server

Why are networking vendors talking virtualization?

LAS VEGAS--Like last month's RSA Conference, there is a sufficient amount of hype about virtualization here at Interop. From a marketing perspective, this is to be expected. The industry is ga-ga over virtualization, so everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. Beyond the spin however, server virtualization and networking are two of a kind as foundational technologies in next-generation data centers.

First off, virtual servers think they are physical servers and own the entire platform. Each virtual server wants all the bandwidth the physical server can offer, but in the virtual world, bandwidth is a shared service. This has the … Read more

Now SpringSource is an application server, too

I read the news that SpringSource has named itself the "first proper" Java application server product in a decade, and I was left scratching my head. Over the years I've heard just about everyone call themselves an "app server" at some point (Funambol went through a spell when it was a "mobile application server" [PDF] and ActiveGrid was a "grid application server", or something, as just two examples), and the only two times it made sense to me (in the open-source context) were with JBoss and Geronimo.

How did SpringSource become an application server? I thought it was a framework.

So, apparently, does Marc Fleury, who had some blunt counsel for SpringSource's founder, Rod Johnson:

To me this is a VC driven move. Spring is a natural consultancy, being a development framework, but they have been struggling with their sales in the runtime. So voila, we now have a box drawn around an OSGi kernel, the Spring framework and Hibernate/Tomcat, and it has a name: it's an application server. It is the same thing you had yesterday for free, except it is now under the GPL and a proprietary subscription license.… Read more

McKinsey: Servers need an MPG-like energy rating

Greenhouse gas emissions from data centers rank higher than the countries of Argentina and the Netherlands and right behind airlines, shipyards, and steel plants.

Those comparisons were compiled by consulting firm McKinsey & Company and the Uptime Institute, which on Wednesday published a report on the worsening picture--environmentally and economically--of energy consumption from data centers.

McKinsey called for the creation of a metric that combines the energy efficiency of a data center facility with the utilization of IT gear that runs in data centers. When combined, the financial impact of data centers' energy bill will become more clear and … Read more

Apple ships Final Cut Server

Apple's tool for media management, Final Cut Server, is now available, the company announced Tuesday.

The software application is meant for managing the production of large-scale video projects. Final Cut Server enables automatic cataloging, viewing, and annotating of video, and is available for both the Mac and PC. It is integrated with Apple's video-editing software, Final Cut Studio.

The product was announced a year ago, was originally supposed to ship last summer, but was delayed.

Final Cut Server pricing starts at $999 for one server and 10 licenses, and $1,999 for one server and unlimited licenses.

IBM uses plumbing, watercoolers to chill supercomputer

IBM's latest supercomputer is hooked up to the watercooler.

Big Blue has come out with a new version of its high-end supercomputer, the Power 575, which can provide five times the performance of its predecessor on 40 percent of the power. A fully stocked Power 575 rack contains 448 processing cores.

A substantial part of the decrease in power consumption is due to a water cooling system that brings in chilled water from the outside, runs it through copper plates located above individual processors to absorb heat, and then draws the water out so it can expel the heat … Read more

IBM: i + p = Power

Over the past year or so, IBM has been revamping its Systems and Technology Group (STG) organization in a major way.

We see those changes reflected in a major way with IBM's Power systems announcement Wednesday at its COMMON User Group Conference in Nashville.

Two aspects of the STG reorg are of particular interest here.

The first is the customer aspect. This announcement reflects its venue; COMMON is IBM's midrange user group--which at IBM historically more or less equated to System i (and its iSeries and AS/400 predecessors). However, this announcement pulls in multiple product threads--including blades. … Read more

Score a Compaq Pentium 4 desktop for $100

Step into the Wayback Machine and check out this refurbished Compaq EVO D51S desktop. It's decently equipped: 2GHz Pentium 4 processor, 512MB of RAM, 40GB hard drive, DVD-ROM drive, and Windows XP Home. It even has a floppy drive! Geeks.com price: $99.99.

You'll have to supply the monitor, mouse, and keyboard, and you'll have to live with a case that has a few dings and scratches. (Read the full product description: This is definitely a "used" PC.)

Even so, this could be an ideal machine for young kids, tween/teen students, or a … Read more

Is an unsecured FTP server publicly accessible?

Unlike other areas of the law where doing something in public can land you in a lawsuit (or at least a courtroom with a nice, slightly used orange jumpsuit), sometimes in patent law doing things in public can get you out of a lawsuit.

When a company finds itself in court defending against a patent lawsuit, it will usually assert two major defenses. First, the company will say "I don't practice (or produce) what is claimed in this patent." Second, a defendant in a patent lawsuit will also attempt to "invalidate" the claims of the patent by showing that "prior art" described the claims in the patent prior to the application date of the patent. While this defense can take multiple forms (see, for example, 35 U.S.C. ? 102 ), a defendant must often show that the prior art relied upon was in fact publicly known or publicly used. So now its time for a pop quiz--which one of three options would you consider not being "publicly accessible" for the purposes of United States patent law:

A: The use of a centrifuge in a secure laboratory at the National Institute for Health;

B: The posting of a paper on an unsecured FTP server; or

C: Indexing a dissertation in a paper file and placing it on a shelf...in Germany.

Technical details remain light in supermarket data breach

Details remain sketchy regarding Monday's announcement of 4.2 million credit card and debit cards exposed at a Maine-based supermarket chain. However, public comments made by Ronald Hodge, CEO of Hannaford Supermarkets, suggest that even with recent improvements in payment card transaction security, there may be holes.

The standards organization, PCI Security Standards International, was founded by American Express, Discover Financial Services, JCB, MasterCard Worldwide, and Visa International. In October 2007, they implemented the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which includes, among other things, network specifications. Dr. Neal Krawetz of Hacker Factor Solutions said that PCI DSS allows … Read more

Microsoft releases 'near final' hypervisor for Windows Server

Microsoft said Wednesday that the first release candidate of its Hyper-V hypervisor will be available for download.

This release will be the near-final code of the virtualization utility that Microsoft is building into Windows Server 2008. The final version will be available in August, according to Microsoft.

Microsoft released the beta of Hyper-V late last year, and it was also included with Windows Server 2008 when that software was launched last month.

The company has had to strip out some of the virtualization features it had originally planned in order to get a product to market this year and take … Read more