Friday, August 9th, 2013

Time	Event
12:05p	Unisys Migrates From RISC to Intel Servers Unisys (UIS) has announced a partnership with Intel (INTC) to bring to market a secure computing platform for cloud and big data workloads, while offering Unix clients a cost-effective path off legacy RISC-based platforms onto an Intel-based environment. Set to be released later this year, the new platform will combine Unisys’ advanced secure partitioning (s-Par) with the computing and security features of Intel Xeon family processors. By bringing partitioning and other mission-critical attributes of RISC systems to an Intel x86 platform, the platform will provide a cost-efficient migration path from RISC systems running Unix applications. Industry analysts estimate that segments of the cloud computing, big data and Unix-RISC migration markets represent an aggregate market in excess of $23 billion, opening potential joint growth opportunities for Unisys and Intel over the next several years. “Unisys has two decades of experience in bringing the power of industry-standard Intel technologies to the high-end server market,” said Ed Coleman, Unisys chairman and CEO. “Now we are combining recent innovations from the two companies to provide a powerful, compelling and cost-efficient server platform able to handle today’s most demanding applications while delivering the security, reliability, predictability and other attributes that organizations have come to expect from true mission-critical systems. It’s a powerful combination that we believe will reignite the enterprise computing market.” Unisys will bring Intel Xeon innovations into the new platform, such as Intel integrated I/O, new Intel Turbo Boost Technology 2.0, and Intel Advanced Encryption Standard New Instructions (AES NI). Unisys and Intel will continue to collaborate on integrating additional Intel innovations into the platform. “Intel and Unisys have a joint vision for bringing greater flexibility, simplicity and predictability to the portion of the enterprise computing segment that still uses legacy RISC-based systems today,” said Shannon Poulin, vice president of marketing, Datacenter and Connected Solutions Group at Intel Corporation. “This innovative platform capitalizes on Intel Xeon Processor breakthroughs and the largest software ecosystem advancements to give organizations a powerful new alternative away from costly, outmoded RISC systems.”   (Comment on this)
12:47p	Space Weather and the Data Center: The Risk from Solar Storms This NASA diagram depicts solar radiation storms interacting with the magnetic field surrounding earth, which can disrupt power grids and communications. Solar flares are a potential threat to critical infrastructure, according to NASA scientists. who say the sun’s vast magnetic field is about to flip, an event that creates an elevated risk of solar activity and “space weather.” A concern for data center providers is the potential for solar storms, which can wreak havoc on infrastructure. The sun changes polarity approximately every 11 years. The coming reversal marks the midpoint of solar cycle 24.The sun’s north pole has already changed, while the south is racing to catch up. This means we’re in a more active phase of the solar cycle. While the chances of a direct hit from a solar flare are small, it’s something data center managers should be preparing for, according to Eric Gallant, consultant energy management services for Schneider Electric. “Have an operational posture that you can shift to in the event of a solar storm,” said Gallant. “Have a plan for what you’re going to do with personnel and communications.” Individual Events Merit Attention The upcoming solar maximum may see a record low in the overall activity, but individual events could be very powerful. The worst-case scenario is a storm of historic proportions, similar to the “Carrington event,” a major 19th century solar weather event on a scale that could wreak havoc with modern infrastructure. The biggest fear is what might happen to the electrical grid during these events. Power surges caused by solar particles could blow out giant transformers. The eastern half of the U.S. is particularly vulnerable, because power infrastructure is highly interconnected, potentially leading to cascading failures. The poles of the sun are tracked just like the poles of the earth, and this heralds in change. This will be the fourth grand reversal since Magnetograms at Wilcox Solar Observatory began tracking the sun’s polar magnetism in 1976. The sun’s magnetic influence (also known as the “heliosphere”) extends billions of kilometers beyond Pluto. The current “sheet,” the sun’s rotating magnetic field, induces an electrical current. The current itself is small, only 1 billionth of an amp per square meter, but there’s a ton of it. The amperage flows through a region 10,000 kilometers thick and billions of kilometers wide. The entire heliosphere is organized around this enormous sheet. During these field reversals, that sheet becomes very wavy. This sheet is crazy. As earth orbits, it dips in and out of the sheet. The transitions in and out can cause stormy space weather. It also affects cosmic rays, which are primarily danger to astronauts and space probes, but some researchers say might affect the cloud concentration and climate of Earth. The real threat is solar flares and coronal mass ejections, or CMEs. A CME is a slower moving cloud of charged particles that can take several days to reach Earth’s atmosphere. When a CME hits, the solar particles can interact with Earth’s magnetic field to produce powerful electromagnetic fluctuations. The Carrington Event If a storm similar to the Carrington event were to occur today, it would be mayhem. The Carrington event occurred in 1859, during the largest solar storm on record. The solar maximum was about the same size as the one we’re entering, according to NASA. The northern lights were reported as far south as Cuba and Honolulu, while southern lights were seen as far north as Santiago, Chile. People in the northeastern US could read newspaper print from the light of the Aurora. Telegraph operators reported sparks leaping from their equipment. “The EPA and congress looked into what would happen if a solar flare of that magnitude would strike us now,” said Gallant. “We rely on those systems a lot more. They were talking about blackouts that last months, trillions of dollars lost, and 10s of thousands of lives lost.  The chances are not huge, but they are as high as they’re going to be.” (Comment on this)
3:25p	Google Strengthens Compute Engine With Load Balancing View of sunset and clouds over the exterior of the cooling towers at a Google data center.(Photo: Google) Backed by a sprawling, massive global data center footprint and a strong developer ecosystem, Google’s cloud presence is an imposing force. Last year Google (GOOG) challenged cloud competitors with the Google Compute Engine (GCE) – acting as its Infrastructure as a Service offering to enable spinning up virtual machines hosted in Google data center.  On Wednesday Google announced numerous enhancements to its Cloud Platform , that go beyond those mentioned at its May I/O conference. Most notable is the addition of layer 3 load balancing to Compute Engine, which delivers Google-scale throughput and fault tolerance to manage Internet applications. Load balancing over a specific set of Compute Engine virtual machines within the same region can benefit from HTTP-based health checks, to ensure that only healthy VMs are used to serve Internet requests. This feature can be configured through a command line interface or programmable RESTful API.  In typical Google beta fashion, the initial release of load balancing is provided at no cost through end of 2013, at which point Google will charge specified rates. Other new features continue the theme of appealing to the developer experience, in the Google Cloud Datastore. Google Query Language (GQL) support was added for a SQL-like language for retrieving entities or keys from Cloud Datastore. Users can now access Metadata Queries that allow retrieval of statistics on underlying data. Local SDK improvements include support for Windows and a number of enhancements to the command line tool. The Ruby language is now supported in Cloud Datastore as well, giving easy spin up of Ruby applications that rely on a managed NoSQL datastore. An App Engine updates 1.8.3 focuses on PHP. Updates include improved support for working with directories in Google Cloud Storage, the ability to write metadata to Cloud Storage files, and substantial performance improvements through memcache-backed optimistic read caching. It also improved support for task queues, including the ability to set headers on push tasks and to add tasks to queues efficiently in bulk. (Comment on this)
3:44p	Friday Funny: A Mouse in the Data Center? It’s Friday and it’s time for our weekly attempt at data center humor. This week we present a new cartoon for our Data Center Knowledge caption contest. It’s drawn by Diane Alber, our favorite data center cartoonist. But first, hearty congratulations to Mike Sweeney for suggesting, “And when we start offering liquid cooling to the chip we’ll get a hot tub too.” This was the readers choice for the best caption for our last cartoon. This week, we present “A Mouse in the Data Center” for your caption suggestions. See below and enter your suggestion for what the mouse is thinking. New to the caption contest? Here’s how it works: We provide the cartoon and you, our readers, submit the captions. We then choose finalists and the readers vote for their favorite funniest suggestion. The winner receives a hard copy print, with his or her caption included in the cartoon! Click to enlarge. (Comment on this)
5:00p	Sungard Goes Mobile With Its Disaster Recovery Services The exterior of a SunGard Mobile Metro Center (MMC) remote disaster recovery unit during a recent visit to northern Virginia. (Photo: Jason Verge) HERNDON, VA -  SunGard Availability has always been an IT recovery expert, but it is a people recovery expert as well. The process usually involves employees trekking to a disaster recovery center. Now SunGard has a way to bring the disaster recovery site to the people. SunGard’s Mobile Metro Center (MMC) Units are completely self-contained workspaces. In the event of a disaster, the unit provides 982 square feet of office and work space supporting up to 52 workers. Each is supplied with desk space, chair, PC and flatscreen and VOIP telephone satellite. Units are always close by, ready to deploy after a disaster strikes. A truck drives the mobile unit up to the site, and workers are ready to go after a quick 1 or 2 hour setup after arrival. On board power, Voice over IP, and voice and data networking are available through statellite. The satellite is on the roof and automatically adjusts its line of sight. All the inputs, air conditioning and diesel generator are all built in. A time lapse of the process can be seen in this video. In terms of layout, let your imagination take you where you want to go. It’s fully stocked with all your needs. Whether you fill it with a workforce or servers – it acts as raised floor- the unit is ready to serve. It contains two 10-ton air conditioners, 70 kW, and a 200 amp circuit. During SuperStorm Sandy, a New York healthcare provider deployed 2 trailers. Before the storm was set to hit, the trailers were staged a short drive from the location, and then brought on-site quickly once the storm had passed. During Hurricane Katrina, an mobile recovery unit was parked in Iowa ready to head down to Louisiana and serve. The unit moved in, allowing a manufacturing company to contain grain trading. SunGard tracks inclement weather and disasters in real-time, alerting customers through mobile, email, or whatever a customer chooses when something is afoot. Forest fires in Colorado, hurricanes, whatever ails you – the company provides full workforce continuity services, extending beyond the app and to the people. SunGard has focused on being recovery experts for all aspects of business. This unit is just one component of the SunGard workforce continuity program. The company also has more than 27,000 workstation seats worldwide, provides complete connectivity, and secure connections allowing employees to work from home. Here’s a look inside the Mobile Metro Center: (Comment on this)

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