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Friday, March 8th, 2013
| Time | Event |
| 2:14p | The Vatican Library Goes Digital EMC Provides 2.8 Petabytes to Store Digitized Versions of Rare Sacred Texts EMC is providing storage systems to help the Vatican Apostolic Library (pictured above) digitize and store rare manuscripts. (Photo by Michal Osmenda via Flickr.) As the cardinals of the Roman Catholic church gather to elect a new pope, there’s also major change underway in another part of the Vatican. As one of the oldest libraries in the world, the Vatican Apostolic Library holds many of the rarest and most valuable documents in existence, including the 42 line Latin Bible of Gutenberg. EMC announced that it is providing 2.8 petabytes of storage to support the Vatican Library digitize its catalogue of 80,000 historic manuscripts and 8,900 “incunabula” (a book printed before 1501). EMC will help the Vatican preserve delicate texts in an ISO-certifiable digital format to protect these manuscripts from deterioration and decay from repeated handling. This process will result in 40 million pages preserved in digital reproductions. Working with its systems integrator partner Dedagroup, EMC will provide 2.8 petabytes of storage capacity across its various storage solutions over the first phase of the nine-year project, which is expected to take three years. “The Apostolic Library contains some of the oldest texts in the world that represent a priceless legacy of history and culture,” said Monsignor Cesare Pasini, Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library. “It’s very important that these documents are protected, and at the same time made available to scholars around the world. Thanks to the generosity and expertise of supporters such as EMC we are able to meet these goals, preserving a treasure-trove of rare and unique texts in a format that will not suffer from the passage of time.” EMC’s sponsorship forms part of its ‘Information Heritage Initiative’, which works to protect and preserve the world’s information for future generations and make it globally accessible in digital form for research and education purposes. “To manage and protect information is part of our mission,” said Michele Liberato, President, EMC Italy. “The Apostolic Library is one of the oldest libraries in the world and we have a duty to ensure that the knowledge and beauty of the manuscripts in it are available to all in the future. This project will help to preserve and make available a unique heritage of knowledge.” |
| 3:00p | Boston ARMing Developers With ARM-as-a-Service Cloud  Boston Limited’s Viridis server will power a new “ARM-as-a-Service” cloud offering powered by ARM technology from Calxeda. (Photo: Boston Limited) Boston Limited wants to help developers future proof their applications for an upcoming ARM-based world. The low-cost, power-efficient processors have been drawing a lot of attention, and now comes a commercially available cloud for developer needs. The Boston ARM-as-a-Service (AaaS) cloud was unveiled at CeBIT 2013. It was built specifically to assist in migrating and porting applications from x86 to ARM, providing developers with tools and services required to port and migrate software. “The Boston cloud is the ultimate resource for application and software developers looking to port their software on to ARM,” said David Power, Boston’s Head of HPC. “Our platform provides all the tools to facilitate porting software to ARM in one easy to use cloud offering.” The Boston AaaS is based on Calxeda’s EnergyCore ARM-based processor as well as Breeze technology. Breeze is used for tracing programs as they run in order to monitor file dependencies and environment settings. It shows the inner workings of complex scripted flows such as those used in semiconductor design or complex software builds. ARM also uses Breeze to profile and troubleshoot applications on their own HPC cluster. “We understand the hardware constraints that many software developers will face in trying to enter the ARM environment,” said Dr. Rosemary Francis, Managing Director of Ellexus, “and Boston’s cloud offering provides a fantastic opportunity for those wanting to future-proof their applications as more and more users move over to ARM technology.” Boston’s ARM-as-a-Service delivers dedicated physical quad-core nodes, as opposed to virtual CPUs typically seen with cloud offerings. Users will be able to develop on single nodes or test scaling capabilities of applications across multiple nodes within the cluster. Users will be able to choose from varying levels of software and professional services to assist in their migration. “There is tremendous demand for easy access to ARM server technology, so the time is ripe for AaaS,”says Karl Freund, VP Marketing, Calxeda, Inc. “We are thrilled to see Boston and Ellexus stand up this service to provide cloud-based access to engineers to build and optimize their server codes for ARM.” There is also an ARM OpenStack test-bed available at TryStack for short-term testing. |
| 3:30p | NetApp Targets HPC With Expanded E-Series Storage NetApp (NTAP) is targeting big data and high performance computing customers with an expansion of its E-Series storage platform, featuring a new E5500 model promising to improve scale, density and uptime. NetApp announced the new NetApp E5500, designed to provide improved performance, efficiency, and reliability for big data and high-performance computing (HPC). As a seventh generation E-Series platform the E5500 provides a robust high-performance architecture, improved storage density, and additional support enhancements. The new E5500 has a modular architecture that can be used with file systems, such as Lustre and Hadoop, to scale to unlimited performance efficiently. The NetApp AutoSupport tool is now available for the E-Series product line, providing improved service and uptime to customers. “HPC and big data customers need high performance to ingest and analyze huge amounts of data, while still managing power and cost efficiently,” said Brendon Howe, vice president, Product and Solutions Marketing, NetApp. “High performance at a reasonable cost can be a difficult balance to strike; however, with over 500,000 E-Series systems deployed, NetApp’s deep industry and storage experience created a strong foundation for the new E5500. The momentum of E-Series enabled us to build a new product that provides industry-leading bandwidth per dollar spent while improving density and reliability.” The SGI InfiniteStorage 5600, which is an OEM version of the NetApp E5500, has produced a new SPC-2 result confirming the performance and cost efficiency of the new E5500. “Our customers are turning massive amounts of data into new business and scientific discoveries, so they need solutions that provide the best price/performance possible,” said Jose Reinoso, vice president, Storage Engineering at SGI. “With SGI’s impressive new SPC-2 result achieving a SPC-2 best price/performance, it’s clear that the NetApp E5500 meets those expectations. The results clearly show that the E5500 provides organizations the high bandwidth and density needed to address big data and HPC challenges.” Bull also uses the E5500 for a storage system on its supercomputers. ”The research carried out on the HPC systems of the Center for Information Services and High Performance Computing at the TU Dresden comprises numerous disciplines, each with their own storage requirements,” said Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Nagel, director of the center. “Our new supercomputer, delivered by Bull, uses the new NetApp E5500 as the base for an excellent storage system that will allow our researchers to get their results faster. The enhanced reliability features and the performance analysis possibilities significantly increase our capabilities to support the users. We are already using NetApp FAS systems for central IT services at the TU Dresden and are happy that the AutoSupport feature has also been extended to the E-Series products.” |
| 4:15p | Latisys Secures $200 Million Credit Facility  The interior of a Latisys data center. The company has arranged a new $200 million credit line. The expansion at Latisys shows no signs of slowing. The company has just announced a new $200 million credit facility, including a 6-year, $180 million institutional term loan and a 5-year $20 million revolving credit facility. This means the company will continue its 2012 momentum, spreading that capital across Latisys’ Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform to drive accelerating growth and customer acquisition. The data center service provider said it will continue to expand its facilities adding high density capacity, enhancing its technology platform, increasing automation, as well as adding high skilled personnel to the team. “Latisys’ growth strategy centers around ongoing strategic expansion of our IaaS platform and our ability to provide innovative right-sized, hybrid IT solutions that solve business problems,” said Doug Butler, Chief Financial Officer for Latisys. “The new credit facility provides additional capital necessary to maintain technology leadership as well as additional support services required to respond to increased demand for higher margin managed hosting and cloud services.” The credit facility was substantially oversubscribed, with commitments from several leading sector lenders and institutional investors. The credit facility was arranged by RBC Capital Markets, TD Securities (USA) and SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, and funded by a consortium of over 20 leading financial institutions and institutional investors. Over the past four years Latisys has invested more than $125 million in expanding its facilities and services to keep pace with demand. Latisys’ national expansion has been ongoing through 2012 and into 2013. Recent announcements include DEN2—Latisys’ state-of-the-art data center in Denver—along with the ASH1 DC5, CHI DC6 data centers that added 22,000 and 10,000 square feet of secure, ultra high-density raised floor in Northern Virginia and Chicago respectively. In Southern California, Latisys recently announced an additional 12,000 square feet in its Irvine, CA data center. Latisys’ total data center platform now exceeds 343,000 square feet across seven data centers in four major markets. Product-wise, it launched its next generation managed hosting and cloud platform and launched its unified service desk in 2012. |
| 8:06p | Friday Funny: Pot of Gold at the End of the Cold Aisle? Happy Friday! The weekend is nearly here, so it’s time for data center levity. Each Friday, Data Center Knowledge features a cartoon drawn by Diane Alber, our favorite data center cartoonist, and our readers suggest funny captions. Please visit Diane’s website Kip and Gary for more of her data center humor. The caption contest works like this: We provide the cartoon and you, our readers, submit the captions. We then choose finalists and the readers vote for their favorite funniest suggestion. Congratulations to reader Steve Swanberg, who submitted the winning caption for last week’s “Shaking in the Data Center” cartoon: “Kip, I think you may have misunderstood when they told us to shake out the new tape management system . . . .” This week Diane writes, “Since the last ‘gold’ comic was so much fun I thought because of the spirit of St. Patrick’s Day another one was in order.”
For the previous cartoons on DCK, see our Humor Channel. |
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