Servers & Data Center Breaking News

Vendors scramble to rein in virtual environments
BMC, HP, Embotics, Fortisphere and VKernel update management products to take on virtual environments. More..

VMware's ESX certified for Microsoft support, deployment
VMware, whose virtualization software helps IT departments maximize use of their server hardware, said Wednesday that its product will run reliably with software from Microsoft. More..

Publisher squeezing IT energy costs via smart data center design
EBSCO Publishing is exploring all avenues that lead to green, from solar, wind and hydro to blades, virtualization and effective data center design. More..

Securing virtualized data centers
While server virtualization increases operational efficiencies, management flexibility and reduces total cost of ownership, it can also increase security risks. More..

Netflix: Hardware flaw caused shipping mess
A hardware component caused the problem that seriously disrupted Netflix's ability to mail out DVDs for several days this month. More..

Dell gains, Sun loses in worldwide server market
Dell posted the biggest gains in worldwide server revenue in the second quarter, helping it to nudge Sun Microsystems out of third place, Gartner said Thursday. More..

Intel confirms OQO to use Atom in handheld PC
Intel on Wednesday confirmed that its Atom chips will be used in an upcoming handheld computer from OQO, a significant design win for the chip maker. More..

More cores, bigger cache give boost to Dunnington
Intel plans to launch its six-core Xeon server processor next month, with the extra cores and a larger cache giving the chip a performance advantage over the company's existing quad-core chips. More..

Two years on, Microsoft and Novell extend partnership
Microsoft said Wednesday it would purchase a further $100 million in coupons for SUSE Linux support from Novell, furthering a controversial 2006 partnership aimed at customers who run both Windows and Linux in their server environments. More..

U.K. outfit woos SMEs with servers direct
It's a far cry from Amazon, but an emerging Yorkshire-based company claims to be breaking new ground in online SME sales. More..

College dropout is one-man IT shop — at college lab
A college dropout is the sole system administrator for a groundbreaking college lab. More..

VMware to get hypervisor certified by Microsoft
VMware and Microsoft team up for virtualization support. More..

IT managers choose SSDs over hard disks
IT managers around the U.S. are falling in love with SSDs (solid state drives) in enterprise servers because they solve two major headaches: they run so fast they can replace multiple HDDs (hard disk drives) and they help reduce the electric bill. More..

Republican National Convention venue gets network makeover
What does it take to convert a hockey arena into a site that can handle the technology demands of the Republican National Convention? Roughly 25 miles of cabling, for starters. More..

Fidelity looks to virtualize, standardize data center resources
A huge server virtualization project, targeting both x86 and high-end RISC servers, is underway at Fidelity Investments, as the nation's largest mutual fund company focuses on creating a more streamlined and adaptive IT infrastructure better able to serve the needs of more than 40,000 employees and 24 million individual and corporate customers. More..

Intel to release Nehalem laptop chips next year
Consumer laptops and desktops could get faster and more power-efficient when Intel releases chips built around its new Nehalem microarchitecture in the second half of 2009. More..

Google's enterprise search device grows up
Google plans to release on Wednesday a newly architected version of its Search Appliance enterprise search device that can index more than three times as many documents as the current model. More..

Planning for disaster - Houston-style, Part 1
Where do you start preparing for a disaster? I was invited a couple of weekends ago to observe a server and storage-area network failover disaster recovery drill at specialty chemical company Champion Technologies in Houston. I jumped at the idea. More..

Intel plots a Web 2.0 play with Facebook
Intel on Thursday said it would supply chips and programming tools to power Facebook servers, which Intel hopes will bring it a larger presence in the burgeoning Web 2.0 market. More..

PC owners urged to manage power use and save money
Businesses and home users can help the environment and save money at the same time by making better use of basic tools for desktop PC power management. More..

10 Gigabit switch unveiled for NEC blades
Blade Network Technologies this week introduced Layer 2 and Layer 3 switches using 10 Gigabit Ethernet for NEC Sigmablade blade-server systems. More..

Transforming the data center from hell
Some CIOs and data center managers have found themselves having to wring performance out of monstrously deficient facilities. Ultimately, these three wrestled with their infrastructures, made major changes and won the day. More..

Low cost data protection in a virtual environment
Data management VAR Champion Solutions Group is getting more bang for its customers' bucks by using Acronis True Image Virtual Edition for data backup and recovery. The flat fee software license covers an unlimited number of virtual machines on a single physical server, lowering the cost of data protection. More..

Sun Microsystems to focus on Africa
Sun Microsystems will focus special attention on Africa under a new emerging markets sales geography, which the company expects to drive accelerated expansion and sales coverage across growing markets. More..

Cisco to develop new generation of data centers
Africa is set to benefit from Cisco Systems' new unified data technology that delivers multiple applications over a network using minimal bandwidth. More..