July, 2011

Inside Enterprise IT

Strategic insights on using IT to achieve business goals
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    Tech women attending VMworld: we need YOU for our v0dgeball team!

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    Are you a techie woman headed to VMworld in August? We still have a couple of spaces left on the all-lady v0dgeball team! What? You don't know what v0dgeball is? Well here are the details: WHAT : A rules-based dodgeball tournament with an M.C. and referee. WHEN : Sunday August 28th 7pm-till its over WHERE: Sports Center of Las Vegas - 121 East Sunset Road, Las Vegas, NV WHY : To have some FUN! All proceeds go to the Wounded Warriors Charity WHO : Right now the teams are...
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    Dell Continues to Help Customers Drive Efficiencies with Green IT

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    As data center temperatures continue to rise, customers can chill knowing that their energy bill will not be increasing. I’m excited to share that Dell is enabling customers to operate data center facilities at higher temperatures (think 113°F) without driving up the cost of cooling . Dell’s servers, storage and networking equipment were recently tested, validated and warrantied by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) to operate reliably...
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    Trixter XDream Gives Cyclists More Game

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    A little over a year ago, Trixter , a high-end, fitness-equipment manufacturer, was just getting their sea legs under them bringing their XDream Training Bike to cyclists worldwide. The cycling gurus at Trixter wanted to add to their product line, which already boasted the popular X-Bike by “upping the ante” from a technology perspective. By bringing gaming elements to the XDream shown on a built-in monitor mounted to the front of the bike, “riders” could choose different...
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    Dell: Fueling the manufacturing industry through efficiency

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    As many of you are aware, Dell has a renewed focus around our approach to vertical markets, beginning with financial services and manufacturing. Our focus will be to help make these very unique industries become more flexible and efficient with powerful technology solutions that help them to solve the complex problems they face. Recently President Obama shined a spotlight on one of these key verticals when he announced the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership . His intent is to leverage the expertise...
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    OSCON: How foursquare uses MongoDB to manage its data

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    I saw a great talk today here at OSCON Data up in Portland, Oregon. The talk was Practical Data Storage: MongoDB @ foursquare and was given by foursquare ‘s head of server engineering, Harry Heymann . The talk was particularly impressive since, due to AV issues, Harry had to wing it and go slideless. (He did post his slides to twitter so folks with access could follow along). After the talk I grabbed a few minutes with Harry and did the following interview: Some of the ground Harry...
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    Dell announces availability of OpenStack solution; Open sources “Crowbar” software framework

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    Yesterday at OSCON we are announcing the availability of the Dell OpenStack Cloud Solution along with the open sourcing of the code behind our Crowbar software framework. The Solution Dell has been a part of the OpenStack community since day one a little over a year ago and today’s news represents the first available cloud solution based on the OpenStack platform. This Infrastructure-as-a-service solution includes a reference architecture based on Dell PowerEdge C servers , OpenStack...
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    System Admin Day 2011: Has it been a year already? [Infographic]

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    If System Administrator Appreciation Day isn’t already on your calendar, you could stand to add it, right? Right. We’re talking about the IT professionals who get your systems running and keep them healthy and secure. When disaster strikes, system admins are pivotal team players for data recovery and business continuity. This year, July 29 could just be the kickoff to another weekend. But why not think of it as an opportunity to add some appreciation to your latest cry for help...
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    Dell’s One-Stop Custom Shop offers more colors than black

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    It was Henry Ford who once answered a question about what colors the Model-T was offered in by stating that customers could get one in any color they wanted, as long as it was black. For nearly a decade Dell OEM Solutions has offered several server platforms to our customers in just the same way. The choice for an un-branded bezel on our OEM Ready platforms was any color they wanted, as long as it was Dell gray. We have always offered full customization where any color could be used, but those projects...
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    Dell Precision M4600 mobile workstations now at your door within 48 hours

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    We announced the Dell Precision M4600 mobile workstation in April and since then our customers have been dying to get their hands on these sleek and powerful little systems. While they’ve been available since May with standard ship times, we are pleased to announce customers only have to wait 48 hours to get their systems now. Starting July 21 customers can order Dell Precision M4600 Ship Fast systems and receive them 48 hours after their order*—with FREE shipping! The Ships Fast Dell...
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    A Revelation to Building Redundant or High Up-time Computing Applications

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    About a month ago I was asked to participate in a discussion with my good friend and co-worker, Josh Neland (@joshneland) , about different methods for building redundant or high up-time computing applications. My understanding was that Josh would discuss redundancies in general and I would cover enterprise class hardware redundancies, which makes sense given our fields of expertise. What I didn’t expect was the great differences in what I said versus what Josh said. To Josh, who has a storied...
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    #NEVMUG and #techfieldday: previews of VMworld?

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    I went to the #NEVMUG summer slam this week. There were well over a thousand folks there. Dell was a sponsor, along with 17 or so of other companies who sell the products and services you need in your data center. The first half of the day, VMware employees presented on all sorts of topics. My favorite presentations were VMware fundamentals: back to the basics and vStorage: Best practices. After a great lunch of subway sandwiches, the vendors presented sessions in the afternoon. ...
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    Intel version of Dell’s third gen Microserver now available

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    Over the past three years Dell’s Data Center Solutions group has been designing custom microservers for a select group of web hosters. The first generation allowed one of France’s largest hosters, Online.net to enter a new market and gain double digit market share. The second generation brought additional capabilities to the original design along with greater performance. A few months ago we announced that we were taking our microserver designs beyond our custom clients and making...
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    Plug and Play Tech Center – Start up Accelerator and a lot more

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    The day after I attended the Hadoop Summit I paid a visit to Candace Denton and the Plug and Play Tech Center in Sunnyvale . Plug and Play, which occupies the space that once housed Phillips Semiconductor, describes itself as a community of over 300 technology startup companies in the areas of Web 2.0, mobile, digital media, software systems (SaaS), semiconductor and telecom verticals. Candace, who heads up Business Development at Plug and Play, gave myself and and a couple of Dell compadres a...
  • Inside Enterprise IT

    Effective Compliance: What’s it Worth To You? [Infographic]

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    It may sound counter-intuitive, but enterprises need to spend money on compliance in order to save money. The costs associated with potential settlement fees, fines, remediation, business interruption and business that is lost altogether have to be balanced against the perceived benefits of two unnerving approaches: “do nothing” or “do the bare minimum.” A February 2010 Open Pages report on non-compliance costs showed that compliance failures could leave enterprises paying...
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    Dell Storage community is headed to #NEVMUG this week!

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    This week members of the Dell Storage community who are based in New England will be heading to the infamous New England VMware user's group (NEVMUG) summer outing up in Maine. In addition to myself, Sheryl Koenigsberg aka @storagediva , Will Urban aka @virtwillu , David Glynn aka @d_glynn, and Bob Ganley aka @ganleybob will be heading up to main to participate in the activities. Here are the details for our session at NEVMUG: Advanced SAN functionality for virtualization: simplified management...
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    Congrats to the Dell vExperts!

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    Every year, the VMware Community bestows the designation "vExpert" on individuals who go above and beyond in their contributions to the VMware community. Here is their description of the award: The VMware vExpert Award is given to individuals who have significantly contributed to the community of VMware users over the past year. vExperts are book authors, bloggers, VMUG leaders, tool builders, and other IT professionals who share their knowledge and passion with others. These vExperts...
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    Hadoop Summit: Looking at the evolving ecosystem with Ken Krugler

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    Here is the final entry in my interview series from the Hadoop Summit . The night before the summit, I was impressed when I heard Ken Krugler speak at the BigDataCamp unconference. Turns out Ken has been a part of the Hadoop scene even before there was a Hadoop, his 2005 start-up Krugle utilized Nutch which split and evolved into Hadoop. He now runs a Hadoop consulting practice, Bixo labs , and offers training. I ran into Ken the next day at the summit and sat down with him to get his thoughts...
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    Hadoop Summit: Chatting with Cloudera’s VP of Product

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    The next in my series of videos from the Hadoop Summit features Cloudera ‘s Vice President of product, Charles Zedlewski . If you’re not familiar with Cloudera you can think of them as the Red Hat of Hadoop world. I sat down with Charles to learn more about Cloudera, what they do and where they came from. Some of the ground Charles covers: Cloudera’s founding, what its original goals and vision were and where its founders came from. (1:35) What Cloudera does for...
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    Jumping in to social media requires putting your best foot forward…

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    Using headshots may help more than you know… If you have a blog, then you likely have an “About Me” section. And if you’re using social media, you certainly have a picture of yourself for your profile. As you become more engaged in online communities, creating content and sharing online reviews, you may have an interview opportunity or an article written about you. You may need to provide a bio for a corporate website, webinar, or other online activity. As you build...
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    Hadoop Summit: Talking to the CEO of MapR

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    I’m now back from vacation and am continuing with my series of videos from the Hadoop Summit . The one-day summit, which was very well attended, was held in Santa Clara the last week of June. One of the two Platinum sponsors was MapR technologies . MapR are particularly interesting since they have taken a different approach to productizing Hadoop than the current leader Cloudera . I got some time with their CEO and co-founder John Schroeder to learn more about MapR: Some of the ground...
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    The Mobile Worker Movement [Infographic]

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    IT consumerization: Quid pro quo Employees want to use their personal mobile devices in the workplace. And many potential new hires make this is a condition of employment¹. The good news? Companies that develop a strategy for supporting consumer smartphones and tablets stand to gain significant benefits. Mobile consumer devices make it easier for employees to choose when and where to get their work done — and those conveniences can lead to higher productivity. In addition, research...
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    Introducing Dell NX3000 for Compellent

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    Dell Compellent is introducing the latest addition to its unified storage line, the Dell NX3000 for Compellent . Another step in the integration of Compellent into the Dell Fluid Data architecture, the Dell NX3000 for Compellent connects to the Compellent Storage Center SAN and leverages Dell’s cluster-ready, Windows Storage Server 2008 R2-based NAS solution to provide advanced file management services such as single-instance storage (SIS) for file-level deduplication and DFS (Distributed File...
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