HP FlexFabric – Virtualize your network connections and capacity

IT Organizations have long realized the disadvantages of a traditional datacenter architecture and underutilization of isolated server, storage and network resources. Since then, virtualization of servers and storage to meet changing business needs has been an accepted fact.  But this drive is applying new pressures on the multiple networks in the data centre. Some of the issues faced are : frequent changes to network configurations due to increased population of virtual machines,  requirement of more network bandwidth per server as server utilization increases. So the traditional network architecture cannot provide the performance, low latency , and quality of service required by virtualized data centres of today.

HP FlexFabric creates a new, wired-once , virtual I/O network, that provides a new data centre network architecture that is more coherent, flexbile and agile.  It can connect multiple servers to a virtualized, high performance, low latency, multi protocol network. Once the FlexFabric is wired and pre-provisioned, servers and virtual machines can be added or moved dynamically and the connections are automatically migrated as they are moved.

Some of the benefits of FlexFabric  are -

·         Predictable performance and low latency for demanding application workloads.

·         Capacity scaling and provisioning connections can be done dynamically and securely, improving business agility.

·         Change management processes which are costly and time consuming, can be removed.

·         Compatibility to existing Layer 3 switches and support for open standards gives investment protection.

For a deep dive into HP FlexFabric  please visit :

 HP FlexFabric Whitepaper

6 ways to work more effectively on a virtual team

The world is becoming a smaller place as organizations are going global and IT is creating bridges between teams which are geographically far apart. It is becoming commonplace to find yourself working with a colleague who may be in a different city, country or  half a globe away in a different time zone.

I found a interesting document from Microsoft which suggests six ways which might help working with people who are in a different geographical location.

The six ways , in brief, are :

Ø  Using instant messaging for quick meetings.

Ø  Using a virtual conference room for formal group meetings.

Ø  Keeping the meetings organized.

Ø  Setting up a virtual water cooler, where you can have a informal discussion.

Ø  Reviewing the edits of co-workers , wherever they may be.

Ø  Staying in touch, using a PDA.

Most of us would be knowing about first, second and sixth. For those of you do not know, the document gives quick insights.  

As such virtual meetings become common and frequent , organizing them is a very useful idea. The third point talks about it. 

The fourth one is interesting.  By this you can have a feel of those informal chats with your colleagues, when you meet at the water cooler or the café. This is important since you get to know your co-workers and can work as a team. 

The fifth one talks about when you’re and your team member cannot go through a document together, then the ability to track the changes that any of the team member makes could be very useful and important.

The link to the document is :

 http://www.microsoft.com/atwork/collaboration/virtual.aspx

New way of designing storage – Tier Less, Cache More!

The traditional way of designing storage was to create ‘tiers’ with high performance, expensive disks for critical, frequently used data and low cost , large capacity disks for less critical data.  However, over the time , data becomes more or less critical and then it has to be moved from one tier to another , which is time consuming, costly and requires change in processes.  This traditional way cannot deliver the speed of response and diverse service levels required by the business.

Flexible IT services are enabled by ‘Intelligent caching’, which enables people to better manage data with improved price/performance.

Intelligent caching lets you create a large pool of shared storage divided into virtual classes of service rather than create many hard-to-manage tiers. The cache inside the large pool of storage is dynamic, so the most important data remains in cache automatically. The cache can be set as big or small as required.

With intelligent caching, flash memory can be used intelligently to optimize performance as needed. IF flash memory is coupled with cost effective high capacity SATA drives to manage capacity requirements, then lesser number of high performance expensive disks will be required.  Moreover different levels of service can be managed virtually, which increases flexibility and  speed of response.

NEtapp is driving this initiative of Flash Cache + Sata drives.  Their finding indicate that the cost of storage capacity with Flash cache and SATA Drive configuration was lower by 56% per Terabyte than that of the baseline configuration. The performance of this combination was comparable to that provided with a  configuration  with Fiber channel disk drives.

Also the Flash + SATA combination uses 2/3 less power and 59% less rack space.

To know more, visit : Netapp - Flexible IT - Tier Less Cache More

HP Integrity Server Blades – The New Generation

HP’s new integrity server blades BL860c i2, BL870c i2 and BL890c i2 offer 2.5 times the compute density of traditional rack mount servers.  The ability to mix and match HP integrity, HP Proliant and HP Storageworks blades within the same HP bladesystem C class enclosure , increases IT effectiveness, gives a better ROI and provides flexibility to grow as per business demands.

The basic building block is the BL860c i2 which is a 2 socket server.  The blade link technology combines 2 such server blades to offer a 4 socket BL870c i2 server and four blades together to give a 8 socket BL890c i2 server.   The integrity blade link ties together all the associated blades by providing a physical inter-blade path for the QPI fabric. The blade link also provides a path for the auxiliary signals.

 QPI is a low latency high bandwidth fabric which is used to tie together each of the nodes within the server.  The Integrity server architecture also provides memory, storage and I/O that scales linearly with the compute power.

For more information visit :  Why scalable blades - White Paper

Watch the video :   

 World's first scale up blades

Cisco Borderless Network Architecture

As Cisco puts it – This is a next generation architecture that connects anyone, anywhere, on any device – securely, reliably and seamlessly.

There is a huge influx of consumer mobile devices in the business world. Cisco borderless network architecture helps IT evolve its infrastructure to deliver seamless, secure access to these mobile devices.

Traditionally, data and applications were housed on premises and the users also were generally on premises. In todays world the workforce is spread all across the globe and many workers are full time remote employees.  The applications also may be hosted off site or in the cloud.

Cisco’s Borderless Network architecture helps IT to unify its wired and wireless networks and securely deliver applications to users in a highly distributed environment.

To know more please visit :

Borderless Networks at a glance

HP P4000G2 SAN – Affordable with Enterprise level features

HP P4000G2 SAN – Affordable with Enterprise level features

HP StorageWorks P4000 G2 SANs, representing a virtualized pool of storage resources, deliver enterprise SAN functionality that enhances virtual environments, simplifies management, and reduces costs. Easy to deploy, to increase and to maintain, HP P4000 G2 SANs ensure that critical business data remain available.

They are proven for virtual servers, client virtualization, database, email and business applications. P4000 G2 SANs scale capacity and performance linearly without incurring downtime or performance bottlenecks.

The P4000 SAN/iQ Software delivers following features that makes the P4000 an affordable SAN storage with Enterprise level features .

Storage clustering for disruption free growth

Network Raid stripes and protects multiple copies of data across a cluster of storage nodes.

Thin provisioning allocates space only, reducing actual capacity requirement.

Snapshots provide instant point in time copies of data.

Remote copy replicates snapshots between  P4000G2 SANs at primary/remote locations.

Online volume migration and automated software updates.

Self healing storage - Proactive disk/volume scrubbing with automatic bad block repair.

To know more about P4000G2 SAN please visit :

HP P4000G2 SAN STORAGE

Single Mailbox Recovery Software from Netapp

Netapp’s single mailbox recovery software is a unique solution, which, when integrated with the storage system, enables you to retrieve individual messages, mailboxes and attachments without disrupting other users.

For an Exchange administrator, recovering a single message or a mailbox from the Microsoft Exchange messaging system, is a dreaded and time consuming job.  The use of SMBR software with Netapp storage eliminates the extra steps and time required to mount each backup of your exchange data for searching specific e-mails. The data can now be recovered literally in minutes, as against hours or days earlier.

With SMBR, time consuming brick level backups can be eliminated. Multiple exchange backups can be kept online with minimal disk requirement for each incremental backup. Maintaining a separate recovery server and storage to retrieve single mail box is not required. Individual Exchange items can be recovered directly to a Production Exchange server or a Outlook .PST file.

SMBR can be used to establish and verify e-mail evidence for compliance and legal requests.

To know more about Netapp Single Mail Box Recovery Software , visit : http://media.netapp.com/documents/single-mailbox-recovery.pdf