News flash: Mainframes still aren't dead.On the contrary, mainframe use is increasing, and not to run COBOL, either. Mainframes are being eyed for modern technologies including blockchain and containers.A survey of 153 IT decision makers found that 50% of organizations will continue with the mainframe and increase its use over the next two years, while just 5% plan to decrease or remove mainframe activity. The survey was conducted by Forrester Research and commissioned by Ensono, a hybrid IT services provider, and Wipro Limited, a global IT consulting services company.
READ MORE: Data center workloads become more complex despite promises to the contraryTo read this article in full, please click here
News flash: Mainframes still aren't dead.On the contrary, mainframe use is increasing, and not to run COBOL, either. Mainframes are being eyed for modern technologies including blockchain and containers.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
A survey of 153 IT decision makers found that 50% of organizations will continue with the mainframe and increase its use over the next two years, while just 5% plan to decrease or remove mainframe activity. The survey was conducted by Forrester Research and commissioned by Ensono, a hybrid IT services provider, and Wipro Limited, a global IT consulting services company.To read this article in full, please click here
Software skills are set to play a more prominent role in Cisco’s network engineering curriculum. The company is launching a new coding-focused certification track, as well as giving its existing certifications a major revamp to address software-defined networking (SDN), automation, the Internet of Things, and other emerging technologies that are changing the job requirements for today’s network professionals. "They’re not trying to turn network folks into developers, but they are certainly trying to make it easier for us to do our job," says Dan Groscost, solutions architect at Computer Design & Integration, an IT services firm based in New York, N.Y. Groscost holds a Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP) certification, and he’s in the final stages of his Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE) Route/Switch certification. To read this article in full, please click here
VMware has taken another step to integrate its virtual kingdom with Amazon Web Services' world with an on-premise service that will let customers automate database provisioning and management. The package, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) on VMware is available now for customers running VMware vSphere 6.5 or later and supports Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL. Other DBs will be supported in the future, the companies said.To read this article in full, please click here
VMware has taken another step to integrate its virtual kingdom with Amazon Web Services' world with an on-premise service that will let customers automate database provisioning and management. The package, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) on VMware is available now for customers running VMware vSphere 6.5 or later and supports Microsoft SQL Server, PostgreSQL, and MySQL. Other DBs will be supported in the future, the companies said.To read this article in full, please click here
HPE and Dell EMC get all the attention when it comes to storage, but Hitachi Vantara sure is making a strong declaration with its new all-flash high performance storage system.The Virtual Storage Platform 5000, known by its codename Project Jupiter, was introduced during the opening keynote of the Hitachi Next 2019 conference, held last week in Las Vegas. Dan McConnell, senior vice president of product management for enterprise infrastructure at Hitachi Vantara, declared it the fastest NVMe array on the planet.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco’s network certification lineup is set for a major overhaul. The company is adding a new coding-focused track to its offerings, and it's continuing to streamline its core designations: Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA), Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP), and Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert (CCIE). To read this article in full, please click here(Insider Story)
Concern over escalating energy costs is among reasons liquid-cooling solutions could gain traction in the data-center.Schneider Electric, a major energy-management specialist, this month announced refreshed impetus to a collaboration conceived in 2014 with liquid-cooling specialists Iceotope. Now, technology solutions company Avnet has been brought into that collaboration.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters.]
The three companies will develop chassis-level immersive liquid cooling for data centers, Schneider Electric says in a press release.Liquid-cooling systems submerge server components in a dielectric fluid as opposed to air-cooled systems which create ambient cooled air.To read this article in full, please click here
Data-hungry technology trends such as IoT, smart vehicles, drone deliveries, smart cities and Industry 4.0 are increasing the demand for fast, always-on edge computing. One solution that has emerged to bring the network closer to the applications generating and end users consuming that data is the micro data center.The micro data center sector is a new space filled with more noise than signal. If you go hunting for a micro data center for your business you’ll find everything from suitcase-sized computing stacks that replace a server closet to modular enclosures delivered by semi-trucks to larger units that reside at the foot of cell towers to dedicated edge data centers with standardized designs that can spring up wherever there’s demand and where real estate or access rights are available, including easements, rooftops and industrial sites.To read this article in full, please click here
Data-hungry technology trends such as IoT, smart vehicles, drone deliveries, smart cities and Industry 4.0 are increasing the demand for fast, always-on edge computing. One solution that has emerged to bring the network closer to the applications generating and end users consuming that data is the micro data center.The micro data center sector is a new space filled with more noise than signal. If you go hunting for a micro data center for your business you’ll find everything from suitcase-sized computing stacks that replace a server closet to modular enclosures delivered by semi-trucks to larger units that reside at the foot of cell towers to dedicated edge data centers with standardized designs that can spring up wherever there’s demand and where real estate or access rights are available, including easements, rooftops and industrial sites.To read this article in full, please click here
Nutanix announced the general availability of its integrated private cloud as-a-service solution with Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), as well as a new integration with the popular IT management platform ServiceNow.Nutanix’s strategy has been to integrate its hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) software with all of the big server-hardware vendors in addition to selling its own hardware appliances. Nutanix shared the news at its .NEXT conference in Copenhagen.HPE’s services are sold under the GreenLake brand, its metered on-premises service meant to counter the allure of the cloud. Customers can get ProLiant hardware under GreenLake without massive upfront acquisition costs and pay only for their use of the hardware.To read this article in full, please click here
There was an old joke: "To err is human, but to really foul up you need a computer." Now it seems the reverse is true. The reliability of data center equipment is vastly improved but the humans running them have not kept up and it's a threat to uptime.The Uptime Institute has surveyed thousands of IT professionals throughout the year on outages and said the vast majority of data center failures are caused by human error, from 70 percent to 75 percent.[Get regularly scheduled insights by signing up for Network World newsletters. ]
And some of them are severe. It found more than 30 percent of IT service and data center operators experienced downtime that they called a “severe degradation of service” over the last year, with 10 percent of the 2019 respondents reporting that their most recent incident cost more than $1 million.To read this article in full, please click here
Floor space is often at a premium in a cramped data center, and Schneider Electric believes it has a fix for that: a wall-mounted server rack.The EcoStruxure Micro Data Center Wall Mount is a 6U design, meaning it has the capacity of six rack units. Schneider is pushing its space-saving option as an edge solution. The company's EcoStruxure IT Expert remote management and vulnerability assessment service will be available for the wall-mount units, even when installed in non-secured edge locations.
READ MORE: Micro-modular data centers set to multiplyTo read this article in full, please click here
In today's data-driven world, high performance computing (HPC) is emerging as the go-to platform for enterprises looking to gain deep insights into areas as diverse as genomics, computational chemistry, financial risk modeling and seismic imaging. Initially embraced by research scientists who needed to perform complex mathematical calculations, HPC is now gaining the attention of a wider number of enterprises spanning an array of fields."Environments that thrive on the collection, analysis and distribution of data – and depend on reliable systems to support streamlined workflow with immense computational power – need HPC," says Dale Brantly, director of systems engineering at Panasas, an HPC data-storage-systems provider.To read this article in full, please click here
At its Memory and Storage Day 2019 in Seoul last week, Intel made several announcements concerning its Optane persistent storage as well as NAND flash capacity.Optane is a new form of non-volatile memory from Intel that has the storage capacity of a solid state drive (SSD) but speed almost equal to DRAM. It sits between memory and storage to act as a large, fast cache. While some come in a PCI Express card design, the predominant design is DRAM memory sticks that plug into the motherboard. And they cost a fortune. A 512GB Optane stick will run you $8,000.See how AI can boost data-center availability and efficiency
Intel announced a new generation of Optane memory codenamed "Alder Stream," which it said has a 50x lower failure rate than 3D NAND and also triples the transfers per second compared to the current generation of Optane on the market today.To read this article in full, please click here
While 3D XPoint memory has been shipping as Optane from Intel for two years, it hasn't found a great deal of traction, but a new server DIMM and an upcoming Micron product release may change that.
While 3D XPoint memory has been shipping as Optane from Intel for two years, it hasn't found a great deal of traction, but a new server DIMM and an upcoming Micron product release may change that.
I've said that colocation and downsizing in favor of the cloud is happening, and the latest research from 451 Research confirms the trend. More than half of global utilized racks will be located at off-premises facilities, such as cloud and colocation sites, by the end of 2024, the company found.As companies get out of data center ownership, hardware will move to colocation sites like Equinix and DRT or cloud providers. The result is the total worldwide data center installed-base growth will see a dip of 0.1% CAGR between 2019-2024, according to the report, but overall total capacity in terms of space, power, and racks will continue to shift toward larger data centers.To read this article in full, please click here
About the only thing harder than building a data center is dismantling one, because the potential for disruption of business is much greater when shutting down a data center than constructing one.The recent decommissioning of the Titan supercomputer at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) reveals just how complicated the process can be. More than 40 people were involved with the project, including staff from ORNL, supercomputer manufacturer Cray, and external subcontractors. Electricians were required to safely shut down the 9 megawatt-capacity system, and Cray staff was on hand to disassemble and recycle Titan’s electronics and its metal components and cabinets. A separate crew handled the cooling system. In the end, 350 tons of equipment and 10,800 pounds of refrigerant were removed from the site.To read this article in full, please click here
Cisco is significantly spreading its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) technology to help customers grow and control hybrid, multicloud and SD-WAN environments.ACI is Cisco’s flagship software-defined networking (SDN) data-center package, but it also delivers the company’s Intent-Based Networking technology, which brings customers the ability to automatically implement network and policy changes on the fly and ensure data delivery.
More about SD-WANTo read this article in full, please click here