Are the 4 biggest management vendors the dinosaurs with the arrival of clouds? IBM, HP, CA, BMC

SearchDataCenter has an article on system management tools in the virtual age.

Systems management in the virtual age: Out with the old

By Alex Barrett, Executive Editor

15 Mar 2011 | SearchDataCenter.com

Consider how Facebook has changed the fabric of society by providing new ways for people to connect. With its large, relatively new data center, the social media company and other organizations like it provide fresh ideas for IT pros working on an old problem: systems management.

Many of these large companies use open source tools and tweak them as they see fit. Stuart Radnidge, an infrastructure architect at a large, multinational financial services firm, viewed a video demonstration of Facebook engineers and their back-end management. “You never see guys like them buying from the Big Four,” Radnidge said. “They use open source tools and modify them for their massive scale.”

Indeed, in era of the Internet and virtualization, IT managers seek inspiration on how to manage their environments from everywhere except the Big Four-- otherwise known as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, BMC Software and CA. And for the up-and-coming generation of systems administrators, traditional systems management tools are almost anathema.

The tools of choice are open source.

While most open source software is associated with Linux, these tools can monitor an impressive breadth of systems, said FSW’s Foran. In Hyperic’s case, “I think the only operating system they can’t see is BeOS,” he quipped, surely a corner case in any modern data center.

Further, having access to the source code and a community of developers translates into new features much faster than in a monolithic, closed-source environment, said the senior product manager at a large Canadian telecommunications firm, which last year replaced traditional Big Four monitoring tools with the commercial open source Zenoss.

The article does point to some who are making the change.

In their defense, traditional systems management players have awakened to the new world and responded by acquiring new forward-looking management players. In the past year, for example, CA purchased 3Tera, a cloud and grid management platform, and Software as a Service-based monitoring provider Nimsoft Technologies.

As ZDNET's  Dan Kunetsky has had conversations with CA's Jay Fry, so have I.

CA's Jay Fry touches on the Golden Rules of IT

By Dan Kusnetzky | February 4, 2011, 2:54am PST

Summary

When good enough is no longer good enough, and management is screaming about costs, cloud computing just could be the answer.

From time to time, I have the chance to speak with Jay Fry, of CA. We’ve had many similar experiences over the years and have come to present similar viewpoints. A blog post he published a while back, Making ‘good enough’ the new normal focused on a couple of the Golden Rules of IT

I wrote something on these rules a long time ago (see Reprise of the Golden Rules of IT if you’d like to torture yourself by reviewing the rules) and believe that Jay has a point. Golden Rule number 4 is “Good enough is good enough” and Golden Rule number 5 is “Don’t make major changes unless people are screaming!” Let’s look at the definition of those rules

4. Good enough is good enough. Although it would be nice to have the luxury of unlimited amounts of time, resources and funding and be able to develop every conceivable feature, most IT executives know that they are only going to be allowed the time, the resources and the funding to satisfy roughly 80% of requests for new capabilities.

5. Don’t make major changes unless people are screaming! If they’re not screaming, see Rule #4, good enough is good enough. If they are merely asking for changes, see Rule 2, don’t touch it, you’ll break it, and Rule 3, if you touched it and broke it, it will take longer to fix than you think. If they begin screaming, you’ll have to do something to respond, just touch things as lightly as possible.

US Military Pacific Fleet blocks top traffic sites to support Japan's relief efforts, a floating ISP prioritizes traffic

CNN reports on the US Military blocking high internet traffic sites in the Pacific fleet.

U.S. military blocks websites to help Japan recovery efforts

By Mark Preston and Adam Levine, CNN

March 15, 2011 9:02 p.m. EDT

Several websites, including YouTube, have been blocked from U.S. military computers in Japan to free bandwidth for recovery efforts.

STORY HIGHLIGHTS

• YouTube, ESPN, eBay among popular websites blocked on military computers
• Effort is intended to free up bandwidth for use in helping Japan
• Blockage is temporary and subject to change, Strategic Command says

Washington (CNN) -- The U.S. military has blocked access to a range of popular commercial websites in order to free up bandwidth for use in Japan recovery efforts, according to an e-mail obtained by CNN and confirmed by a spokesman for U.S. Strategic Command.

CNET also reports on the same activity pointing to CNN.

With satellite communication on the US Pacific Fleet, images, video and documents can be sent from North Eastern Japan to data centers in Japan or anywhere else in the world.

You could think of the US Pacific Fleet as a mobile floating ISP, and they need to provide as much bandwidth as possible for the emergency efforts vs. the entertainment and shopping of the crew.

Mobile Gaming has rumors circulating about an Xbox tablet

Zynga is one of the hottest gamers, and it is starting rumors that Microsoft will target the mobile market.  An Xbox console uses 150 watts+ and the TV makes or another 150+.   An iPad has a 25 watt-hr battery.  The mobile market is growing faster than the gaming console.  And, all the games for mobile come from bit distribution vs. gaming DVD/media.

We’ll see if the rumors come true, but if they do the power use for gaming should decrease noticeably.

Vice president of Epic Games, Mark Rein, in an announcement of Unreal Engine 3 on the iPad, expressed his thoughts on the future of gaming consoles. He thought the future of Xbox gaming console could be a gaming tablet with a built-in Kinect.

Below is the excerpt from Rein’s statement

Imagine a future Xbox 360 that is actually a tablet you carry around. It will have more power than 360 does today, with technology like Kinect built right in. Imagine walking into a bar with some friends, propping it up on the table and playing games like Dance Central or Kinect Adventures anywhere you go. Then when you get home that same device will use technology like AirPlay or wireless HDMI to connect to your big screen, you’ll pick up a wireless controller, or use your phone as controller to play games like Gears of War.

Oregon Wind farm has $1.2bil in subsidies for $1.9bil project

If you could get 65% of your renewable energy project subsidized would you be thinking about green energy for a data center?  Here is a project in Oregon that is controversial.

The cost of green: Huge eastern Oregon wind farm raises big questions about state, federal subsidies

Published: Saturday, March 12, 2011, 4:32 PM     Updated: Sunday, March 13, 2011, 2:54 PM

By Ted Sickinger, The Oregonian

Randy L Rasmussen/The OregonianWillow Creek Valley landowner Clyde Smith sold out to the developers of Shepherds Flat wind farm in Eastern Oregon. He calls the heavily subsidized project a taxpayer "boondoggle."

Here are more details.

Stacking federal, state and county subsidies is perfectly legal. But the result is that taxpayers who subsidize a project may bear a greater burden for development than the company that profits from it.
For Shepherds Flat, for instance, federal, state and local subsidies total more than $1.2 billion, about 65 percent of its $1.9 billion cost, according to a White House memo.
Caithness Energy, the New York-based developer of Shepherds Flat, did not respond to numerous phone calls from The Oregonian or detailed questions e-mailed to the company concerning the White House analysis and the company's state tax breaks.

Transitioning from assumption of Secrecy to public exposure snares top dogs, College football is an example

Data Center is an industry where most assume secrecy is a standard practice.  Secrecy makes life easier as many can do things that aren’t known to the public.  But, with Facebook, Twitter, and many other social sites documenting people’s actions, it is harder to keep things secret.  One of the latest examples in College Football’s Ohio St football coach Jim Tressel.

The WSJ article reviews the situation.

The Sport That Can't Keep a Secret

College Football's Sins Keep Getting Publicly Exposed—But Isn't Sunlight a Disinfectant?

By DARREN EVERSON

The public shaming of Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel is the latest in a series of revelations that have touched nearly all the top programs in college football and many of the sport's most prominent stars.

Photo Illustration by The Wall Street Journal; Zuma Press

The recent suspension of Ohio State football coach Jim Tressel points to a complex truth.

The long trail of investigations, accusations, clarifications and statements of heartfelt contrition has cut from North Carolina to Oregon in recent months, scooping up national champions, famous coaches and Heisman Trophy winners.

Some see the openness as a good change.

The obvious conclusion to draw is that college football's moral center has been replaced with a delicious filling of creamy marzipan. (Good luck finding someone who would argue the other side). But the events of recent days also point to another, more complex truth: College football is becoming an impossible place to keep secrets.

"The more transparency, the more openness the better," said former Michigan athletic director Bill Martin. "I think this is all very healthy."

The NCAA has an impossible task to try and monitor football let alone all college athletics, but their life is much easier thanks to web properties like Facebook, Twitter, and TMZ.com.

In the last year, NCAA investigators have been drawn to ask questions about everything from a report on TMZ.com that a player was at a party sponsored by an agent to a Facebook post in which one heavily recruited high school player posted about his new iPhone.

There have been controversies generated by reports of players who've been spotted in fancy cars. And because most schools are public institutions supported by taxpayers, they're required to respond to requests for information made under the Freedom of Information Act.

The mood is changing to help the NCAA catch the illegal action.

Beyond enforcement, however, there's a growing consensus throughout college football that the NCAA is simply doing a better job of collecting information. "In the past, the NCAA was often criticized for not knowing what's going on in the real world," Baker said. "I think we've got a pretty good idea. Coaches and players are starting to realize that as well."

What's often forgotten is that the immense popularity of college football, the intensity of its rivalries and the increasing interconnections of its fans, have created another potent police force. The result: more messes are being exposed. But the sport is also seeing more than its share of sunlight. And as Justice Louis Brandeis said, "Sunlight is the best disinfectant."

"I don't know that things are a lot different—it's just that people are turning in schools now that weren't before," said Gary Barnett, the former Northwestern and Colorado coach. "It really comes down to all of the hype that's around this sport. The hype is involved, therefore the interest is involved, and people are willing to come forward."

In the future there is going to be a data center disaster that will break the code of secrecy in a location.  What type of event?  Imagine if there was a loss of life due to a data center going down or a data center is proven to be the center of criminal activity.  An investigation into the data center could bring out a bunch of people who were witnesses to illegal activities.  What kind?  Watch where the money flows.

Ironically what could snare some of the top dogs is how they are proven to know of the inappropriate activity, but as long as the data center was running it is not a priority.  Ethics in the data center should help transparency and openness which also makes it easier to green the data center.