News Facts

• In a keynote address to nearly 43,000 OpenWorld attendees, Oracle Chief Executive Officer, Larry Ellison unveiled the HP Oracle Database Machine, a system designed for extreme performance data warehouses.
• The HP Oracle Database Machine consists of a grid of Oracle Database Servers and a grid of new Oracle® Exadata Storage Servers packaged in a single rack ordered as a complete system from Oracle.
• The latest offering resulting from Oracle’s and HP’s long-time engineering relationship, HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers break the performance bottleneck between database servers and conventional storage by shipping less data through larger pipes.
• No changes are required to existing queries or business intelligence applications to deliver extreme performance for large Oracle data warehouses.

HP Oracle Exadata Product Family:

The product family consists of two components.

• HP Oracle Database Machine is pre-configured for performance, pre- tuned, and certified for Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition tools and Oracle Real Application Clusters. Complete configurations can be ordered from Oracle, with hardware support by HP. The HP Oracle Database Machine is a high-performance system configured for data warehousing that includes a grid of eight database servers featuring: 64 Intel processor cores, and Oracle Enterprise Linux; and a grid of 14 HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers that include up to 168 terabytes of raw storage and 14 GB/sec data bandwidth to the database servers.
• HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers are key performance enablers for the database machine and can be ordered separately if customers have an existing data warehouse and merely require the storage enhancements. Customers can build data warehousing solutions using HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers, which feature industry-standard components including two Intel processors, up to 12 TB of raw storage and InfiniBand connectivity delivering 1 GB/sec of data bandwidth per storage server.
• The HP Oracle Exadata Storage Server uses a massively parallel architecture to dramatically speed up Oracle data warehouses by shifting the data-intensive part of query processing away from Oracle Database Servers and closer to the data.
• HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers deliver 10x or more performance improvements in data-intensive query processing, have virtually unlimited I/O scalability, are easier to optimize for data warehousing, and provide mission-critical availability and reliability.

Availability & Delivery

• The HP Oracle Database Machine and HP Oracle Exadata Storage Servers are available today.
• Complete configurations can be ordered from Oracle.
• Oracle is responsible for sales and system support.
• HP is responsible for hardware delivery and hardware service.

Supporting Quote

“For the first time, customers can get smart performance storage designed for Oracle data warehouses that is ten times faster” said Oracle CEO Larry Ellison.

Source: Oracle

The Google doodle tradition started a long time ago (in summer 1999, in fact) when Larry and Sergey put a stick figure on the homepage to signify that they were out of the office at Burning Man. Nothing against stick figures, but our logo designs have become rather more varied since then. Today you’ll see a special design that commemorates our 10th birthday. We’ve incorporated a little bit of history by using the original Google logo from 1998. And since everyone keeps asking what we’d like for our birthday (besides cake and party hats) — the first thing we thought of was a nice new server rack.

Source: Google

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 22, 2008 – Intel Corporation today introduced its third-generation Intel® vPro™ suite of business desktop PC technologies, which among other features enhances security and reduces the time and cost of maintenance by enabling PCs to literally think and act for themselves. The new vPro Technology for desktop PCs also opens the door to new virtualized PC models and products aimed at the special needs of small businesses.

The new Intel vPro Technology (formerly codenamed “McCreary”) combines the energy-efficient performance of Intel® Core™2 quad-core or dual-core processors with the new Intel® Q45 Express Chipset and Intel® 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection along with Intel® Active Management technology 5.0.

Among the new business-class technology innovations, this 2008 version for the first time extends IT organizations’ reach to protect and manage PCs beyond the corporate firewall. With the new Remote Alert feature, a suddenly ailing PC – even one that is turned off – that is experiencing symptoms outside preset parameters can “call” for IT assistance on its own.

Using the new Remote Scheduled Maintenance feature, IT administrators can program PCs for regular tune-ups that have PCs automatically connecting to an IT management program for maintenance. With the new Fast Call for Help feature, the user can get immediate assistance over an out-of-band link by entering a key sequence, even if the computer is completely crippled with a failed operating system or hard drive.

“Intel vPro Technology has been a win-win for the IT industry and high-tech industries, and each year we’ve unveiled unique innovations to solve IT’s biggest challenges,” said Gregory Bryant, Intel vice president and general manager, Digital Office Platform Division. “For 2008, vPro Technology continues that trend, automating repair and maintenance functions to not only free IT professionals’ time, but rapidly accelerate the time it takes to get endusers up and running.”

In addition, for 2008 Intel beefed up access security with two new features. The new Access Monitor feature comprehensively and more securely logs IT activity on systems, further closing the door on potential internal security breaches. The platform also offers the first embedded technology to authenticate PCs using Microsoft* Network Access Protection,* enabling protected out-of-band remote maintenance on Intel vPro-based systems.

New Small-Business Solutions Added

For the first time, Intel has molded Intel vPro Technology in a form to specifically fit the needs of small businesses, those whose computer systems are likely managed by someone with no computer background at all. Designed for businesses with less than 25 notebooks or desktop PCs, Intel® IT Director offers a user-friendly “dashboard” that provides status on key system settings and health parameters, capability to block connection to risky USB devices and a data back-up feature that enables users to work seamlessly through hard-drive failures.

For small businesses which periodically need immediate help with PC problems, Intel unveiled Intel® Remote PC Assist Technology that connects those businesses with service providers that can assist when an end-user enters a key sequence. Once connected, service providers can take full advantage of the out-of-band capabilities, and security and management features of vPro Technology to solve problems remotely. For the service provider, Intel Remote PC Assist Technology means enhanced service delivery, reduced operational costs and broader access to customers. Initially, Intel Remote PC Assist will be available in North America.

Intel also introduced two motherboards supporting all of the new Intel® vPro features. Aimed at channel customers, the Intel® Desktop Board DQ45CB is for standard-sized PCs and the Intel® Desktop Board DQ45EK is for small- form-factor systems.

Creating New Computing Models for Security, Manageability

Many IT organizations are looking to new application delivery technologies to strengthen security, improve management and lower total cost of ownership. Dynamic Virtual Client technologies (DVC), Intel’s designation for a new group of computing models, work in conjunction with Intel vPro Technology to centralize data security and application management on a server, but “stream” applications on demand to a desktop or laptop PC where they run under the PCs own processing power. In this way, DVC preserves user mobility and performance, simplifies IT management and security, and, unlike thin-client models, does not require a large-scale burden on the datacenter. Citrix, Lenovo, and Microsoft recently announced DVC products or programs that take advantage of Intel vPro technology.

source: Intel

Red Hat, Inc. (NYSE: RHT), the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux has achieved a powerful, record-setting TPC-C benchmark that demonstrates the rapid improvements that open source software can bring to overall performance and costs. In its fifth TPC-C result over 1M tpmC, Red Hat improved price performance to a level 20 percent lower than the best competing non-Red-Hat result with a combination of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 on an IBM System x 3950 M2 with the new Intel X7460 Xeon processor.

In its latest 1M tpmC benchmark, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2 outperformed all other operating systems on price performance in the 1M+ range. The Red Hat-based benchmark system delivered 1,200,632 transactions per minute and improved the price performance to $1.99, delivering a 20 percent savings in comparison to competitors.¹ The single system proves its capability to handle substantial transactional workloads with its ability to process over 20,000 transactions per second.

“Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides an extremely capable and reliable platform for customers’ heavily demanding high-performance, high-scale platforms,” said Scott Crenshaw, vice president, Platform Business Unit at Red Hat. “We broke our first 1M tpmC barrier back in December 2003, which was two years before others in the industry, like Microsoft, reported their first 1M TPC-C results. With our latest record-breaking benchmark, we’ve again raised the bar for performance and cost-efficiency and have demonstrated proven benefits from the fast-innovating open source model.”

In addition to its ability to handle challenging, high transaction-intensive jobs, the Red Hat-based, IBM solution offers headroom for growth and the opportunity to run simultaneous background jobs to produce bills and consolidate invoices, all while providing rapid response to customer orders and queries. In this TPC-C result, Red Hat also broke 100,000 operations per second per Java Virtual Machine for both bare-metal and virtual instances. The overhead of virtualization registered at only 6 percent, proving the excellent performance delivered through Red Hat Integrated Virtualization technology.

“Through this record-breaking TPC-C benchmark, IBM has demonstrated our unique ability to deliver high performance for Linux workloads, leveraging the scalability of the industry’s only Intel-based 8-socket server,” said Sergio Amoni, director of Marketing, IBM System x. “Because IBM innovates with its own chipset for Intel-based servers, clients can take full advantage of the high performance x3950 M2 system with unbeatable reliability and power and memory technologies capable of up to 37 percent lower overall power consumption.”

Source: RedHat

NEC India has released a new server that it claims consumes up to 55% less power than conventional servers. The company says that the ‘ECO CENTER’ server also occupies 50% less space and is approximately 58% lighter.

The ECO CENTER will support ‘Windows Server 2003,’ ‘Windows Server 2008,’ and ‘Red Hat Enterprise Linux.’ It features NEC’s ‘Sigma System Center’ integrated with ‘VMware ESX 3.5′ that allow it to streamline allocation of operations in response to hardware demands. According to NEC, the ECO CENTER is ideally suited for large-scale application servers and Web servers being used in major enterprises and government agency data centers.

With energy-saving IT devices attracting considerable attention in the battle against global warming, NEC intends to actively market the ECO CENTER as the core product in its ‘REAL IT COOL PROJECT’, an initiative that aims to cut the power used by customer IT platforms by 50% year on year, and to realize a cumulative reduction in CO2 emissions from IT devices by approximately 910,000 tons by 2012.

IT managers wrongly believe that successful communities form spontaneously after social software tools are installed, according to Gartner Inc. IT and business managers in charge of deploying social software need to choose a core purpose for the community and arrange implementation to achieve that purpose.

“Contrary to the common perception that vibrant communities arise spontaneously, starting with a carefully chosen purpose does not limit participants. It gives them the direction they need to form a productive community” says Anthony Bradley, managing vice president at Gartner.

“As those initial communities gain momentum, other groups will use the social application to build their own communities, and this is how social applications achieve widespread adoption across the enterprise”

Bradley said that many IT organizations fall into the trap of following “worst practice” installing social software in the expectation that productive communities will emerge spontaneously. According to Gartner its discussions with clients revealed that while 70 percent of the communities typically fail to come together, the other 30 percent that succeed have purposes unintended by the planners of the social software.

According to Gartner a good purpose for a social application has seven key characteristics:

1. Magnetic
The purpose should draw people directly to participate, immediately appealing to the “What’s in it for me” characteristic.

2. Aligned
Purpose should align with business value that is the “What’s in it for the business” value, be it direct or indirect.

3. Low Risk
Organizations are advised to resist the temptation to opt for high-risk communities, which seem to offer the greatest potential for business value. They are better revisited once social applications have gained momentum.

4. Properly scoped
Gartner advises organizations to start with a minimal scope and focus on growing a community’s scale as fast as possible. Once the community has scaled up, users will guide on how to expand the scope.

5. Facilitates Evolution
Purposes must be selected that both the organization and community can build on. A “purpose road map” will allow for growing the scope of communities or establishing other applications and communities with the goal of progressing toward a highly collaborative enterprise.

6. Measurable
The success of a good purpose can be measured. Especially early on, when organizations are skeptical of social applications, Gartner advises choosing a purpose where business and community value can be clearly measured.

7. Community-Driven
The value must come from the community. The best communities contribute far more to themselves than do the enterprises that support them. If the purpose requires the enterprise to contribute most of the content, and the community participants are mere readers, the enterprise has simply used the new technologies as another channel to push communications.

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a 27 kilometer (17 mile) long particle accelerator straddling the border of Switzerland and France, is nearly set to begin its first particle beam tests. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is preparing for its first small tests in early August, leading to a planned full-track test in September - and the first planned particle collisions before the end of the year. The final step before starting is the chilling of the entire collider to -271.25 C (-456.25 F). Here is a collection of photographs from CERN, showing various stages of completion of the LHC and several of its larger experiments (some over seven stories tall), over the past several years.

Sunnyvale, CA—September 11, 2008—OCZ Technology Group, Inc. a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the OCZ Gladiator and Gladiator Max, the latest CPU cooler line designed for supreme thermal management and efficiency. Combining a distinctive stacked fin array, heat-pipe direct touch (HDT) design, and a large low-noise fan, the Gladiator series is built to take on the cooling challenges of today’s most powerful processors and ensure your system functions at its peak.

“The new Gladiator coolers take the HDT design from the popular Vendetta series to the next level, with the addition of the latest pillar design to transfer heat even more efficiently up and away from your processor,” said Ryan Edwards, Director of Product Management of the OCZ Technology Group. “With the Gladiator series we are able to offer customers sophisticated coolers for the complete spectrum of applications ranging from mainstream gaming to enthusiast overclocking.”

Utilizing the proven performance of the latest HDT design, the Gladiator series has direct contact with the processor using four copper heat pipes to ensure the most rapid heat transfer. The unique “folded” fin configuration also helps maximize surface area while maintaining a compact form factor. Whether you are tight on space and need the small 92mm fan size of the Gladiator, or need the ultimate performance of the larger 120mm Gladiator Max, these coolers accommodate all levels of enthusiasts with a variety of case sizes.

Engineered to aggressively dissipate heat produced by high-speed CPUs, the Gladiator series can tackle any challenge in the overclocking arena. These coolers run quiet courtesy of a large fan mounted with anti-vibration rubber connectors to reduce excess noise, perfect for a media center or office desktop where silence is a top priority. The versatile and user-friendly Gladiator series is compatible with AMD AM2/939/754/755 and Intel 775 sockets and can be installed quickly and easily by end-users at all skill levels. Set at a price point that is friendly to a range of budgets, the Gladiator series proves to be a worthy opponent against even pricier coolers.

Efficiency, acoustics, power, and affordability make the OCZ Gladiator series an excellent edition to your desktop, providing superior performance with a state-of-the-art design for enthusiasts looking to maintain the stability of their overclocked systems.

For more information on the OCZ Gladiator CPU Cooler, please visit our product page here.

For more information on the OCZ Gladiator Max CPU Cooler, please visit our product page here.