Unisys lays out services-led plan for datacenters
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InfoWorld - Unisys announced new servers and a suite of infrastructure management software Tuesday that are aimed at giving it a bigger role to play in customers' datacenters, where it will compete more directly with Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems.
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A Linux developer has come up with a virtualized I/O system that allows competing virtualization software to use one mechanism for handling storage and other virtual devices.
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(InfoWorld) - On Tuesday, Unisys plans to announce an expansion of its relationship with Oracle to move mainframe and Unix deployments over to Linux and SOA. Unisys and Oracle have partnered before, but the new arrangement features joint engineering, sales, and marketing activities to boost system migrations. Featured in the expanded arrangement are specific blueprints that demonstrate how to redeploy applications. For example, the companies have been building a blueprint, or "proof point," on moving from an IBM CICS environment onto Linux running Oracle Fusion middleware and the Oracle 10g database on Unisys ES 7000/one Enterprise Servers. These servers are powered by Intel-based multi-core processors. Also in this particular mix would be Micro Focus MTO (mainframe transaction option) software for CICS compatibility. The blueprints are horizontal and not industry-specific. Critical to the arrangement is use of the Unisys 3D-VE (3D Visible Enterprise) methodology, which features a knowledge-mining and abstraction service. Through the extraction of business rules and policies, users gain a better understanding of their applications. "One of the key areas that's different about our approach compared to some of the others is our story is not just advocating moving the applications over from one platform to another. What we've seen from customers is a desire to understand what the applications do in the first place," said Ali Shadman, Unisys vice president and general manager of open-source solutions, systems, and technology. Through 3D-VE, users can see the impacts of applications changes at the technology and business layers more clearly, Shadman said. The bulk of Unisys's alliance with Oracle will be geared toward moving z/OS and MVS mainframes over Linux. But the company has seen instances of users moving over very large Unix systems, said Shadman. Unisys can move over applications without rewriting code in some instances. Code conversions can be done manually or automatically. There are tools, for example, to convert over Addabas code. Other Oracle products featured in the alliance with Unisys include Oracle applications and the Oracle Enterprise Manager tool for application management as well as Oracle On-Demand outsourcing services.
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OCTOBER 25, 2004  - Preparing for the wave of servers with multicore processors that&#39;s expected to hit data centers over the next year, Microsoft Corp.
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Solar Data Centers, a Web-hosting company, plans to power its servers on electricity generated by solar panels.
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As servers and storage start to merge into unified, virtualized systems, Cisco wants to do the same thing with the networks that connect them.On Monday, the company is set to unveil a datacenter networking platform that eventually could take the place of both the Ethernet switches that link servers as well as the Fibre Channel devices that form storage networks. The Nexus series is designed both to meet exploding demands for bandwidth and energy efficiency within data centers and to simplify the jobs of IT administrators. In the process, it could help give Cisco the central role it seeks in IT infrastructure.Cisco is already a leading player in datacenter networks with its&#160;Catalyst series Ethernet switches&#160;and its MDS storage network platform. Now it hopes to transcend those separate systems using a single, unified switching fabric and the emerging Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) standard. The platform it will use, called Nexus, will be a line of routing switches in chassis, rack-mounted and blade form. The first of these, the Nexus 7000 chassis, will be generally available in the second quarter. Prices will start at $75,000, but a typical configuration will cost about $200,000, according to Jayshree Ullal, senior vice president of Cisco&#39;s Data Center, Switching and Security Technology Group.Mark Drake is looking at the Nexus platform for future-proofing as his company, Health Management Associates, centralizes its data resources. The company runs about 60 hospitals, mostly in the Southeastern U.S. Health Management&#39;s current Catalyst switches are probably enough to handle connectivity needs in its data centers for the next two years, but it&#39;s hard to predict storage and processing requirements beyond that as he looks for the next generation, Drake said.&quot;I&#39;m looking at a little over ten years&#39; capacity,&quot; Drake said. The Nexus line is built to go far beyond the scale of the Catalysts, delivering more than 15Tbps. &quot;The capacity to grow is huge,&quot; he said.Another benefit Drake sees in the Nexus, which he has been told about but hasn&#39;t tested, is ease of management. Health Management is already trying to reduce IT staff costs by consolidating data centers from each hospital to a two main locations. Because the new platform combines storage and data switching along with security in a single switch and management interface, it could further simplify running those datacenters, he said.Initially, Cisco sees the Nexus switches at the core of datacenters that still use separate networks for processing and storage. But as FCoE emerges in storage systems, the Nexus could become the single connectivity platform, Ullal said. Its switching fabric is designed to be lossless, unlike a standard Ethernet system, which tolerates dropped packets, said Tom Edsall, senior vice president and CTO of the data center group. The platform also has built-in security features, including wire-speed encryption and authentication capability for each port.At the heart of the platform is a new, virtualized operating system, NX OS. As with server virtualization, NX OS can turn a Nexus switch into multiple logical switches running totally different processes, Ullal said . For example, one logical switch could handle storage and be managed by storage specialists, while the other links servers and is run by a different staff. A third could be a test platform. All would use a single switching fabric and set of redundant power supplies, which provides benefits in performance, economies of scale, and resiliency, she said. This virtualized architecture eventually will trickle down to other Cisco product lines, according to Ullal.Cisco also has automated some aspects of management with the Nexus line, drawing on best practices it learned partly from its customers, Edsall said. The system is designed to monitor and heal itself in many cases.The network&#39;s role in datacenters is growing as computing and storage are combined and shared, according to industry analysts. It&#39;s now the &quot;orchestrator&quot; of the datacenter, Zeus Kerravala of Yankee Group said. Cisco is the only vendor with both the networking and the computing experience to fulfill that role, he believes. But though many managers of datacenters want to see total virtualization of the datacenter, which could boost efficiency, they aren&#39;t yet ready for it.&quot;We&#39;re just entering the very early stages of the virtual datacenter,&quot; Kerravala said. &quot;This is probably at least two years away.&quot;Cisco is best positioned to build the core of datacenters because the network touches everything in it, according to Ullal, Edsall, and other executives.&quot;For Cisco, it&#39;s very critical that this platform be a launching pad to go further up the IT stack,&quot; said IDC&#39;s Cindy Borovick. However, taking control of datacenters won&#39;t be a walk in the park, she cautioned.&quot;Cisco&#39;s in a very strong position, but there are other very large suppliers that recognize how important the datacenter is and are willing to invest the R&amp;D dollars,&quot; Borovick said, citing IBM and Sun Microsystems. To Cisco&#39;s peril, datacenter administrators are more than willing to buy the best of many vendors rather than standardize on one, because they control the &quot;crown jewels&quot; of the enterprise, she said.
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Dell has announced the availability of virtualisation services.
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Unisys is opening two additional global service delivery centers in India as part of its plan to expand its offshore resources to 6,000 people by 2008.
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Red Hat has announced a partnership with Unisys and the availability of security updates to their Enterprise Linux offering today.
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Oct. 07, 2004. Unisys plans to cut 1,400 jobs, or nearly 4 percent of its workforce, and consolidate some facility space, moves that will help yield annualized savings of about $70 million a year by 2005.
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A proposed standard to enable integration, automation and better management of data center components this week will begin development under the direction of a new standards
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(InfoWorld) - Dell has announced the availability of virtualisation services that aim to help enterprises draw up and implement their virtualisation plans -- and it'll help you choose from its own hardware and software portfolio too of course. The process starts with Dell's Virtualisation Readiness Assessment (VRA). The VRA provides companies with a way to evaluate the impact a virtual infrastructure will have on its data center, according to the company. Dell reckoned that the service indicates the potential financial savings of a virtual infrastructure and explains how a virtualized environment could improve server management, maximize uptime and streamline deployment, and enable a company to simplify and scale operations to meet present and future demands. Dell's partners in the initiative include VMware, Microsoft, Red Hat, and Novell/SuSE. Dell said it provides a number of other virtualisation services including 'health checks', infrastructure and migration workshops, as well as design and implementation services that include proof of concept testing prior to deployment. The aim, said Dell is to provide a single source for a tested and vendor-validated virtualized solution. The Texas company said its services division aims to provide an end-to end virtualisation solution that simplifies IT and helps its customers design, configure, test, migrate, and maintain their systems, as well as reap the benefits of virtualisation. Dell quoted four reference sites for its services. The first is Deelgemeente Ijsselmonde, a local authority in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. The system Dell helped set up helps to deliver key community services to its surrounding population, via a consolidated server environment. The second reference site, said Dell, is Belgian consultancy ARCADIS which has implemented a SAN with a virtualized system that makes disaster recovery simpler and represents a step towards an efficient disaster recovery plan. Third, AZ Vesalius, a hospital in Belgium, is using a virtual server infrastructure to improve scalability to support the hospital's growth, according to Dell. And lastly, when the Marienhaus Klinikum Hospital in Germany needed a dependable IT Infrastructure for its 24/7 medical services, incorporating a back-up strategy for business continuity, it did so with the help of Dell's virtualisation services. "Increasingly, companies are looking for ways to make themselves more agile and competitive as well as create the most efficient IT infrastructure within the organization," said Dell's infrastructure consulting director Francois Argouges. "By managing and scaling resources as needed, organizations can continually refresh their IT infrastructure to support their dynamic business needs. Dell is committed to working with its customers and partners in order to deliver the most enhanced virtualisation solution on the market, backed up by industry leading support and services." The company also announced that it'll be unveiling a Vista migration service in autumn 2007.
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The data center fabric will at a minimum bring together network, server, and storage administrators. Are you ready? Can you handle it?
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Chip maker offers few details about its plans for dual-core server processors.
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Data center management software pulls in more pieces of the infrastructure--virtual machines and virtual networks.
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IBM&#39;s Global Services division has created a practice to help customers with Web services management tools scale to larger service-oriented architectures (SOA).
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New initiatives aim to help businesses create server clusters for high-performance computing tasks.