HP Server-Storage Appliance Targets SMBs
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HP is the latest to offer a server-storage product targeted to small- to mid-size businesses.
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Iomega on Friday introduced a new network-attached storage appliance for Windows networks in small and midsized businesses.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-Packard's HP Labs research center has developed a new approach to cooling datacenters by adjusting air conditioning systems to changing server loads more precisely than what's available now. HP says its Dynamic Smart Cooling (DSC) technology, which the company claims can deliver 20 percent to 45 percent savings in cooling energy costs, depending on the size of the datacenter, will be available in mid-2007. DSC involves placing several heat sensors on racks of servers throughout the datacenter, which send information on changes in temperature to a central monitoring system. As the sensors detect an increase in a server's temperature, a signal is sent to the nearest of several air conditioning units to throttle up to cool that server. When the server cools down because it's not doing as much computing, the air conditioner throttles down. HP, which firstÂ introduced the concept of Dynamic Smart CoolingÂ in 2003, revealed a number of additional program details Tuesday. It announced creation of a Data Center Solution Builder program with design partners that will work with HP to implement a DSC solution, which can be retrofitted into an existing datacenter. HP has already started trials of the technology is going to implement DSC in new datacenters for its own operations at six U.S. locations. Also, Pacific Gas & Electric, the power utility serving Northern California, will make rebates available to datacenters that deploy DSC, said Mark Bramfitt, of PG&E. DSC is a way of addressing an energy consumption problem datacenters didn't have just five years ago, said Chandrakant Patel, an HP Fellow and one of the system designers. "Five years ago, no one got fired for wasting energy but they did get fired if the server went down," Patel said. But today, energy consumption is an issue and Dynamic Smart Cooling technology addresses datacenter management concerns about the operating expense of powering and cooling, said Paul Perez, vice president of HP's Technology Solutions Group. At a demonstration of the technology for media Tuesday at HP Labs in Palo Alto, California, journalists could see that the datacenter in a nearby room was using 117 kilowatts of electricity to stay cool. But when the DSC system kicked in, consumption dropped to 72 kilowatts. Power consumption is, on average, 40 percent of the operating expense of running a datacenter, Perez said, citing industry research. And 60 percent to 70 percent of that energy expense goes to cooling the servers, he said. Other technology companies areÂ working on ways to keep datacenters cool, said Jonathan Eunice, founder and principal advisor at Illuminata, an IT research firm. Chip makers like Intel and Advanced Micro Devices are developingÂ processors that run coolerÂ than they have in the past, Eunice said. HP's chief competitor, IBM, is trying toÂ address thermal issuesÂ on a system level. "IBM does have its services arm with the ability to send out heating experts to map the datacenter hot spots and advise about efficiencies," said Eunice. IBM also offers a product called Power Executive that measures and modulates power consumption on a wide basis. Â ADVERTISEMENTNEW IT SERVICES FROM IBM: EASIER TO BUY AND IMPLEMENTDiscover a simpler, more cost-effective way to get the solutions your company needs to grow more flexible and efficient.
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(InfoWorld) - MicrosoftÂ has released the second beta of a new server aimed at giving users a way to connect and manage Windows Vista PCs, devices, and printers in their homes. Beta 2 of Windows Home Server, which already has been tested by more than 1,000 Microsoft employees, software and hardware partners, is now available, Microsoft said. The company soon plans to extend the product's beta program, and those who want to test beta 2 of the OS can sign up at this Web site. Microsoft also unveiled the Windows Home Server Blog, which will track the progress of the software's development, oin Monday. Additionally, Charlie Kinder, Microsoft general manager of Windows Home Server, also maintains a blog where he will post about the product. Microsoft introduced Windows Home ServerÂ at theÂ Consumer Electronics Show in Las VegasÂ in January. Hewlett-Packard will have the first server built on the OS, a product called the HP MediaSmart Server, later this year. Currently, Microsoft only plans to make Windows Home Server available through OEMs, not sell it directly to consumers.
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Iomega on Friday introduced a new network-attached storage appliance for Windows networks in small and midsized businesses. The Iomega NAS 400r incorporates Serial ATA drives and uses Microsoft&#39;s Windows Storage Server 2003 technology.
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard&#160;introduced an entry-level rack server in India on Thursday, part of its strategy to design lower-cost servers specifically for Asian countries.
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Vendor says it&#39;s developing standards-based servers in various form factors for the telecom market. By Darrell Dunn. Hewlett-Packard on Thursday unveiled plans to create a portfolio of products and services
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HP is offering a 16GB drive with its dc7800 PC, which it said will greatly reduce the computer's energy consumption, start-up time and application load and execute much faster when disk access is needed.
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(Source: Computerworld)  When it comes to storage systems, small and medium-sized businesses have had their share of challenges. Even when some storage vendors have tried to address the unique needs of the SMBs, it has been with underpowered versions of their enterprise-class products. The advent of unified network storage, exemplified by the DellTM PowerVaultTM NX1950, has dramatically altered the SMB landscape by combining iSCSI and NAS capabilities in a single, highly functional package that delivers simplified management and enhanced scalability at a cost-efficient price point.
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Virtualised SAN and NAS bid for your storage grid
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With the near-ubiquity of network architecture as a fundamental part of nearly all computing and digital communications, it was only a matter of time before Microsoft would develop a SKU of Windows Server directed toward the consumer.  BetaNews spoke with Windows Home Server group product manager Joel Sider, in an effort to pin down how thoroughly Microsoft has actually planned for the repercussions of marketing Windows Server for the home user.
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(InfoWorld) - Hewlett-PackardÂ is introducing a long-awaited upgrade to its Unix operating systemÂ and launching new, affordable Integrity servers in a direct challenge to rival products from IBM and Sun Microsystems. HP Thursday is introducing an Integrity rack server with a starting price below $5,000 and an Integrity blade server below $4,000. Integrity servers, powered by Intel's Itanium processors, have been traditionally sold as high-end products used for mission-critical business applications. By offering Integrity servers at these prices, HP is aiming at entry-level servers from Sun, HP executives said. "We believe, with our entry class servers, it's very much targeted at taking that away," said Nick van der Zweep, director of Business Critical Systems at HP. "We think Sun's in a vulnerable position in the entry class right now." The new HP-UX 11i v3 features enhanced virtualization management capabilities, which should give it an advantage over IBM, said van der Zweep. IBM often touts its legacy in virtualization dating back to its mainframe computers, but van der Zweep said HP has been more adept at bringing virtualization to the server platform. The Unix operating system is a standards-based OS, but IBM, HP and Sun each add unique features to differentiate their products. HP has encountered delays in the development of HP-UX v3, which was originally scheduled for release as far back as late 2004. But HP, instead, focused on adding new features as they became available to HP-UX 11i v2 rather than hold them for version 3. "HP has deliberately not made this a 'must upgrade to today' release," said Gordon Haff, senior analyst at the research firm Illuminata. "The case here is that upgrade when you're ready." HP-UX 11i v3, shipping now at a list price of $150 per core, does have enhanced features over v2, such as running software applications 20 percent to as 30 percent faster than on version 2, HP claims. Notably, it runs Java applications faster, another dig at Sun, which developed the Java programming language. "It's not really clear what's new here," said Tom Goguen, vice president of Sun's Unix operating system, Solaris. Solaris 10 is a free download that can run on 735 different brands of servers, including HP, while HP-UX only runs on HP servers, Goguen said. Solaris 10 already includes a virtualization manager called Containers, and has security features he considers "second to none." HP, IBM, and Sun are close competitors in the $17 billion Unix server market and, combined, control about 80 percent of it, said Jean Bozman, an analyst at IDC Research. "Every time there is a major Unix bid out there from the government or some big business, all three of them are in there pitching their products and it gets very intense at times," said Bozman. However, what makes HP's latest Unix release significant is that HP actually went into the operating system kernel and made changes that are part of the reason they achieved an increase in application performance, she said. The introduction of the new $4,931 rx2660 rack server, shipping now, and the $3,827 BL860c blade server, shipping in March, should also put to rest questions about the viability of the Itanium processor platform, said Markus Berber, HP's Integrity Blades Strategist. Itanium has been slow to catch on in the market because relatively few software products were certified to run on it. Today, 10,500 applications can run on Itanium, more than double the amount of just a year ago, said Berber. "It is self evident that there are many OEMs who are voting with their dollars or yen or Deutsche marks or French francs in support of [Itanium]," he said.
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InfoWorld - Hewlett-Packard plans to offer solid-state drives (SSDs) as an option in all professional series laptop PCs starting from next month because the drives operate faster, conserve battery life, and are more durable than hard disk drives.
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Hewlett-Packard says it is putting 300GB hard drives into storage devices and servers, with more products in October.
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'Shorty' kicks blades out of the data center and onto the floor The mid-market push has definitely been heating up for tech vendors in recent weeks. We've already seen Dell, IBM and Hitachi touting their simplified server and storage lines with SMB-aimed gear, and frankly, we're starting to recite the hard sell for companies with limited budgets and expertise in our sleep.â¦
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Hewlett-Packard is beefing up its Integrity BladeSystems with a new model released last week thatâs intended to handle memory and CPU intensive applications.
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Cisco's Linksys division introduced its first network-attached storage and stackable switches for SMBs. The NAS products are available with an optional redundant power supply unit to keep the NAS units running in case of a power outage, as well as standard on-disk encryption.