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Friday, April 4th, 2014
| Time | Event |
| 12:28p | Fusion-io Flash-Aware Compression Boosts Capacity for MySQL The new flash aware NVM Compression Interface from Fusion-io (FIO) doubles the capacity of ioMemory flash and boosts performance for Percona Server and Oracle’s MySQL and MariaDB databases. Collaboration to double usable capacity for MySQL Fusion-io announced a collaboration with Oracle (ORCL) on the development of flash-aware interfaces for MySQL. These interfaces include NVM Compression, a flash-aware interface that can double the usable capacity of Fusion ioMemory flash while eliminating the performance impact associated with disk-era compression and Atomic Writes, an interface that enables more efficient database commits when running on flash memory. Together, these flash-aware interfaces allow MySQL to deliver up to 4x more flash endurance by streamlining commands to help optimize databases for persistent flash memory architectures. “Flash-aware interfaces like NVM Compression and Atomic Writes underline the significant divide between flash as a memory and flash SSDs,” said Fusion-io Chief Technology Officer Pankaj Mehra. “The value of enterprise flash memory is maximized as a memory tier that enables unique optimizations for cloud computing, big data, in-memory databases and high volume transactions. Fusion-io is pleased to collaborate with Oracle to make these interfaces available to the businesses that use MySQL database every day.” The NVM Compression and Atomic Writes interfaces are now available in the MySQL 5.7.4 Development Milestone Release. usion ioMemory platforms for MySQL database acceleration are available from server vendors including HP, Cisco, Dell, IBM, and Supermicro. “Oracle continues to lead MySQL innovation and is working with Fusion-io to deliver flash-aware application performance,” said Tomas Ulin, vice president of MySQL Engineering, Oracle. “The flash aware interfaces introduced by Fusion-io update disk-era commands with code streamlined for flash memory operations, significantly reducing latency and accelerating performance for modern web, cloud and embedded applications. Solutions like the flash-aware NVM Compression and Atomic Writes interfaces continue to push the boundaries of performance and efficiency for MySQL deployments around the world.” Double capacity for Percona and MariaDB Fusion-io also announced that testing conducted by MariaDB database developer SkySQL showed that using the NVM Compression interface with the Fusion-io nonvolatile memory file system (NVMFS) doubled the useable capacity of the ioMemory server flash available to the database without affecting performance. In addition, the well-defined interface of NVM Compression allows developers to quickly introduce flash-aware compression to their applications using versatile workload-optimized compression algorithms. Once integrated into an application, NVM Compression enables developers to help enterprises scale their IT infrastructure to meet increasing data demands by effectively balancing storage efficiency with customer workload performance requirements. The NVM Compression and Atomic Writes interfaces are now in early access testing in MariaDB 10 and Percona 5.6. “Database compression provides the valuable ability to store more information in a limited storage capacity and reduces TCO of database management systems,” said Peter Zaitsev, Percona CEO and Co-founder. “We recognize Fusion-io’s continued leadership in providing hardware level storage optimization for databases and leverage that expertise when possible. We integrated both the flash-aware NVM Compression interface and Atomic Writes into Percona Server to ensure maximum capacity as well as maximum performance when used with Fusion-io flash memory products. We see this as enabling Percona Server users to enjoy lower total ownership costs and enhanced performance.” “Solutions like the flash-aware NVM Compression and Atomic Writes interfaces integrate powerful software-defined features that enhance the efficiency and effectiveness of modern IT architectures, making flash an even more essential addition to the data center,” said Eric Burgener, Research Director for IDC’s Storage Practice. “While much of the rest of the industry is looking at flash as a replacement for disk, these flash aware interfaces emphasize how Fusion-io is architecting flash as a replacement for memory.” |
| 12:58p | Facebook Provides A Peek at Progress In Altoona Facebook is giving us a peek at construction progress of its data center in Altoona, Iowa with some new photos. The company provided two new aerial views of the data center as well as a look at the interior data hall. The “shell” of the facility is well in place, eight generators are on site, and the framework for the data hall is coming together. Once Altoona comes online, it will be a critical part of Facebook’s overall infrastructure. The building will be approximately 476,000 square feet, and the project currently averages more than 400 people per day working on construction, logging more than 372,000 hours on the project. The Facebook Altoona data center was first decloaked back in April of 2013. After years of secret scouting missions, the company began building the $299.5 million first phase of the campus. As can be seen from the aerial photos, the facility is unusually long. The company plans to build a total of three data centers on its 200-acre Altoona campus, which is nestled alongside Route 80 and has access to significant supplies of fiber and power. New Design ApproachesFacebook will employ some new, innovative design initiatives on the Altoona campus that the company recently discussed at the Open Compute Summit. One involves using as a modular “chassis” approach to construction, shipping large pre-fabricated building blocks that can be rapidly put together, much like Legos, to create a building. The chassis approach is much like the concept behind the assembly of a car on a chassis. The frame is built, and then components are attached to it on an assembly line. Cable trays, power busways, containment panels, and even lighting are pre-installed in a factory. It begins with a pre-assembled steel frame 12 feet in width and 40 feet in length. The second design focuses on the use of IKEA-style kits filled with lightweight parts that can be assembled on-site to create rows of racks and ducting inside a data hall. Made famous by IKEA, the “flat pack” approach – you know when you buy a bookshelf and it comes in flat packages with easily assembled pieces – here, the walls of a data center are panelized so they fit into standard modules that are easily transportable to a site.  A look at the data hall inside the first phase of Facebook’s data center campus in Altoona, Iowa. (Photo: Facebook) A deeper look into the new design approaches is available here. This approach to design will enable the company to contruct and deploy new capacity twice as fast as their previous approach, according to a blog post by Marco Magarelli. Having already built three massive data center campuses, it will be interesting to see these big ideas regarding design in action. Wind energy supportOne of the deciding factors on choosing Altoona for the company’s fourth data center was the opportunity to help develop a new wind project in the state. This is Facebook’s first major foray into renewable energy (although it has a 100 kilowatt solar array at its Prineville data center). The new data center will be supported 100 percent by wind energy, another innovative move that made Greenpeace hit the “Like” button. The wind energy will be 100 percent supplied by a local plant. MidAmerican Energy won the contract and will build and maintain the Wellsburg wind plant. The wind farm will provide 138 megawatts of clean, renewable energy to the data center. The company continues to innovate from the power right down to the server. While Altoona’s energy needs will be met entirely with wind, the company has additionally committed to being clean across its facilities worldwide. |
| 1:21p | Mike Manos Moves From AOL to First Data After bringing micro-modules and lights out data centers to AOL, Mike Manos has moved on. The veteran data center industry executive is now the chief technology officer at payment technology specialist First Data, where he will be responsible for the company’s global technology infrastructure. He will be based in Atlanta, and report directly to company president Guy Chiarello. “Mike is a key addition to our world-class leadership team and his knowledge and expertise enhances our ability to provide our clients with cutting-edge technology,” said Chiarello. “He is a seasoned technology management executive with a proven track record of successful revenue generation. Mike’s leadership will be invaluable as we continue to improve our financial position and seek to grow First Data’s business as the global leader and most trusted, reliable and secure network.” For the past three years, Manos served as AOL’s chief technology officer and was responsible for global technology and development platforms for all AOL subscription businesses and media sites. Manos has also held leadership posts in data center operations at Nokia, Digital Realty Trust and Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services. During his tenure at AOL, Manos brought new innovations to the company’s infrastructure, retiring thousands of servers through consolidation, creating a highly virtualized unmanned data center, and deploying infrastructure in one rack micro-modules that could live outdoors and weather hurricanes. “I am excited to join the new First Data,” said Manos. “First Data is the biggest player in the payments industry yet it also has an innovative and entrepreneurial spirit. In my role as chief technology officer, I will help First Data maintain and grow its market-leading position as a technology company, a payments company, a security company and a solutions provider.” |
| 2:00p | NVIDIA GRID Technology Adds Speed to VMware’s Desktop Virtualization
A new partnership between virtualization software provider VMware and graphics card maker NVIDIA is poised to deliver graphics-rich experiences to more virtual desktop or Desktop-as-a-Service environments. NVIDIA’s GRID technology, which is designed to help offload graphics processing from the CPU to the GPU in virtualized environments, was first introduced as a beta service late last year. Now, NVIDIA GRID is available on Horizon, the DaaS platform VMware launched earlier this year, allowing complex graphics to be able to be rendered remotely through the cloud. Many corporations are keen on providing employees virtual desktops because they generally help reign in costs and maintain a high level of security. They also make it possible to access desktops from different locations on different devices. In the past, virtual desktops have been unpopular for users because they would become unresponsive or slow, however, software and hardware advances are making this less of an issue. And competition among cloud providers in the DaaS space has begun heating up. Amazon Web Services recently released Amazon WorkSpaces, and Cisco launched its own subscription-based DaaS solution. While NVIDIA GRID gained considerable attention for its ability to stream graphics-intensive games to players remotely, this technology is also pertinent to graphics-rich desktops and applications used by engineering firms, automakers, movie studios, retail designers and more. The combination of NVIDIA GRID and Horizon, according to VMware, offers the industry’s only multi-tenant DaaS platform for service providers. Multi-tenant architecture allows a single instance of a software application to serve multiple customers for added agility and lower costs. NVIDIA and VMware are also partners in developing virtual GPU technology called NVIDIA GRID vGPU that allows up to eight virtual desktop users to share GPU acceleration. An early version of NVIDIA GRID vGPU will be available to later this year to selected customers. This article was first published here: http://www.thewhir.com/web-hosting-news/n |
This article originally appeared at TheWHIR.| << Previous Day |
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