside air economizer mode will be used.
• Airside economizer – The facility will be cooled by simply bringing in colder air from the outside. During low humidity times of the year, the evaporative cooling system will be used to meet server humidity range requirements.
• Re-use of server heat – A portion of the excess heat created by the computer servers will be captured and re-used to heat office space in the facility during the colder months.
• Proprietary Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) Technology – All data centers must have an uninterruptible power supply to bridge the gap between a power outage and the ability of backup generators to kick-in. The Prineville Data Center will use a new, patent-pending system for UPS that reduces electricity usage by up to 12 percent.
Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Certification
The Prineville Data Center is being designed to achieve the USBGC LEED Gold level certification. In addition to the industry-leading energy efficiency designed into the facility, the data center will also feature:
• Use of rainwater to maintain landscaping and for gray water use in the facility.
• Use of low Volatile Organic Compound (VOC) finish materials.
• Use of Energy Star Compliant appliances.
• Use of low water consumption technologies such as automated faucets and low flush toilets.

Cisco OTV Discussion

2010-02-12T16:29:00.000-08:00

Some useful discussion of Cisco OTV:

seamlessly move groups of virtual machines between data centers.

Facebook sees need for Terabit Ethernet

2010-02-03T10:38:00.000-08:00

Facebook Engineer Donn Lee told Ethernet Alliance's Technology Exploration Forum, held 2/2/2010.

Facebook has so many servers, and those servers can process data so fast, that they could fill 64 Terabit Ethernet pipes in the backbone of one data center.

Ultimately, network bottlenecks slow innovation at Facebook, Lee said. Faster network connections would mean faster development, as new internal or customer-facing applications were quickly run through their paces and refined. Ideally, each server could send a full 1G bps to any other server in the data center, but that would require the 64 Terabit Ethernet pipes Facebook can't buy today -- or 6,400 of today's 10-Gigabit Ethernet connections, which isn't really feasible, he said. A fabric of that size would require 160 of the largest switches available, Lee said.

Is Amazon EC2 Oversubscribed and Suffering from Internal Network Latency?

2010-02-01T15:00:00.000-08:00

In virtualized environments and specifically in the case of “Noisy Neighbors”, where you happen to be on a node where a neighboring instance is computationally heavy, this doesn't seem to be a good practise since there is a "tendency for EC2 to assign fresh instances to the same small set of machines" [PDF].

HITECH act extends HIPAA

2010-02-01T10:29:00.001-08:00

HITECH act extends HIPAA http://bit.ly/9oAnqu

How Many Virtual Machines Fit on [a] Server?

2010-02-01T10:05:00.000-08:00

How Many Virtual Machines Fit on [a] Server? http://bit.ly/aftkDl #datacenter

for every core on a new Intel or AMD processor you can add three to five virtual machines, he says.

That's a more optimistic outlook than that of Scanlon, who says he puts five or six VMs on a single server. If the applications are resource-intensive databases or ERP apps, he only runs two. ...

for every core on a new processor, add between two and 4GB of memory. That coincides with Scanlon's assessment, and the 48GB of RAM he runs on each high-end blade server. ...

have enough links to back-end storage and to the network to accommodate them, ...

build a fence. VMs are easy to launch and hard to see, so server sprawl - having too many VMs running without actually being used - is appallingly common. ...

Use what tools are available to give you a detailed look at your setup, Wolf says.

VMware offers VMware's vCenter CapacityIQ 1.0, and Microsoft offers its Assessment and Planning Toolkit for Hyper-V to guide customers. Neither is particularly good at figuring environments that include VMware and Hyper-V, however.

Many third party tools do cover both versions - HP alone has a sizing tool designed specifically for VMware and another for Hyper-V. Those less affiliated with VMware or Microsoft can provide a more independent evaluation, as well, Mann says.

Among them are are Novell's PowerRecon, CiRBA, Inc's Data Center Intelligence and Akorri'sBalancePoint, VKernel's Capacity Modeler, To learn more about how one customer used CiRBA's tools, see CIO.com case study " How Underwriters Laboratories Plans Virtualization Moves Wisely".

Google Wave Experimenting: First Thoughts

2009-10-06T09:01:00.000-07:00

Somehow got an invite in the first public release, so I'll keep a diary here.

Noted so far:

contact management not intuitive. People are showing up, but unclear how. One doesn't have a googlewave.com address and says he didn't get an invite.
folder creation apparently not working
can't remove people from a wave (scenario: created a wave that's not ready for prime time and inadvertently added someone. Can't remove them)

IBM System z10 Equivalences to x86 Servers

2009-05-28T16:46:00.000-07:00

Some notes on the claims.

IBM: Why the Mainframe Will Never Die, Part I
By: Darryl K. Taft
2009-05-07
In an interview with eWEEK, Anne Altman, general manager of the IBM System z Platform in IBM's Systems and Technology Group, explains why the IBM System z mainframe platform remains relevant today and has relevance well into the next decade as it supports new workloads, complements “greening” strategies, bolsters cloud computing models and supports a variety of development and programming technologies. In short, the mainframe continues to adapt to evolving IT environments.
...
Q: Why is a System z mainframe better than, say, a farm of x86 boxes?

A: An IBM System z10 Enterprise Class mainframe has the equivalent capacity of nearly 1,500 x86 servers, with an 85 percent smaller footprint and up to 85 percent lower energy costs. An IBM System z10 Business Class server has the capacity of up to 232 x86 servers with an 83 percent smaller footprint and up to 93 percent lower energy costs.

By: Blue Lagoon
at: 05-09-09 @ 9:59 pm EST
In 1991, pundit Stewart Alsop predicted the end of the mainframe by 1995. Obviously he was wrong. He did not know the market or the technology, and the mainframe has merits he did didn't understand.

That said, eWeek should not take at face level self-serving IBM claims that a z10 has "equivalent capacity of nearly 1,500 x86 servers", without seeing that's it's already been shown to be without basis. Use Google!

When IBM announced the z10 their PR included this claim which included benchmark guesstimates that were never actually run. IBM does not publish benchmarks on z10. In the announcement small print they said that only 125 of the 1,500 servers were actually running the application, with the other 1,375 for DR or test. Some way to replace 1,500 machines!

IBM later removed the "justification" from the benchmark (Use Google for cached copies of the original result), but have done a great job repeating the claim. Be a little more suspicious about vendor claims, please, and don't just repeat them.

Analysis
We do know how some of the numbers compare to alternatives. For $26 million, for example, you could buy 21,131 low end Sun x86 servers - each with 2GB of memory and a dual core opteron - or, if you prefer mid range x86, the same money would buy 4,985 Sun M2 X4200 servers, each with two dual core opterons at 2.8Ghz, 8GB of RAM, 292GB of Disk, and Solaris.
If, however, you just bought 1,500 of these; you’d get to keep $18 million or so in change - enough, at $85K per FTE all in, to pay 21 additional IT staff for ten years.
You’d also get rather more processing resources:

	IBM z10	1500 X4200s
CPU Cycles	282Ghz	16,800Ghz
Memory	1,520GB	12,000GB
Disk Storage	None	438TB

Biometric Identification for Data Centers: Hand Vascular Pattern Recognition

2009-04-23T14:22:00.000-07:00

Saw this in use at a large data center.

Data Center Suite/Cage Key Locks

2009-04-23T14:17:00.000-07:00

ASSA locks were chosen to secure cages within a data center to comply with HIPAA and FISMA requirements.

Data Center Equipment Seismic Isolation

2009-04-23T13:56:00.000-07:00

I visited a fairly large data center recently that has been using ISO-Base seismic isolation platforms, which they apparently liked.

Part of the sales blurb refers to the UBC-Bellcore Engineering Test (R7.5).

Data Center Site Selection: Avoid Electric Load Pockets

2009-04-21T15:51:00.000-07:00

This is part of a continuing investigation of the criteria one might use in data center site selection.

A load pocket is an area where there is insufficient transmission capability to reliably supply 100% of the electric load without relying on generation capacity that is physically located within that area. It is the result of high concentrations of intensive power use inevitable in a big city and limitations, known as constraints, on the transmission system that limit the ability of load to be served by generating resources located remotely.

General guidance is not to connect to buses in load pocket. For California this information is available as a spreadsheet (data as of 2008).

Laptop tether, USB, Netbook issues

2009-01-02T07:27:00.000-08:00

Extracted from Flyertalk duiscussion:

With a PDA phone, you can use the data on the go including tools like Google Maps. Conversely, people are correct that with a USB stick you can split the two up as needed. ATT is the only US carrier that has GSM prepaid data in a laptop compatible plan. It will set you back $60 a month.

Vodafone in Germany has a great prepaid roaming SIM on the Vodafone network. Three has a plan called three like home which allows data roaming anywhere on the Three network at the same rate as your home network. I think that includes Oz, but don't hold me to it.

A solid PDA phone will perform as well as a USB stick. A 7.2 triband HSPA phone is probably still a high end order. You can get an unlocked ATT 881u HSPA card off ebay for a $100. Hint, be sure to download the Sierra Netwatcher software from Sierra's website if you plan on using the card with anyone other than ATT.

Even you are going with a netbook, be sure to identify the machine before buying the card. Most netbooks don't support Express Cards. ATT's new Mercury USB stick has potential compatibility problems with some Acer notebooks (read the ATT forum on this ).

If you are on a 3g network, not EDGE, you can carry a phone call while remaining tethered. You should also note that there are some programs out there that will turn some PDAs into virtual hotspots by basically rebroadcasting the cellular data out of their wifi adapter. For windowsmobile look at wmwifirouter.com. For Symbian look at jokuispot. Cradlepoint also has a nifty device which will turn a Sierra stick, a Windows Mobile Device, or a Blackberry into a portable router.

--Dubai Stu

Ten Free Log Management Tools

2008-10-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

Baseline lists 10 free log management tools as a slide show. Here's the plain list:

Twitter: Lists of People to Consider Following

2008-09-28T06:31:00.000-07:00

Lists of people that may be worth following on Twitter:

50+ Designers
and, then there's the Top 8 FRIENDLY designers
TwitterPacks wiki
Lifehacker picks
31 [Wordpress related] People To Follow On Twitter
Green Twitter Feeds
Webmaster resources
Twelve People Actually Worth Following
Twitter-Stalking Power List
200+ Internet Marketing Gurus on Twitter

Meta following:

Finding

Lenovo and HP Laptop Real World Travel weights

2008-09-21T16:25:00.000-07:00

Lenovo Thinkpad W500 15.4" screen with 90W AC/DC adapter 7.5 pounds
Lenovo Thinkpad X61s 12.1" mincreen with standard AC adapter 3.6 pounds
HP dv2000 with 14.1" screen with standard AC adapter 6.4 pounds

Vista , U3, Sandisk USB

2007-07-30T17:58:00.000-07:00

It turns out that some Sandisk USB devices, even with the 1.4 Launchpad can't work with Vista. Here's the info from the U3 site:

Launchpad Version
Please be aware that many existing U3 smart drives will not work with Microsoft Vista without an upgrade to the U3 Launchpad. Vista compatible Launchpad versions are 1.4 and higher. These Launchpad updates will be available ONLY from the website of your smart drive manufacturer. U3 does not distribute Launchpad updates. Please use the ‘Check for Updates’ feature on the U3 Launchpad. It can be found on the Launchpad under Status and Settings, U3 Launchpad settings.

Manufacturers' Firmware Restrictions
Due to legacy issues, some versions of firmware cannot be upgraded to support Microsoft Vista. On the U3 Launchpad, the firmware version is called Device Version. On some drives, the Launchpad will not work properly with Vista even if they are upgraded to Launchpad version 1.4.x.x. On these devices, the removable disk partition works normally with Vista.

For SanDisk smart drives: firmware (or device) versions 2.15, 2.16 and 2.21 support Vista while firmware releases 2.17, 2.18, and 2.20 do NOT support Vista.

Please check your manufacturer's web site before upgrading to ensure there are no restrictions on your smart drive that would make upgrading unfeasible.

To check the firmware version on your smart drive:

Open the U3 Launchpad
Choose About U3 Drive or Help and Support / About U3 Smart Drive (depending on your manufacturer)
Note the Device Version. This is the firmware release.
U3 Smart Applications
Only those applications on U3 Software Central that explicitly state they work with Microsoft Vista in the System Requirements should be used on Vista

So, might as well uninstall the U3 and try to use the USB as a dumb device, perhaps with Portable Apps

Study of Site Acquisition by Google

2007-07-16T17:50:00.000-07:00

The High Cost Of Wooing Google: "The High Cost Of Wooing Google
States and cities are dangling ever-bigger inducements to attract companies, and the digital giant knows how to drive a hard bargain"

Deduplication, Thin Provisioning Top Storage Trends

2007-07-14T06:33:00.000-07:00

Deduplication, Thin Provisioning Top Storage Trends: "Thin provisioning is a method of storage resource management and virtualization that lets IT administrators limit the allocation of actual physical storage to what applications immediately need."

Equinix colocation data centers -- like no others

2007-06-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

Equinix colocation data centers -- like no others: "What does a typical Equinix data center look like?
Backaus: It won't look like any data center you've been in. There are no raised floors, there are no low ceilings. There aren't these hideous, bright lights around. It's a very different design to handle the high-powered density needs of customers today. There is tons of security. There are five levels of biometric hand readers from the front door into somebody's cage. There are 30- to 40-foot high ceilings to handle the installations. We use overhead cooling technology, not this under floor perforated tile stuff. It just does not work in today's environment to really cool high-powered density equipment.
...

What do you use for overhead cooling?
Backaus: We used chilled water cooling outside of the collo floor. What you'll see when you go to a center are these big vents. You could literally drive a Volkswagen Beetle through them, that's how big they are. That's the cooling that goes across the data center floor forcing the cool air. We do all hot aisle, cold aisle. We work with customers on thermal dynamics on how to position their equipment. That's why we have high ceilings, so the heat rises quickly, and we can get it up and out of the center.

We can provide customers with computational thermal dynamics. It's actually a weather chart of a customer's cage, so it shows where the cold spots are and where the hot spots are, so that we can adjust for it. It looks like a little weather map inside a customer's cage. So that's the stuff that we get involved with to make sure they're laying their stuff out right.

These are obviously some big, high-powered data centers. How do you get power to them?
Backaus: Our site in New Jersey, for example -- the new one we're building right now -- there is going to be 32 megawatts of power in that center. It will be second only to Newark Airport in the state of New Jersey.

When we're going out and looking for a new site, the first conversation we're having is with the utility. In Chicago, for example, we worked very closely with the power companies. We paid the utility $8 million to build a new substation for us. You've got to have multiple substations coming in on multiple sides of the building. The amount of redundancy you want on the utility side is significant."

Liquid cooling buyer's guide

2007-06-11T07:44:00.000-07:00

Liquid cooling buyer's guide

Microsoft Data Centers

2007-05-31T19:32:00.000-07:00

Microsoft Data Centers - getting bigger and better | Tina Wood | Channel 10:

University avoids raised floor in new data center

2007-05-31T18:03:00.000-07:00

University avoids raised floor in new data center: "'When you look at these BladeCenters, the kilowatt per rack goes way up,' he said. 'We designed this for 100kW per square foot. When we told our facilities people that, they thought we were crazy.'

As of now, Bryant has a 450-square-foot data center sitting on the bottom floor of the university's international business center offices. The data center has mostly empty American Power Conversion Corp. (APC) racks alongside APC's In-Row cooling devices"

Google Gears Technology

2007-05-31T11:57:00.000-07:00

» ‘Google Gears’ vies to be de facto tech for offline Web apps | Berlind’s Testbed | ZDNet.com: "The [Google Gears] technology consists of three primary components. First, a local “server” which is not really a local Web server but rather a means for capturing all of the Javascript and HTML-based logic that drives the functionality of an application. Second, a local database using the open source-based SQLite for persistence of any data associated with the offline functionality. For word processing, one record could theoretically hold the entire contents of a document. For something like Google Reader (an RSS reader app from Google and, in a proof of concept, the first to take on the offline capability using Google Gears), one record might hold an RSS item. To the SQLite project, Google also contributed the necessary Javascript APIs for accessing SQLite from Javascript.

Thirdly, Google took a look at the single-threaded mentality of most Web browsers and realized that any hangup in a Javascript-based application could easily hang the entire browser (something that has happened to me several times!). So, Google solved that problem by making it possible for Javascript threads to run as background tasks."

Google Reader Offline Using Google Gears

2007-05-31T11:04:00.000-07:00

Official Google Reader Blog: Oh Sam I Am, can I read it on the tram?: "you can use Google Reader offline...[using] Google Gears, browser plugin that enables offline web applications"

Potentially removes an obstacle to more widespread adoption of web based SAAS applications for the mobile.

WAN acceleration to connect remote sites

2007-05-30T20:01:00.000-07:00

Nevada prison looks to WAN acceleration for IT upgrade: "WAN acceleration from vendors like Blue Coat, F5, Juniper Networks Inc., Riverbed Technology Inc. and Cisco Systems Inc. is helping remote and branch offices to connect efficiently with distant data centers."

» Solving the network storage dilemma | George Ou | ZDNet.com

2007-05-29T14:33:00.000-07:00

» Solving the network storage dilemma | George Ou | ZDNet.com

Options for networked storage at home.

Telcordia Seismic Zones

2007-05-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

Should the next racks/enclosures we get be seismically stable to comply with the Telcordia (Bellcore) GR-63-CORE Network Equipment-Building System (NEBS) compliance standards for strength and rigidity

DegreeC Offers Hot Spot Cooling Tool - Data Center Knowledge

2007-05-19T14:26:00.000-07:00

DegreeC Offers Hot Spot Cooling Tool - Data Center Knowledge: "Data center cooling specialist Degree Controls, Inc. (DegreeC) has introduced HotSpotr, a new system for cooling data center 'hot spots' in high-density server environments. The system concentrates additional cooling in floor tiles located in front of a rack, and then uses an overhead ventilation system to return the hot air directly back to the CRAC (Computer Room Air Conditioner)."

Patterns-based design and development for architects, Part 1: Using design patterns

2007-05-14T16:31:00.000-07:00

Patterns-based design and development for architects, Part 1: Using design patterns: The three main sections, each starting with a brief discussion of design issues related to a specific part of the system, include:

Interfacing with a legacy system
Flexibility to use any database to maintain local data and transactions
Using design patterns for a better user experience

Why VPN can’t replace Wi-Fi security

2007-05-14T14:31:00.000-07:00

» Why VPN can’t replace Wi-Fi security | George Ou | ZDNet.com: "Why VPN can’t replace Wi-Fi security"

NYSE undertakes IBM mainframe migration to Unix and Linux

2007-05-14T13:15:00.000-07:00

NYSE undertakes IBM mainframe migration to Unix and Linux: "(NYSE) is migrating off a 1,600 millions of instructions per second (MIPS) mainframe to IBM System p servers running AIX and x86 Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) servers running Linux, ...

Clerity uses its UniKix software to ingest the mainframe code and compile it to run on a distributed platform. The recompilation is then tested in the company before it goes live. The AIX platform executes the application of the recompiled code while the Linux boxes handles FTP transfers on the front end. Feldman wouldn't disclose what Linux distribution was running on the HP servers.

Meanwhile, the NYSE is also using Tidal Software's job scheduling applications to replace IBM's Tivoli Operations Planning and Control job scheduler on the mainframe."

Spring Batch - Open Source Enterprise Batch

2007-05-13T06:30:00.000-07:00

Spring Batch Home | Springframework.org: "Spring Batch provides a technical framework and programming model to support long-running processes that perform a given set of tasks repetitively"

IBM Data Center Cooling Technology

2007-05-12T12:17:00.000-07:00

IBM Unveils Data Center Cooling Technology - Data Center Knowledge: "IBM today unveiled a new data center cooling technology, a patented thermal storage solution that can reduce cooling costs by up to 50 percent, according to IBM. The new system works as a 'cold battery' placed between the cold water chillers and the data center's HVAC system. ...
IBM's system allows a data center operators to manage their chillers more cheaply and efficiently, taking advantage of differentials in power pricing. As an example, the chillers could be used to charge the cold battery during evenings or other periods in our prices are lower. The batteries could be activated during peak power pricing, reducing energy usage by these cooling units."

A quick, uninformed patent search doesn't turn this one up but shows a surprising number of data center cooling patents issued to HP and APC.

How to Add Search to Google Reader

2007-05-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

Google Operating System: How to Add Search to Google Reader:

Uses Google Co-op.

Social Networking: Tagged

2007-05-10T13:41:00.000-07:00

Tagged Turns Profitable - May Be Fastest Growing Social Network: "Tagged was a young-teen focused social network that, like Piczo, focused on security of its users first. If is part of a vague second-tier of social networks that assemble under the MySpace/Facebook giants and includes Hi5 (which is fast becoming a first tier player), Bebo, Piczo, Orkut and Friendster."

Creating Dynamic Client-side Maps Mashups with Google Spreadsheets

2007-05-09T13:41:00.000-07:00

Official Google Maps API Blog: Creating Dynamic Client-side Maps Mashups with Google Spreadsheets: "Creating Dynamic Client-side Maps Mashups with Google Spreadsheets"

Vista Boot Time

2007-05-07T07:00:00.000-07:00

» Microsoft’s hidden diagnostic tool unlocks Vista startup secrets | Ed Bott’s Microsoft Report | ZDNet.com: "The total boot time is divided into two parts

* MainPathBootTime measures the time it takes for the system to load all drivers and services that are critical to user interaction and get to the Windows desktop where the user can begin doing things.
* BootPostBootTime includes all the other drivers and processes that aren't critical to user interaction and can be loaded with low-priority I/O that always gives preference to user-initiated actions that execute using Normal I/O priority.

If you look in Event Viewer, you'll see a separate value called BootTime, which measures the sum of these two values. (Subtract 10 seconds from this value to account for the idle time that indicates the boot process is completely done.) In addition, the logs are filled with clues that can help you figure out what went wrong and why a specific startup (or shutdown) took longer than normal.

Because the Event Viewer logs save their data in standard XML, I was able to capture this data from 104 startup events on four separate machines and crunch it down to these bullet points:

* 35% of all starts took 30 seconds or less to return control to the user
* 83% of all starts took 60 seconds or less to return control to the user"

iSCSI and Hard Disk Interfaces

2007-05-06T15:15:00.000-07:00

iSCSI SANs - Storage & Servers - Network Computing: "If you've decided to bring iSCSI to your SAN, what's the best way to proceed? Start with the storage itself. All the usual considerations for a storage array come into play: reliability, speed, capacity, expandability and price.

Next, consider what type of hard disk drive you'll need. There's no such thing as an Ethernet hard disk drive. All drives are a form of SCSI, Fibre Channel or ATA (AT Attachment). Thankfully, some companies, such as IBM, LSI Logic and Adaptec's Eurologic Systems, make enclosures that act as iSCSI targets--this eliminates the need to buy a translative device. If you buy the storage device with its native interface, however, you must attach it to a storage switch from Cisco Systems, McData (Nishan Systems), Crossroads Networks or another translative device vendor, which creates an extra step."

iSCSI SANs - Storage & Servers - Network Computing

2007-05-06T10:28:00.000-07:00

iSCSI SANs - Storage & Servers - Network Computing: "Fibre Channel has dominated the storage area network market for several years now, and its cost and complexity are finally becoming apparent. Meanwhile, IP SANs--particularly the long-awaited iSCSI SAN--have emerged and warrant your consideration.

iSCSI has much to offer. ..."

A 2003 discussion of FC versus iSCSI. Need to look at TCP Offload Engine (TOE) technology.

Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI - more

2007-05-06T09:24:00.000-07:00

Storage @ Work - Marc Farley's Blog: "Four points worth making are:

1. The vast majority of Fibre Channel implementations use service Class 3, which is a best-effort, datagram service without any of the latency guarantees that FC fans are claiming. ...

2. FC fans like to compare FC SANs with Ethernet/TCP/IP WANS when discussing latency. If you want to do this properly, you need to compare FC SANs with iSCSI SANs. ...
3. In either FC or iSCSI SANs, the network latencies are insignificant compared to the latencies introduced by a storage system that is servicing requests from many servers simultaneously...
4. That leaves latency potential for host systems running latency sensitive applications. The argument made by FC fans is that TOE is somehow a fate worse than death. Its not. TOE cards work - and work very well. Its not like TOE is a disease. The point is that high performance iSCSI host systems can benefit from TOE, but there are many more systems that don't need TOE at all.

Is The Fibre Channel Killer Born, yet? - Data Center Networks Blog

2007-05-06T08:24:00.000-07:00

Is The Fibre Channel Killer Born, yet? - Data Center Networks Blog: "Fibre Channel and Ethernet are transports. Serial SCSI protocols such as FCP and iSCSI do their work at the application layer.

Its not the iSCSI application protocol that threatens Fibre Channel, but all the other technologies, talents and tricks that have been invented over the years to make Ethernet/TCP/IP networks manageable, reliable and affordable. A protocol is not the killer, its all the 'relatives' that the protocol has and iSCSI has a big family."

A comment on Fibre Channel and iSCSI from Marc Farley

Is Fibre Channel dead? (iSCSI 10G Ethernet)

2007-05-06T08:16:00.000-07:00

Is Fibre Channel dead? - Network World: "So I asked him: 'You are actually saying that ‘Fibre Channel is going to be dead,’ when users adopt 10G Ethernet and use iSCSI to transport their storage. I haven't seen a lot of uptake of 10G Ethernet in the enterprise - yet. But with TCP offload and Microsoft's Scalable Networking Pack, iSCSI and 10G Ethernet should be a hit. Right now though 10G Ethernet adapters are tracking at about $1,000 each, far too expensive for someone who wants to put in iSCSI because they think it is inexpensive.'

Snyder responded. “No, that's not exactly what I meant. What I mean is that anyone who, today, goes out and buys Fibre Channel is making a serious mistake, and that the path of growth and innovation is going to be down the iSCSI route."

Need to review 10G Ethernet adoption and evolving infrastructure.

Imation USB Clip Flash Drive

2007-05-03T20:36:00.000-07:00

Imation - USB Clip Flash Drive:
--rubberized shell,
--fitting into the tightest USB slots.
--An ultra-durable clip attaches the drive ... anywhere it's needed.

Features:
* Clips securely to your bag, briefcase, backpack, or belt loop
* Detachable water-resistant case
* Rubberized exterior protects drive from damage
* External write protect switch
...
* Available capacities include 256MB, 512MB, 1GB, 2GB, 4GB
* Five-year limited warranty"

BlackBerry Curve 8300 Smartphone

2007-05-03T14:00:00.000-07:00

RIM Introduces the BlackBerry Curve Smartphone: [model 8300]

No:
Wi-Fi
3G
touch screen
GPS
video

Features:
4.2'' x 2.4'' x 0.6''
approximately 3.9 oz.
320x240 display includes RIM's light sensing technology that automatically adjusts backlighting levels for indoor, outdoor and dark environments.
trackball navigation system
2 megapixel camera, with 5x digital zoom, built-in flash, self-portrait mirror and full screen viewfinder
3.5 mm stereo jack
Bluetooth stereo audio profile (A2DP/AVRCP) is supported
dedicated volume controls
microSD expansion slot. It supports up to 2GB cards that are available today and will automatically support 4GB
Speaker Independent Voice Recognition (SIVR) for Voice Activated Dialing (VAD),
Bluetooth® 2.0,
quad-band [GSM],
dedicated 'send', 'end', and 'mute' keys,
smart dialing,
speed dialing,
conference calling,
call forwarding,
noise cancellation,
low-distortion speakerphone for hands-free conversations
support for polyphonic, mp3 and MIDI ring tones.

Install open source code on a home router

2007-05-02T17:38:00.000-07:00

Turn your home or small-office router into an enterprise-level powerhouse: "Turn your home or small-office router into an enterprise-level powerhouse
Four steps to increase your router's capabilities"

Renesys Blog: Rough Day at Cogent Part 1: Cogent Depeers Someone?

2007-05-01T18:46:00.000-07:00

Renesys Blog: Rough Day at Cogent Part 1: Cogent Depeers Someone?: "Cogent is one of the most massively 'overpeered' networks in the world. They sit at the top of the Renesys Market Intelligence Peering Base ranking. That ranking is a simple sum of the Customer Base score of a network's peers. (Readers who are newer to networking may wish to review some of the basics of peering. Cogent has hundreds of peers (250 is a lower bound and probably closer to 400), and they include many very large networks. They also include many very small networks. Cogent, along with Abovenet, is known for having a very open peering policy driven by a combination of history and opportunistic cost savings."

Resilient Packet Ring (RPR) simplifies campus communications

2007-05-01T14:53:00.000-07:00

Lightwave - RPR simplifies campus communications: "Significant resources and effort are spent to maintain the backbone network to provide resiliency, proper quality of service (QoS), and equal best-effort traffic utilization to departments and groups on campus. Resilient Packet Ring (RPR, otherwise known as IEEE 802.17) can help network managers meet these requirements. RPR provides survivable dual counter-rotating optical rings with several advantages over traditional enterprise network architectures, including support of oversubscription and variable bandwidth per span as well as the provision of advanced traffic routing capabilities.

RPR is among the standards the IEEE has defined to enable carrier-class Ethernet. This work has included provider bridging standards (802.1ad and 802.1ah), fault management (802.1ag), and link operation, administration, and maintenance (OAM) (802.3ah) as well as the RPR specifications defined in 802.17."

Database Sharding Helps High-Traffic Sites - Data Center Knowledge

2007-04-30T09:39:00.000-07:00

Database Sharding Helps High-Traffic Sites - Data Center Knowledge: "database sharding - breaking a large database into smaller pieces to provide faster access to the data."

See also use by Digg and integration with Hibernate by Google

memcached: a distributed memory object caching system

2007-04-30T09:36:00.000-07:00

memcached: a distributed memory object caching system: "memcached is a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system, generic in nature, but intended for use in speeding up dynamic web applications by alleviating database load."

Apparently used by Digg

Digg Dips Deep Into Open Source

2007-04-30T09:22:00.000-07:00

Digg Dips Deep Into Open Source: "In Digg’s architecture, a load balancer sends queries to PHP servers, MySQL slave servers that feed data to the PHP servers, and a MySQL master server that feeds data to the slaves. That’s a fairly standard setup. But White said that to get away from “sending raw queries against the database,” the San Francisco-based company uses open-source memory caching software called Memcached.

First developed for use by LiveJournal Inc.’s online journaling Web site, Memcached stores chunks of data that can be pulled out and used to dynamically create a Web page. Conventional caching technologies, which store entire Web pages, would be too slow and inefficient for a site that changes continuously like Digg.-com, White said.

The other atypical feature of Digg’s setup is its use of what engineer Tim Ellis called “sharding” — a term apparently coined by developers at Google Inc. Sharding involves breaking a database into smaller parts to improve performance by isolating heavy workloads."

6 Habits of Top I.T. Groups: A Consultant's List

2007-04-30T08:21:00.000-07:00

6 Habits of Top I.T. Groups: A Consultant's List: "effective technology departments:

* Use consolidation and virtualization technologies to become more flexible
* Invest in service-oriented architecture (SOA) applications to promote software reuse
* Adopt recommendations from the Information Technology Infrastructure Library, or ITIL, which is a set of best practices in corporate technology
* Invest in automated technology management tools
* Align business and I.T. in terms of governance and monitoring service levels
* Take on new challenges ranging from development of end-of-life and recycling strategies for old hardware to experimentation with emerging social software tools, such as wikis, to improve productivity."

Get the pros and cons of SATA II (SATA-IO)

2007-04-29T19:54:00.000-07:00

Get the pros and cons of SATA II (SATA-IO): "pros and cons of SATA II (SATA-IO)"SATA 3G,SATA 300, SATA 3Gb/s
" Many of the new enhancements are only optional, but the SATA label can still be used. Therefore, if you are buying a SATA-IO disk or controller and specifically need one of the new features, make sure you carefully read the fine print and all of the specifications for both your controllers and disks.
"3Gb/s
Native Command Queuing
Port Multipliers
Asynchronous Notification
ClickConnect
eSATA (external SATA)
Hot Plug
Link Power Management
Staggered Spin-Up
xSATA

HP to Save $8 Million With Smart Cooling - Data Center Knowledge

2007-04-29T07:57:00.000-07:00

HP to Save $8 Million With Smart Cooling - Data Center Knowledge: "Dynamic Smart Cooling is designed to provide precise targeting of air-conditioning systems in response to changes in server temperatures. The system deploys sensors throughout the data center, which communicate with the AC systems. The 'smart' piece is the system's use of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling to understand the flow of air within the data center and route the cold air to the hot server. HP says the approach can cut cooling costs by 20 to 45 percent as it turns AC systems on or off as temperatures rise and fall."

Rackable Selling Portable Data Center - Data Center Knowledge

2007-04-29T07:52:00.000-07:00

Rackable Selling Portable Data Center - Data Center Knowledge: "Rackable Systems, Inc. (RACK) this week announced the first sale of its new Concentro portable data center ... Concentro is a data center housed in a 40-foot by 8-foot shipping container, and can support high-density installations of up to 9,600 processing cores. ...The new product from Rackable will mean competition for Sun's Project Blackbox in the market for portable data centers."

High-Density, But Low (or No) Tracking - Data Center Knowledge

2007-04-29T07:40:00.000-07:00

High-Density, But Low (or No) Tracking - Data Center Knowledge: "The survey found that 6.8% of users reported an average power density higher than 18 kW per rack in their data center, with 8.7% reporting loads of 13 to 18 kW per rack. Most respondents believe they can handle even higher loads, with 15.5% citing a potential maximum power density per rack of at least 18 kW and 5.8% claiming the ability to manage 30 kW per rack or more. Then there are the 21.4% who say they have no idea of the maximum power density their racks can handle."

Google Super-Sizing Its Data Centers? - Data Center Knowledge

2007-04-27T15:06:00.000-07:00

Google Super-Sizing Its Data Centers? - Data Center Knowledge: "exploring how Google is scaling its data center ambitions."

Online Backup Startup Signs Global Pact with GE

2007-04-24T16:43:00.000-07:00

Online Backup Startup Signs Global Pact with GE: "Berkeley Data Systems, of American Fork, Utah, has landed a rather large corporate fish. The 25-employee online storage backup company announced April 23 a multimillion-dollar contract to provide remote backup services to employees of General Electric worldwide.

The announcement of the contract follows the successful launch of the company's MozyPro online backup service for businesses, which took place quietly in December and was officially announced in April.

MozyPro offers the first 2GB of storage for no fee, and unlimited backup—which includes an unlimited number of restores—for $3.95 per month per PC or server, plus 50 cents per gigabyte of storage used per month. Users may select month-to-month or annual payment plans"

Green Grid Plans First Technical Summit

2007-04-22T19:54:00.000-07:00

Green Grid Plans First Technical Summit: "The Green Grid, a nonprofit consortium based in Portland, Ore. and dedicated to cutting the use of IT's single most precious resource—electricity...

The consortium, focused on advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems, originated last April behind 11 founding members: AMD, APC, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Rackable Systems, SprayCool, Sun Microsystems and VMware.

New members to The Green Grid include 1E Ltd., 365 Main, Active Power, Affiniti, Aperture, Azul Systems, BT plc, Brocade Communications, Chatsworth Products, Cherokee International, Cisco Systems, ColdWatt, COPAN Systems, Digital Realty Trust, Eaton, Force10 Networks, Juniper Networks, Netezza, Novell, Pillar Data Systems, Panduit, QLogic, Rackspace Managed Hosting, SGI, SatCon Stationary Power Systems, Texas Instruments, The 451 Group and Vossel Solution."

IBM Lowers Power Consumption, Ups Connectivity In New Blades - Hardware - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

2007-04-22T19:47:00.000-07:00

IBM Lowers Power Consumption, Ups Connectivity In New Blades - Hardware - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness: "IBM this week unveiled new blade servers with low-voltage Intel and AMD processors and on-board flash memory, which Big Blue said can help data centers slash power and cooling costs.

The new blades are available with 50-watt quad-core Intel Xeon processors, 35-watt and 40-watt dual-core Xeons, and 68-watt dual-core AMD processors.

'Overall, blade server platforms are 30 percent to 40 percent more power-efficient than standard rack servers,'...

They also have an optional, on-board 4-Gbyte modular flash drive to take the place of a direct-attached hard drive. ... the flash drive can be used as a Linux boot drive or as a cache memory for external drives.

'They only consume 2 watts of power per blade, instead of 10 watts with hard drives,' ... 'Client data can be shared on external storage devices.'

Those external storage devices, as well as other external devices, can be connected to the servers via optional modules for 10-Gbit Ethernet, 4-Gbit Fibre Channel and InfiniBand."

Open-Source ESBs on the Rise

2007-04-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

Open-Source ESBs on the Rise: "Enterprises hoping to take advantage of the growing richness of service-oriented architecture technologies are taking a hard look at Enterprise Service Bus offerings... Mule ESB technology. Meanwhile, Red Hat's ... JBoss ESB continues to gain traction in the enterprise space, and ... Iona Technologies ... two open-source ESBs—its own Celtix and LogicBlaze's ServiceMix ESB. Other open-source ESBs include the Apache Software Foundation's Synapse and the WSO2 ESB...

An ESB is a middleware component that provides foundational services for more complex architectures via an event-driven and standards-based messaging engine. It typically sits above an enterprise messaging system."

Sourcefire Targets Enterprise Threats - Security - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

2007-04-22T19:37:00.000-07:00

Sourcefire Targets Enterprise Threats - Security - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness: "Sourcefire on Monday took the wraps off a new enterprise strategy that blends multiple security functions under one management umbrella.
...
'We're focusing on enterprise customers that are building policy response rules for compliance monitoring...
'Now that government auditors are checking for compliance with FISMA [Federal Information Security Management Act], "

Xen API Will Enable New Management Era - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

2007-04-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

Xen API Will Enable New Management Era - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness: "The Xen project will soon release an API for developing high-end management features like those in VMware's VMotion and Virtual Infrastructure 3 platform."

Sun Counters Competition with Low-Cost SAS Array

2007-04-22T19:32:00.000-07:00

Sun Counters Competition with Low-Cost SAS Array: "Sun Microsystems, struggling to keep up with powerhouses Hewlett-Packard, Network Appliance, EMC, IBM and others in an effort to gain share in the exploding SMB storage market, announced April 17 [2007] ... that it is making available its first serial-attached SCSI array [SAS].
...
SAS controllers allow the use of SATA (Serial ATA) drives, but SATA controllers do not handle SAS. Serial-attached SCSI supports three transport protocols: SSP (Serial SCSI Protocol), STP (Serial ATA Tunneling Protocol) and SMP (Serial Management Protocol)."

Content Management Moves Continue - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness

2007-04-22T19:28:00.000-07:00

Content Management Moves Continue - Software - IT Channel News by CRN and VARBusiness: "The enterprise content management world has been transformed in the past few years as ECM leader after leader was snapped up by large platform players.

EMC bought Documentum; IBM bought FileNet; Oracle bought Stellent. That M&A scramble left Open Text as the sole independent ECM player and, not to be outdone, last fall Open Text acquired Hummingbird.

That consolidation came even as demand for content management among companies of all sizes is growing, solution providers say. Much of that demand is generated by corporate governance regulations. The complicating factor is that the mandate for those controls butts up against an explosion of document-resident data."

Tidal Challenges Dominant Job Schedulers

2007-04-22T19:25:00.000-07:00

Tidal Challenges Dominant Job Schedulers: "Tidal Enterprise Scheduler 5.3 now automates the scheduling of jobs across Windows, UNIX, LINUX, z/OS as well as Web services, databases and ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) applications from SAP, Oracle and PeopleSoft."

Intel's View of Efficient Data Center Design

2007-04-18T08:27:00.000-07:00

Data center design

Design centers to expand via modules
Targeting 525 Watts/sq ft
Design for thermal management

DC Power: Data Centers and Servers

2007-04-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

Seeing a lot of DC powered servers lately, such as these from Rackable.

Flash, Java, F3

2007-04-06T07:30:00.000-07:00

Some analysis of Flash and Java applets. Mentions F3.

The Top Five Technologies You Need to Know About in '07

2007-03-02T14:03:00.000-08:00

1. Ruby on Rails
Faster, easier Web development

2. NAND drives
Bye-bye, HDD?

3. Ultra-Wideband
200x personal-area networking

4. Hosted hardware
Supercomputing for the masses

5. Advanced CPU architectures
Penryn, Fusion and more

Content Addressable Storage

2007-02-26T10:11:00.000-08:00

the long-term storage of unchanging digital assets (fixed content). "...data such as digital images, e-mail messages, presentations, video content, medical images and check images that don't change over time. Unlike transaction-based data, whose usefulness is short, fixed content data must be kept for long periods of time, often to comply with retention periods and provisions that government regulations such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 have specified."

Privoxy -- Privacy Enhancing Web Proxy

2007-02-15T09:21:00.000-08:00

Privoxy is a web proxy with advanced filtering capabilities for protecting privacy, modifying web page data, managing cookies, controlling access, and removing ads, banners, pop-ups and other obnoxious Internet junk. Privoxy has a very flexible configuration and can be customized to suit individual needs and tastes. Privoxy has application for both stand-alone systems and multi-user networks. Privoxy is based on Internet Junkbuster (tm).

TOR and TCP Anonymity

2007-02-15T09:01:00.000-08:00

"Tor is a toolset for a wide range of organizations and people that want to improve their safety and security on the Internet. Using Tor can help you anonymize web browsing and publishing, instant messaging, IRC, SSH, and other applications that use the TCP protocol. "
See also, "Using Tor isn't a crime, but it could be a policy violation" by Martin McKeay

MySpace Adapting to Load

2007-01-28T17:14:00.000-08:00

MySpace developers have repeatedly redesigned the Web site software, database and storage systems in an attempt to keep pace with exploding growth - the site now handles almost 40 billion page views a month.
--David Carr

Storage: Thin Provisioning

2007-01-27T14:45:00.000-08:00

Thin provisioning refers to a type of approach to storage that creates virtual pools of storage that can be applied to specific application demands on an as-needed basis. This is a step further than just creating a virtual pool of storage with a particular array and companies...that have large storage requirements have turned to companies such as 3PAR for storage products that make use of thin provisioning.
--Posted by Michael Vizard on January 24, 2007 3:37 PM

Inxight Search Extender for Google Desktop

2007-01-24T17:09:00.000-08:00

Inxight Search Extender for Google Desktop is a stand-alone product that that extends Google Desktop to... find documents faster and locate hidden information that would otherwise be overlooked.

...free, easy-to-install application that helps you locate hard to find documents faster. ... Search Extender automatically clusters results on the fly, allowing you to see pertinent documents at-a-glance, Top Mentions in each item, as well as filter your search results by the relevant people, companies, products, and other information contained within them.

Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK)

2007-01-14T21:34:00.000-08:00

The PMBOK is an internationally recognised standard (IEEE Std 1490-2003) that provides the fundamentals of project management that are applicable to a wide range of projects, including construction, software, engineering, automotive, etc.

PMBOK recognizes 5 basic process groups and 9 knowledge areas typical of almost all projects. The basic concepts are applicable to projects, programs and operations. The five basic process groups are:

Initiating,
Planning,
Executing,
Controlling and Monitoring, and
Closing.