Friday, January 31st, 2014

Time	Event
12:30p	Mellanox Releases 40 Gigabit Card for Open Compute Level 3 launches a cloud service for transferring large files, Mellanox contributes a 40gigabit network card based on Open Compute designs, and A10 Networks announces aCloud Service Architecture for multi-tenant cloud data centers. Mellanox releases 40 Gigabit network card based on Open Compute designs. Mellanox (MLNX) announced it is offering its 40GbE network interface card as a proposed contribution to the Open Compute Project. he new 40GbE NIC is based on Mellanox’s energy-efficient, high-performance ConnectX-3 Pro ICs, and is designed to meet OCP specifications. Available now, the ConnectX-3 Pro OCP-based 40GbE NICs with RDMA over Converged Ethernet (RoCE) and overlay network offloads offer optimized latency and performance for converged I/O infrastructures while maintaining extremely low system power consumption. “Mellanox has been active in the OCP Network Project and has contributed to the open hardware and software model to help achieve OCP’s vision for true open standards and faster pace in network technology innovation,” said Kevin Deierling, vice president of marketing at Mellanox Technologies. “We’re pleased to continue our collaborations with Facebook in delivering 40GbE NIC technology to OCP to deliver unmatched performance and rich feature-sets that enable superior data center productivity and efficiency.” Level 3 launches cloud file transfer for large files.  Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced the launch of a new cloud-based file transfer platform that simplifies and accelerates the process of sending large video and data files, such as syndicated content and advertising files. The new service was developed to meet increasing demand from network broadcast and other media companies to move content to remote locations around the world. Leveraging its global storage platform and network connectivity Level 3′s Cloud Content Exchange stores media files in a central, cloud-based library where they can be metatagged, sorted and accessed in real time with rapid upload and download speeds. ”As one of the largest broadcasters in the world, FOX needs the ability to rapidly send and receive media files all over the globe,” said Keith Goldberg, vice president of Global Operations and Transmission Services at FOX. “Level 3 worked side-by-side with us to develop a one-of-a-kind, secure solution that not only allows us to quickly transfer video clips, promos and other content internationally, but also provides extensive cloud storage capacity and a global network – an all-inclusive solution we couldn’t find anywhere else.” A10 Networks announces aCloud Services Architecture.  A10 Networks announced the aCloud Services Architecture designed to help Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) data center operators deliver a rich set of application networking and security services to their customers. It includes a range of new products and integrations with 3rd-party software-defined networking (SDN) and cloud platforms that enable dynamic L4-7 security and application services in multi-tenant cloud data centers. Key features include high-performance applications that perform a variety of functions, virtualized and hybrid appliances, pay-as-you-go licensing, SDN and network virtualization platform integrations, and cloud orchestration integrations with other platforms such as OpenStack and Microsoft Systems Center Virtual Machine Manager. ”Deutsche Telekom AG cooperated with A10 on the implementation of a scalable, carrier-grade IPv4 Softwire solution for our TeraStream pilot,” said Axel Clauberg, Vice President Aggregation, Transport, IP and Fixed Access at Deutsche Telekom AG. “The A10 vThunder software was the first Virtualized Network Function with high bandwidth and low latency to be integrated in our Infrastructure Cloud in our TeraStream pilot network in Croatia, serving customers with up to gigabit access speeds. TeraStream is Deutsche Telekom’s drastically simplified IP architecture, running just IPv6 in the core. The scalable delivery of IPv4 is critical. A10’s willingness to work with us to implement the Lightweight 4 over 6 solution and their execution and integration in our Network Function Virtualization (NFV) was impressive.” (Comment on this)
1:00p	Cisco InterCloud Champions the Hybrid Cloud At Cisco Live, Cisco debuted its new InterCloud hybrid solution. During a busy week at the Distributech conference in San Antonio, and its own Cisco Live event in Milan, Italy – Cisco (CSCO) announced an extension of its cloud portfolio with InterCloud, and an expansion of its vision of Fog computing, to spark new innovations in the Internet of Things. At Cisco Live, Cisco debuted its new InterCloud hybrid solution, introduced new validated designs, Cisco Services for cloud strategy, management and operations, and version 4.0 of its Intelligent Automation for Cloud (IAC). “Cisco introduced the concept of the ‘World of Many Clouds’ two years ago, and since then, we and our partners have been enabling an ever-expanding world of highly secure clouds, helping organizations shape their own unique cloud journeys,” said Robert Lloyd, Cisco president of development and sales. “Now, as brokers of IT services, organizations can add value by dynamically combining, integrating, and tailoring the delivery of cloud services – whether public, private, or hybrid – to best meet their business needs. Today marks a key step in the evolution of cloud computing – cloud workload portability will deliver immense benefits to cloud providers and cloud customers, paving the way toward an open and highly secure cloud ecosystem that delivers greater levels of agility, transparency, and speed of deployment.” InterCloud: Open, Hybrid Clouds As a part of the Cisco One platform, InterCloud is infrastructure software that will support hybrid clouds by allowing organizations to combine and move workloads – including data and applications – across different public or private clouds as needed, easily and very securely, while maintaining associated network and security policies. Embracing an open approach, InterCloud will move workloads to and from participating cloud providers with Cisco Powered services, such as BT, CSC/ServiceMesh, CenturyLink Technology Solutions, and Virtustream. The adoption of Cisco InterCloud by other cloud providers through the InterCloud Provider Enablement Platform will give users even more choice and flexibility. In addition, Cisco InterCloud has been designed to move workloads to and from multiple public clouds, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Azure. “Our customers rely on the BT Cloud Compute portfolio of services to design and operate cloud solutions that are tailored to meet their needs,” said Neil Sutton, vice president, Portfolio at BT Global Services. “BT welcomes Cisco’s InterCloud announcement as it aligns to our vision. The open standards approach of this new solution makes it even easier for our customers to reap the benefits of hybrid cloud solutions and migrate traditional IT workloads to the cloud. Cisco’s support for the Citrix Cloud platform builds on our long-standing partnership with Cisco, Citrix and NetApp. This collaboration continues to open new opportunities to bring innovative cloud services to meet the business needs of our customers.” Cisco and Red Hat are working together on several key initiatives to extend OpenStack and enable open, interoperable cloud environments. Red Hat (RHT) created a Cisco Validated Design (CVD) that incorporates OpenShift into Cisco’s latest Intelligent Automation for Cloud and Virtualized Multiservice Data Center (VMDC) releases. This means that enterprises now will be able to build a powerful PaaS with everything from underlying Cisco server and networking hardware to OpenShift. Furthermore, we have integrated OpenShift with Cisco’s Prime Service Catalog so that developers can have a single portal for requesting all their services. Expanded Fog Computing Vision At the Distributech smart grid event in San Antonio, Cisco continued delivering on its vision for fog computing, transforming the network edge into a distributed computing infrastructure for applications that take advantage of the billions of devices already connected in the Internet of Things (IoT). Cisco IOx is an application enablement framework for the IoT. With the new Cisco IOx capability, customers from all segments and solution providers across industries will be able to develop, manage and run software applications directly on Cisco industrial networked-devices, including hardened routers, switches and IP video cameras. IOx allows applications to run close to the data source – in instances such as smart energy distribution, smarter traffic lights, self-maintaining trains, and lifesaving air vents. It marries Linux and Cisco IOS network operating system together in a single networked device, which allows applications to run and respond instantly to actionable data sensed in an IoE world. “Itron’s work with Cisco is focused on providing an open, end-to-end, standards-compliant network for smart utility operations,” said Jeff Carkhuff, vice president of global product management for electricity at Itron. ”IOx will take this offering even further, allowing field devices to serve as both powerful IP routers and application hosts. The “bring your own interface” capabilities of IOx allow easy integration of innovative, specialized communications technology with a common IP architecture. Itron has been actively integrating IOx into our smart energy and water solutions, and we are excited about the possibilities it offers, including distributed analytics, real-time monitoring and dynamic control in the network itself.” Cisco IOx capabilities will initially be available in Cisco industrial routers this spring. Cisco is working with industry leaders to collaborate and develop IOx-based solutions that will ease the deployment and support of the billions of connected devices in IoT. (Comment on this)
2:00p	NERSC Flips the Switch on New Edison Supercomputer The National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center recently accepted a new flagship Cray XC30 supercomputer. (Photo: NERSC) The National Energy Research Scientific Computing (NERSC) Center recently accepted a new flagship Cray XC30 supercomputer, named in honor of inventor Thomas Edison. The Edison supercomputer will be used by about 5,000 researchers to support a broad range of science, from basic energy research to climate science, from biosciences to discovering new materials, exploring high energy physics and even uncovering the very origins of the universe. “Facilities throughout the Department of Energy are being inundated with data that researchers don’t have the ability to understand, process or analyze sufficiently,” said NERSC Director Sudip Dosanjh. “Historically, NERSC was an exporter of data as scientists ran large-scale simulations and then moved that data to other sites. But with the growth of experimental data coming from other sites, NERSC is now a net importer, taking in a petabyte of data in fields such as biosciences, climate and high-energy physics each month. Edison has been optimized for that: It has a really high-speed interconnect, it has lots of memory bandwidth, lots of memory per node, and it has very high input/output speeds to the file system and disk system.” The Cray XC30 system is expected to reach almost 2.4 Petaflop/s – which would place it just outside of the top 10 in the semi-annual Top500 rankings of the most powerful supercomputers in the world. Edison boasts 322 terabytes of memory, 124,608 processing cores, 462 terabytes per second of global memory bandwidth, 11 terabytes per second bisection bandwidth, and 7.56 petabytes of disk storage. Edison will specialize in data analysis, for things like  genome sequencing or molecular screening programs, which involve high throughput computing – which is running large numbers of loosely coupled simulations simultaneously. Such “ensemble computing” requires more memory per node and has typically been relegated to separate computer clusters. In preparation for its 2015 move into a custom-built data center (the Computational Research and Theory facility), Edison is the first supercomputer at NERSC to rely solely on outside air for cooling. Water is circulated through outdoor cooling towers and back into the system’s internal radiators, which cool air rather than heat it. Fans located between each pair of cabinets in a row pull air in one end; circulate it through a radiator, over the hot components and on to the next set of cabinets before it exits at the row’s end. This side-to-side airflow, or transverse cooling, is more energy efficient than the typical front-to-back flow of most systems. The dedication ceremony for Edison will be held at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory on February 5th, during NERSC’s 40th anniversary celebrations (Comment on this)
3:00p	Level 3 to Deliver HD Video for Super Bowl MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J. will be the site of the Super Bowl on Feb. 2. The NFL has teamed with Level 3 on TV broadcast connectivity for the game. (Photo: Rich Miller) With Super Bowl XLVIII expected to break TV viewership records this weekend, Level 3 Communications (LVLT) announced that it will once again provide television broadcast video services for the event, using its Vyvx VenuNet+ technology. This year the event comes with the added complexity of building a separate broadcast location in Times Square for FOX Sports. The Times Square remote location includes 4,500 square feet of temporary office space, using more than 200,000 feet of cable.  In total, more than 5,000 hours of video content will be acquired, encoded and transported across Level 3′s Vyvx VenueNet+ platform as part of the Super Bowl coverage. “Last year’s Super Bowl broadcast was viewed by an estimated total audience of 108.4 million viewers in the United States – making it the third most-watched television program in history – and Level 3 was instrumental in making that happen,” said Mark Taylor, vice president of Media and IP Services at Level 3. “We’ve worked with FOX and the NFL for many years, so we know how important it is to provide a seamless viewing experience for their businesses and viewers. From planning and strategy to build-out and execution, we’re there every step of the way.” This year, the Super Bowl will be hosted at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., which is connected directly to Level 3′s advanced fiber-optic network, enabling the TV broadcast of the event. As part of the service, FOX will also use Level 3′s JPEG 2000 compression services, which the broadcaster employed at all NFL venues during the 2013 season. In total, more than 5,000 hours of video content will be acquired, encoded and transported across Level 3′s Vyvx VenueNet+ platform as part of the Super Bowl coverage. “This is the first time in history the Super Bowl will be played outdoors in winter weather conditions. As part of the celebration for this unprecedented event, FOX will incorporate Times Square for a weeklong event of coverage prior to the game.” said Keith Goldberg, vice president Global Operations & Transmission Services at FOX Networks Group. “More than ever, performance is critical, and Level 3′s excellent track record of delivering the Super Bowl in addition to many of our previous professional sports broadcasts were ultimately key factors in our decision to work with them in 2014.” Used in all 31 NFL football venues, the Level3 Vyvx VenueNet+ technology is engineered to provide HD and standard-definition (SD) digital video services, with added HD and SD encoding, high-speed Internet and telephony services. The Super Bowl XLVIII broadcast will air on FOX networks on Feb. 2 at 6:30 p.m. EST. With a great effort going into the video production and broadcasting – and the power lessons learned from the last Super Bowl, hopefully the local utility provider can maintain power to the stadium. (Comment on this)

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