Massive 65% rise in data centre power consumption – survey

Power requirements surging across globalised data centres – survey

Exponential gigawatts more energy being siphoned into globalised corporate data centres

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus /London/ +++ In a sharp rise in expected power consumption by data centres used for cloud computing as a result of globalisation of the IT and corporatist sectors, research firm DCD Intelligence has just taken the wrsps off stark findings from its DatacenterDynamics 2012 Global Census report.

European Data Centre Association to launch at DataCentres 2012

Data Centre (Photo credit: Route79)

Newly-formed EUDCA to exhibit at conference for content relating to the data centre industry

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Data Centres 2012 (www.datacentres2012.com) to be held in Nice on the 23rd and 24th of May is to be the venue for the formal launch of a new European Data Centre Association

According to the Association, it will be exhibiting at the event, and is welcoming new members to meet there.

System of a Double Down: First 10 hour DDoS attack crashes SoundCloud

DDoS attacks. Image: kryptyk

On-line cloud firm decked by double major outages in weekday Distributed Denial of Service meltdown

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ On Tuesday October 4 at approximately 8:40pm CET, SoundCloud’s Operations team were alerted to an unusually high amount of unidentified traffic leading to a complete network outage. Within minutes, the company’s Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering and Head of Operations and all available operations engineering resources were deployed to investigate the issue and the company said it “worked around the clock” to locate and resolve it.

LATEST FEATURE: SAN storage and RAID: maximising efficiency in your data centre

In running a data centre environment, is any single factor more important than system reliability? Probably not. After all, without it you have no data centre. And you have an expensive failure instead.

By NAVEEN LOIUS

System reliability is so vital, entire industries are dedicated to ensuring it. RAID systems are a fail-safe solution to the problem of disk failure. In such an instance, data still exists on other disk(s). Mission critical systems have a fail-over system in place. In the event of any server or network failure, another system will initiate and thus remain on-line.

PRODUCT NEWS: V-locity 3 takes off for virtual disk duties

SAN storage area network schematic

Diskeeper takes wraps off V-locity 3 Virtual Platform Disk Optimizer

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Diskeeper has just released the latest version of V-locity 3 virtual platform disk optimizer for VMware, proffering invisible background optimisation for maximum I/O performance on virtual servers.

Amazon and Microsoft outages clatter cloud integrity

Cloud chaos in blitzkrieg strike

Catastrophic corporatist cloud outages destroying credibility of cloud as a serious business model?

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ In the wake of the dramatic outages at behemoths Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud services, industry heavyweights were quick to weigh in with their take on the ongoing data debacles.

Riccardo Degli Effetti, data centre manager at Rackspace said: “The recent lightning strike in Ireland that has taken down Amazon’s cloud hosting service in the region is a timely reminder that outages occur, no matter how well a technology or technology provider is prepared to prevent it.” 

Cloud threat as ‘zombie VMs’ sprawl

Virtual sprawl goes Zombie in cloud threat

Tens of millions of pounds tied up in petabytes of wasted storage as Zombie Virtual Machines continue to be a problem

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Real-Status CTO, Stace Hipperson, has warned that Virtual Machine administrators still need to be extra-vigilant against VM sprawl as more and more users ‘self-provision’ to set up their own virtual machines.

VMs, software implementations of computers that execute programs like physical machines, are the enabling technology behind cloud computing.

Gyron grows datacentre space with new 8MW Hemel facility

New high availability ‘Maylands’ secure data centre to open in New Year

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Gyron has just started work to bring online an additional data centre in Hemel Hempstead, in the South East of England.

According to the company, when open for customer occupation in Q1 2012, the new Maylands facility will complement the existing Centro facility, also in Hemel Hempstead, that was opened by the company in 2009.

‘Let’s Rocket’ as id7 hunts Dell partners in SAN surge

Intelligent interconnect for Dell SANs

id7 markets VS-fusion bootable software stack to Dell Partners:

BY PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Manchester-based interconnecting storage specialist id7 has launched a new targeting of their VS-fusion bootable software stack to Dell’s British partner network.

Dell partners are being sought by id7 to take to market their VS-fusion software stack which converts a Dell server into an ultra high performance storage appliance. Tests on a PowerEdge Dell R610 server, coupled with id7’s bootable VS-fusion software, show transformation of existing EqualLogic array into a rocket storage solution.

APC acquires Kell Systems

APC by Schneider Electric Acquires Kell Systems
BY PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Kell Systems has just been acquired by datacentre tech leviathan APC by Schneider.

According to the UK manufacturing company, its ‘Server Room in a box’ boasts a soundproofed IT cabinet that enables server and network deployment wherever and whenever needed, saving space, costs and deployment times.

The range of Kell Server Cabinets will boost APC’s existing datacentre offerings to include office server storage that can be operated independently of or in conjunction with traditional server rooms, cutting capital expenditure and running costs.

Corporations’ cloud moves are ill-prepared – survey

Corporate calamity? Cloud plans ill-prepared

Large organisations moving to clouds to reduce costs but are ill-prepared to achieve goals according to CiRBA survey

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ According to a new survey by CIRBA, a majority of large organisations are migrating internal virtual infrastructure to the cloud believing it will cut costs, but only 17 percent achieved utilisation and ROI goals with virtualisation, and yet, they intend to use similar planning and management approaches for their move to the cloud.

Disaster recovery driving virtualization – survey

Virtualization: outsourced power

IT personnel not aware of hidden costs – including I/O bottlenecks

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ A new survey by Coleman Parkes and commissioned by CA Technologies has found that downtime costs businesses more than 127 million man-hours per annum.

However, more that 30 percent of both VMware and Microsoft virtualisation users identified backing up VM data as a challenge, and also indentified storage management, I/O bottlenecks and server availability monitoring as major virtualisation challenges.

Cloud migration held back by ‘lack of visibility’

Cloud migration concerns mount

Are organisations holding back from making use of cloud services due to lack of understanding and reassurance?

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ New research by IT firm Intergence Systems has found that companies are often reluctant to migrate to the cloud when there are still on-going security and management concerns around data management.

According to Intergence, cloud-based services are expanding but are also frequently viewed with suspicion, particularly for reasons such as data governance and security.

Software AG acquires Terracotta in Java cloud move

German company takes control of foreign firm to acquire cloud and memory assets

In-memory and cloud to enable high-performance Java applications for cloud services

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ /Frankfurt, Germany/ +++ The German software firm Software AG has just acquired Silicon Valley innovator Terracotta’s portfolio of products and services which the German firm said will form the foundation of its new in-memory and cloud offerings.

According to Frankfurt-Germany-based Software AG, the combined portfolio will increase revenue with existing customers and expand opportunities with new enterprise customers.

The German software giant added that it would also gain access to Terracotta’s large open source community.

The firm also stated that the acquisition would also enable it to offercloud and to increase performance and scalability of its business process platform.

Digital asset firesale as Autonomy mops up at Iron Mountain

Autonomy’s moves into the cloud platform to expand to 25 petabytes of customer data under management

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus +++ Autonomy has just acquired selected key assets of Iron Mountain’s digital division including archiving, eDiscovery and online backup.

In a digital asset firesale that observers see as a stratgic move into the cloud for Autonomy, this means access to Autonomy’s technology for information governance in secure, private clouds in data centres.

Oracle database disasters a thing of the past with Kroll’s recovery drive

Fried disk drive with burnt chips

Ontrack data recovery spins to the rescue

by ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Kroll Ontrack has taken the wraps off its latest Ontrack Data Recovery service for Oracle systems, which now includes popular virtual environments.

According to Kroll, recovery efforts can now be further complicated when databases are hosted inside virtual machines or in the cloud. 

OBITER DICTA: Cloud data center chaos set for earthquake catastrophes?

With a cloud security standards void to bring enterprise disasters closer?

The ostensible absence of universally-agreed cloud security standards and SLAs for enterprises who venture forth into the sexy and hip cloud outsourcing trend, without implementing an adequate risk assesment profile, is a recipe for digital data centre disaster.

FEATURE: Cloud Computing Standards: The Great Debate

Cloud confusion debate continues

Justin Pine takes a look at the ongoing debate around cloud standards.

Recent research conducted by Mimecast has found that a large proportion of businesses are now using some form of cloud service, with a further 30 percent planning on adopting more cloud services in the future.

Fashionable new architectures within the technology industry are not unusual. However, even allowing for a certain amount of bandwagon jumping, this rate of cloud adoption has been considerable.

Testing times as MTI proffers EMC cloud virtualization tools

Virtualization

MTI adds EMC VNX to its Solutions Centres

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ A new European cloud virtualisation platform has been launched for enterprise ‘proof-of-concept’.

Cloud infrastructure consultancy MTI has just revealed details of its plans to add EMC VNX capabilities, enabling testing of performance and functionality within a fully-integrated virtualisation architecture within a three-location cloud environment.

Kroll Ontrack avows varied virtualisation systems

Kroll Ontrack now supports range of virtualised systems for data recovery

Media that has suffered a catastrophic electronic malfunction

ECM Plus – Kroll Ontrack has just confirmed it can now support virtualisation products from a range of other vendors, including Hyper-V, Oracle VM VirtualBox and Citrix XenServer, as well as VMware vSphere virtual systems.

The support will be via its in-lab and remote Ontrack Data Recovery services, the comany said.

Fifth amendment for Entropy’s ECM Content Hub

The Content Grid. Picture: Eloqua

Content hub for document connectivity transfers

By PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus – /London/ +++ EntropySoft has released Version 5 of Content Hub for connectings all ECM systems and manages document transfers.

According to the firm, Content Hub V5 enables synchronisation of documents between disparate ECM systems, which may be deployed on-premises or in the cloud.

Enterprises of all sizes can manage their own document transfers and share documents in cloud repositories and exchange documents with others.

GXS touts GridConnect for cloud SaaS collaborators

GXS on the grid in cloud collaborator for SaaS and ISVs

Embedded integration partner programme for ISVs and SaaS providers for B2B cloud

ECM Plus +++ GXS has just taken the wraps off a new programme for collaborators in the independent software vendor community and SaaS players to embed GXS’s Trading Grid integration cloud platform into cloud services and software apps.

GXS said that their collaborators can now connect banking, manufacturing and retailer customers to make the most of their six million trading partner relationships already in GXS Trading Grid.

FEATURE: Got a copy in the Cloud?

Copy protection in the cloud

BY CLAIRE GALBOIS-ALCAIX

Ten years ago, if you’d asked a small businesses owner what they did to back up their data, the majority would have pulled a tape from their bag and told you how they swapped out a cassette each night and took them home for safe keeping.

But times have changed and, today, everyone is talking about ‘the Cloud’. So what does that mean? Are all Cloud services the same? And is all Cloud data protected?

Wunderbar! Free ‘Cloud-In-A-Box’ offer from Onapp at German fest

US$25 million “Cloud-In-A-Box” giveaway to dispel cloud hosting cost and complexity myths

BY PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus – OnApp is offering hosting providers at the WorldHostingDays 2011 exhibition today, in a campaign they hope will dispel the myth that the cost and complexity of setting up a cloud hosting operation is a big deal. 

In a moment of marketing madness, OnApp will give away 500 “Cloud-In-A-Box” packages that give recipients the opportunity to get cloud hosting software and services, worth well over US$50,000 – free of charge.

FEATURE: The Challenges and Business Benefits of Cloud Computing

A row of racks in a server farm

BY JULIAN BOX
The current economic climate has seen the need for organisations across all sectors to identify cost savings strategies. The term ‘virtualisation’ and the concept of ‘cloud computing’ have been long discussed as cost-saving and business continuity solutions. However, before an organisation considers deploying a virtual environment and eventually utilising the cloud, it is important for companies to understand how this will fit into their overall business objectives.

Improving operational efficiency will yield cost savings as many organisations are still stuck with the inefficient model of utilising both physical only or a hybrid of physical and virtual infrastructure. These types of environments are expensive to purchase and maintain, especially when adding on power and cooling costs in server rooms or data centres. While virtual infrastructure brings about significant cost and resource savings, it also brings challenges and a shift in operations to deliver the ultimate benefits.