The Cloud Computing Channel is brought to you by ZT Systems
-
Open Cirrus Cloud Expands to Carnegie Mellon
February 23rd, 2010 : Linda LeungCarnegie Mellon University has become the latest research institution to host a site as part of Open Cirrus, the global cloud testbed created by HP, Intel, and Yahoo to provide researchers with access to an open source cloud platform for honing their development skills.
To become a testbed or Open Cirrus Center of Excellence, each participating institution is required to offer at least 1,000 cores to the cloud. There are 10 testbeds including facilities at HP Labs, Intel Research and Yahoo, as well as the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Intel donated to CMU some 148 high-end systems and an undisclosed amount of funds to invest in other equipment to enable the university to become a testbed. Each Intel system features two quad core CPUs and 16GB of main memory. Seventy eight of the machines house four 1TB disks. All in all, Carnegie Mellon’s Open Cirrus infrastructure has 159 servers and 1,165 processing cores, offering 2.4TB of memory and almost 900TB of storage.
Read More » -
How Intel Manages 100,000 Servers
February 17th, 2010 : Rich Miller
A look at the dense server configurations in one of the 97 data centers operated by Intel Corp, which runs more than 100,00 servers.
Chipmaker Intel has one of the largest data center management challenges on earth, with more than 100,000 servers housed in 97 data centers around the globe. About 70 percent of those servers support Intel staffers designing microprocessors, with the remainder dedicated to Intel’s office, IT and web operations. The company manages more than 18 petabytes of primary and secondary storage.
Those are just some of the data points Intel (INTC) shares in an interactive overview of its data center operations on its web site, which provides a series of videos to highlight different elements of its data center strategy.
Major Consolidation In Progress
Read More »
Intel’s infrastructure won’t be this expansive for long. The company is several years into a massive data center consolidation that has already retired about 35 older facilities, and eventually hopes to compress its entire infrastructure into eight large, highly-efficient facilities. -
-
Roundup: 2010 Mobile World Congress
February 16th, 2010 : John RathThe 2010 Mobile World Congress kicked off Monday in Barcelona, Spain and features a key note from Google Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt, a concert from Duran Duran and a number of big announcements from big players in the industry.
Microsoft starts from scratch
In the first public preview, Microsoft (MSFT) unveiled Windows Phone 7 Series Monday at Mobile World Congress. The new mobile OS is a very ambitious re-branding of Windows Mobile and an agreed much overdue release. Gadget sites Engadget and Gizmodo both have glowing reviews and pictures of the new interface and explain how Microsoft threw out everything from the old OS, started over, and produced a game-changing phone operating system that will give the Android phone and iPhone a run for the money. Gizmodo actually calls the Outlook application on phone “stunning” and continues to elaborate on the big picture, where Microsoft brings together different services like Zune, Xbox and Bing in a way that “actually makes sense and just works.” The Windows Phone 7 Series isn’t due to be released until the 2010 holidays.Intel and Nokia merge platforms
In another big announcement at Mobile Congress World, Intel (INTC) and Nokia (NOK) announced they would merge their popular Moblin and Maemo software platforms into an open software platform called MeeGo. Hosted by the Linux Foundation MeeGo will be Linux-based and run on multiple hardware platforms and across devices such as netbooks, tablets, mediaphones, connected TVs and in-vehicle infotainment systems. “Our vision for seamlessly communicating between computing devices from the home, auto, office or your pocket is taking a big step forward today with the introduction of MeeGo,” said Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini. People are able to keep their favorite mobile applications when changing devices, since MeeGo runs on multiple device types. The first release of MeeGo is targeted for the second quarter of this year with MeeGo-based devices from Nokia and other manufacturers expected later this year. Other resources about MeeGo including the press conference replay from Barcelona can be found here.Juniper’s new framework for mobility solutions
Juniper (JNPR) hit the ground running at Mobile World Congress, unleashing a flurry of press releases regarding new software, solutions and partners to transform the experience and economics of mobility. The new mobility framework marries partner applications with Juniper MX 3D Series Universal Edge Routers and SRX Series Services Gateways to help mobile operators deploy truly open and secure mobile networks. At the conference Juniper announced Junos ready software, Junos Pulse for Smartphones, Juniper Mobile Secure, Juniper Traffice Direct, Juniper Media Flow and Juniper Mobile Core Evolution. “Mobile operators need their networking vendors to stop building new one-off boxes, band-aids and bolt-ons to handle mobile data traffic. They need networking vendors with real innovation that can offer immediate TCO relief, unmatched scale for the future, built-in security and open platforms to monetize new services,” said Kim Perdikou, executive vice president, Office of the CEO, Juniper. Juniper also announced that Sprint has selected them to secure their mobile data network infrastructure. Sprint will use Juniper SRX Series Gateways to securely deliver mobile data services. Juniper also joined the IBM Service Provider Delivery Environment Framework Partner Program and jointly announced security solutions for fixed and mobile networks with Nokia Siemens.The Mobile World Congress runs through February 18 and mobileworldlive.com has been setup for announcements and live broadcasts.
Read More » -
Roundup: Internap, Rackspace, Joyent, Isilon
November 18th, 2009 : John RathHere’s a roundup of news announcements from the data center and hosting industry:
- Internap Enhances CDN for High Quality Video. On Tuesday Internap Network Services announced enhancements to its content delivery network (CDN) offering, including new ease-of-use functions and automation of key CDN capabilities. A comScore Video Metrix service poll showed that in September 2009 more than 84.8% of the total U.S. Internet audience watched online video. Version 5.0 of Internap’s CDN MediaConsole includes an integrated rule-based transcoding that automatically converts video into the ideal formats for a broad range of devices. It also performs a continuous bitrate adjustment that dynamically adapts video streams based on the capabilities and bandwidth of the network. Internap is showcasing its CDN offering at the Streaming Media West conference November 17-19.
- Rackspace Launches Cloud Drive. Rackspace (RAX) announced a set of new product offerings that help businesses move their IT applications into the cloud. New products include Cloud Drive, Server Backup, and an upcoming release of Hosted Microsoft SharePoint. The new cloud products mark an aggressive move by Rackspace to expand into collaboration and backup applications and compete in the software-as-a-service market. Rackspace Cloud Drive is a cloud-based, online file storage application that allows individuals and teams to store, share and backup files. Rackspace Server Backup is a cloud-based, online server backup application designed to protect file server data. Both Server Backup and Cloud Drive are powered by technology from Jungle Disk, a Rackspace subsidiary acquired in 2008.
-
IDF Keynote: Sean Maloney on Nehalem-EX
September 23rd, 2009 : Rich MillerIn yesterday’s keynote at the Intel Developer Forum, Sean Maloney of the Intel Architecture Group discussed the improvements seen for the next-generation “Nehalem-EX” server processor. The Nehalem-EX will feature up to eight cores inside a single chip, supporting 16 threads and 24MB of cache. In this video, Maloney describes what Nehalem-EX may mean for the data center and HPC computing, and offers a look at new hardware, incuding an IBM BladeCenter EX and a 4-socket Nehalem EX in a 1U form factor from SuperMicro. This video runs about 5 minutes.
For more news from Intel, visit our Intel Channel. For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.
Read More » -
Video Tour: Intel’s High-Density Data Center
September 10th, 2009 : Rich MillerIntel has provided some really interesting video tours of its data centers. Last year we highlighted a tour of a former silicon chip fabrication facility that Intel converted into a high-density data center. Today we present a video tour of a two-story “greenfield” (new construction) data center featuring a highly efficient design. Intel data center manager Neal Smith walks us through some the facility, which houses 220 racks of gear and is managed remotely, with only a security guard on site. The equipment area features a fully-contained hot aisle and cabinets of blade servers with power densities of 13kW to 16kW per cabinet. This video runs about 5 minutes, 30 seconds.
For additional video, check out our DCK video archive and the Data Center Videos channel on YouTube.
Read More » -
Intel Launches Data Center Manager Software
May 1st, 2009 : Rich Miller
A diagram illustrating an implementation of Intel Power Manager.
Power usage has become a key priority for data center operators, who are assessing the best hardware and software options to track and manage the efficiency of their facilities. Yesterday Intel (INTC) became the latest tech titan to roll out an energy-focused offering, announcing Intel Data Center Manager, a software development kit that helps monitor and manage data center power consumption on servers using the new Intel Xeon 5500 processors. Data Center Manager uses Power Node Manager, a power management policy engine embedded in Xeon 5500 server chipsets, to collect and analyze energy usage data, set up alerts for power and thermal events, and set policies on power capping and workload management.
Intel tested Data Center Manager last year in a proof-of-concept installation at the Chinese search engine Baidu, which was experiencing power capacity challenges in leased third-party data center space. Baidu’s rack-level power constraints limited it to just 5 2U servers in each 42U rack. By using Data Center Manager to track and cap power usage, Baidu was able to put three additional 2U servers in each rack, for a total of 8 – providing 60 percent more capacity. Intel has a white paper detailing its work with Baidu.
For more information, see coverage at CIO.com and a blog post from Intel’s Jackson He with an in-depth look at the energy management features of the Xeon 5500.
Read More » -
Intel Xeon 5500 Focuses on Power Savings
March 31st, 2009 : Rich Miller
Patrick Gelsinger, Intel senior vice president, holds up a wafer containing the new Intel Xeon 5500 series processors.
Intel’s news Xeon 5500 processor (Nehalem EP) was launched yesterday, and touted as a historic leap forward in power and energy efficiency. Each processor features four cores and automated energy efficiency enhancements, providing users with greater control of their energy expenditures. Intel says the Xeon 5500 features a processor idle power level of only 10 watts, enabling a 50 percent reduction in system idle power compared to the previous generation. New integrated power gates allow idle cores to power down independently.
The Intel Xeon processor 5500 series also offers up to 15 automated operating states, allowing significant improvements in chip power management by adjusting system power consumption based on real-time throughput. Intel says these features can allow customers who replace older Intel Xeon servers with the 5500 series to recoup their costs in as little as 8 months.
Here’s our roundup of analysis and commentary about the Xeon 500 launch:
- Why You Should Care About Intel’s New Server Chip: A high-level overview from GigaOm, offering three areas where Nehalem changes the game.
- Intel Showcases ‘Transformational’ Nehalem: The Register notes the energy advances, but also the fact that Intel has been slow to focus on low-power chips. “The Nehalem EP chip is exactly the high-volume, high-performance, energy-efficient chip that should have been launched years ago, not today,” writes Timothy Morgan.
- At VentureBeat, Dean Takahashi notes that the Xeon 5500 is the latest round in the processor wars between Intel and AMD, which has its Istanbul chips with six cores coming later this year, and plans to launch a 12-core server chip in 2010.
-
HP, Intel, Yahoo Team on Cloud Testbed
July 29th, 2008 : Rich MillerHP, Intel Corp. and Yahoo have created a global, multi-data center test bed for cloud computing research and development, the companies said today. The initiative is designed to provide researchers with access to an open source cloud platform for honing their development skills. The new platform will compete with a similar cloud testbed introduced by Google and IBM.
Both efforts are designed to provide researchers and universities with easy access to a cloud platform on which they can develop the skills required to write and support the cloud applications of the future.
The three tech giants are partnering with three universities – the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany – along with the National Science Foundation.
The testbed will initially consist of six “centers of excellence,” each hosting a cloud computing infrastructure running on HP hardware and between 1,000 to 4,000 Intel processor cores. The six centers – housed at IDA facilities, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Steinbuch Centre for Computing of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, HP Labs, Intel Research and Yahoo – will be fully operational later this year.
Read More »
