RSSNews Analysis
Will 3Par Be Good For HP? The Jury Is Out
HP has prevailed in its bidding war with Dell for 3Par, a high-end storage vendor, giving HP an important advantage in the converged infrastructure and cloud computing era. Dell withdrew from the bidding war for 3Par on Thursday, after its board voted not to try to counter the $2.4 billion cash offer ($33 per share) that HP made earlier. The bidding war started Aug. 16 with Dell's $18 a share, or $1.15 billion, offer. For coming in second, Dell will receive a $72 million "break-up fee" from 3Par.
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Architectures
School District Optimizes Virtual Machine Archiving
Server virtualization separates operating systems and applications from the physical hardware, letting organizations consolidate infrastructure and pool application and communications resources. Organizations of all sizes are adopting virtualization to reduce the number physical servers they need. The El Dorado County Office of Education (EDCOE), located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in Placerville, Calif., has been leveraging virtualization for several years to support 70 schools.
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Reviews & Workshops
When To Encrypt At Layer 2 Or Layer 3
Layer 2--data link layer--encryption is a high-performance security option that offers some advantages over Layer 3--networking layer--encryption in some scenarios, particularly in unified communications environments that require low-latency, high-volume data transmission. The increased availability and popularity of high-speed carrier Ethernet services provide fast, relatively cheap transmission, particularly for voice, video and other latency sensitive traffic. Enterprises can leverage more traditional Layer 3 IPSec encryption utilizing high-speed switching technology and fast pipes. Or, they can look at Layer 2 encryption technology, which is faster and simple to manage, for appropriate situations.
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Blogs
Virsto Virtualizes Storage I/O For Virtual Machines
September 2, 2010 5:09 PM
Posted by Tom Trainer
Back in February of this year, Virsto launched their "Virsto One" storage virtualization software product. Much was written about Virsto at that time, and they were covered here on Network Computing. I had the unique opportunity to sit down and talk with Mark Davis, CEO of Virsto, in San Francisco this week while we were both in town for VMworld. Virsto is virtualizing storage in Microsoft Hyper-V based environments. A key question for Mark was why release storage virtualization in the Hyper-V space first before addressing the VMware market?
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DocuSign Goes Mobile
September 2, 2010 9:30 AM
Posted by Lee H. Badman
I recently caught up with Tom Gosner, VP and chief strategy officer of DocuSign. Given the advantages of digital signature technology--paperless transactions handled securely and rapidly with legally binding electronic signatures--DocuSign's core service is a natural fit for today's mobile business world. As I watch everyone from salespeople to execs hit the road while doing business out of the palm of their hands, I wanted Gosner's perspective on how digital signatures are being received by those asked to use and trust them, how they fare in legal challenges, and if DocuSign has new service offerings tailored to the latest generation smartphones. It turns out that Gosner has a lot to be excited about these days.
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Everyone Wants To Be The IBM Of Old
September 1, 2010 3:00 PM
Posted by Howard Marks
As the 3PAR bidding war comes to a close, it seems time to examine the larger trend amongst IT manufacturers to go back to the future and recreate Thomas Watson's IBM or Ken Olsen's Digital Equipment Corporation, providing soup-to-nuts IT equipment and services. While some other members of the IT chattering class have been concentrating on the integration of vertical stacks of storage, compute and networking, I see an even bigger trend including a broader set of hardware, software and services.
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Dealing With VMware's I/O Challenges
September 1, 2010 10:36 AM
Posted by George Crump
One of the key themes at VMworld this week is dealing with the I/O challenges that a physical host loaded up with a dozen or more virtual machines places on the storage and the storage infrastructure. This is caused by consolidating hundreds of I/O friendly stand alone systems into a few dozen hosts. While virtualization reduces the number of physical servers, it now makes every server an I/O nightmare.
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IT Is Woefully Behind Network Updates
August 31, 2010 1:00 PM
Posted by Jeremy Littlejohn
The focus on software features and APIs in network equipment means a renewed emphasis on network maintenance that is severely lacking today. Network automation, adaptation and virtualization are increasingly focused around the software features of network equipment. The days of "speeds and feeds" have given way to the API. It is funny, I hear so much talk about APIs from network vendors that I am waiting for someone to tell me about the "Virtual, open-source, multi-port network appliance." It is probably out there already, so send me the link if you have it.
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The Challenges Of VMworld
August 31, 2010 10:26 AM
Posted by George Crump
VMworld kicked off yesterday, and despite the crowd, everything seems to be under control. The media/analyst area is no exception. It is under strict control (i.e. too much), making it very difficult for industry people like myself to get information to you about what is going on at the event. VMworld organizers will let the analysts and press in the area, but not the vendors we need to speak to. Anyone see a problem with that?
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Best of the Web
Data deduplication: Declawing the clones
Data deduplication is emerging as a critically important new arrow in the storage administrator's quiver to answer hard questions about the increasing problem in storage growth costs.
Compression, Encryption, Deduplication, and Replication: Strange Bedfellows
One of the great ironies of storage technology is the inverse relationship between efficiency and security: Adding performance or reducing storage requirements almost always results in reducing the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of a system.
WAN Optimization Whitelists and Blacklists
Optimization is a fantastic way of saving money and creating really happy customers at the same time, but it doesn't work flawlessly for all applications.
WAN Optimization as a Managed Service: It's Not About the Cost
This insight examines how organizations outsourcing their WAN optimization initiatives to a third-party go about achieving their goals for application performance, reducing operational costs, and streamlining enterprise infrastructure.
