servers

Synology DS1812+ NAS server: More TBs than you can count with your digits

Synology announced today its first eight-bay DiskStation NAS server, the DS1812+.

This is one of the first, if not the first, consumer-friendly NAS server on the market that offers eight native hard drive bays. This means that when populated with all 4TB hard drives, the server can offer up to 32TB of storage space.

Most computers have just about 1TB of storage space, which is enough (and then some) for most users. The DS1812+, by itself, can host 32 times that much, more TBs than you can count with your fingers and toes.… Read more

Meet a retired World of Warcraft server

A game like World of Warcraft requires several thousand servers to operate the hundreds of online realms within its ecosystem. Earlier this year, Blizzard Entertainment auctioned off several of those server blades "used during World of Warcraft's early days."

A Reddit post brought up the subject again recently, and contains a few pictures of a server blade used for the European server Sunstrider from February 27, 2005 to August 24, 2010. There's little doubt that countless gamers spent thousands, if not millions, of hours playing during that time frame. A special clear enclosure reveals the innards of the server, which contains 6 gigabytes of RAM (DDR-400MHz). It did not come with the original hard drives. … Read more

Google Public DNS prevails as the world's largest service

Handling more than 70 billion domain name system (DNS) requests each day, Google is now the largest public DNS service on earth, the Web giant announced today.

"We launched Google Public DNS in December 2009 to help make the web faster for everyone," software engineer for Google Public DNS Jeremy K. Chen said in a statement. "Today, we're no longer an experimental service."

According to Chen, the way DNS works is it acts like the phone book of the Internet. "If you had to look up hundreds or thousands of phone numbers every day,&… Read more

What's different about storage for virtual desktops?

It is often said that data center-level server virtualization projects created a renewed demand for networked storage, both NAS and SAN.

If that's true, then efforts to virtualize desktops--aka virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) projects--will create renewed demand for high-performance storage, both network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN).

Storage performance is a major determinant in successful deployments of VDI. Why? VDI is a storage input/output-intensive environment.

When you lift the hood to find out what's going on inside a disk array that's supporting virtual desktops, you see the following:

The typical virtual desktop running Windows … Read more

Nginx tries converting Web-server popularity into money

Nginx, a Russian startup that has succeeded where others have failed at challenging the dominant Apache software for housing Web sites, has begun trying to convert its popularity into actual money.

Nginx (pronounced "engine X") yesterday unveiled corporate support offerings for the product, a traditional business model for open-source software. It offers three grades--Essential, Advanced, and Premium--with three- and twelve-month contracts for services including installation, configuration, performance tuning, and maintenance.

"Subscribers to the Advanced and Premium options receive design, implementation and optimization assistance, as well as prioritized development. Premium subscribers will have access to an additional set … Read more

Tech spending was strong in 2011, despite sluggish economy

Spending on technology around the world managed to rise last year, despite economic woes in Europe and a severe hard-drive shortage, research firm IDC said yesterday.

Overall, IT spending rose just 5 percent in 2011, but that proved to be a healthy gain in the face of worldwide challenges.

The 5 percent figure was calculated using constant currency, a method that does not take into account fluctuations in the exchange rate. In U.S. dollars, the picture was even rosier, with tech spending rising by almost 9 percent last year.

A surge in demand for smartphones, tablets, and software kicked … Read more

Free Windows servers float onto Amazon's cloud

Anyone can download Linux for free, so it was no surprise that Amazon offered the open-source operating system on the free tier of Amazon Web Services.

But now the company has added a free version of Windows Server to the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, too.

"We are excited to announce that starting today, the AWS Free Usage Tier will now include Amazon EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server," Amazon told EC2 customers today. "Customers eligible for the AWS Free Usage tier can now use up to 750 hours per month of t1.micro instances running Microsoft … Read more

Cool stuff: Seagate contemplates 4G LTE for mobile storage hot spot

LAS VEGAS--When on the go, you want to stay connected at all times and carry as much data as possible without having to physically carry a lot, right?

Soon you'll be able to do just that.

Seagate revealed and demonstrated at CES 2012 the prototype of a product tentatively called the Personal Server 4G LTE Wi-Fi. This is basically a combination of what the company's GoFlex Satellite has to offer and a 4G LTE mobile hot spot in one compact box.

Seagate said this is result of a 1.5-year collaboration with Verizon, which will be the exclusive … Read more

Iomega StorCenter ix2 angles for business users

LAS VEGAS--Iomega here at CES today announced the new Iomega StorCenter ix2 Network Storage, which offers up to 6TB of storage space.

This is the upgrade to the previous version of the same server.

Iomega says the new server comes with many advanced business capabilities, including video surveillance capability and support for online storage services, including Mozy, Amazon S3, and EMC Atmos-enabled cloud backup services offered by service providers. On top of that the server itself can also work as a "personal cloud."… Read more