Tuesday, February 18th, 2014

Time	Event
12:30p	Big Data News: Zettaset, Pentaho, Couchbase Zettaset is granted a new U.S. patent for Hadoop high availability, Couchbase releases Server 2.5 Enterprise edition of its NoSQL database, and Pentaho powers big data analytics with Storm and YARN. Zettaset granted Hadoop Patent.  Big data management provider Zettaset announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company a new patent for “split brain resistant fail-over in high availability Hadoop clusters”. The newly patented technology provides a future-proof approach to high-availability and ensures that automatic failover is applied to all services running in a Hadoop cluster, as well as any new Hadoop services that may be introduced in the future. The high availability technology is at the core of Orchestrator, an enterprise software application that complements open-source products to help them meet enterprise requirements. “Our mission at Zettaset is to accelerate the adoption of Apache open-source Hadoop and help enterprise customers to safely and confidently move from pilot to production, no matter which distribution is being used. Our newly-patented, high-availability technology represents a major breakthrough for enterprise organizations that require and expect rock-solid dependability from their Hadoop clusters, and complements the existing open-source ecosystem,” said Jim Vogt, president and CEO of Zettaset. “This unique capability from Zettaset, along with the most comprehensive security available for Hadoop environments, makes Hadoop truly compelling to the enterprise.” Couchbase releases Server 2.5 Enterprise edition.  Enterprise NoSQL database provider Couchbase announced the release of Couchbase Server 2.5 Enterprise Edition- featuring capabilities for enterprise-grade performance, with new features such as Rack Awareness for high availability and cross data center (XDCR) data encryption for secure data center replication. The new edition’s newly introduced Rack Awareness provides a simple, flexible and effective solution for data replication that is easy to scale and administer. With Couchbase Rack Awareness, the user can create logical groupings of Couchbase Server nodes and replica copies of the data are automatically distributed across server nodes located on different racks. This intelligent data replication ensures that data is secure despite disruptions such as power outages, or switch or rack failure. “Enterprises requiring the highest scalability and availability are consistently choosing Couchbase over traditional databases and other NoSQL vendors,” said Rahim Yaseen, Senior Vice President, Couchbase. “With the Rack Awareness and data encryption capabilities included in Couchbase Server 2.5 Enterprise Edition, we continue to establish Couchbase as the clear choice for global enterprises requiring high availability, reliability and security.” Pentaho powers big data analytics with Storm and YARN.  Pentaho announced the native integration of Pentaho Data Integration (PDI) with Storm and YARN. The integration allows developers to process big data analytics in real time, so businesses can make critical decisions based on time-sensitive data. “As an M2M leader in the Internet of Everything, our wireless solutions require innovative technology to bring big data insights to business users, ” said Bryan Stone, Cloud Platform Lead, Synapse Wireless. “The powerful combination of Pentaho Data Integration, Storm and YARN will allow my team to immediately leverage real-time processing, without the delay of batch processing or the overhead of designing additional transformations. No doubt this advancement will have a big impact on the next generation of big data analytics.”   (Comment on this)
1:30p	SOASTA Provides Stress Testing for Olympic Web Sites Cloud and mobile testing provider SOASTA has been named the official web and mobile testing partner for the Sochi Winter Olympics, signing a 10-year contract to assure quality web and mobile user experiences for the 2018, 2020, 2022, and 2024 Olympic Games. After originally being asked to help the Olympic Organizing Committee prior to the 2012 London Games, SOASTA helped London2012.com handle 431 million global visitors, 109 million unique users, 15 million application downloads, and 4.73 billion page views. In early September 2013, SOASTA began web and mobile testing for the Sochi Olympics, leveraging SOASTA’s Global Test Platform for continuous testing from 16 locations worldwide. “SOASTA was honored to be awarded our first Olympics engagement for the 2012 London Games,” said Tom Lounibos, SOASTA CEO. “By assuring the delivery of high quality web and mobile experiences for the millions of Olympics fans across the world for London 2012 and Sochi 2014, we are honored that the SOASTA team and technology has earned the trust of the Olympics for the next 10 years. In the near future we will see the Internet of Things as part of the Olympic experience, with even higher expectations for quality user experiences every time.” For Sochi SOASTA simulated worldwide traffic conditions, delivering continuous testing for multiple Olympic web and mobile apps, including game times, cultural sites, and volunteer sites. Each site includes a strong mix of both mobile and web traffic. Leveraging best practices, performance testing was run daily and early on in the development process, including extreme tests of 100,000 pages per second with hundreds of thousands of concurrent users. The SOASTA platform for the Olympics includes mPulse, real user monitoring, for analyzing in real-time the experience of every web and mobile user of the Olympics sites. Cloud testing and real user measurement have revolutionized how the Olympics IT team tests and measures their millions of global users. The success the Olympics team has experienced for the last two Olympic Games has instilled confidence and trust in the SOASTA team for the next decade. (Comment on this)
5:02p	In Loudoun, Rizer Works to Help Data Centers Rock the Economy Buddy Rizer, the Director of Economic Development in Loudoun County, Virginia, has helped the county build a thriving cluster of data centers in Ashburn’s “Data Center Alley.” (Photo: Loudoun County) LEESBURG, Va. - Buddy Rizer knows a few things about promoting rock stars. Now he wants Northern Virginia to be known as the rock star of the data center world. Rizer is the new Director of Economic Development in Loudoun County, which is home to 56 data centers and more than 5.2 million square feet of mission-critical space. After a lengthy career in the radio industry, Rizer has spent the past few years working closely with the data center sector in his role as assistant economic director in Loudoun. Last year he was promoted to director. “You’re not seeing growth anywhere like we’re seeing right now,” said Rizer of the region’s cluster of server farms. “This allows us to really grow our economy year after year. We have continued to grow and provide excellent services. (Data centers) provide tax revenue, and they don’t put a drain on services. It’s really a perfect industry for a fast-growing community like ours.” This is something of a second act for Rizer. In a lengthy career in radio, Rizer met rock luminaries such as The Rolling Stones, David Bowie, Aerosmith, KISS, Robert Plant and Janet Jackson, to name only a few. He owned a radio station, and also worked as a program director, brand manager and on-air personality. “I started in radio when I was 15 years old, and had a wonderful time doing that,” said Rizer, who spent 16 years at DC101 in Washington, including stints as its morning host and program director. He still does an occasional radio show at 98 Rock in Baltimore. Now the rock stars in his world are Digital Realty, DuPont Fabros, Equinix, RagingWire and the many other technology companies building businesses in Ashburn’s “Data Center Alley.” Curiosity Led to Career Crossover How did a program director for one of the biggest rock stations in the Washington area end up so entrenched in the world of technology? “I was always interested in the technology of storing digital music,” said Rizer. “When I bought my own radio station, I made it completely digital. I was by no means an expert in data centers at this point. But when I sold the station I wanted to delve deeper into the technology world.” Rizer got his start as a volunteer in economic development. “I saw how government can really help business,” he said. “If you create the right environment, business thrives.” Rizer has been key in the success of the data center industry in Loudoun County, typically referred to as the NoVa (Northern Virginia) region. He’s too humble to say it, but the track record during his tenure is clear. “I was the first outbound sales guy,” said Rizer. “We conducted a cluster study and recognized data centers as having huge potential for Loudoun. I became as much of a data center expert as I could. I got certifications, and went to conferences. It helped Loudoun County understand what data center operators needed. From a government standpoint, it’s easier to do business in the data center industry here in Loudoun.” Proof of that statement is companies getting to market in record time. Digital Realty, for example, recently delivered new space in less than a year. If you attend a data center conference these days, the expo floor features many booths staffed by economic development folks from all regions of the country and the world. That’s a big change from his early experiences, Rizer recalled. “When I first started going, I was the only EconDev guy there,” he said. “At the latest conference, there were more economic developers than prospects that I wanted to talk to. There’s still value (in conference attendance), but the industry has gotten incredibly competitive. “It’s like any other industry,” Rizer continued. “When you start to see success, every community is going to want to see a piece of that action. We were leaders of a unique economic development success story here in Loudoun County.” Looking Beyond Data Centers Rizer now hopes the template that helped build the data center sector can be applied to other growth industries. “We want to take that same energy and vitality to other clusters,” said Rizer, who mentioned “big data” and healthcare IT as growth opportunities. “From a strategic standpoint there’s still a big future ahead. With the proliferation of cell phones and big data, digital data is going to grow 42 percent a year through 2020. In two years, we’ll generate more data than we can save today. The data center industry is going to be the one to store this information.“ Loudoun Country is primarily a market for colocation and wholesale space, two sectors that have benefited as companies seek a home for all that data. “In my opinion, it makes less and less sense for an enterprise to have its own data center,” said Rizer. “It’s not their core business to own and operate their own data center. The trend we’re seeing is that the colocation companies are growing.” Many of the prime properties in the Ashburn area are being gobbled up, according to Rizer, as most of the data center industry’s leading companies have already invested in land for their next stage of growth. “I wouldn’t say there’s a shortage, but a lot of the major sites are controlled by owners,” said Rizer. “We have such a great group of data center operators here. We even had a Data Center-centric fantasy football league. They all compete, but they also understand that it’s a great thing for the industry. “You start to think about not only the data center companies that are here, but the thousands of companies inside of these data centers,” he added. “Some of the greatest companies are located right here in Loudoun. A lot of people, when they think of Washington, D.C., they think of it as a government town. I think of it as a technology location. ” As for the people of Loudoun County, the fact that data centers bring such immense tax revenue to the county, it keeps tax rates low. Rizer continues to ensure that life is not only good for data center operators, but for the people in the county that have benefited tremendously from his tireless work to make Loudoun into an economic powerhouse. (Comment on this)
6:00p	Real-time Advanced Analytics: The Time Is Now Pat Buddenbaum is the Director of the Enterprise Computing segment in Intel’s Datacenter Group. PAT BUDDENBAUM Intel As the data deluge grows, there is an urgent need for businesses of all sizes to have a corporate data strategy in place – spanning the IT infrastructure, the line of business and CxO office, and the data scientists that bridge the business-statistics-technology gap. The opportunity for IT is significant, helping shift from a cost center to a profit center, but only if the processes and tools that help your organization access, analyze, govern, and share information quickly and efficiently are put in place. Everyone knows there is a competitive advantage for those who can gain immediate insights from the data  but that’s nearly impossible using yesterday’s computing platforms and software tools to create and manage the haystack, let alone finding the proverbial needle in said haystack. There are a variety of analytic methods depending on the needs of the problems being solved – whether running complex analytic solutions over a period of hours and days, using batch or offline analytics where data is grouped and analyzed at convenient points in time, or real-time advanced analytics. To make the fullest use of your data, you need the latest-generation platforms and solutions that allow you to analyze transactional information as events occur, without the latencies that arise when you have to extract data from data warehouses in order to run analytics. This is the idea behind real-time advanced analytics-solutions built by the software community on the latest Intel Xeon processor platforms. In-Memory Computing Facilitates Real-time Analytics The new Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 product family is designed to make data more valuable for your business through in-memory computing – one of the more recent advances in data management and analytic solutions, which stores the entire data set in main memory rather than traditional hard disk storage. In-memory database and analytics solutions enable significant performance gains in analyzing complex and diverse datasets. We’re talking about analysis in seconds or minutes rather than hours or days. This is how you get to real-time insight. In-memory architecture represents a major milestone for large-scale IT systems. In addition to driving orders-of-magnitude improvement in performance, it enables the development of all-new applications. This change in the way data is stored will have a big impact on your enterprise applications and, ultimately, on the way you run your business. It’s not a reach to say that real-time analytics will drive business transformation by enabling faster decisions, better decisions, new insights, and customized products and services. It all adds up to a competitive advantage in the marketplace. A platform built for mission-critical applications All of that said, let’s not miss the forest for the trees-the advances in the platform don’t stop at in-memory technology. If you take a step back and look at the platform more broadly, you’ll see that the E7 v2 family supports mission-critical applications on many levels: leadership performance, world-class reliability and uptime, and the scalability to handle any workload. The platform delivers up to 2X average performance gain, 3X more memory capacity, and 4X I/O bandwidth vs. the previous generation, and is designed for five 9s reliability. This is a platform built with data integrity in mind-a key concern for mission-critical applications. As your applications move to in-memory computing, you want to have the confidence that bits won’t get flipped and turn a $375 transaction into a $3.75 sale. The platform helps avoid such threats through the use of Intel Run Sure Technology, which increases both data integrity and system uptime. An Ecosystem Effort This isn’t a platform we built in isolation. In developing this next generation of processor, we worked closely with our ecosystem of software partners. They are designing their applications to take advantage of the platform’s advanced architecture, including in-memory computing. Our software partners are excited about the new processor for lots of reasons, not the least of which is that it will allow them to continue to evolve their mission-critical applications to take advantage of the latest x86 innovations. The platform will facilitate and accelerate their ongoing evolution away from proprietary UNIX platforms and into the world of open systems based on Linux and Windows operating systems. Let’s Focus on the Bigger Issues All of this should give you the confidence that you have a platform that is ready to run your mission-critical applications-such as online transaction processing-that require 24x7x365 availability. This level of confidence, in turn, allows you to focus your concerns on bigger issues-like using real-time advanced analytics to enable a transformation in the way you leverage your data and run your business. Industry Perspectives is a content channel at Data Center Knowledge highlighting thought leadership in the data center arena. See our guidelines and submission process for information on participating. View previously published Industry Perspectives in our Knowledge Library. (Comment on this)
7:40p	Dell, HP, Cisco Roll Out New Servers Powered by Intel Xeon E7 v2 A look at the HP Proliant DL580 Gen 8 server, which features the new Intel Xeon E7 v2 processors. (Photo: HP) As Intel rolled out its new Xeon E7 v2 processors, leading IT vendors promptly announced updated servers integrating the new chips, which support in-memory technology for improved analytics support. Here’s a look at the new offerings from HP, Dell and Cisco: HP Updates ProLiant Gen8 HP announced its new HP ProLiant DL580 Generation 8 (Gen8) server and upcoming enhancements to the HP ProLiant DL560 and BL660c Gen8 servers for its x86 portfolio. The ProLiant DL580 Gen8 server, based on the Intel Xeon E7-8800/4800 v2 processor, leverages in-memory technology to offer improved performance. HP also is touting the DL580′s use of intelligent management to lower total cost of ownership. ProLiant Gen8 innovations include a range of embedded automation and intelligent management features for integrated life cycle automation, dynamic workload acceleration and automated energy optimization. HP says the new servers continuously analyze thousands of system parameters to enhance application performance and improve uptime. The HP ProLiant DL580 Gen 8 is available for order worldwide starting at $13,079. “With the increased performance and higher memory capacity of HP ProLiant DL580 Gen8 servers, we can provide our customers with cutting-edge solutions to dissolve big data bottlenecks,” Christopher O’Malley, chief executive officer, Velocidata. “This technology reduces capital and operational costs, allowing us to continue building the world’s fastest data transformation, data quality and data simplification appliance-based solutions.” HP also is announcing upcoming enhancements to the HP ProLiant DL560 and BL660c Gen8 rack and blade optimized servers. HP said it will be updating these platforms next month with new performance and scalability features. Dell Debuts PowerEdge R920 Server The new PowerEdge R920 server from Dell includes four Intel Xeon E7 multi-core processors and the ability to support dual RAID controllers and up to 6TB of memory. (Photo: Dell) With up to four Intel Xeon E7 multi-core processors and the ability to support dual RAID controllers and up to 6TB of memory, the new PowerEdge R920 from Dell is ideal for large databases, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) applications, e-commerce, business decision applications and high-performance computing, the R920. The 4-socket, 4U PowerEdge R920, built on Intel’s new E7 processors, is also being positioned for customers looking to migrate from an outdated RISC architecture. Dell says the server offers nearly the same performance in an SAP environment as previous generation 8-socket servers, providing up to a 50 percent cost savings in software licensing. The company also says the R920 can process more than twice the number of Oracle OLAP queries than previous generation server configurations, when coupled with a Dell Compellent Flash-optimized solution. Dell touts several several significant data access enhancement in the PowerEdge R920, including 8 high-performance PCIe Express Flash drives that far surpass the IOPS performance of rotating drives, the new H730P PowerEdge RAID controller (PERC) that doubles the previous cache size, and the dual PERC capacity that lets customers maximize performance across the larger number of available solid state drives (SSDs). With 6 TB of memory and up to 24 local storage drives, Dell is positioning the R920 as a candidate for threaded HPC applications that require large amounts of shared memory (SMP codes). These “fat nodes” are essential in most modern HPC systems to accommodate applications that scale-up (vs. scale-out). The R920 includes a plug-in for managing or monitoring your HPC environment via Nagios (Linux console). (Comment on this)
10:30p	New Intel Xeon Chips Seek to Tame Data Analytics The product die for the Intel Xeon E7 v2 processors (previously known as “Ivy Town”)  which were released today. (Photo: Intel) Seeking to bring more power to bear on some of the largest computing challenges, Intel (INTC) today launched its Xeon E7 v2 family of processors, offering markedly improved performance and processing power. The Xeon E7 8800, 4800 and 2800 v2 processors are targeted for advanced analytics jobs. Formerly code-named “Ivy Town,” the new processor uses 22 nanometer process technology, and ranges from 6 to 15 cores with two to eight sockets. “Organizations that leverage data to accelerate business insights will have a tremendous edge in this economy,” said Diane Bryant, senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Data Center Group. “The advanced performance, memory capacity and reliability of the Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family enable IT organizations to deliver real-time analysis of large data sets to spot and capitalize on trends, create new services and deliver business efficiency.” With growing opportunities arising from Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT), companies are boosting investment in high-performance technologies and analysis solutions that can deliver significant cost savings. Intel’s own IT organization has harnessed the power of analyzing big data and connected devices, and expects to achieve cost savings and increased bottom-line revenue of nearly half a billion dollars by 2016 through the use of analytics solutions. In-Memory Analytics As A Selling Point The Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family has triple the memory capacity of the previous generation processor family, allowing much faster and thorough data analysis. This is coupled with in-memory analytics in the system memory rather than on traditional disk drives. Dramatic improvements can be witnessed with the use of in-memory analytics, delivering complex analysis in minutes instead of hours. The Intel E7 v2 (code named Ivy Bridge EX) is built for up to 32-socket servers, with configurations supporting up to 15 processing cores and up to 1.5 terabytes of memory per socket, the new processor family achieves twice the average performance of the previous generation. New memory capabilities support transaction-intensive in-memory analytics with up to 6 terabytes (TB) in a four-socket platform and 12 TB in an eight-socket platform. The new chip also features Intel Integrated I/O, Intel Data Direct I/O and support for PCIe 3.0, achieving up to four times the I/O bandwidth over the previous generation9 and providing extra capacity for storage and networking connections. With the new E7 v2 family of processors, Intel notes a delivery of up to 80 percent more performance and up to 80 percent lower total cost of ownership, when compared to alternative RISC architectures. With the addition of in-memory computing features, test results show a 148 times faster performance over disk-based solutions. The new processor family achieves twice the average performance and has four times the I/O bandwidth of the previous generation of Xeon processors. Broad Ecosystem Support Attesting to the performance improvements made in the new family, Intel announced that 20 new world records were set – with seven coming from Cisco UCS, and others from Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Huawei, IBM, NEC and Sugon. Ecosystem support was demonstrated for the new Intel E7 v2 family, with testimonials given during an Intel E7 v2 press event from HP and VelociData, IBM and London Stock Exchange, Cisco and eBay, and Dell. A total of 21 system manufacturers from around the world will announce more than 40 Intel Xeon processor E7 v2 family-based platforms, including Cisco, EMC, Hitachi, HP, IBM, Lenovo, Oracle, Quanta, SGI, Supermicro and many others. Analytics software vendors also support Xeon processor E7 v2 family-based platforms, such as IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Pivotal, Red Hat, SAP, SAS, Splunk, Sungard, Teradata and others. (Comment on this)

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