Whitepapers

In pictures, here is an inside look at ten of the world’s largest data centers.

A highly virtualized infrastructure that leverages an integrated stack across storage, backup, networking, management and security will cut IT costs dramatically.

Instead of heavy wastage of storage resources as a means of providing fast access to storage, this paper covers how to accelerate database access with flash-based SSD.

This is all about optimizing the number of clients on a server to bring about stability.

Organizations today are struggling with virtualization deployments. In many cases, they are not realizing the full benefits of the investments made in virtual environments.

It is not enough to assume that virtual machines cost less than physical machines; we have to prove it with hard numbers and with reduced costs in our IT operations.

Seven Steps to a Virtual-Aware Security Strategy

Server sizing and selection is a critical element of Intel IT enterprise resource planning (ERP) infrastructure strategy, which makes use of both two-socket and four-socket servers.

VMware Lifecycle Manager has been designed to provide end-to-end lifecycle management of VMs to address these challenges.

The capability for dimming lights in a server is embodied by the Intel Enhanced SpeedStep technology or EIST and Intel Intelligent Power Node Manager technology or Node Manager.

IBM's latest Power7 processor comes in for comment in this posting.

Virtual image sprawl is problematic due to disconnected tools that are ill-suited for these challenges. So what is IBM doing about it on its platforms?

System z combined with NetView for z/OS provides a solid platform on which to build an integrated Services management solution.

Want to know the top 10 predictions for servers in 2010? This paper gives the IDC view.

When it comes to managing nonproductive servers, data center operators have become paralyzed because they lack insight into which business applications (if any) are running on which servers and their frequency, or whether or not an application is even being used. Most data center operators live by the Hippocratic Oath of the data center: “First do no harm, then take no chances”. Faced with the conflicting objectives of maintaining service and reducing energy costs, they automatically turn to the worst offenders by reducing power and cooling

This paper provides guidance for organizations considering an IT Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) program. It explores how a GRC program can support board and management needs, such as providing them with key converged risk information to better understand the impact of opportunities on strategic decisions or proposed changes in the organization.

This report looks at how vendors are tying Solid State Drives into more and more servers and storage devices.

This paid IDC report will be of most interest to those focusing on the HPC market. It provides IDC's latest forecast for HPC server spending through 2013.

Today, most applications can efficiently run inside virtual machines (VMs), and application vendors have a responsibility to develop licensing and support policies offering virtualization compatibility without the expense of added management total cost of ownership (TCO).

This IDC study reviews the 2009 workloads study results for the server market. IDC's workloads research examines how end users are using recently deployed servers. To explore the type of work being performed on servers sold or upgraded in the past year, IDC implemented a tried-and-true survey methodology. Market shares are provided for the server market by workload and operating system. The basis for the Server Workloads 2009 Market Model is the marriage of IDC's latest server market forecast, Worldwide and Regional Server 2009–2013 Forecast (IDC #217579, April 2009), and extensive interviews with senior IS managers in the United States. The primary research effort included a total of 800 surveys conducted between April and May of 2009.

According to this Illuminata report, IT is now heading toward a “shared services model.” This marries the latest approaches to building efficient datacenters. This is paid research.

Increasing power demands and space limitations in the data center have begun to transition server virtualization technologies from luxuries to necessities. Server virtualization provides a path toward server consolidation that results in significant power and space savings, while also offering high availability and system portability. This free research (registration required) covers the various virtualization architectures.

Server virtualization is a technology that has taken hold with amazing speed and is now firmly entrenched with overwhelming success in many data centers. This perspective document recaps why you should be moving ahead quickly with virtualization (if you haven’t already done so), what the implications are for IT and the business, and what the future holds as the ramifications of virtualization become apparent. It is important that CIOs understand the technical, political, and organizational effects of this new technology so that they are better prepared to discuss virtualization plans with their technical staff.

According to Garner, when looking at feature requirements in front of and between server tiers, too many organizations think only about load balancing. However, the era of load balancing is long past, and organizations will be better served to focus their attention on improving the delivery of applications.