Cisco frowns on resellers of used network hardware because it doesn’t get a cut of aftermarket sales. Network Hardware Resale (NHR), a prominent reseller, is going a step further by offering an alternative to Cisco’s SMARTnet maintenance service -- a key revenue source for the networking giant.

The sad truth is that every computing problem has at least one performance bottleneck. Those of us lucky enough to run applications where the slowest component of the chain is the user don't often have to worry about it.

Last week I blogged about conflicting reports on new plans laid out by Cisco's new Green Guru, Paul Marcoux. I had a chance to catch up with Paul this morning -- here's what I learned.

Maybe it's all in the interview. Cisco Systems recently hired green guru Paul Marcoux from APC. As is typical for a hire like this, which is as much for public relations as anything, Marcoux set out for a round of interviews, and depending on which story you read, his plans lie somewhere between sensible contributions to the green movement and a very unlikely attempt at world domination.

Last week, InformationWeek held a single-day event called the "Future of Virtualization." Along with me and Charles Babcock, InformationWeek editor at large, were reps from Citrix/XenSource, VMware, Sun, and Blue Lane.

Without a lot of fanfare, Symantec has been making substantial investments to compete with HP, BMC, CA, and IBM as a major player in enterprise management software. While Symantec may be best known for its antivirus software, it has been adding very compelling software offerings that will help it compete head to head with the other enterprise software vendors.

Hewlett-Packard announced the release of Automated Operations 1.0, an integrated set of products that automates IT operations across technology and organizational domains.

This is what happens when Internet engineers have too much time on their hands.

For a long time now, the editors at Network Computing have liked EqualLogic. Its products are easy to manage and perform extremely well, turning in some great performance numbers in our labs. The genius if the EqualLogic design is that as you grow your storage pool, you grow the compute power by adding controllers. It isn't the only company to take this approach, but it's done one of the better jobs on implementation.

At Sun's invitation, I spent an hour with EVP and manager of Sun's System's group, John Fowler yesterday. Surprisingly, the meeting came just a week before Sun announces its FYQ1 numbers.

It's predictable like the change of the seasons. Every year systems come off lease or are fully depreciated and its time dump the old and bring in the new. But just how careful are you about erasing data from old systems?

I was recently kicking the tires on some other data center blogs and came across Data Center Knowledge -- lots of good info there, and among all that good stuff was this link.

Perhaps the scariest thought for data center managers is the prospect of actually needing your generators -- just ask the good people at 365 Main. Given that California again had brownouts this summer, it's a good time to think about preparing for minor (and major) disasters.

For businesses that rely heavily on Microsoft back office products, DPM 2007 has a lot going for it. The product provides near continuous backup for products such as Exchange, SQLServer, SharePoint server and more.

About a month ago, green computing vendor Rackable Systems announced ICE Cube. It's a data center in a tractor trailer, and it's pretty cool (pun intended).

It's like watching grass grow, but less exciting. Every three years, HP puts out a new version of HP-UX 11i, then every six months it issues updates and patches, more or less like Microsoft releases service packs.

If Cisco Systems gets its way, data centers eventually will be replaced by virtual machines running somewhere on a switch or a router. It's spent the last 2 ½ years talking about the virtual data center, and in July this year made its boldest claim yet: that in the long term, virtualization will mean the end of physical servers.

A number of analyst firms and our own surveys indicate that there's a growing trend toward data center consolidation. The drivers are many--better data management and backup, regulatory requirements, cost reduction and better information security practices.

Running a data center is for suckers. They're expensive, hard to power and cool, and full of cranky hardware and software that require ceaseless attention.

We all know and loathe the type -- they floss twice a day, eat plenty of fiber, always remember their anniversaries, and max out their 401(k)s so they can retire at 55. When these paragons go into IT, they're inevitably the killjoys reminding the rest of us that it's not enough to have a disaster recovery plan, you have to actually test it every millennium or so.