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Wednesday, December 5th, 2012
| Time | Event |
| 2:30p | AMD Unveils Nine New Opteron Processors AMD has unveiled nine new mid-range and entry-level Opteron 4300 Series and 3300 Series server processors, which offer improved performance per watt for customers focused on reducing their energy usage. The Opteron 3300 Series processors are targeted at web hosts or small to medium sized businesses, and provide enterprise-class features in a lower power envelope. The Opteron 4300 Series processors give up to 15 percent better performance versus the prior generation AMD chips, based on SPECint benchmark results. SPECpower results show up to a 24 percent improvement in performance per watt. “The Piledriver core architecture shared by the AMD Opteron 4300 and 3300 Series processors provides optimized performance, power and price for today’s customer,” said Suresh Gopalakrishnan, general manager, Server Business Unit, AMD. “These new processors are ideal for cloud providers, web hosts and small- and medium-sized businesses who want to address their space and power constraints. With a simple upgrade, existing customers can obtain more performance and improved energy efficiency and new customers will obtain compelling value and ROI.” The Opteron 3300 Series features 2.8 GHz base frequency and up to 3.8 GHz using AMD Turbo CORE technology, up to 8 cores per socket, AMD-V virtualization, up to 4 DIMMs per CPU for up to 32GB of memory per processor and one x16 Hyper Transport technology (HT3) link at up to 5.2GT/s. The Opteron 4300 Series features the only x86 processor to support ultra-low voltage 1.25V memory, up to 8 cores per socket, 3.4 GHz base frequency and up to 3.8 GHz using AMD Turbo CORE technology, AMD-V virtualization technology, up to 6 DIMMs per CPU for 192GB of memory per processor, and up to two x16 HyperTransport technology links at up to 64.GT/s per link. Servers based on the new processors are now available from Supermicro as well as the AMD SeaMicro SM15000 platform. Additional server offerings will soon be available from Dell and others. Support from a broad software ecosystem is available for the new processors, across hypervisors, operating systems, developer tools and Java virtual machines. “AMD Opteron processor solutions have provided excellent investment return for our customers,” said Brian Payne, executive director of Server Solutions, Dell. “The new 4300 and 3300 Series processors in the AMD-based Dell PowerEdge servers maintain this history and are ideal for web service providers who strive to maximize revenue from their server infrastructure and also for small- and medium-businesses who carefully invest to enable growth.” |
| 3:16p | Cloud News: Cisco and Xerox, Amazon, SoftLayer News from the cloud computing sector includes developments from Cisco and Xerox, Amazon and SoftLayer: Xerox selects Cisco UCS for global cloud print services. Cisco (CSCO) announced that its Unified Computing System (UCS) handles more than 1 million Xerox and non-Xerox print devices worldwide and Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud offerings with Vblcok-for-Cloud. A year ago Cisco and Xerox formed an alliance to deliver cloud-based services that combine network intelligence and print. Today, Xerox uses Cisco data center solutions so its global delivery centers can meet the fast-growing demand for cloud-based managed print services (MPS). These cloud services are also delivered using the Vblock platform, which combines Cisco UCS with EMC storage and VMware for virtualization, as well as Cisco Intelligent Automation software, to deliver Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud capabilities and Cisco Hosted Collaboration services. A new global delivery center deployment has resulted in accelerated performance of applications for MPS, improving response times; streamlining the environment by reducing the number of server service profiles by as much as 80 percent. “As the worldwide market leader for MPS, we’re continually looking for ways to bring new benefits to our customers. By using Cisco UCS to support our global MPS delivery network, we can quickly respond to the changing needs of our customers and offer them simplified data, new applications, and faster service. Cisco’s UCS is critical to managing the growing global demand for MPS,” said Andrew Morrison, senior vice president, Xerox MPS Business. AWS now supports Windows software. Amazon (AMZN) Web Services announced that the AWS Marketplace now supports software built on Microsoft Windows Server. Windows software titles can be deployed to the AWS Cloud, as well as hosting solutions from software vendors like MicroStrategy, Quest Software, and Parallels. The software can run on EC2 instances running Windows Server, including 2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012 editions of Windows Server. AWS also announced a new software development kit for Node.js that lets developers tap into the cost-effective, scalable, and reliable AWS cloud from their Node.js applications. AWS also now supports Amazon RDS Micro DB Instances in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). This lets a customer provision a private, isolated section of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud where you can launch AWS resources in a virtual network that you define. SoftLayer and 10gen launch MongoDB systems. SoftLayer and 10gen announced the general availability of new on-demand MongoDB production-class systems available across SoftLayer’s global cloud infrastructure. The companies collaborated to engineer the systems, including optimized hardware and OS configurations, automated deployment of multi-data center clusters, and integrated monitoring and support. MongoDB Cloud Subscriptions is a new offering from 10gen of certified pre-built MongoDB systems. SoftLayer’s MongoDB engineered systems include options from entry-level quad-core servers to powerful sixteen-core, high-performance computing nodes, all available on demand and in real-time via SoftLayer’s portal and API. “Our aim is for MongoDB to be available in combined offerings, so that the growing number of organizations that want to deploy in the cloud have an easy and scalable solution,” said Eliot Horowitz, CTO of 10gen. “We look forward to working with SoftLayer to bring this new service to market as a convenient and effective way to deploy big data workloads.” |
| 4:00p | Supermicro Debuts Hyper-Speed Servers  A Supermicro 2U Hyper Speed server optimized for low-latency financial trading (Photo: Supermicro) Supermicro (SMCI) debuted new 2U and 4U/Tower platforms that maximize processing power and precisely tune hardware and firmware to provide lower latency than previous models, while still maintaining high reliability. At the High Frequency Trading World event this week in New York, Supermicro introduced the line of high performance “Hyper-Speed” servers that are built on Supermicro’s X9DAX series dual-processor (DP) motherboards and SC829BTQ chassis. Hyper-Speed systems allow the highest performance Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processors to be tuned for even higher performance and run at peak performance in a dense 2U form factor for colocation installations. ”Advanced trading firms looking to reduce latency and maximize transaction flow can gain an advantage with the extreme processing power and enterprise-class server optimizations designed into Supermicro’s Hyper-Speed systems,” said Wally Liaw, Vice President of Sales, International at Supermicro. “Our latest HFT-optimized platforms boost performance of the fastest rated x86 dual processors with board-level control and circuitry enhancements and custom tailored cooling systems for the highest sustained performance. With mission critical transactions on the line, Supermicro Hyper-Speed systems ensure peak performance with maximum reliability for the most demanding computational finance applications.” The new servers, optimized for high frequency trading (HFT), feautre premium pre-installed CPUs and memory, with storage and I/O components that are validated with a rigorous burn-in process to ensure maximum performance and reliability on deployment. The 2U HFT-optimized solutions feature dual Intel Xeon E5-2687W or E5-2643 processors, 10 hot-swap bays, up to 8x8GB DDR3 ECC RDIMM, onboard storage controllers, and 1280 watt redundant high efficiency digital switching power supplies. The 4U/Tower models can also be used in HPC or scientific research applications, and features dual Intel Xeon E5-2600 series processors, 8 hot-swap bays, 16x DIMMs to support up to 512 GB of memory, and 1280 watt redundant high efficiency digital switching power supplies. |
| 9:53p | Report: Twitter Expanding in Atlanta
Back in September 2011 we reported that Twitter was leasing a big chunk of space in an enormous data center operated by QTS (Quality Technology Services) in downtown Atlanta, with the option to expand as it grows. It looks like the micro-blogging service is invoking that option. The Atlanta Business Journal reports that Twitter is adding 100,000 square feet of space at the Metro Technology Center, owned by QTS, in downtown Atlanta. That type of expansion would be hard for many providers to accommodate. But Metro Tech is one of the world’s largest data centers, with more than 990,000 square feet of space. That provides lots of flexibility, as we noted last year: “The huge Atlanta space offers plenty of room for expansion for growing tenants, which is a consideration for Twitter. That allows companies like Twitter to gradually expand their data center space and power costs over time, rather than purchasing a larger amount up front and seeing some of the capacity go unused as it ramps up its operations in the new site. QTS also offers flexible pricing on power usage, which can be attractive to companies facing rapid growth. The provider’s PowerBank plan allows large customers to scale their available power up and down as their requirements change. “ Twitter is pursuing an East-West strategy, with server hubs on both coasts. It’s an approach followed by Internet-scale companies like Facebook and Apple, which have each supplemented their California server farms with huge data centers in North Carolina. This East-West approach places infrastructure closer to more users Up until 2010, Twitter used managed hosting services from NTT America, housing its servers in NTT data centers in Silicon Valley and Ashburn, Virginia. In 2010, Twitter announced that it would operate its own data centers, starting with a new facility in Salt Lake City. In 20122 it leased data center space in Sacramento, Calif. with RagingWire Enterprise Solutions. |
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