Paul Rubens

Converged servers are part of a three-tier infrastructure setup that includes storage systems and networking hardware, but hyperconverged server infrastructure does away with this traditional three tier approach. Instead, hyperconverged servers are the base hardware units – referred to as nodes – along with directly attached storage in the form of hard drives and solid […]

Understanding the differences between virtualization vs. containerization can lead to improved scalability and reduced operational costs for organizations. In this article, we’ll discuss the specific differences between both methods of creating virtual packages as well as the general differences between these two valuable solutions. Discussions about server virtualization inevitably revolve around VMware, Hyper-V and, to […]

Hard drive failures are a fact of life: That’s why there are RAID arrays, backup systems and an entire infrastructure designed to prevent data loss and minimize the impact to an organization when drives stop working. Too hot makes for better reliability than too cold, brand new disks should be kept away from disks already […]

Companies concentrating their data center automation efforts on server automation are making a strategic mistake. Data center automation will be here within five years. Start planning for it now. That’s the view of Glenn O’Donnell, a senior analyst at Forrester Research. He believes what’s needed is a more holistic view of data center automation. “It’s […]

There’s no getting away from it: Cloud computing has many potential benefits, but it has a number of drawbacks as well. Cloud computing has many potential benefits, but it has a number of drawbacks as well. Building an internal cloud mitigates many of these drawbacks, but it is not without its own limitations. On the […]

As it comes closer to becoming reality, Oracle’s purchase of Sun makes more sense, for the simple reason that there is plenty of good technology in Sun — like Java — that Oracle can put to good use. OS Roundup: From Java to Solaris, Sun brings myriad good technology to the table, technology that Oracle […]

Imagine a data center some time in the future where the hardware is all white, the operating systems never crash, and everything works just right. The good-looking, trendy, 20-something server room technicians walk around with slightly smug grins on their faces because managing these servers and the applications that run on them are simple, stylish, […]

Find any group of server administrators, and look for the one lying in the corner gasping “The horror! … The horror! …” A dollar pays ten that he or she is the one responsible for looking after the company’s Exchange servers. Is your Exchange Server driving you around the bend? Fear not, from hosted Exchange […]

Microsoft’s Windows operating systems account for the biggest share of server spending in the data center, but Windows is by no means the only show in town: Linux’s market share in particular is growing strongly. It’s growing because in Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) at least two distros are […]

In the first piece in this series we looked at the role schedulers play in I/O optimization. But how do you actually select and tune a scheduler to increase I/O performance in practice? Selecting and tuning a scheduler to increase I/O performance is a complex process. The obvious first question that must be answered is […]

When it comes to crashing your enterprise systems, destroying data, deleting or creating accounts and changing passwords, it’s not just malicious hackers you need to worry about. Anyone inside your organization with superuser privileges has the potential to cause similar havoc, either through carelessness, incompetence or perhaps through malicious intent. Superuser privileges bring inherent risks […]

Network virtualization has long been the neglected little sister of server virtualization and storage virtualization, but software-defined networking (SDN) technology may, finally, be about to step out into the spotlight. SDN has certainly been waiting in the wings for long enough. The first commercial implementation of SDN was probably network virtualization pioneer Nicira’s technology back […]