In June, private cloud infrastructure provider ZeroStack hired David Greene as its new CEO. For those of you who have followed the networking space closely, you may recognize Greene as the chief marketing officer of a couple of companies that were pioneers in their respective industries. Most recently, he was at Aerohive, one of the first Wi-Fi vendors to embrace a completely controller-less model.Prior to that, Greene was CMO of Riverbed. Riverbed certainly wasn’t the first WAN optimization vendor, but the company was responsible for evangelizing it and making it a household term (at least among IT circles).+ Also on Network World: Public vs. private cloud: Why the public cloud is a real threat to security +
Now, Greene is trying to catch another wave, as ZeroStack is one of the first companies to offer an easy-to-deploy solution that enables businesses to quickly deploy a private cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google has launched a new service called Google Cloud Interconnect Dedicated that allows companies to directly connect their data center network to its public cloud.The company already has an interconnect service, which has been renamed Carrier Peering, where co-location provider or carrier customers can buy private links to Google’s cloud. Here the third party has been eliminated, and the link is direct.+ Also on Network World: Deep dive on AWS vs. Azure vs. Google cloud storage options +
Interconnect Dedicated service goes much further than Google’s Cloud VPN service. While that created a secure tunnel to Google’s cloud, those connections were limited to 3 Gbps, and traffic traveled over the public internet. Interconnect Dedicated offers a direct line to Google’s network with up to 80 Gbps in bandwidth, which is far more useful for moving large amounts of data.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Using the sky as a free heat sink could be a solution to an impending energy crunch caused by increased data use. More data generated in the future will require evermore electricity-intensive cooling — the data centers will be getting bigger.Researchers at Stanford University think they have a solution to cooling creep. They say the way to reel in the cost of getting buildings cold enough for all the servers is to augment land-based air conditioning by sending excess heat into space and chilling it there.+ Also on Network World: 9 tips to turn your data center green +
The scientists say cost savings will be in the order of 21 percent through a system they’ve been working on, and up to 70 percent, theoretically, by combining the kit with other, newer radiant systems, according to an article in IEEE Spectrum this week.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the world of technology, August is normally a fairly quiet month, and overall it was—but not in the realm of hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI).Around mid-August, Cisco finally announced the long overdue acquisition of Springpath, indicating it sees a strong potential upside in this market. Also in August, VMware held its annual user event, VMworld, and at the event it and its closest technology partner, Dell EMC, made a significant amount of news in the area of HCI. Historically, HCI has been used for desktop virtualization, but recently the uses cases have expanded into other business critical areas. And last week, Dell EMC and VMware announced new joint solutions. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
After years of struggle and fading recognition, it seems the end is finally here for Solaris and Sparc, the Unix operating system and RISC processor designed and championed by Sun Microsystems and inherited by Oracle in 2010.In a move that will win it no PR points, Oracle sent out recorded telephone messages to employees who were let go on the Friday before the Labor Day weekend. Yes, firing by voice mail. Classy.The exact number is being debated, but talk on one message board puts it at 2,500. That’s both Solaris and Sparc engineers. The workers affected are primarily in the Santa Clara area, in a former Sun office not even a mile from Intel’s headquarters, but they are in three other states and India as well. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Ubuntu is one of the most popular versions of Linux, with a very substantial market base, especially in the cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
If you’re looking for a free Linux Server that gives you access to the latest Linux features as they become available without waiting for a major version release, then Fedora Server 26 could be for you.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a multi-purpose server that has long been popular with Internet Service Providers for various Web-based workloads, but it’s well suited for enterprises as well, and even small businesses.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
If you need comprehensive support, the comfort of having a well-established Linux vendor on your side and you have the budget to pay for it, then you should give Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.4 a careful look.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Oracle Linux has been around for more than 10 years, but has been gaining market share and the company says it has over 14,000 customers world-wide.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Ubuntu is one of the most popular versions of Linux, with a very substantial market base, especially in the cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here(Insider Story)
Recently I made the (unfortunate) decision to eat at a particular fast-food establishment. For the sake of this story, let’s call it Shmurger Shming.I didn’t eat at The Shming because the food tastes amazing. Nor did I choose to ingest those Shmurgers because I thought it was, in any way, healthy for me. In fact, I knew full well that eating them would cause not insignificant amounts of gastronomical distress.Which begs the question: Why, on this green Earth, would I make that decision? Why would I do that to myself?Simple. It was convenient, there was very little up-front investment (in time and money), and it was food. Technically. In other words, I was lazy.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
While the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT) has many investors and innovators enamored with hardware development so they can churn out millions of their own IoT-connected devices, wise industry insiders are uncovering the true IoT goldmine: data exchange services. Data sharing, exchanging and selling is rapidly coming to define the IoT market more than anything else, and investors are quickly hopping on board to cash in on this new phenomenon.So how exactly are the industry leaders of tomorrow tapping into data exchange services to fuel their success? How will recent developments in data exchange services impact IoT development, and what steps should sensible IoT developers take now to capitalize on them?To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Almost two-thirds of organizations surveyed say recruiting for jobs in data center and server management is becoming increasingly difficult because of the skills needed, both in traditional servers and converged infrastructure.The findings come from a worldwide survey by 451 Research for its Voice of the Enterprise: Servers and Converged Infrastructure, Organizational Dynamics study (registration required). It found that IT shops have concerns about the long-term costs of using public cloud, and that is causing many IT shops to pull back on their cloud movement and even expand on their on-premises infrastructure.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
VMworld 2017Image by Thinkstock/VMwareVMworld 2017 is underway in Las Vegas, where IT pros are converging to learn about the latest in enterprise cloud, virtualization, security, and software-defined data center technologies. Here are some of the product highlights on display at the show.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
(In the run-up to VMWorld this week, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger spoke to IDG Enterprise Editor-in-Chief Eric Knorr about announcements at the conference, the future of the company and his five-year tenure at the helm. This is a summary of some of the highlights of that interview.)As VMware opens up its user conference this week in Las Vegas, the company’s CEO Pat Gelsinger says it is making significant announcements about cloud integration and security.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
A survey has found that on-premises data centers are the lowest priority for investment by IT organizations, a reflection of the growing impact of cloud infrastructure and services. For Computer Economics’ annual IT Spending and Staffing Benchmarks report, the organization surveyed more than 200 IT organizations over the first half of this year. It noted that top-line findings show that IT organizations continue on a path of “steady but modest growth in operational budgets while capital budgets and hiring are essentially flat.”+ Also on Network World: IT budgets shift away from capital expenses thanks to the cloud +
Now, that’s not to say data center spending will be cut. It’s just that it won’t get the priority for increased spending and is being reduced. IT capital spending now accounts for only 18% of total IT spending, compared to 24% in 2013. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If it seems your IT team has more data to manage than ever before, you’re not mistaken. Just about every enterprise is trying to determine how to manage more data growth without scaling budget or staff as well.451 Research analyst Henry Baltazar emphasized this trend in a recent report, noting, “The increasing relevancy of data management is in parallel with the ongoing growth of the sheer volume of data that enterprises must deal with.” The good news is that there are many approaches IT can take to ease the challenges of data growth. Let's take a look at four steps IT can use to make a big impact.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The fastest of the fastImage by ThinkstockYes, your new gaming PC that supports VR headsets is impressively fast. But can it simulate the entire universe over millions of years? Shed light on the forces that cause destructive summer storms in Europe? Ensure the safety and reliability of nuclear weapons? We didn’t think so; those are jobs for supercomputers.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Docker announced the first major update to its flagship Docker Enterprise Edition 17.06, with a clear eye to on-premises data centers and DevOps. Docker rolled out the rebranded Docker EE in March, based on what was previously known as the Docker Commercially Supported and Docker Datacenter products. With that launch, Docker added the ability to port legacy apps to containers without having to modify the code.The major new feature of this update — which seems to borrow from Microsoft’s year/month naming convention for Windows 10 updates — is support for IBM z Systems mainframes running Linux. Now containerized apps can be run on a mainframe, with all of the scale and uptime reliability it brings, and they run with no modifications necessary.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here