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See also:- Squeak! - the Solid State Disks Buyers Guide
article:- a Short History of Disk to Disk Backup
Squeak! - Who's Eating Whom in the Storage Market?
article:- the Next 3 Years in the SPARC Server Market - (2007 to 2009)
earlier SPARC news, Storage news, Solid state disks, PCI cards Articles about Sun
SPARC history:- March 2000, March 2001, March 2002, March 2003, March 2004, March 2005, March 2006
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Solid state storage systems are typically deployed alongside traditional storage devices to allow IT managers and database administrators to increase the number of concurrent users and simultaneous transactions without resorting to additional servers, associated licenses and management overhead.

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See also:- 66 more Articles, FAQs and Case Studies about Solid State Disks


Sun Resurrects STB

Editor:- March 27, 2007 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. has resurrected the idea of a microelectronics group to sell SPARC chips to itself and 3rd party oems.

In the 1990s when Sun's SPARC chips actually ran a lot faster than Intel processors - Sun had a very successful group called at various times Sun Microelectronics" or "SPARC Technology Business".

They also sold motherboards as our 1997 entry for the SPARCengine Ultra AX recalls. (Scary what you can still find on the web.)

The new move from Sun suggests either a greater confidence that future SPARC chips will set the computing world on fire (quite possible) or is simply an arms length way of preparing to do more business with Sun's pal Fujitsu.


SiliconValley.com Quizzes Sun's Systems Boss

Editor:- March 26, 2007 - SiliconValley.com today published an interview with Sun's John Fowler.

In which he teases readers by revealing nothing very much at all about a new Sun product to be launched in June.


Quorum Simplifies Real-Time Management of Growing Server Populations

FREMONT, California - March 22, 2007 - Themis Computer announced the availability of Quorum its award winning High Availability management appliance.

Quorum enables enterprises to keep applications "always on" and works with Windows, Linux, Solaris and AIX servers in real-time with a single interface. It's also compatible with various network switches and SMI-compliant SANs and NAS devices. Themis claims Quorum can save users 50% compared to traditional H/A clusters. Themis' Quorum Appliance is also a dynamic workload manager and can automate the management of Service Level Agreements applications and hardware resource in real-time, mission critical distributed systems.

"Themis' Quorum helps CIOs and IT managers drive down total cost of ownership, for mission critical IT resources and infrastructure. When Themis first started the development of its Slice scalable computing initiative, it was painfully clear that there were no real-time computing resource managers that could automatically manage quality of service for legacy applications," stated William E. Kehret, president of Themis Computer. "We also realized the need to provide standards driven API's for forward looking, enhanced application monitoring and control. Quorum uniquely addresses this market need and integrates well with other managers in a heterogeneous, multi-vendor environment of software, servers, switches and storage." ...Themis Computer profile

Editor's comments:- the webinar:- IDC Quorum Webinar discusses Quorum in a utility computing context where it is not uncommon for large organizations to be managing 10,000 or more servers - and automating server management and SLAs will reduce operational cost, get better utilization and enable applications to be more flexibly decoupled from the infrastructure.



Sun Saves the Planet - (Hey I thought Flash Gordon did that Already)

Editor;- March 20, 2007 - Sun blew hot air today about saving the planet by saving half a billion pounds of CO2 with its energy saving UltraSPARC T1.

While that's laudable - I think environmental claims from computer companies should be met with only slightly less cynicism than so called "green" claims from oil companies.

I'm not ashamed to say I think the world is a better place for having microprocessors - which enable people to access information more easily - and the web - for saving trees. So much better to have email spam (easily filtered) and web ads (don't click if you're not interested) than convert ancient forests to paper pulp.

Personally I think technology will fix the man made contribution to global warming if bird flu doesn't do it before. (I've got a pet goose and will be among the first to go.) Or another looming disaster like unsanitized phones.

But - past the smoke and mirrors of Sun's PR hype - was observed a truly interesting factoid.

"We now calculate that only 15% of the T1000 CPU processor cycles go unused, which compares very favorably to the 85% wasted cycles from competitive processors" said John Fowler, executive VP of Sun's Systems business.

I'll put my cynic hat on again - and suggest that if Sun's SPARC cores were sh*t hotter than the current lame clock speed (say 3x faster) - then the percentages would look different - but maybe most of Sun's most loyal customers wouldn't complain.

See also:- BBC recent book contest winner How Green Were The Nazis?

And - on the subject of really serious books... global warming and its unexpected results - feature in my online novella Pirates and Goblins


Flaming SPARC Notebooks

Editor:- March 14, 2007 - CrunchGear has an amusing contest for laptop horror stories - featuring a flaming RDI SPARC notebook story.

It's many years since I heard a story involving SPARC notebook maker RDI Computer.

But the article uses the wrong image - a product from Naturetech. RDI's notebooks (even in 1996) were more less clunky than the incorrect rugged notebook image used in the article. Technology (or bird flue - or unsanitized phones) will fix the man made contributions to global warming.


Sun's CEO still tied to tape

Editor:- March 13, 2007 - Sun's CEO Jonathan Schwartz inserts a sneaky argument for tape backup in his most recent blog "Moving A Petabyte of Data".

But I guess what shocked me was the revelation that most US households don't have an internet connection faster than 500kbps. That lower case "b" is "bits" BTW. Schwartz also says that's why Sun is now shipping Solaris on DVDs - instead of just hoping that potential users can just download it. There may be some wishful thinking in this article though - re the need for tape backup.

Organizations that own a lot of data can make arrangements to get faster connections. And it's the rate of change of that Petabyte of data that's important. That's what the online backup system has to contend with to make disk to disk backup viable. But I suspect that Sun may be having second thoughts about the wisdom of buying that big old tape backup company a few years ago. I'm still waiting for some glimmer of an intelligent storage-aware thinking to emerge from them. I'm not so convinced they will stay in my next update of the 10 biggest storage companies - when I publish the 2010 edition.


Worm Turns On SPARC and x86 Solaris Systems

Abingdon, UK - March 1, 2007 - Experts at SophosLabs have warned of an internet worm that is exploting a recently announced vulnerability on Sun Solaris servers.

The Unix/Froot-A worm (also known as Wanuk) exploits a vulnerability in both x86 and SPARC versions of version 10 of Sun's operating system, attempting to open a backdoor which could allow hackers to gain remote access to computers. Under certain conditions the Froot worm can send system broadcast messages via the 'wall' command.

"Most attacks today are targeted at computers running Microsoft Windows, but that doesn't mean that businesses running UNIX and other operating systems don't need to take security seriously," said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos. "This worm takes advantage of a security hole in Solaris's telnet service that was first disclosed last month. Vulnerable businesses would be wise to install the vulnerability fix from Sun, and consider disabling telnet."

See also:- Storage Security
.
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Fastest Storage Certified "Solaris Ready"

Sun Resurrects STB

SiliconValley.com Quizzes Sun's Systems Boss

Quorum Simplifies Management of Growing Server Base

Sun Saves the Planet

Flaming SPARC Notebooks

Sun's CEO still tied to tape

Worm Turns On SPARC and x86 Solaris Systems

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a Short History of Disk to Disk Backup
STORAGEsearch.com has been reporting on the enterprise D2d market since the concept first began.
This article plots the main events in the market transition from the heady days when tape backup was at its height - through to the situation now where most corporate data is backed up using disk to disk backup. click to read the article - a Short History of  Disk to Disk Backup
In March 2007 - D2d was the #1 subject viewed by Storage Searchers. ...read the article, Hard disk drives, Backup Software
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