Earlier Data Center
Final call – free Hyper V training
When we do our broadcasts we’re often asked if we can show you how to use the abilities that our experts describe. So, tomorrow at 11:00 BST we’ve got 60 minutes of live training on how to take advantage of the improvements and new features of virtual machine migration with Hyper-V 3.0 and Windows Server 2012.
We’re teaming up …
Rackspace does tech support for popular languages on its cloud
Rackspace Hosting has spent the past six months putting together a set of officially sanctioned software development kits and runtime environments for popular programming languages to run on its eponymous infrastructure cloud, and now it is ready to offer tech support for those SDKs when companies deploy applications on the …
EMC hits flash leader Fusion-io where it hurts: Low-cost server cards
Storage, virtualisation, info and cloud giant EMC is set to widen its attack on server flash card leader Fusion-io by releasing a low-cost flash card for hyper-scale data centres.
Server flash card cache coherency is also set to appear for Oracle RAC environments, according to Stifel Nicolas analyst Aaron Rakers, who was at EMC …
Intel Centerton server-class Atoms: How low can you go?
Review In late 2012 Intel launched Centerton: the first in its new line of Atom-based server processors. Hoping to cut ARM's invasion of the data centre off at the pass, these low-power CPUs are targeted at an emerging "Metal as a Service" movement that sees a return of unique workloads to individual processors.
I've finally gotten my …
Hm, disk drive maker, what's that smell lingering around you?
The disk drive vendors have been utterly screwed by mismanaging the disruptive force of solid state drives: that's the view of Mike Shapiro - lately a storage bigshot at Sun and Oracle.
Mike Shapiro was a Sun Microsystems Distinguished Engineer, CTO, and VP of Storage for Sun and then Oracle. He is most recently a founder at a …
Google pools cloud storage
Google has changed its approach to cloud storage, with individuals and business users of its apps now offered a pool of storage rather than silos dedicated to different services.
Announced in an inevitable pair of blog posts, the Chocolate Factory is calling the new arrangement “unified storage”. Storage wonks wondering why …
Dell gooses HANA appliances, loads up SAP Business Suite
Enterprise application software powerhouse SAP is beside itself with glee that its HANA in-memory database is driving more business than expected, and server makers like Dell, which are building appliances that meet the very strict – and unmalleable – configurations prescribed to run HANA, are hoping that this turns into a …
So you've got a nice virtual desktop stack – wait, here comes DaaS Boot
Storage supplier GreenBytes has teamed up with desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) provider Desktone to dedupe virtual desktop data and accelerate its delivery to employees' machines.
Desktone provisions and boots virtual desktops from its cloud through partners such as Dell and Fujitsu. Customers can treat their entire virtual desktop …
Xyratex shrinks ClusterStor to prop up sinking revenues
Xyratex has downsized its ClusterStor high-performance computing storage array with the scale-out storage 1500, hoping to add much-needed revenue growth by flogging departmental HPC storage.
Like the existing 6000 and 3000 models it is a Lustre system with scale-out capability through modular building blocks. Xyratex's idea is …
Integration gets back on track with the vertical stack
What is the role of integrated stacks, in which compute, networking, storage and management are vertically integrated? And how do you avoid vendor lock-in?
Let's get the discussion started with three expert submissions, one from an analyst, one from an IT practitioner and one from a vendor. And tell us what you think in the …
Storage-slinger: Sales down for 6th year running? Blame TAPE
Storage biz Quantum's position couldn't be further from that of rival CommVault. Revenues down? Yes. Both annually and sequentially? Yep. Losses deeper? Mmhmm. Annually and sequentially? Yes indeed.
It's the same old, same old for Jon Gacek's crew at Quantum, where unreeling tape revenues overtook slowly growing disk revenues. …
Japan begins planning exascale super
Japan is plotting its return to global supercomputing dominance, with its science ministry seekings funds to design the successor to its K supercomputer, to be completed by 2020.
According to The Asahi Shumbun, the new project aims to create a super with 100 times the processing capacity of the Fujitsu-Riken Research Institute- …
ScaleMP: Use RAM plus vSMP, not flash, to boost server performance
There are hypervisors that chop a single server into virtual bits, and other hypervisors that take multiple servers and make them look like one big virtual one. ScaleMP's vSMP hypervisor is the latter kind, and can be used to create a shared memory x86-based system that runs Linux that would normally require special processors …
Former Fusion-io CEO just wasn't that into operations, says new broom
Fusion-io CEO and co-founder David Flynn resigned because he realised he didn't have the operational management skills needed to grow Fusion-io into a global business. That, in a nutshell, is what we understand after talking to replacement CEO Shane Robison.
First Robison, who is also Fusion-io's chairman and president, wanted …
Inside EMC's software-defined ViPR storage tech
EMC spent much of this year's EMC World talking up ViPR, its new system for managing, automating, and controlling storage infrastructure.
Tucci and the gang were scolded for the premature nature of the announcement – ViPR won't launch until late 2013, and it'll be late 2014 when it gets the features that truly differentiate it …
Penguin Computing to make Open Compute servers
Linux server and cluster maker Penguin Computing is a member of the Open Compute Project started by Facebook to create open source data center gear, and now it is an official "solution provider".
This means that Penguin now has OCP's official blessing to make and sell integrated systems based on the motherboard and system …
Facebook plans globe-spanning hardware deployment
Facebook plans to deploy sophisticated gear at the very edge of its network to cut the time it takes for denizens of the social network to interact with the site.
The plans – which are still in a very early stage – were revealed to The Register by Facebook at a briefing at Interop in Las Vegas this week. They will see the social …
Fujitsu Integrated Systems stack up servers, storage, and switches
Japanese IT giant Fujitsu will roll out a bounty of new – and, of course, cloudy – hardware and software offerings next week at its annual customer and partner confab in Tokyo.
Fujitsu was the first and only Microsoft Azure partner that got a public cloud puffed up based on the Windows stack and its own iron that is compatible …
Rivals tout antidotes to EMC's ViPR bite
Comment How do you avoid a snakebite from the ViPR that EMC has let loose in the storage jungle? El Reg storage desk has spoken to some of its competitors about their "software-defined" antidotes.
ViPR is a layer of storage virtualisation software that separates upper-level storage management functions (which EMC calls the "storage …
Aryaka adds mobile admin to WANOP kit
WAN-optimisation-in-the-cloud provider Aryaka has added mobile portal access to its network.
Unleashed on the world at Interop, the MyAryaka portal has a simple enough proposition: since systems administrators are expected to be able to tell their bosses what's going on even in their downtime, why not make the ability to look at …
Nutanix getting traction with server-storage hybrids
The road to the present is littered with the rusty hulks of server companies that had great engineering and a new twist on an old systems idea, and yet were crushed by incumbents. But judging by its numbers for the past year and a half, upstart Nutanix – which is peddling a virtualized server cluster with a virtualized SAN …
Fallen flash flogger sTec says direct sales will save its bacon
Flash disk maker sTec isn't looking healthy. Its revenues have declined by over a third from the last quarter and net losses exceed revenues for this quarter - as they have done for the last 18 months.
Revenues from storage array manufacturers are falling away faster than the company's alternative revenue-generating efforts are …
Bolshy investors launch yet another assault on Emulex board
Angry investor Altai Capital Management has written an open letter to Emulex CEO Jim McCluney demanding the resignation of Emulex's board after it rejected a takeover offer from Broadcom.
That's the view put across by activist investor Altai Capital Management in a public letter to Emulex CEO Jim McCluney.
Background
Emulex …
Seagate CTO hangs up his hard disks
Seagate's chief technology officer Bob Whitmore has retired, at the same times as the company has launched its third generation flash products.
A company statement read:
Bob Whitmore Bob Whitmore
On May 7, 2013 Robert W. Whitmore, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Seagate Technology plc (the "Company") …
IT spending squeeze? Are you joking, cackles cash-flush CommVault
Quarterly revenues up? Check. Annually and sequentially? Check. Annual revenues and profits? The same pattern. Any problems? Nope. Just another year at CommVault.
The company, which supplies Simpana backup, archiving and data data management software, operates like a Swiss watch and makes business look like child's play.
For …
Over ONE-THIRD of PCs will have SSDs in 2017 - analyst
As hard disk drive (HDD) shipments into PCs continue their downwards slide, solid-state drive (SSD) shipments should rise at least 600 per cent between 2012 and 2017, say market researchers.
Of course, solid-state drive sales represent only a small proportion of the market currently, which means that by 2017, vendors will sell …
Symantec: We 'stubbed our toe' on Backup Exec, but we'll be fine
Analysis Symantec's new broom CEO has presided over record final quarter - at least for revenues - and full year 2013 results. This is despite the company being in the middle of a management clear-out, profits droop and wholesale sales operation revamp.
Revenues for the fourth quarter, which finished on 29 March, were $1.75bn, a record …
How smart does your desk phone need to be?
The business IP telephone market has spent more than a decade trying to establish exactly how much intelligence the market wants in its telephones. The customer's answer has almost always been “less than the vendors want to sell us.” Anyone looking for an albino pachyderm can therefore point to the CPUs and APIs baked into IP …
Facebook crashes into networking with open switch
Not content with shaking up storage and servers, Facebook is creating an open source switch to help it save money on networking equipment and stop it being dependent on technologies pioneered by any single company.
The switch was announced by Facebook's infrastructure czar Frank Frankovsky in a keynote speech at Interop on …
Fusion-io founders flee, ex-HP hotshot takes the wheel
Right out of the blue, flash memory-maker Fusion-io has lost its CEO co-founder David Flynn, as well as its chief marketing officer, co-founder Rick White.
Board member Shane Robison has been named chairman, president and CEO. Messrs Flynn and White are resigning to pursue other entrepreneurial early-stage investing activities …
Deep, deep dive: Hyper-V
Hands-on Regcast Next week, on the 17th May at 11am, we will show you how to take advantage of the improvements and new features of virtual machine migration with Hyper-V 3.0 and Windows Server 2012.
Our award-winning Regcasts crew is teaming up with training provider QA to do the deepest of deep dives for you. And you can join in, for free here …
Teradata boosts DRAM on appliances for in-memory queries
If it were as simple as adding more main memory to a server to crank up the performance of a parallel database, Teradata would have done it by now. But with memory capacities going up on x86 servers and memory prices coming down, now is the time to add more in-memory processing to data warehouse appliances – and that is …
Attention large Linux workloads
The Register Live Evidence from users in the real world shows that for large workloads, the mainframe offers power, security, administration licensing and management benefits – but, in an x86 world, many IT departments simply don’t consider running their Linux apps on anything but traditional servers.
IBM’s system z platform offers the …
Acronis co-founder slips into driving seat after CEO picks up P45
Backup and recovery specialists Acronis's latest CEO, Alex Pinchev, has left the firm and has been replaced by one of its founders.
Pinchev became Acronis's CEO with much fanfare in November 2011, replacing Jason Donahue. Pinchev, an ex-Red Hat sales leader, was described as a visionary CEO, and became an Acronis board member in …
Seagate: Who us... no flash cred? Check out our PCIe card, suckers
Seagate has opened up fresh fronts in its assault on the flash market and announced SATA and SAS SSDs as well as a PCIe flash card, signalling for the first time in a product sense just how serious it is about becoming a major league flash product supplier.
There are basically four products: the 600, 600 Pro and 1200 SSDs and X8 …
Isilon OneFS snorts dedupe magic
EMC World 2013 EMC is preparing the next version of its Isilon OneFS NAS operating system, and is giving the technology a deduplication capability and support for object storage.
The next version of Isilon will integrate with EMC's ambitious software-defined storage ViPR technology, along with support for APIs from Amazon S3 and Atmos, Hadoop …
'Quantum network? We've had one for years,' says Los Alamos
The boffins at the Los Alamos National Laboratory are known as a secretive lot; a much understated lot, in fact. Rather than cause a fuss, researchers there have quietly published a paper showing they've had a flexible quantum network – something rather a lot of people are interested in – up and running for two and a half years …
Cray descends to midrange HPC shops with baby XC30 supers
Supercomputer maker Cray had been hinting that it would deliver a new cut-down version of its "Cascade" XC30 system, and the machine is being unveiled on Tuesday at the Cray User Group meeting in Napa Valley, California.
The XC30-AC machines go into more standard cabinets like those used with the XE5 and XE6 predecessors to the …
EMC: 'Hardware? We stopped doing that YEARS ago'
EMC World 2013 Storage titan EMC doesn't really believe in hardware any more – the value is in the software.
The company has been on a shift for the past decade to wean itself off of a dependency on proprietary gear, and has instead been pouring resources into developing clever software, EMC head honcho Joe Tucci told The Register at EMC World …
The real reason why Dell wants to go private: To fondle big Boomis
Dell has added an API management tool to its Boomi platform, which connects up clouds and in-house applications.
The new component - which monitors and controls software interfaces used to hook together various services within an enterprise - is included in an upgrade that also adds new integration and process management …
Micron brandishes sharp new flash blade, lunges at Fusion-io
Micron is touting a new server flash drive that's apparently significantly faster than Fusion-io's market-leading ioDrive 2.
Micron is believed to be supplying its PCIe-format drives to EMC for the storage giant's XtremSF flash cards. (EMC's other supplier is Virident.)
Micron's P420m flash drive comes in both PCIe and 2.5in …
EMC, VMware dangle axe over 1,804 workers around the planet
In the week of EMC's self-congratulatory EMC World extravaganza in Las Vegas, the storage giant revealed it will slash 1,004 jobs.
The cuts will be felt worldwide in the company's Information Storage, RSA Information Security and Information Intelligence divisions, according to EMC. The redundancies will cost the biz $80m. This …
