Data Center Management Articles
CA Technologies has announced a mainframe tool that is the combination of two of its application performance management products, as well as additional integrations, features and functions. The new product, CA Mainframe Application Tuner, combines the performance analysis and tuning capabilities of TRILOGexpert TriTune with the automated performance management of TRILOGexpert APC for TriTune. CA Technologies has a non-exclusive, worldwide source agreement to develop, market and support this technology, thus facilitating innovation beyond its previous capabilities.
Posted September 20, 2011
Cleversafe, a storage management provider, announced enhancements to its flagship platform intended to improve the scalability and reliability of cloud storage. "The area that we are focusing on is big data storage challenges. These are customers that have hundreds of terabytes to petabytes - and even growing larger to exabyte levels of storage - and need things that Cleversafe delivers in terms of managing those large data repositories," Russ Kennedy, vice president of product strategy and marketing for Cleversafe, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted September 20, 2011
Virtual Instruments, a provider of storage area network (SAN) and virtual infrastructure optimization solutions, introduced a new product suite, which includes a new 8Gb SAN Performance Probe that provides improved visibility across servers, networks and storage. "IT roles that look across all aspects of the virtualized data center have the potential to become the next hot IT job," according to John Thompson, president and CEO of Virtual Instruments. "The new VirtualWisdom platform provides the essential cross-domain infrastructure monitoring solution to enable this new role and to ensure business-critical application performance and availability in the emerging private cloud infrastructure."
Posted September 20, 2011
IBM says that it is broadening its Power architecture licensing program to include a multi-use agreement that provides developers access to the entire lineup of Power cores with a single license. This is the first time such an option has been available for Power systems developers, the company says. Designers can now gain access to a blanket license for unlimited uses of the Power 470, Power 460 and Power 405 cores for a 5-year period. IBM also announced a new "no-barriers" license for the Power 405 core which drops the standard access fee.
Posted September 20, 2011
IBM says it is working with Yi Lian Zhong Information Technology (YLZ), a leading provider of information services in China, to build a cloud computing platform that will improve the life of citizens in China via an online portal for a variety of social services. With an IBM System z mainframe running Linux as the foundation, YLZ will expand its existing services available in Fujian Province to seven more Chinese provinces. This will enable them to construct a citizen livelihood service information network covering a population of 300 million.
Posted September 20, 2011
Gluster, a provider of open source storage solutions, announced a partnership with Redapt, Inc., a data center architecture and infrastructure solutions provider. Under this agreement, Redapt will integrate GlusterFS with hardware providing customers with Network-Attached Storage (NAS) storage technology for on-premise, virtual and cloud environments. "With the dramatic rise of unstructured data, storage has quickly become a major pain point for enterprises," says Matt Huff, vice president of business development at Redapt.
Posted September 20, 2011
Stone Bond Technologies announced that it has created a new level of data federation connectivity, enabling users to work live within Salesforce.com screens without the data ever having to leave the System z host system. Stone Bond's flagship product, Enterprise Enabler Virtuoso, is creating virtual data sets by federating on-premise mainframe data, and providing a new integration to view the data side-by-side within the Salesforce.com data view. "This new capability effectively enables Salesforce.com to become a portal to all corporate data in a highly secure environment," says Pamela Szabo, chief technology officer at Stone Bond.
Posted September 20, 2011
Zmanda, a provider of open source and cloud-based backup and disaster recovery solutions, released the latest version of its cloud backup software, incorporating tools that enable users to direct backups either to the cloud or to local storage systems. Zmanda Cloud Backup (ZCB) 4.0 provides users the choice to store backups directly on the cloud; on local disks; or in a hybrid backup configuration, which is an intelligent combination of the two. In addition, ZCB 4.0 offers performance improvements of up to three times the speed for uploads and downloads, the vendor says.
Posted September 20, 2011
At SAP TechEd 2011 in Las Vegas, SAP AG announced two new solutions built on SAP HANA, the company's in-memory computing platform. The two new solutions - SAP Smart Meter Analytics software powered by SAP HANA and SAP COPA Accelerator software - were developed by SAP product and design teams working in collaboration with customers. According to SAP the new applications will provide users with real-time insight into "big data," allowing them to leverage large amounts of information for analysis, planning, and forecasting and simulations in a more fluid, natural way versus traditional approaches.
Posted September 15, 2011
Jean Staten Healy, director of Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, IBM Systems & Technology Group, Systems Software, moderated a panel discussion at Innovation Nation Forum, which was co-located with GOSCON (the Government Open Source Conference) last month in Washington, D.C.
Posted September 14, 2011
LinuxCon North America 2011 took place last month in Vancouver, Canada. IBM, a platinum sponsor of the event, offered several presentations and break-out sessions. In a keynote presentation, Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, chairman emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology, presented "Linux: A Disruptive Force - Then and Now." Dr. Wladawsky-Berger, who was responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments critical to the future of the IT industry while at IBM, drew upon more than 40 years of experience to provide a unique perspective on Linux and the evolution of IT.
Posted September 14, 2011
This week Jeopardy! has been broadcasting an encore presentation of the first-ever man vs. machine Jeopardy! competition between IBM's "Watson" computing system and the show's two greatest contestants - Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The final episode airs tonight, September 14.
Posted September 14, 2011
IBM has announced that it has achieved the highest TPC-C benchmark performance score ever achieved for an x86 server. The single rack non-clustered IBM System x running DB2 achieved more than three million transactions per minute, which breaks the industry record set by the same IBM x86 system just 8 months ago.
Posted September 14, 2011
Jean Staten Healy, director of Cross-IBM Linux and Open Virtualization, IBM Systems & Technology Group, Systems Software, moderated a panel discussion at Innovation Nation Forum, which was co-located with GOSCON (the Government Open Source Conference) last month in Washington, D.C. The session, "Unlocking Data Center Consolidation and the Cloud," spotlighted how Linux on the mainframe is enabling a smarter approach to IT infrastructure, and the efficiencies and cost savings that result.
Posted September 14, 2011
LinuxCon North America 2011 took place last month in Vancouver, Canada. IBM, a platinum sponsor of the event, offered several presentations and break-out sessions. In a keynote presentation, Dr. Irving Wladawsky-Berger, chairman emeritus, IBM Academy of Technology, presented "Linux: A Disruptive Force - Then and Now." Dr. Wladawsky-Berger, who was responsible for identifying emerging technologies and marketplace developments critical to the future of the IT industry while at IBM, drew upon more than 40 years of experience to provide a unique perspective on Linux and the evolution of IT.
Posted September 14, 2011
This week Jeopardy! has been broadcasting an encore presentation of the first-ever man vs. machine Jeopardy! competition between IBM's "Watson" computing system and the show's two greatest contestants - Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. The final episode airs tonight, September 14.
Posted September 14, 2011
IBM has announced that it has achieved the highest TPC-C benchmark performance score ever achieved for an x86 server. The single rack non-clustered IBM System x running DB2 achieved more than three million transactions per minute, which breaks the industry record set by the same IBM x86 system just 8 months ago.
Posted September 14, 2011
Unisys has announced the availability of the Unisys Stealth Solution for Secure Virtual Terminal (SSVT), a secure solution residing on a federal government-certified USB device to help ensure that a mobile user's data is secure and readily available to those authorized to view it. According to Unisys, SSVT combines the power of Unisys Stealth Solution for Network with a customized, dedicated and portable device that allows a remote user to boot up and establish a "clean and secure session" linking to an enterprise network. The Unisys solution creates virtual "communities of interest," groups that can share the same physical or virtual network without fear of another group accessing their data or workstations and servers.
Posted September 14, 2011
Micro Focus, a provider of enterprise application modernization solutions, announced the launch of its Online Application Value Profile (AVP), a self-assessment tool which helps software organizations begin the process of making strategic and continuous improvements to the software development lifecycle (SDLC). According to Micro Focus, as pressures mount on organizations to increase productivity and understand potential return on investment for a project, software development teams are caught between pressures to produce more software, increase quality and meet rigid schedules, while controlling or even reducing costs.
Posted September 14, 2011
Nearly 40 international airlines operating to and from Australia have signed a 2-year contract extension through 2016 with Unisys Australia, which will continue providing an advanced baggage reconciliation system at seven Australian international airports at Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Cairns, Perth, Adelaide and the Gold Coast. The contract extension is worth more than $11.7 million.
Posted September 14, 2011
Attunity Ltd., a provider of real-time data integration software, has signed a definitive agreement to acquire RepliWeb Inc., a Coconut Creek, Florida.-based provider of enterprise file replication and managed file transfer technologies. According to Attunity, RepliWeb has more than 1,500 customers worldwide, and is a profitable business that generated approximately $8 million in revenue during 2010. "This acquisition is an important milestone that will help Attunity to grow faster through the introduction of new software technologies and broader base of established customers," said Shimon Alon, Attunity's chairman and CEO.
Posted September 13, 2011
At an event for customers, partners and industry experts in Redwood Shores that was also presented live online, Oracle announced Oracle VM 3.0, the latest release of its server virtualization and management solution. According to the company, Oracle VM 3.0 is suitable for all data center workloads and features new policy-based management capabilities, advanced storage management via the Oracle VM Storage Connect plug-in API; centralized network configuration management, improved ease-of-use and Open Virtualization Format (OVF) support.
Posted September 07, 2011
Submit your proposal to present at SHARE in Atlanta, March 11 - 16, 2012 in Atlanta, Georgia, the premier event for the Enterprise IT community. SHARE welcomes and encourages both first-time submitters and seasoned presenters to take part in this leading enterprise technology event. The deadline to submit a presentation proposal is October 7, 2011.
Posted September 06, 2011
FalconStor Software, Inc. a provider of disk-based data protection solutions, announced an upgrade of its suite of data protection solutions. Version 7 (V7) of FalconStor's product family offers solutions for backup and disaster recovery. "With V7, FalconStor's data protection solutions have been optimized to deliver a holistic approach to backup and recovery that helps data centers of all sizes overcome obstacles to continuous service and data availability," says Fadi Albatal, vice president of worldwide marketing for FalconStor.
Posted September 06, 2011
More than 1,000 enterprise IT professionals attended 600-plus educational sessions during the recent SHARE event, held at the Walt Disney World Dolphin in Orlando. Hundreds of topics were discussed, but the biggest issues on attendees' minds were how to deal with the proliferation of data and changing workforce dynamics facing the technology industry.
Posted September 06, 2011
Gluster, a provider of open source storage solutions, has just released a version of its storage system that includes support for Apache Hadoop. GlusterFS 3.3 beta 2 employs standard file system APIs available in Hadoop to provide a new storage option for Hadoop deployments.
Posted September 06, 2011
STORServer, a provider of data backup solutions, has added Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) 256-bit encryption to its Archive Backup Client (ABC) and STORServer Data Protection (SDP) software, agents written specifically for OpenVMS customers backing up to IBM's Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM).
Posted September 06, 2011
Micro Focus, a provider of enterprise application modernization solutions, announced the launch of its Online Application Value Profile (AVP), a self-assessment tool which helps software organizations begin the process of making strategic and continuous improvements to the software development lifecycle (SDLC).
Posted September 06, 2011
Veryant, a COBOL-to-Java migration tools vendor, announced it has added features to its vCOBOL Enterprise platform that includes new compatibility with legacy mainframe and Micro Focus COBOL dialects and improved debugging capabilities.
Posted September 06, 2011
At the recent VMworld conference, Symantec Corp. announced new enhancements to Backup Exec 2010 designed to provide greater visibility into physical and virtual environments with a single backup solution.
Posted September 06, 2011
VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization and cloud infrastructure, announced the general availability of VMware vSphere 5, delivering nearly 200 new and enhanced capabilities to help customers transform IT by driving greater efficiency from existing investments and improving operational agility.
Posted September 06, 2011
NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a provider and integrator of advanced communications, networking and IT solutions, announced that its NEC Express5800/R320b fault-tolerant servers, which are powered by the six-core Intel Xeon processor 5600 series, now support VMware vSphere for virtualization.
Posted September 06, 2011
Registration is now open for TechWave 2011, which will be co-located with SAP TechEd, September 12-16 at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. TechWave will continue to deliver targeted training on Sybase products, plus offer attendees access to TechEd keynote sessions, exhibits, special event and other networking functions.
Posted August 24, 2011
Sybase has announced its mobile device security and application management software support Cisco Cius - a highly secure business tablet created for the enterprise. The announcement extends Sybase's device agnostic approach to support a growing list that includes Android (smartphones and tablets), iOS (iPhone and iPad), Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry. The Cisco Cius running on Sybase Unwired Platform will offer customers a new class of highly collaborative and secure productivity apps, which will continue advancing tablet adoption in the enterprise," says Terry Stepien, president, Sybase iAnywhere.
Posted August 24, 2011
The rise of big data has garnered much of the attention in the data management arena lately. But it is not simply the sheer volume of data that is challenging data professionals. Many new types and brands of DBMSs are also popping up across organizations, bringing new problems for the data professionals who are tasked with managing them, and also giving rise to scores of "accidental database administrators" with no formal DBA training, a new Unisphere Research study reveals. The results of the survey are explained in a report titled "Data Cross-Currents: 2011 Survey on Cross-Platform Database Administration," now available from Quest Software.
Posted August 24, 2011
BMC Software has announced a new set of solutions designed to help customers monitor and manage middleware across the data center. The vendor's Middleware Management solutions are intended to enable IT departments to deliver reliable business services through a more in-depth view of enterprise applications and the transaction paths that make them run.
Posted August 22, 2011
Serena Software, a provider of application delivery tools, is shipping Serena Release Manager, a new application lifecycle management solution that incorporates release automation, release control, and release vault into a single product.
Posted August 22, 2011
INNOVATION Data Processing (IDP) announced a strategic partnership with CA Technologies in which CA will include IDP products within its own portfolio. The alliance enables CA to offer IDP's "UPSTREAM for Linux on Z" and "UPSTREAM for UNIX on Z" as data protection solutions as part of CA's existing portfolio of systems management capabilities, Pat Fitzsimmons, product manager at IDP, tells 5 Minute Briefing. The IDP-CA alliance was announced at the recent SHARE user conference in Orlando.
Posted August 22, 2011
EMC Corporation, a storage systems and management provider, announced new software for its Symmetrix VMAX family of storage systems, targeted at virtual data center and cloud storage capabilities. A new version of EMC AutoSwap software, with support for z/VM environments, was unveiled at the recent SHARE user event in Orlando.
Posted August 22, 2011
AES, a provider of infrastructure performance tools, announced it is supporting IBM's zEnterprise System with expert analysis of network traffic for multi-architecture environments. CleverView for cTrace Analysis v7.0 is designed to help users make virtualization a reality and do more with less, AES says. CleverView enables users to simultaneously schedule start and stop traces for end-to-end trace views from z/OS, Linux, OSA, HiperSockets and Windows. The Expert Analysis enhances diagnostic efforts and accelerates virtualization and application deployment, all while reducing costs and improving network problem resolution.
Posted August 22, 2011
Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g, together with Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle's Sun Blade X6270 M2 server module, has set a new record for all 2-processor systems on the industry-standard SPECjEnterprise2010 benchmark. Both the Application Server and Database Server were running Oracle Linux on Sun Blade X6270 M2 server modules and utilized Oracle's Sun Storage 6180 Array for all database files.
Posted August 18, 2011
Oracle Solaris 11 Express is available on Oracle Exadata Database Machines X2-2 and X2-8, enabling customers to take advantage of the reliability, scalability, and security of Oracle Solaris to run their online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing and consolidated workloads on the x86-based Oracle Exadata systems, Oracle announced.
Posted August 18, 2011
The rise of big data has garnered much of the attention in the data management arena lately. But it is not simply the sheer volume of data that is challenging data professionals. Many new types and brands of DBMSs are also popping up across organizations, bringing new problems for the data professionals who are tasked with managing them, and also giving rise to scores of "accidental database administrators" with no formal DBA training, a new Unisphere Research study reveals.
Posted August 11, 2011
EMC Corp. has announced its next generation mainframe virtual tape library (VTL). Designed for use in IBM z/OS and Unisys OS2200 environments, EMC says the new DLm6000 is the industry's fastest mainframe VTL with 2x the performance of its nearest competitor. By leveraging the latest advances in EMC Data Domain and EMC VNX storage systems, the company says the DLm6000 can address the full range of mainframe tape workloads with a single, consolidated all-disk system and will enable mainframe users to minimize their storage and replication costs and improve their disaster recovery capabilities. By matching different workloads to the most appropriate storage, the DLm6000 maximizes system performance and accelerates data retrievals and backup and recovery times. The new EMC DLm6000 will be available in September, 2011.
Posted August 11, 2011
Unisys Corporation announced that it has helped the General Services Administration (GSA) successfully migrate all of its 17,000 email users to Google Apps for Government, a secure cloud-based email and collaboration platform. The transition makes GSA the first federal government agency to migrate all of its employees to a cloud-based email solution. Based on the success of its work with the GSA and other agencies, Unisys also announced the availability of its Collaborative Office Solutions - Google Apps for Government. Working with Google and Tempus Nova, Unisys will provide a set of services to help agencies accomplish their enterprise transitions to Google Apps for Government. Through this solution, agencies can benefit from reduced costs associated with cloud-based systems, increased uptime and availability of agency data, and the confidence of a secure solution that has received Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) authorization.
Posted August 11, 2011
Unisys reported a second-quarter 2011 net loss of $11.6 million, or a loss of 27 cents per diluted share. The results include a previously announced charge of $45.7 million related to debt reduction and a pre-tax charge of $13.5 million related to the loss of an old non-income tax case concerning the company's former Brazilian manufacturing operations. Excluding these charges, non-GAAP earnings per diluted share were 93 cents in the quarter.. Revenue in the second quarter of 2011 declined 10 percent to $937 million compared with $1.04 billion in the year-ago quarter. Foreign currency fluctuations had a 5 percentage-point positive impact on revenue in the quarter.
Posted August 11, 2011
Attachmate Corporation announced the availability of Attachmate Luminet 4.2, an enterprise fraud management solution that helps thwart insider fraud and abuse. Luminet's ability to reveal user activity across enterprise applications and score risk in real-time to flag questionable activity patterns helps transform data into actionable intelligence. The latest Luminet version offers the option of a new Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 validated cryptographic module to conform to certain federal government requirements. The FIPS module is critical for federal government installations for making sure that they are meeting FIPS requirements, and allows Attachmate to add to the product's specific vertical appeal," Christine Meyers, senior product marketing manager for Attachmate Luminet, tells 5 Minute Briefing.
Posted August 11, 2011
SUSE has announced the availability of SUSE Studio Version 1.2. The latest update to the award-winning development platform is intended to help customers more easily build, update and manage application images across x86, public cloud and IBM System z deployments, reducing the overhead associated with managing a heterogeneous IT environment.
Posted August 10, 2011
Virtualization combined with Integrated Service Management helps you use your resources effectively, manage your infrastructures efficiently, and gain the flexibility to meet ever-changing business demands. The Virtualization@IBM blog is an open exchange of ideas relating to virtualization across the entire infrastructure. Articles written by IBM's virtualization experts serve as conversation starters. Topics can range from the latest technologies for server consolidation and tools for simplified systems management and monitoring to open virtualization with KVM, automating IT systems to respond to changing business conditions and cloud-based solutions for the "virtual" enterprise.
Posted August 10, 2011