Here's a tale of two PC titans: HP and Dell. One executes well every quarter. The other doesn't. Both see big PC upgrade cycles ahead. Both are looking to ride... Continued »
Hosting company DreamHost is becoming a nightmare for customers. The company has had trouble keeping its customer sites up and running as it migrates to a new data center.
The problems began to appear on Sunday and are stretching almost into Thanksgiving. Customers have reported that their sites have been down for 24 hours at a clip and when there is a recovery it isn’t a reliable one.
Among the problems:
DreamHost has been upgrading their shared hosting hardware;
DreamHost is currently experiencing a fairly large network failure. The extent is unknown at this time however it seems that most of our central services (dreamhost.com, panel.dreamhost.com, webmail, etc…) as well as our customer sites and email are affected.
We have our network experts up and looking into the situation right now, hopefully a solution or at least more information will be forthcoming.
In an email to a customer flabbergasted at the outage, DreamHost’s customer support team wrote:
From: DreamHost Customer Support Team <support@dreamhost.com>
Date: Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: Site is down
————————————————————————
- After reading this response, please consider visiting
- the URL below to comment on its quality. Thanks!
-
- http://www.dreamhost.com/survey.cgi?n=30693556&m=5589763
————————————————————————
Howdy,
We’re quite sorry about the problems you’ve been running into today!
Our admin team recently upgraded the network in the data center where your machine is located. Unfortunately, we had a major network outage last night that caused one of those upgrades to no longer work correctly.
Now here’s where things get tecnical. Sorry if your eyes glaze over while I geek out over the details…
Basically, after the network outage started happening, we had to reseat the Gigabit Interface Converter (GBIC) that was no longer being used. Once the GBIC was reseated the network started working correctly. In fact, all of the problems and packet loss went away again.
As it stands, our admin team is closely monitoring our network. They have been since this weekend’s data center move - but we are now on even higher alert since last night’s network outage.
Even tho I said this before, it bears repeating:
Sorry about all the problems!
I’ll be straight with you - our team is in a bit of a rough spot (from a networking standpoint) as we integrate all the new machines to this data center. If you are noticing any lingering problems do not hesitate to reply to this message.
—
Addendum: We’ve noticed that WordPress is returning 500 errors for a large number of customers. This is possibly due to problems with accessing the database that were caused by the network issues.
If you happen to notice this happening to your WordPress install, you have two plans of attack:
1. You can change the “template” and “stylesheet” settings in your wp_options table to the value “default”. After you’ve done this, visit your site again. It should hopefully come up.
If it does, go ahead and set the value back to what you had previously and go about your day.
2. If mucking with the database isn’t your thing, go ahead and change the name of the folder your current theme is in. You should be able to locate the theme folder via FTP or SSH in the “wp-content/themes”
folders wherever your copy of WordPress is installed.
Doing this will make WordPress freak out (since it can’t find the files it needs) and flip your site back onto the Default theme. Then you can visit your site - which should be coming up in stripped down form - log into the admin interface and change your theme back to your preferred one.
As I said previously, please contact support if you are still noticing any issues. Even moreso if our bulk issue mover managed to put you into the high volume support queue when your intial ticket wasn’t even related to outages or WordPress 500 errors. We earnestly want to assist you with your problem and get your site running ASAP - so anything we can do to help, we will.
Thanks,
Jason
P.S. I also need to apologize for using a canned response. The amount of support that was generated by this problem called for it tho. If I could have responded to each question individually, I would. I hope you understand that.
Guest post: HP is purchasing 3Com. With every merger comes some customer trepidation about changes that could be made. TechRepublic’s Scott Lowe lists four items he’ll watch during the merger to decide if Procurve continues to be a viable solution. This ran on TechRepublic’s IT Leadership blog.
HP and 3Com announced that HP will acquire 3Com for about $2.7 billion. Obviously, with HP’s Procurve unit currently the only company other than Cisco to enjoy a spot in Gartner’s leadership quadrant for enterprise LAN and 3Com’s focus on all things networking, there is quite a bit of overlap between HP’s current offerings and those provided by 3Com. At the same time, this acquisition will help HP expand their share of the networking market. But there is a distinct possibility that HP’s expansion in enterprise LAN and the resulting product changes that will probably have to take place could change HP’s current approach, which have been very customer-friendly, to policies that might not be quite as beneficial to the customer but that would improve the bottom line for HP.
At Westminster College, we’re committed HP Procurve customers; we jettisoned our Cisco infrastructure back in the Spring of 2007 and have been extremely happy ever since, both from a functional standpoint as well as from a financial standpoint. Frankly, I’m a pretty big Procurve fan. As far as 3Com is concerned, the company, in my opinion, hasn’t exactly made particularly good decisions over the years. Back in 1999, I had just completed the installation of a 3Com CoreBuilder 9000 core switch when 3Com made the surprise announcement that the company was exiting the enterprise networking space. Part of me is happy to see HP acquiring 3Com and I hope that the merger goes smoothly. There are, however, a few items I’ll watch for. Note that the items on my list are considered as an existing HP customer.
Rackspace has launched a beta for Windows Server 2003 and Server 2008 cloud computing services.
The offering, which was hinted at a few months back in an interview, will be fully supported by Microsoft. In a nutshell, Microsoft will allow its Windows customers to get the same technical support for Windows Servers in Rackspace’s cloud as they would in a physical environment.
Rackspace’s Windows effort comes amid a flurry of news for the company of late. On Monday, Rackspace reported third quarter net income of $7.6 million, or 6 cents a share. Revenue for the quarter was $162.4 million, up 17.4 percent from a year ago. The results were in line with expectations.
According to Rackspace, the bulk of that revenue derived from managed hosting services. Cloud revenue accounted for 10 percent of total revenue.
Meanwhile, Rackspace ended the quarter with 80,994 customers, up from 70,803 in the second quarter. In addition, Rackspace announced that its cloud would power the Posterous blog platform.
Cisco and HP have been duking it over their visions for the next generation data center architecture and the battle is just getting interesting. Cisco entered the server market and HP has countered by purchasing 3Com for $2.7 billion.
Simply put, both Cisco and HP have encroached on their rival’s home turf. The 3Com purchase gives HP a foothold in security (3Com owns TippingPoint), switches and routers (statement, breaking news). HP also becomes the No. 2 networking vendor. Cisco CEO John Chambers foreshadowed the HP collision course back in August. He declared HP a clear foe.
Juniper Networks on Thursday unveiled an armada of new gear, software and chips that it hopes will ding Cisco Systems while positioning the company well in the next generation data center.
The networking company will roll out its strategy at the New York Stock Exchange later today (statement). Juniper’s strategy positions the company’s network operating system, Junos, as a centerpiece of the enterprise network while surrounding it with a bevy of new systems including processors that offer “3D Scaling.” In a nutshell, 3D Scaling is expected to allow for more subscribers, services and bandwidth to be squeezed into the network.
For Juniper, the product overhaul represents a repositioning as the center of the network. Juniper CEO Kevin Johnson called the repositioning a “historic day” for the company that highlights the vision for the next decade of networking. “Juniper believes it’s time for a new approach to networking. An approach based on smart systems and open software platforms. An approach that adapts to changing business dynamics. An approach that embraces partnership and unleashes innovation,” said Johnson.
Juniper’s biggest brother in this adventure is IBM, which has an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partnership. The companies said that IBM is now shipping to customers a suite of Ethernet networking products to customers. In addition, Juniper has surrounded itself with a bevy of other partners such as Dell.
The game appears to position Juniper as a Switzerland type neutral and open figure as larger players vie to become the dominant data center architecture.
Among the moving parts from Juniper:
The company unveiled new Junos software platform. Junos, a network operating system that runs behind the scenes, is Juniper’s answer to Cisco’s Internetwork Operating System (IOS). Junos has been updated to program layers of the network for rich user interfaces. Juniper’s platform consists of the Junos operating system, a Junos Space network application platform and Pulse, a network client.
Juniper rolled out new processors. The company touted a new Junos One family of processors. The linchpin here is a Junos Trio chipset with 3D Scaling, which allows enterprises to cram more onto a network. Junos Trio will be delivered in new line cards and 3.5 inch routers for the Juniper MX Series. The Junos chips are the fourth generation. There are 30 patents in the architecture. Juniper founder and CTO Pradeep Sindhu said in a statement that the company has invested more than $80 million over the last five years developing the processor line.
Juniper introduced new edge routers based on its software and new processors. The systems, dubbed MX 3D, carry some heady claims including dramatic cuts in operating expenses for carriers. Juniper is claiming that the MX Series can provide up to 2.6 terabits per second with less power consumption. To put that throughput into perspective 2.6 terabits per second equates to 8.5 million iTunes downloads in one tenth of a second or 50 Blu-ray DVDs downloaded in less than 5 seconds.
The MX 3D introductions include new line cards and two new routers. The products will be available in December and throughout 2010.
The company is offering cloud services based on its systems. Virtualized security services are the headliner here and Juniper is also offering new support for VMware and Citrix.
I don’t have to design data centers, but I do have to play a knowledgeable wonk on the Web from time to time. With that in mind, I attended two data center presentations at the Gartner IT Symposium to see what I could learn.
My knowledge about the data center essentially boils down to one word: Money. Companies are building new data centers to save money on power and better utilize their computing power. Sure, cloud computing is a factor, but a small one for enterprises at this juncture. These people are building data centers in a big way. The other money point: Vendors are killing each other to be the data center king. Cisco takes on HP. IBM is in there. Oracle too (via Sun). And unfortunately for IT buyers each vendor has a different twist on data center architecture.
Simply put, I’m a data center economics major with a minor in things like raised floors, cooling systems, server racks and other items.
Here’s what I learned:
Companies are only building what they need. A weak economy and green IT initiatives mean that techies are increasingly going to be judged by their data center savings, says David Cappuccio, an analyst at Gartner. An efficient data center design can cut the footprint by 60 percent.
Tiers are being mixed and matched with one data center. Data centers have tiers of availability. Tier 1 is 99.6 percent uptime and Tier 4 is 99.995 percent with Tier 2 and Tier 3 in between. To build a Tier 1 10,000 square-foot facility the cost is $9.94 million. Tier 4 will run you $34.5 million, according to Gartner.
One of the more recent trends is to mix and match tiers within one facility. With this approach, you can segment applications based on the importance to the business.
Everyone has a box for mid-sized and large businesses. IBM, Rackable, Sun, Verari Systems and HP all have trailers (right) that can extend data centers and deploy in 12 to 14 weeks. Cappuccio noted that Microsoft has a large 200-and-more-container deployment at its Chicago data center. Microsoft is also experimenting with wind-powered containers. For mid-sized companies these containers could become an alternative to traditional data centers—slap these boxes on a slab and go.
Pod architecture. Cappuccio noted that previous data center design principles went like this: Build a facility for today, estimate what you’ll need in 20 years, and go. Today, it’s all about pods. With this approach you figure out how much space you need, say 15,000 square feet, and then build out for five to seven years. Then you add pods as you grow. Pods also allow for retrofitting so a data center complex can last 40 to 50 years.
Combine pod architectures with density zones. Cappuccio added that data centers should be designed by density zones. High-density applications (200 watts per square foot) represent 10 percent to 15 percent of a total data center usage. Medium-density apps (150 watts per square foot) account for another 20 percent. The rest is low-density (100 watts per square foot). If you mix and match densities you save money on the build-out. The density zone approach is likely to be used in the majority of new or retrofitted data centers by 2013. Double bonus if you take the pod architecture and use density zones.
The money chart:
Raised floors are passe. Anyone who has been in a traditional data center knows that raised floors, anywhere from 12 to 18 inches to 24 to 48 inches, are the norm. If you design a data center properly you can use a concrete slab for the build out. Building on a slab can be $20 per square foot cheaper than a raised floor.
And once you learn the data center principles all you have to do is evaluate all of these vendor data center visions dancing around. The field: Cisco, Oracle, HP, IBM and VMware. You can toss Dell, Microsoft, Amazon and Google into the mix too. The big takeaways from Gartner’s talk on the vendor data center vision are:
Don’t get locked into anything proprietary;
The tectonic plates between these vendors are still shifting;
Don’t let any one vendor creep to the point where it controls your budget. Data centers aren’t meant to be homogeneous.
That final point is very notable. Most data center players have adjacent products and if you’re not careful your entire enterprise could depend on one big name.
While attending Gartner Symposium/ITxpo 2009, I spoke with Laef Olson, CIO of RightNow Technologies, about the company’s IT plans for 2010. Olson discussed RightNow’s plans to consolidate and rework its datacenters, an upcoming ERP implementation, and the company’s migration to Windows 7.
VMware’s third quarter financial results were better than expected based on maintenance renewals and federal IT spending.
The company reported net income of $38 million, or 9 cents a share, down from $83 million, or 21 cents a share a year ago. Non-GAAP net income of $95 million, or 24 cents a share, flat with a year ago. Wall Street was expecting earnings of 20 cents a share. Revenue for the quarter was $490 million, up 4 percent from a year ago.
Gartner unveiled its top 10 strategic technology list for 2010. Unified communications, servers and specialized systems are out. Client computing, data center do-overs, flash memory and mobile applications are in.
The items that were bumped from the top 10 list (statement) aren’t necessarily less important, but are moving slowly. Unified communications is strategic, but not critical. Specialized systems and servers are notable for converged systems, but they aren’t as important as new data center technologies that can consolidate data centers (think flash memory).
Data warehousing giant Teradata is outlining its cloud computing strategy including an internal cloud service and a public offering via Amazon Web Services. In addition, Teradata is rolling out an appliance it claims will provide a big performance boost.
The announcements, timed for Teradata’s partner conference in Washington D.C., this week highlight how the stakes are being raised in the data warehousing space. Teradata is battling larger foes like Oracle with its Exadata appliance, HP and smaller players such as Netezza.
Teradata is rolling out a bevy of new initiatives, but the most notable one is its cloud strategy. Teradata has a multi-pronged strategy that includes an internal cloud offering for customers—housed in the vendor’s data center—and a public rollout with Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Compuware on Wednesday said it will acquire Gomez, which monitors Web applications, for $295 million in cash.
At first glance, the deal seems like an odd fit. After all, Compuware’s list of products includes IT portfolio management, mainframe and monitoring applications. Gomez is focused on Web load and performance monitoring as well as analytics. However, Gomez does work in data center consolidation, mobile Web deployment and cloud computing. Read the rest of this entry »
A global consortium of IT professionals announced on Friday new tools and reports to assist data center managers and executives to improve the efficiency of their operations.
At a forum hosted at the New York Stock Exchange by NYSE Euronext, representatives of The Green Grid — a consortium that seeks to improve energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems worldwide — were joined by members of the United States Environmental Protection Agency and U.S. Department of Energy to discuss the challenges of data center energy management.
The Green Grid presented the results of a recent assessment of a mid-tier data center operated by the EPA, and said more than $1.1 billion could be saved by greening up the data center:
Nvidia unveiled its next-generation graphics processing unit (GPU) architecture, dubbed Fermi, and announced a key supercomputing win with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory.
The takeaway: Graphics and visualization are becoming key to scientific discoveries. And Nvidia could be a major player. Oak Ridge’s supercomputer will be used for research in energy and climate change and is expected to be 10 times more powerful than today’s fastest supercomputer (statement).
Fermi, announced at Nvidia’s GPU Technology developer’s conference (statement), is a new architecture designed to deliver computational GPUs. The game for Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang is to make his company more than just a graphics chip player.
Fermi will have tools for large data center deployments, 512 CUDA Cores and a host of other goodies including NVIDIA Parallel DataCache, which speeds up algorithims for physics solvers and raytracing.
At the afternoon keynote at the Intel Developer Forum, Executive VP Sean Maloney took some time to talk about what Intel is doing to address the needs of the enterprise and the changing data center.
The reality, he said, is that the data center is undergoing a major transformation these days and that three elements - computing, storage and networking - are beginning to overlap, meaning that you can’t really address one without considering the others.
At the same time, data centers are becoming more diverse. There’s no longer a one-size-fits-all way of dealing with data centers. Some are designed to power a small- to medium-sized business or remote office, while others might be powering a communications center or a cloud or a full infrastructure.
But Maloney points out that the each of these data centers have common requirements - performance, energy efficiency and virtualization. “All the underlying technical challenges are the same,” Maloney said. To address them, Intel next year will launch Tukwila, which is built on the Itanium family of processors, as well as performance enhancements to Nehalem, which is built on Xeon.
Maloney also touched on security and the enhancements that will come with the launch of the Westmere 32nm die-shrink of Nehalem. He noted that there are people out there who are trying to “crack transactions on the Internet” and do other bad stuff and that Intel is building directly into the architecture the technology that customers need to be better protect themselves.
“As Westmere moves in, the infrastructure will be there to do more secure transactions across the Internet, on the client and on the server,” Maloney said.
Beyond that, Maloney also touched on the client side and even had some fun on the stage to show what sort of technologies could be deployed in a Las Vegas-style, computerized slot machine.
The touch-screen machine would not only be smart enough to switch from slots to roulette or other games but also recognize a player and even allow him to order a drink. (That’s my kind of slot machine.) And so, Maloney pressed the “play” button and watched as the wheels begin to spin and he hit the 7s for a jackpot.
Maloney slot machine demo is a lot like Intel’s thinking about the future of chip technology. Both have been programmed to win.
HP on Wednesday rolled out new ProCurve networking gear, including new switches and a firmware upgrade.
The product additions, part of HP’s duel with Cisco Systems, are integrated into HP’s BladeSystem architecture. Many vendors are jockeying for position as enterprises build out next-generation data centers.
HP’s lineup additions include:
The 10Gb HP ProCurve 6120XG blade switch;
An expansion of the HP ProCurve 8200 and 5400 Ethernet switch portfolio to include better connectivity and more design alternatives.
A firmware upgrade to HP Virtual Connect, which is designed to allowed IT managers change bandwidth requirements easily.
Oracle chief Larry Ellison unveiled the latest version of its Exadata data warehousing appliance on Tuesday and it’s clear the company plans on increasing its data warehousing push.
Ellison’s Exadata Version 2 launch had three primary goals:
Knock data warehousing rivals Netezza and Teradata;
And illustrate some of the logic behind the Sun acquisition.
The first Exadata machine was launched in partnership with HP. This go round Exadata was built by Sun Microsystems (statement). The move made sense given Oracle’s purchase of the company. The Exadata Version 2 launch also gave Sun executive vice president John Fowler an excuse to show off its the company’s FlashFire technology.
Oracle’s big sell is that Exadata Version 2 “was designed for online transaction processing and data warehousing,” said Ellison. Running online transaction is “something Netezza can’t do at all” and “something Teradata can’t do at all,” he added.
Ellison also added that Oracle is installing Exadata machines “within the Teradata installed base.”
EBay has appointed Dean Nelson, a Sun Microsystems veteran, to be in charge of its data center strategy.
Nelson will be senior director of global data center strategy, architecture and operations. Nelson is founder of Data Center Pulse, a non-profit data center industry group.
The online auction company announced Nelson’s appointment in a short statement. Luckily, Nelson elaborated quite a bit in a blog post. Nelson noted that he had worked with eBay, a long-time Sun customer, and ultimately bought into the company’s data center vision. Nelson wrote:
I sat down with a group of execs from NetIQ during a break from the VMWorld show yesterday. They wanted to talk about the company, which offers a lineup of software products for improving IT processes, and its role in the virtual world, specifically process automation.
But what was interesting about the conversation was the idea that virtualization - which is considered by some to be the holy savior of the IT industry - could also have some downsides. Mind you, the benefits still seem to outweigh those downsides over the long term but the points that the execs raised as we were talking about challenges of a virtual environment were worth pondering.
One of the messages that Paul Maritz, CEO of VMWare, was trying to drive home in his Tuesday morning keynote speech was the idea that virtualization reduces complexity, lowers costs and increases efficiency. Those are all true statements - but let’s not forget that, with anything new, there is bound to be some level of complexity, at least an initial investment and likely some stumbling blocks for those working hands-on in the new environment.
The theme of the opening keynote at VMWorld 2009 was centered around two ideas: reducing complexity and offering freedom.
In its quest to shift from a virtualization company to the tech industry’s cloud infrastructure giant, VMWorld CEO Paul Maritz on Tuesday touched on a number of topics - including new tools, a strategy for reaching small and medium businesses and a Web-based “express” version for light workloads.
Of course, the bigger message surrounds saving money and operating more efficiently through virtualization. In his opening remarks, Maritz spoke of the need to transform IT spending. The majority of IT spending goes into things that don’t benefit the company’s growth. Instead, he said, it goes into keeping the lights on, the train running, the plumbing flowing or (enter your favorite analogy here.)
That way of doing business has to be inverted if the industry expects to keep growing, he said. And virtualization is “one of the few technologies, maybe the only one that can provide that evolutionary path to that transformation,” Maritz said.
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Everyone has a box for mid-sized and large businesses. IBM, Rackable, Sun, Verari Systems and HP all have trailers (right) that can extend data centers and deploy in 12 to 14 weeks. Cappuccio noted that Microsoft has a large 200-and-more-container deployment at its Chicago data center. Microsoft is also experimenting with wind-powered containers. For mid-sized companies these containers could become an alternative to traditional data centers—slap these boxes on a slab and go.
