Walking Man, Into Bar He Goes | whatever | Jokes.com

 

A guy walks into a bar and says, "I think I've heard this one before!"

Walking Man, Into Bar He Goes | whatever | Jokes.com

Get your Outlook under control

I don’t review products too often, but I have to mention the best productivity aid for Microsoft Outlook I’ve found so far: ClearContext.

There are two versions, personal,which is free and professional which is not. I actually sprung for the pro version, it’s so good.

My problem was too many e-mails and too many folders to sort them into. I also needed to track contacts and project tasks and e-mails and appointments and so on. ClearContext does addressed these issues with a relatively simple to use interface and some great automation features.

For example, with a single click (in version 5, currently in beta) any message in my inbox (or a Spam folder) can be sent to the right folder location and categorized. Send a reply and instead of going to the “Sent Items” folder your message is automatically also put into the correct folder and categorized.

In addition, Outlook follow-up and scheduling features are enhanced and simplified, so they’re easier to use.

Task and project management is where ClearContext really shines. Announced features for the next version promise to make it even better. There’s a feature called the Dashboard which displays all your Projects, Tasks and Actions, Appointments and Notifications (from Facebook, Linked-in etc.) In addition to the this global dashboard, double clicking on any project in the project list will open a tab just for that project which gives you a view of messages, Appointments, Contacts (extracted from the messages and linked to your Outlook Contacts lists or from which you can create an Outlook Contact. You can also see all the attachments relating to your projects and your Tasks.

Here’s a screenshot (borrowed from ClearContext’s web site) of the dashboards:

There are lots more features, but the most important one is the time you’ll save. It seems that I save at least 20 minutes in my AM mailbox cleanup alone. And I’ve been able to find project related attachments while I’m on the phone almost instantly. Just those two features make the software worth the money.

Use MS Outlook to run your life. Get ClearContext to get more control.

Search reveals people’s emotions

 

A search in TipTop on any subject will instantly reveal people’s emotions and experiences about it, as well as other concepts that are being discussed in connection with the subject.

Just what we need. A search engine that tells you how people feel about what you’ve searched for. How about what people think?

Oh, wait. Thinking is out of style. Emotional response is what matter.

I don’t want to know about how someone feels about that new SSD Drive. I want to know how it works, how it integrates into the array, how it affects performance for the array and for the attached servers.

I don’t really care if spending $10,000 of 64GB of SSD storage makes you feel good, bad, proud or nauseous. Well, maybe nauseous.

Is this Core-rect?

The article to which this is linked came across my inbox just now.

Tilera, which already has 36- and 64-core processors on the market, is announcing its third-generation products, Tile-Gx, which includes plans for a 100-core processor. The chip will appear in 2011. Tilera officials hope the high-core count in its processors will help give the company traction in a space dominated by Intel and AMD, which currently are looking at eight-core processors.

Tilera Talks 100-Core Processor 

I find this interesting on several levels. First, and most obvious, are these guys for real? Do they have something that can run on “Industry Standard” servers? (By this I mean, can companies like IBM or HP make servers that could run these processors without too much proprietary work?) The linked article below appears to say they can.

The next big question is whether any of the big server vendors risk their relationships with Intel or AMD to try Tilera? Or has the recent anti-trust actions with Intel and AMD opened a door that might not have existed a few years ago?

Whatever, I’d sure like to start running some tests on these things.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Tilera's 100-core Tile-GX processor won't boil the oceans, will still melt faces (engadget.com)
• Report: Intel closer to facing U.S. anticompetition charges (infoworld.com)

Making the choice between virtual and physical servers – Why Choose?

Image by JohnSeb via Flickr

 

the future of the physical server is secure, as there are still a number of reasons to use a physical server over a virtual server.

Making the choice between virtual and physical servers | Servers and Storage | TechRepublic.com

Scott Lowe writes about is experience and the policies in use at his place of work for the deployment of virtual machines versus physical servers. He states that the usual policy is to use VMs for everything unless there are compelling reasons for a plain physical server. He gives, as examples, Microsoft Communication Server instances and other examples where high I/O or CPU utilization would seem to preclude the use of or need for virtualization.

I’d like to suggest an alternative. One I’ve touched on before and one that my not be fully applicable in all instances with the software and hardware currently available:

All servers should be configured with a hypervisor as the base configuration. Even if the server will only run one OS and application it should still be installed as a VM. The main reason for this is HA/DR and provisioning time. There are undoubtedly performance issues that might need to be addressed, but modern server hardware, especially when combined with 10GBE can handle pretty much anything thrown at it.

 

Eddie Izzard finishes 43rd marathon in 52 days, covering 1,100 miles - Times Online

Image via Wikipedia

This is not about technology. It’s about a person’s will to do something  he has never done and doing so in a manner that far exceeds imagining.

BTW, I don’t think he ran in this outfit.

Eddie Izzard finishes 43rd marathon in 52 days, covering 1,100 miles

Eddie Izzard finishes 43rd marathon in 52 days, covering 1,100 miles - Times Online

Why did I add Ads?

I just added an ad-sense account to my blog. I did it for a couple of reasons. Mostly, I'm curious.

• What ads would appear?
• Will I make more than a dollar a month?
• Would it annoy my few readers?
• Would it generate traffic.

Whatever the reasons, it will be interesting and if I make a buck or two, I'll be grateful.

Integrating management systems

In the August 31-Sept 7 issue of NetworkWorld, Tim Greene writes about 3Com's efforts in unifying network and security management.

"The most significant aspect of the announcement is the management, says Phil Hochmuth, an analyst with the Yankee Group. 'Enterprises are really consolidating their management roles,' he says. 'More and more enterprise IT and enterprise security teams are sharing the same hat, the teams are extremely integrated. The more they are looking at the same screens, the better.'"

This is something I've been discussing and writing about for many years. Too many different management consoles leads to confusion, error and frequently extreme segregation of operational functionality limiting the ability of administrators to manage increasingly complex systems. Systems that are comprised a mixture of servers, storage, networks, security systems and more and all being virtualized as well.

This need is becoming more and more critical as even the largest organizations are relying on teams of technologists responsible for managing these virtualized, integrated, multi-vendor environments. These teams may be made up of men and women who've specialized in storage or server or application management, but are now being asked to address issues outside their comfort zones as the issues they're facing are not necessarily linked to any single component of the IT environment. Problems may be coming from any device, program or function in the system and waiting for another specialist to solve a problem is untenable.

A "Single-pane-of-Glass" console helps the administrative team identify the multifaceted issues they're facing and a uniform interface, tool set and command syntax empowers team members. They are empowered because they can resolve all but the most complex issues by using what they already know about the system and are comfortable enough with the tools at hand to attempt what may have not been comfortable for them before.

It's good to see 3Com attempt to address these issues, as is Cisco and the other vendors. It will be interesting to observe how this plays out.

NetApp unveils new virtualized storage software | NetworkWorld.com Community

 

Among the announcement are of a Virtual Storage Console, which is a plug-in module for VMware vCenter Server that lets storage administrators manage and monitor NetApp gear from within vSphere 4 environments.

NetApp unveils new virtualized storage software | NetworkWorld.com Community

This specific item and the other announcements from NetApp, quoted in this article,  show their continued commitment to marketing themselves as the VMware storage solution. Competitors will need to move quickly to implement similar capabilities in the area of two way management integration.

This is important because even if servers, storage, applications, I/O and everything else is virtualized, the devices are still individual components with unique characteristics that need their own management tools. In a virtualized world though, changes to the hardware have affects on the virtual space and visa versa; so being able to manage the virtual from a physical device and the physical from a virtual device will become ever more critical.

It’s going to become a requirement that admins be able to manage any storage system from vCenter and vCenter from any storage management console. These capabilities are going to be a special challenge to IBM and HP as their focus has been on integrating within  their own equipment stacks rather than bi-directional integration with management platforms for vendors such as VMware. Stories about a Cisco/EMC joint venture might, at least partially, be about this need for management capabilities across the whole hardware stack.

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Has it come to this?

Mental Health Break - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
Mental Health Break - The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan

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Yet another fallen leader

Just thinking about Teddy and the Kennedy's all day. JFK was the first President I was involved in. I remember Ike, and even Truman a bit, but JFK was my inspiration. Needless to say, his murder was devastating; starting my period of disillusionment with our country. Bobby's race for President in '68 brought back the positive feelings (with a help from McCarthy) after MLK assasination only to be dashed again, almost before my eyes as I'd seen him that day in LA, by yet another shooting.

Teddy became the spokesman for the rational liberal perspective. It took him a while, and I didn't support his run in 1980, I supported and worked for Jimmy Carter, but what a speech he gave and what a leader he was.

So I've been thinking...

Does the Cloud need “Servers”?

A cloud is something soft and fluffy. When used to describe shared compute services, it means, among other things, that the borders between the various compute services provided and the users of those services are blurred. Why shouldn’t the devices providing these services also be a bit blurry. Servers as we’ve come to know them (I’m mostly talking about x86 servers here) have architectures that are starting to really reach their architectural limits when providing cloud compute services. It’s time for something new and different.

Why couldn’t the hardware of which servers are now comprised be treated differently. Rather than clusters of servers or pools of virtual machines running on clusters of servers, I think it might make more sense for there to be pools of processors, pools of memory, pools of I/O, pools of storage. These can be provisioned in any combination of components as needed to deliver the functionality required by the applications in question.

Instead of racks and racks of servers filling acres of air conditioned space why not have racks or processors and racks of memory and of storage and so forth. Each of these module achieve different densities and consume different power volumes producing different heat profiles. This means that memory and processors which produce the most heat can be cooled separately from other components that produce less heat or storage that works fine at higher temperatures than processors and memory.

I’ll try and explore this idea more at a later time.

We don’t need no stinkin’ chillers!

Google’s Chiller-less Data Center

Google (GOOG) has begun operating a data center in Belgium that has no chillers to support its cooling systems, a strategy that will improve its energy efficiency while making local weather forecasting a larger factor in its data center management.

Kudos to Data Center Knowledge for bringing this to my attention. The story speaks for itself, so I’ll limit my comments to highlighting a few things that I found very interesting.

Google maintains its data centers at temperatures above 80 degrees.

Most data centers are kept below 80 degrees. Co-Lo facilities speak of keeping temperatures below 70 degrees. Google has an advantage over other large companies: among other things their equipment is much more uniform so airflow and other temperature management issues are less complex to manage.

Co-Lo facilities probably have to keep things cooler than corporate data centers because their tenants often won’t use best practices in provisioning for air flow and other factors such as highly heterogeneous hardware use.

At last month’s Structure 09 conference, Google’s Vijay Gill hinted that the company has developed automated tools to manage data center heat loads and quickly redistribute workloads during thermal events (a topic covered by The Register).

Google has had a head start here, and this is an area where the major vendors are playing catch-up. Most current hardware management tools now include power and temperature monitoring as standard features and we’re starting to see performance tuning for power and heat appear in the administrator console as a standard feature. This trend will undoubtedly continue as components become more manageable for energy use.

Let That Be A Lesson To Me

I first posted this several years ago, in 2005 I believe. The blog site and the story are long gone but the story is still pertinent, so once again:

Let that be a lesson to me!

 

The New York City Police Department and its parking bureau have severely damaged my faith in the value of technology.

 

When it fails, it fails completely. And it recently turned me into Kafka’s Cockroach.

If you have the time, hear my tale. I feel better having written it. Perhaps it will teach you something important

This past weekend, I was careless. I’d dropped wife, family and friends at the Brooklyn Heights Prominade so the guests could enjoy it for the first time, and my wife could continue guiding their tour of our historic neighborhood.

They walked while I navigated the narrow Brooklyn Heights streets, looking for that most cherished momentary possession; a parking space. Preferably one I could use for the whole week. I drove my usual hunt route (a trade secret, sorry) traveling virtually every street in the North Heights, scouting orthogonal routes to parking nirvana. Sadly the spaces were filled by tourists and neighbors who, being smarter than me had not driven that day.

After several circumnavigations I’d not found a space so I went toward my secondary parking resources –down Columbia Heights toward the old Ferry docks, past the Watchtower factories and the emerging neighborhood of DUMBO.

As usual there were several spots on the hill, adjacent to the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway and the park I like to call “Dog Hill,” where the neighborhood canines cavort under the adoring gaze of their humans and the wistful smiles of passersby. I selected the parking space closest to my home.

This was my big mistake.

The rest of the weekend proceeded according to plan. Early Tuesday morning I trekked back to my space, carrying drycleaning and a full shoulder bag for my weekly reading hour – the wait in a Tuesday space for the clock to make it legal. No car.

I walked up the hill again: still no car. Drats! (or words to that effect) it must have been towed. But why?  I finally saw a single sign pointing out that there was one 20 or 25 foot wide space on the block where parking was illegal – there was a driveway across the way. I must not have noticed it in my joy at finding a spot so close to my destination. ((I must note that New York City gets a lot of money through the collection of parking fines It is a labyrinth of regulations whose complexity would give Milo Minderbinder pause.)

Of course, I thought, the city’s labyrinth would meet its match in me. I am an experienced hand with a mouse, a formidable hand on a phone, a patient and kindly customer, uber-New Yorker.

Little did I know.

I knew just what to do first: Go home, boot up and log in and see whether the NYPD and City had the car. I went here. There was no record. Could it be the City had cruelly let me slide until Tuesday; and the car hadn’t made it into the system yet?. Being an experienced parker, I knew, and the web site reminded me, that my local precinct would have the most up-to-date information.

So I went to the official NYPD web site, expertly wandered about until I found the precinct list and the link to my local precinct. I selected the best number for my needs and called. The officer checked computers for parking and local activities. She asked where I’d been parked, and asked if I thought I’d been in an illegal space.

Finally my car appeared on the screen – it had been towed. In April 2002.

Was it a Mercury Tracer? No, it’s a Ford Taurus, but the plates are the same, I got a new used car to replace the Tracer. Ahh! Then perhaps the Marshal has it because, though the change was six months old, the vehicle registration database didn’t have it and came to the obvious conclusion that the vehicle might be stolen. I was given several phone numbers – the parking impound lot at the Navy Yard, the NYC Marshal’s office, the NYC Department of Finance (they handle the tickets).

It was now about 7:30 AM. The Marshal’s office didn’t open until 8:00. The pound wasn’t open either, but they offered a telephone search system which I navigated. But no car with my plates was impounded. The NYC Department of Finance wasn’t open either, and their web site showed no tickets for my car.

At 8 AM I started to call the Marshals. They have an interesting auto-attendant. Instead of putting you into a queue with bad music, they provide a minute’s worth of semi-useful information and alternative numbers for other city agencies who might have towed your car. I already had these other numbers so I waited until the end of the message to hear instructions: Press “0” to reach an operator. The phone was picked up by another auto attendant computer that told me, “All operators are busy helping other customers and please call back at another time. Thank you. Goodbye”. Then it hung up!

I dialed again, went through the same process, got the same result. I dialed again. This time I pressed “0” before the message finished, and was switched to: the second auto attendant.

For the next hour I played their game. It seemed the program went something like this:

Auto attendant A

answer on three rings

Play message

If “0”, connect to queue

If queue is busy, connect to

Auto attendant B

Hang up

Or

If queue is busy

Auto attendant C answer

Hang up

Or

If queue is busy,

Auto attendant B answers and hangs up.

It was now nearly 9:30 AM. I began searching for other ways of accessing databases which might contain information on my missing car. Though I found three sources, they all failed me. I phoned the 84^th Precinct again.

The office let me repeat my story, now much embellished with the details of failed research. After a short pause, he suggested I call 911 and report the car as stolen, since there was no record of it being in NYPD or other NYC custodies.

I dialed 911. The operator took down my information, received my location, and told me officers would be there shortly to discuss my case. I intercomed the doorman, let him know that the police were coming to talk to me about my stolen car, and asked him to send them up. Less than thirty minutes passed and two officers were at my door. We went over the case. I showed all my papers, (including an older registration ticket for the Tracer) my driver’s license, my insurance. One of the officers whipped out his cell phone and called the precinct on his “special” number. He had the desk officer check the computers for the car. It wasn’t there.

Because people forget where they’ve parked and for other reasons, the police don’t want to make a stolen vehicle report unless absolutely necessary. As they noted, if the car was reported stolen and then found, the “stolen car” report would stay in the system despite the “found” disposition, meaning I might be arrested for driving my own (stolen) car. This might even happen out-of-state. The officers thus performed a preliminary investigation to determine whether the car was, in fact, stolen.

So they returned to the precinct. They accessed the department computers, called the pound, marshals and their other resources, and could not come up with the car. They phoned me to say they would be back shortly to have me fill out “stolen car” paperwork, and finalize their investigation. It was now about 10:30 AM.

The officers returned around noon. We filled out forms. The lead officer, a woman, was attracted to my cats, petting them and heading my warning that the marmalade one would get cat hair all over her uniform. I filled out several pages of questions to aid a detective in the search.

There was one final step required: we must return to the scene of the crime –to where I had parked the car. After all, it was early in the morning when I’d gone out, maybe I’d missed it? Maybe I’d forgotten where I’d actually parked it. Or, we’d discover that I’d parked in an illegal spot and the car had been towed after all.

Of course the truth was the latter -- I’d parked in what was now obviously an illegal spot. The second officer called the precinct yet again, this time, using the license plate as written on the new form instead of from his earlier notes from which they may have made an error. This time, the desk cop said; yes. The car was in the impound lot. Relieved to have closed the case, the officers dropped me at home, I went to my apartment and called the number for the impound again.

Yes, they said, a car with my license plate had been towed: on April 26, 2002 and redeemed on April 27^th. That car was a Mercury Tracer. Not a Ford Taurus. No there was no record of a Ford Taurus with that license plate number being towed or ticketed in the past week.

I was starting to lose patience.

I called the precinct. I breathed deeply and repeated my story. Fortunately I was cut short by the officer, who had brought up on his screen the morning’s activities. I was told that my officers would be in touch with me shortly.

In less than an hour they returned. We filled out more paperwork, including a new form covering grand larceny property descriptions. The officers once again admonished me about making this report and the probable complications. I suggested that if the car had actually been towed, the theft claim might enable a more thorough investigation. And if the car had actually been stolen, my insurance company and their investigation would both benefit from an early report.

The officers left. A detective would be in touch in a day or two. It was now about 3 PM on Tuesday. I spent the rest of the day working from home, exhausted.

I took the subway to work Wednesday. At about 5 PM I got a call here from the 84^th Precinct. A detective told me the car had been found! It was in the Brooklyn Navy Yard impound lot! And here was the inventory number. Call this number, or if they don’t answer, this other number, or if that fails this other, other number and I’ll be able to get the details.

I asked, “Why hadn’t either the officers been able to succeed in finding the car the previous day?” She said, “They hadn’t tried hard enough to find the car” and the folks at the pound were probably unmotivated to look more deeply into their records. I was surprised but relieved. My car was not stolen, and though I’d owe money for a tow and ticket, at least the situation was resolved.

I thought.

This was late on Wednesday. I had fresh food from the Union Square Farmer’s Market including fish fresh caught by the Blue Moon folks.  I couldn’t schlep all the way to the Navy yard, in the pouring rain, while my fish rotted. Let it go until tomorrow, I thought

Thursday morning I go to work and at about 9 AM I call the impound lot. I say, “I’m Barry Cohen and I’m calling about my car which was towed”.

I’m asked for and give my license plate number and am told “We have a Mercury Tracer that was towed on April 26, 2002 and redeemed on April 27, 2002. We don’t have a newer incident”.

I retort, “Yes you do have my car. Here’s the inventory number”. I give the agent the inventory number, repeatedly. There’s a pause of a minute or two. A sigh. I’m put on hold.

“We do have your car. It was towed on Monday.” I am told.

“How much do I owe?” I ask, needing to steel myself for the horrifying news.

“Well”, says the agent, “the car was towed on Monday, and today is Thursday so that’s three days of storage, plus the $185 tow: you owe us $245.”

“You don’t seriously expect me to pay for storage when you’ve been unable to find my car in your system? Do You?” My voice was rising at this point, blood rushing to my head and my breathing restricted.

“One moment, please”. I was put on hold. “My supervisor says that ‘the computer has the right information’, we’ll have to charge you for the storage”.

This was where my natural patience and good nature was overcome by the crushing pressure of the absurdity of the situation. Leaving out some choice modifiers I said “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m supposed to pay for the incompetence of your system and department. You yourself couldn’t find the car without the help of a detective who’d given me additional information!!!”

“Please don’t use such harsh language sir’, said the hapless agent. I, sputtering apologies and too incensed to continue, hung up.

Fortunately my co-workers didn’t arrive for another half hour, so I was able to cool down to a simmer or they’d have had their heads chewed off too.

That evening I masochistically revisited the parking violations web site again. There was still no ticket recorded for my vehicle, nor was the vehicle listed as towed. (It’s Saturday as I write this, and there is still no ticket listed for my license plate.) When I left the office, I called the pound, and got an auto attendant. The system offered me two useful options. The first one I followed, in a fit of further stupidity, allowed me to check if my car was impounded by pressing phone buttons to search for my car. The car wasn’t there according to the system. I then navigated to the other useful feature – directions to the Navy yard. Since it was pouring, I wanted to have as short a walk as possible, and wanted to double check.

The choice was clear. Take the F train to York Street, walk four blocks to the Navy Yard. When I got to Brooklyn, exiting from the station, I was fortunate to see two police officers whom I asked for direction confirmation. (I know, men don’t ask for directions, but I was wet and had promised to be on my best behavior – no screaming at cops! I was practicing.) A block later, I came upon a NYPD tow truck, one of those that had started this whole journey, the operator reading the paper and listening to hip hop in anticipation no doubt of ending their shift. It was now about ten to 6. I confirmed directions yet again as it was raining so hard I could barely see a block ahead of me.

I arrived at the lot. I zigged and zagged through barriers, stepping over broken pavement and unfathomly deep puddles. I climbed the rain slick steel steps to the redemption office. I dutifully stood on the “T” as instructed while a lone clerk, behind bullet proof Plexiglas, tended to another forlorn parker. A second clerk was doing paperwork behind her counter. Two other clerks were at desks in the back of the room performing other tasks and talking with pound drivers.

The second clerk finished her paperwork. She beckoned me. I approached, handed her my registration and driver’s license, and intoned: “My name is Barry Cohen and I’m here to get my car”.

The clerk went to her computer, typed in the license plate and a report appeared on the screen: On April 26, 2002 a Mercury Tracer, was towed and redeemed on April 27^th. “We don’t have your car, sir”, she said.

“Yes you do”, said I. “Here’s the inventory number”. I handed over my very neatly written information. She typed some commands at the terminal, typed a few more, and entered the number. A screen came up. She doubted the response and went through the routine once again. This time the information appeared on the screen – a Ford Taurus, license plate number so and so, VID, etc. Towed on Monday, November 3, 2003.

She walked away.

She went to a file cabinet and pulled out some papers. I was in for it now. Having been rude to a previous clerk, I was about to be sent to purgatory. Or perhaps hell, as this building at the gates of the impound lot was purgatory already.

Instead my clerk went over to the adjacent clerk, who stood before a man whose tale of woe made mine pale in significance. This poor schlub had spent the previous two days dealing with the fact that some six months previously he’d been the victim of “Identity Theft” resulting in warrants filed against him. These had been satisfied with a criminal fraud determination and affidavits of his innocence. He’d spent one day waiting in an office, after the first visit to the pound, only to be told he was in the wrong office and had to go to another location. There he’d spent another day waiting to have forms filled out, questions asked and answered. (I must point out that these offices are a half mile apart, with no practical connecting public transportation, and the only way to get between them is walking, in the steady downpour that had been going on for several days.) The poor man has come to the pound with the paperwork he was given as the last office shut for the day. His clerk says, yes, that’s the right form but “he needs the white copy” of the form. Not the blue one. They kept the white copy, he replies. You’ll have to go back and get the white copy, says the clerk… I stop here as my clerk comes back to me, and I’m feeling so much better. Proportion has been restored. I’m not in the 7^th circle of hell. This is only the 5^th, maybe even the 4^th.

The clerk asks me for $185. There’s no mention of the storage. I say nothing. Pay, and go get my car. The parking ticket, soaked through and dissolving on my windshield, is now totally illegible.

The title of this piece is “Let that be a lesson to me” and I opened with the statement that my faith in technology had been hurt by this incident. Why? Because no matter the efforts to utilize computer technology to provide New Yorkers with better access to information and thus better services, no matter the good intentions of the workers and police officers who serve us, no system is fool proof, and we’re all, at one time or another, fools.

If this tale is not one of compounded foolishness, human error and poor system design, I don’t know what else it is. Were I asked, I’d want to improve many aspects of the computer systems involved. I’d want to make sure that data was gathered more quickly and accurately, that the systems communicated better, software routines dealt with anomalies like two cars with the same license plate separated by time, that clerks and web site visitors could do more of their own searching, finding and self servicing.

But I’m not being asked. I just have this tale to remind us that the systems we design for data acquisition, analysis and reporting have to be used by real people, people with incomplete knowledge, with mixed skills and intelligence. We must pay attention to these human elements, and be prepared to listen to screams of frustration caused by decisions made out of technical or financial necessity.

Here is the lesson.

There is no such thing as a finished program. Upgrades are not just a way to generate additional revenue. They exist to continue the modification of our tools so that we can make the best use possible of them.

Sun Microsystems Web Event - Maximizing the Economics of Computing

 

Sun's Open Network System is a modular system design approach integrating leading technologies across Sun's portfolio in networking, storage, compute and software.

This is a very interesting announcement from Sun. First of all, the architecture is very similar to what was recently announced by Cisco. That is, the integration of a virtualized network infrastructure with computers (including the new Intel Xeon 5500 – Nehalem) and storage onto a single piece of hardware, albeit a blade enclosure.

It also has some of the elements of IBM’s iDataPlex and Cool Blue offerings, including cooling doors for the cabinets using water or refrigerant gas.

But what makes this announcement truly compelling is looking at it as an Oracle database and applications platform. Think about it:

Racks of databases and applications running on virtualized Linux or Solaris OS servers with Sun Open Storage for virtually limitless storage capacity and connected via virtualized or InfiniBand ultra high bandwidth networking. Throw in some Windows and VMware and you’re talking about a very powerful value proposition for many customers.

Challenges to all three competitors: Cisco, HP and IBM.

Cisco is challenged because there’s less apparent uniqueness to their UCS offering. Regardless of other factors, Sun is an established server and storage hardware vendor with a large installed base and usually happy customers. Loosing the uniqueness of UCS makes breaking into the server and storage market just so much more difficult for Cisco.

HP is challenged because they don’t have the fully integrated stack for their blade systems yet, and more importantly don’t have the application software stack that Oracle/Sun could bring to the table. HP has yet to enunciate their response to Cisco UCS. Now, they may have to take Sun seriously again. And, of course, the value of the hardware bundling deals with Oracle is even more threatened.

IBM’s challenges are of a different order. The recent IBM/Brocade and IBM/Juniper networking deals point to IBM’s greatest areas of weakness. IBM does have the software stack and the storage and server platforms to match up well. They also have the green credibility to compete with Sun there. But the combined Oracle/Sun platform could still be a challenge, especially with companies for whom IBM’s centralized enterprise computing culture is not a great fit.

Even with the down economy, IT competition is really heating up.

How many computers does the world need?

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about this question and this question and Nicholas Carr’s corollary assertion, “The coming of the mega computer” :

The original quote, from the FT Techblog:

According to Microsoft research chief Rick Rashid, around 20 per cent of all the servers sold around the world each year are now being bought by a small handful of internet companies - he named Microsoft, Google, Yahoo and Amazon. That is an amazing statistic, and certainly not one I’d heard before. And this is before cloud computing has really caught on in a big way.

Having recently been working with one of the vendors of the high density servers designed for this market, I’ve been reviewing the articles and comments with great interest. Our work is almost always on contract for a major IT vendor, so we tend to see the universe through the distorting glass of our client’s needs. In this case, the outer realities reflect the inner space fairly well.

The market for high density servers is very different from the traditional approach of x86 server vendors. Servers have usually been designed to provide generalized compute capabilities within a form factor such as tower, Multiple rack unit sizes and blades. The new high density servers are much less generalized. Not only do they allow for the more discreet units of physical servers within the space required from other form factors – the high density part – but they’re also focused on providing mission specific computing capabilities through mass customization. Even, or perhaps especially, vendor giants such as IBM are producing server product lines for which the concept of server model might be an oxymoron. Yes, there are SKUs, but in reality they systems these vendors produce are custom built for the customer.

The economies of scale for mass production fits here because typical orders are for thousands of servers, all integrated into racks redesigned to hold more server units and incorporating power efficiency and cooling schemes that not only allow more servers per data center square foot, but also requiring less electricity to run the servers and keep them cool. (Cooling electricity costs are generally equal to operational electricity costs.)

The scale of this business is also very different. Where Dell, HP, IBM and the other server vendors compete to sell hundreds of servers to tens of thousands of companies in the traditional markets, in this space there are only a few customers; perhaps a few hundred world wide. But the math still works – 10,000 servers a month to one account is a lot of servers. And as anyone who’s sold computers knows, five deals to sell 50,000 units is much less expensive than 10,000 sales to sell the same number of units.

If the future is being able to use compute like services from devices anywhere on the planet at any time, then Nicholas Carr’s label of the mega computer makes sense. Or as Scott McNealy said, so long ago, “The network is the computer”. Now they’re building it.

The question is whether the vendors can wait while the economy sorts itself out. Perhaps the economies of scale work again here. That same 5X10,000 metric applies here to: Selling 50,000 servers can pay a lot of bills. Even for IBM.

Dell adds Xsigo's I/O virtualization to it storage and server products - Network World

From Deni Conner at Network World…

One of the coolest deals happened this week in the storage arena. I/O virtualization vendor Xsigo teamed up with Dell to expand Dell's data center offerings. In addition to reselling Xsigo's I/O Director, Dell will also collaborate with the company on technology roadmaps and channel resources.

The I/O Director will be paired with the full line of Dell products – PowerEdge servers, PowerVault storage, EqualLogic iSCSI storage and Dell/EMC branded storage

I/O virtualization is the next frontier in data center virtualization and the vendors are scrambling to come up with answers. Xsigo has a unique external approach. HP is doing it in the BladeSystem with Virtual Connect.

I haven’t had the time to figure out what the other vendors (IBM, SUN) are doing.

One thing seems obvious to me with this announcement though: Dell-Xsigo-EMC. Anyone else see a synergy for a single competitor to HP and IBM?

Rackable puts desktop CPUs in low-cost servers - Network World

How’s this for a new approach to application serving:

Rackable Systems has turned to low-cost desktop components for a new server design that aims to provide a cheaper alternative for companies running busy Web applications, the company announced Wednesday. The design uses Athlon and Phenom desktop CPUs from Advanced Micro Devices and allows for highly dense servers that can be priced under US$500 because they are based on commodity PC parts, said Saeed Atashie, director of server products at Rackable.

Rackable puts desktop CPUs in low-cost servers - Network World

People have been using desktops as server for years. Hell, my first publically accessible web server ran an a Mac SE30. And it ran commercial sites driven by an Oracle Database that ran on a PC!

But that was a one off test bed, not a large scale web farm. It was also 1994.

Rackable makes high density x86 servers. Until now they utilized Xeon and Opteron processors. The systems were designed so as many as 84 servers could fit into a standard server cabinet. At about $3K a piece, they were not cheap, but were in the same ball park as the much lower density 1U servers from everyone.

This offering fulfills the RAIC paradigm. This is really an array of inexpensive computers. While the reliability won’t be as high as with server grade parts, that doesn’t matter that much in this use model. Quickly pulling out a failed server and replacing it is the story here and dumping a $500 box is much easier to justify to the CFO than a $3500 one, even if you could make the case that the $3500 one was cheap too.

Very interesting.

The shifting tides of heterogeneous storage virtualization :: Wikibon

A few months ago I’d embarked on research concerning external virtualization, here called heterogeneous storage virtualization. I like that term better and the TLA, HSV, works pretty well too. 

The article points to the same drivers I’d identified in my research:

1. Tiered storage - in an effort to create a default tier 2 strategy and avoid expensive tier 1 platforms;
2. Migration capability - especially for customers facing a rolling financially-forced lease conversion every year or those with particularly frequent migrations due to acquisition strategies;
3. Storage consolidation - in an effort to pool heterogeneous storage assets;
4. VMware and server virtualization - to support backend storage virtualization for virtualized server environments.

So far, my research has focused on how the main players: IBM with SVC, EMC with Invista, Hitachi  with USVP (and HP which sells Hitachi built storage, customized to HP specs, but still using Hitachi technologies) with and LSI with Storage Virtualization Manager. In the past few weeks, HP has brought to market its own version of the LSI product, renaming it SVSP and adding some features and capabilities.

It’s very hard to compare how these products differ in delivering their functionality as the costs are fairly high, but Edison hopes to begin some testing in the next several months. For now, it looks like the market will have to depend upon what the sales folks say. But in the future, perhaps, Edison will have some nuts and bolts information to help organizations make more educated decisions.

Vista doesn't like to update

I've been having a problem with one of my computers that's running Vista. (I know, I know: why am I running Vista? Probably so I can go through this crap and understand what the fuss is about.)

Anyhow, a few months ago, Windows Update started having problems. It would automatically update, but I couldn't access the tool to change settings and if I also wanted to update other Microsoft products, I couldn't access the Microsoft Update site, nor install nor run Microsoft Update or even MS Office auto updates.

I discovered that this might not be an unusal problem - there was a link on the error page to get support from Microsoft. I clicked it.

Microsoft support people started a long, e-mail discussion of things to try. I've tried them all over the past many weeks. Install this, run that command line utility, download that other thing, do an upgrade installation (which failed because I'd installed SP1 and the Vista DVD was pre SP1; MS kindly sent new software media, but it too was pre-SP1 and also came on CD not DVD. Oh, and it didn't work).

Additional research on the Microsoft forums has shown that this problem is common enough to have several threads about it.

Everyone seems to go through the same steps. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. I know that Microsoft is at a disadvantage over Apple in this - every PC has different hardware and software installed and not all of those products are made to the same high standards. And updating live software is always a challenge. Windows (and earlier MS OS) biggest advantage over Macintosh OSes is that it runs almost any Intel compatible hardware. It's biggest disadvantage is that it also may not run on almost any Intel compatible hardware.

The fruits of this conflicting agenda is the failure of Vista to gain market acceptance and the on-going concerns about next generation operating systems.

Sad.