Gettin’ the scoop on the OpenStack Design Summit

April 28, 2011

Earlier this week, I attended the first two days of the OpenStack Design Summit out in Santa Clara, CA.  Before I took off I grabbed sometime with Jim  Curry, GM of Rackspace Cloud Builders and the leader of Rackpace’s OpenStack efforts.

I got Jim’s thoughts on how the summit was going, how the project was going as well as some breaking news.

Some of the ground Jim covers:

  • Jim’s areas of responsibility
  • How this week’s Design summit is different from the first two?  (how its grown and changed)
  • Some of the hot topics at this summit
  • Breaking news re. the next release, Diablo, milestones and a regular cadence
  • Note: I had a brain cramp and said Ubuntu follows the Mozilla schedule, I meant GNOME (go figure)

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…


Eucalyptus back at OpenStack Design Summit

April 26, 2011

At the last OpenStack design summit, I sat down with Eucalyptus co-founder Graziano Obertelli and got his thoughts on the effort.  This morning I bumped into a now clean-shaven Graziano and thought Id get his input on this week’s summit.

Some of the ground Graziano covers:

  • What Graziano’s goals are for this weeks OpenStack summit
  • What sessions he plans to attend
  • Eucalyptus’s big upcoming 3.0 release
  • Looking forward to really engaging with the Eucalyptus community

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…


Forrester’s James Staten on OpenStack

April 26, 2011

Earlier today the OpenStack Design Summit kicked off here at the Hyatt in Santa Clara.  This four day event is bringing together developers, users and business people to discuss OpenStack and design its future.

Among this morning’s attendees was James Staten Forrester Research’s cloud guru.  I grabbed James at the first break and got his thoughts on the event’s kick-off and OpenStack in general.

Some of the ground James covers:

  • Why he chose to attend and what he’s looking for
  • What he thought of the opening presentations and how something like an OpenStack could alleviate some of the pain of outages like Amazon had last week.
  • What type of outcomes he would like to see from this weeks summit.
  • How important are programs like Rackspace’s cloud builder effort.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…


TIBCO, Dell, Arista & Mellanox deliver Extreme Low-Latency messaging solution for Financial Markets

April 19, 2011

When it comes to latency in financial trading, the name of the game is how low can you go.  According to an industry analyst, a millisecond of latency in trading can translate into $100 million of lost revenue for a major brokerage firm.

In a quest to quash latency while at the same time providing flexibility and agility, TIBCO has banded together with Dell, Arista Networks and Mellanox Technologies to deliver a complete Extreme-Low-Latency Messaging solution based on TIBCO FTL.

This solution, which was announced earlier today, is made up of the following:

  • TIBCO FTL
  • Arista 7100 switches
  • Dell PowerEdge C6100 servers
  • Mellanox ConnectX-2 EN 10GigE NICs with RDMA over Converged Ethernet

This end-to-end solution enables financial trading market customers to rapidly turn millions of messages per second into actionable information on the trading room floor.  Faster access to information means faster time to analysis and faster time to profitability.  And in today’s global financial markets, speed is king.

Extra-credit reading

  • Datasheet: TIBCO FTL: Extreme Low-Latency Messaging
  • Press release: TIBCO, Arista Networks, Dell, and Mellanox Technologies Team Up to Provide Financial Markets with Extreme Low-Latency Messaging Solution

Pau for now…


Savtira streams media and apps from the cloud with beefy PowerEdge C combo

April 18, 2011

Savtira Corporation, who provides outsourced Cloud Commerce solutions, has chosen Dell DCS’s PowerEdge C line of servers and solutions to deliver streamed media and apps from the cloud.  Dell’s gear will help power the Savtira Cloud Commerce platform and Entertainment Distribution Network (EDN).

With a little help from PowerEdge C, businesses will now be able to use EDN to stream all digital media (business apps, games, music, movies audio/ebooks) from the cloud to any device.  One of the particularly cool features is, since the state and configuration are cloud-based, consumers can switch between devices and pick up exactly where they pushed pause on the last device.

Talk about supercharging

To power Savtira’s EDN data center, the company picked PowerEdge C410xs packed with NVidia Tesla M2070 GPUs and driven by PowerEdge C6145s.  If you think GPUs are just for rendering first-person shooters, think again.  GPUs can also cost-effectively supercharge your compute-intensive solution by offloading a lot of the processing from the main CPUs.  According to NVidia, for 1/10 the cost and with only 1/20 of the power consumption, GPUs deliver the same performance as CPUs.

To  help you get an idea of the muscle behind this solution, the PowerEdge C410x PCIe expansion chassis holds up to 16 of the Tesla M2070s GPUs, each of which exceeds over 400 cores.  Two fully populated C410xs are in turn powered by one PowerEdge C6145 for a combined total of 33 Teraflops in just 7U.

Talk about a lot of power in a little space :)

Extra-credit reading

  • PowerEdge C6145 — Dell DCS unveils its 4th HPC offering in 12 months, and its a beefy one
  • PowerEdge C410x — Say hello to my little friend — packing up to 16 GPGPUs
  • NVIDIA: from gaming graphics to High Performance Computing

Pau for now…


Whitepaper: 5 points to consider when choosing a Server Vendor for Hyperscale Data Centers

April 15, 2011

A whitepaper came out a little while ago from the management consulting firm, PRTM, that gives a perspective on the server industry.  The paper, which Dell was one of the contributors to, specifically focuses on something near and dear to our hearts, hyperscale data centers.

The paper, entitled Hyperscale Data Centers: Value of a Server Brand, talks about what organizations who are looking to build out these ginormous data centers should consider when selecting a system vendor.

In particular, PRTM offer their points to consider in light of the decision of working with a system OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) like a Dell or HP, or going directly to an ODM (Original Design Manufacturers) like a Foxconn or Quanta.

The five main areas PRTM recommends focusing on when choosing a server vendor are:

  1. Providing total solution reliability
  2. Ability to accommodate future capacity swings
  3. Ability to guarantee supply of components and sub-systems
  4. Accountability
  5. Ability to manage the entire spectrum of a large-scale deployment

Check out the whitepaper and see where you land (I know which I would choose :) )

Update:

Dave Ohara of Green Data Center blog fame did a post about choosing between OEMS and ODMs building on this entry.  He provides a lot of great detail and factoids, check it out:

Extra-credit reading

  • PRTM blog: Hyperscale Data Centers—5 Points to Consider When Choosing a Server Vendor

Pau for now…


A walk thru Facebook’s HQ on Open Compute day

April 12, 2011

Last Thursday a group of us from Dell attended and participated in the unveiling of Facebook’s Open Compute project.

Much the way open source software shares the code behind the software, the Open Compute project has been created to provide the specifications behind the servers and the data center.    By releasing these specs, Facebook is looking to promote the sharing of data center and server technology best practices across the industry.

Pre-Event

The unassuming entrance to Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters.

The Facebook wall.

Facebook headquarters at 8am. (nice monitors! :)

Words of wisdom on the wall.

The Event

Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerburg kicks off the Open Compute event.

The panel moderated by Om Malik that closed the event. Left to right: Om, Graham Weston of Rackspace, Frank Frankovsky of Facebook, Michael Locatis of the DOE, Alan Leinwand of Zynga, Forrest Norrod of Dell (with the mic) and Jason Waxman of Intel.

Post-event show & tell: Drew Schulke of Dell's DCS team being interviewed for the nightly news and showing off a Dell DCS server that incorporates elements of Open Compute.

Extra credit reading

  • GigaOM: Bringing Facebook’s Open Compute Project Down to Earth
  • The Register:  Facebook’s open hardware: Does it compute?

Pau for now…


Rackspace’s head of OpenStack talks about Facebook’s Open Compute

April 7, 2011

This morning at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto the company announced their Open Compute project  Partners and kindred spirits were there to tell the story behind Open Compute and explain what they think it means to the industry.  One group of kindred spirits were the individuals from Rackspace.  I got some time with Jim Curry who heads up OpenStack at Rackspace after the event officially ended.

Here is what Jim had to say:

Some of the topics Jim covers:

  • Driving efficiencies in data center design requires looking at the issue holistically.
  • Learning from Facebook’s successes and failures.
  • Looking forward to collaboration in an area that hasn’t historically had a lot of collaboration.
  • Engagement with Facebook engineers on how to run OpenStack on their hardware.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…


Frank Frankovsky of Facebook talks about Open Compute — how they got there and where they go from here

April 7, 2011

Former Dell DCS dude Frank Frankovsky has been at Facebook for about 18 months.  Frank is Facebook’s Director, Hardware Design and Supply Chain and since he arrived, he has been heavily involved in the Open Compute project.  Today was the big day when Open Compute made its worldwide debut.

Frank represented Facebook on the panel discussion which was moderated by GigaOM’s Om Malik.  After the panel I was able to grab a few minutes with Frank, between press interviews, and learn first hand about the project.

Some of the topics Frank covers:

  • What he and his team do at Facebook
  • Their brand new data center which is running open compute infrastructure
  • Opening up the details and specs of their data center and the systems they are running
  • The genesis of the open compute project
  • What are the next steps for the open compute project

Extra-credit reading:

Pau for now…


Forrest Norrod of Dell on Open Compute

April 7, 2011

This morning, at Facebook’s headquarters in Palo Alto, the company unveiled the Open Compute project.  Also on hand to support the announcement were partners such as Dell and Intel, who served on a panel alongside representatives from Rackspace, the Department of Energy, Zynga and Facebook.  Forrest Norrod, GM of Dell’s server platform division represented Dell on the panel.

I caught up with Forrest after the event to get his take on the Open Compute project and what it means for Dell.

Extra-credit reading

Pau for now…


Facebook, OpenCompute and Dell

April 7, 2011

Today at its headquarters in Palo Alto, Facebook and a collection of partners such as Dell, Intel and AMD  — as well as kindred spirits like RackSpace’s founder (the company behind OpenStack) and the CIO of the Department of Energy — are on hand to reveal the details behind Facebook’s first custom-built data center and to announce the Open Compute project.

Efficiency: saving energy and cost

The big message behind Facebook’s new data center, located in Prineville Oregon, is one of efficiency and openness.  The facility will use servers and technology that deliver a 38 percent gain ìn energy efficiency.  To bring the knowledge that the company and its partners have gained in constructing this hyper-efficient hyper-scale data center Facebook is announcing the Open Compute project.

Much the way open source software shares the code behind the software, the Open Compute project has been created to provide the specifications behind the hardware.  As a result, Facebook will be publishing the specs for the technology used in their data center’s servers, power supplies, racks, battery backup systems and building design.  By releasing these specs, Facebook is looking to promote the sharing of data center and server technology best practices across the industry.

How does Dell fit in?

Dell, which has a long relationship with Facebook, has been collaborating on the Open Compute project.  Dell’s Data Center Solutions group has designed and built a data center solution using components from the Open Compute project and the server portion of that solution will be on display today at Facebook’s event.  Additionally Forrest Norrod, Dell’s GM of server platforms will be a member of the panel at the event talking about the two companies’ common goal of designing the next generation of hyper efficient data centers.

A bit of history

Dell first started working with Facebook back in 2008 when they had a “mere” 62 million active users.  At that time the three primary areas of focus in with regards to the Facebook IT infrastructure were:

  1. Decreasing power usage
  2. Creating purpose-built servers to match Facebook’s tiered infrastructure needs
  3. Having tier 1 dedicated engineering resources to meet custom product and service needs

Over the last three-plus years, as Facebook has grown to over 500 million active users, Dell has spefically helped out to address these challenges by:

  • Building custom solutions to meet Facebook’s evolving needs, from custom-designed servers for their web cache, to memcache systems to systems supporting their database tiers.
  • Delivering these unique servers quickly and cost effectively via Dell’s global supply chain.  Our motto is “arrive and live in five”, so within five hours of the racks of servers arriving at the dock doors, they’re live and helping to support Facebook’s 500 million users.
  • Achieving the greatest performance with the highest possible efficiency. Within one year, as the result of Dell’s turnkey rack integration and deployment services, we were able to save Facebook 84,000 pounds of corrugated cardboard and 39,000 pounds of polystyrene during that same year.

Congratulations Facebook! And thank you for focusing on both open sharing and on energy efficiency from the very beginning!

Pau for now…


Dell’s Billion Dollar Baby

April 7, 2011

Today Dell is announcing that it is continuing to put its money where its mouth is when it comes to its transformation into a solutions provider, this time to the tune of $1 Billion.  The goal of this investment, which is being made this year, is to provide customers with a complete set of resources and services to enable business agility, efficiencies and competitive advantage.

Specifically Dell is announcing:

  • Cloud Data Centers:  The building of multiple cloud data centers around the world that will allow customers to take advantage of such offerings as Infrastructure as a Service, Desktop as a Service, Storage as a Service and IT outsourcing.
  • Global Solutions Centers:  The creation of a network of global solutions centers to help customers architect, validate and build the efficient enterprise from the data center to the edge of the network.
  • New Solutions: New open, capable and affordable solutions for data management, client virtualization and data center virtualization:
    • Dell vStart: a single unit infrastructure solution that runs 100 to 200 vm’s and comes racked and cabled from the Dell factory.
    • Dell|Microsoft management and virtualization solutions partnership  to deliver integrated management solutions made up of Dell’s Virtual Integrated System, our Advanced Infrastructure Manager and Microsoft’s System Center.
    • Dell Email and File Archive Solutions
    • Dell Desktop Virtualization Solutions

A little more detail:

Next generation cloud data centers

Over the next 24 months Dell is building out a host of cloud data centers around the world.  Rather than old-school, giant raised-floor data centers these cloud data centers will be much smaller (approximately 10,000 square feet), more efficient and designed to take advantage of modular, hyper-scale and high-density principles.  Dell’s modular strategy will let the company quickly expand capabilities as demand grows.

These data centers will feature private, public and hybrid cloud options.  They will provide the foundation for Dell’s next generation services and solutions and offer IaaS, and SaaS capabilities as well as IT outsourcing for customers.

Global solutions center network

This year Dell will open 12 Global Solutions centers and is planning ten more over the next 18 months.  These centers are customer facing facilities that will act as a “living lab” providing an environment and the support for customers to architect, build and test proof of concepts involving Dell products, services and solutions.  The centers will also support solution integration, technical briefings and validation and ISV certification to meet regional requirements.

Starting with the upgrading of the existing Austin, Limerick and Frankfurt centers, further facilities will be opened this year in the Americas (Washington DC, Chicago, Northern California and Brazil), APJ (Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney) and EMEA (Paris).

With today’s announcement Dell his taken its evolution into a services and solutions company and kicked it up a notch.  In the “Virtual Era” technology is rapidly changing and it along with new delivery models such as cloud are changing the way businesses operate and create advantage.   Through its cloud and solution centers and new solution offerings Dell is bringing new ways to help customers harness and leverage these changes.

Pau for now…


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