Oracle acquires Virtual Network Company Xsigo

It's tough being a network company.  Why?  Because VMware buys Ncira, and now Oracle buys Xsigo.

Oracle Buys Xsigo

Extends Oracle's Virtualization Capabilities with Leading Software-Defined Networking Technology for Cloud Environments

Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 30, 2012

News Facts

Oracle today announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Xsigo Systems, a leading provider of network virtualization technology.

Xsigo’s software-defined networking technology simplifies cloud infrastructure and operations by allowing customers to dynamically and flexibly connect any server to any network and storage, resulting in increased asset utilization and application performance while reducing cost.

The company’s products have been deployed at hundreds of enterprise customers including British Telecom, eBay, Softbank and Verizon.

The combination of Xsigo for network virtualization and Oracle VM for server virtualization is expected to deliver a complete set of virtualization capabilities for cloud environments.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed. More information on this announcement can be found at oracle.com/xsigo.

Supporting Quotes

"The proliferation of virtualized servers in the last few years has made the virtualization of the supporting network connections essential," said John Fowler, Oracle Executive Vice President of Systems. "With Xsigo, customers can reduce the complexity and simplify management of their clouds by delivering compute, storage and network resources that can be dynamically reallocated on-demand."

"Customers are focused on reducing costs and improving utilization of their network," said Lloyd Carney, Xsigo CEO. "Virtualization of these resources allows customers to scale compute and storage for their public and private clouds while matching network capacity as demand dictates."

By the way the press releases reads you would think VMware would be one  buying Xsigo and not Oracle.

Twitter outage couldn't have happened at a worse time, day before Olympics

People have gotten used to Twitter.  Depending on a service that is free leaves little recourse except to switch.

Out of the times Twitter could go down, the day before the 2012 summer olympics is probably one of the worse.

Twitter outage spreads around the globe

Social media site's second outage in 5 weeks

 

 

 

Associated Press

12:13 p.m. CDT, July 26, 2012

People across much of the planet were having problems accessing Twitter on Thursday, a day before the 2012 Olympic Games are expected to cause a spike in use of the micro-blogging site.

The San Francisco-based company acknowledged the problem, saying in a statement that its engineers are "currently working to resolve the issue," although it didn't go into any further detail.

Visitors to the site were greeted with a half-formed message partially in code saying that "Twitter is currently down."

The fields where a reason for the outage and a deadline for restoring service were apparently meant to go were filled with computer code.

Sluggishness or outages were reported from countries in North America, Europe, Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa.

Isn't it kind of funny to think that you retweet a twitter outage.  :-)

THU

Twitter Site Issue 2 hours ago

Users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter. Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue.

Google Fiber = gigabit internet, HDTV, and Nexus 7 Mobile

Google Fiber has officially announced its project in Kansas City.

How much is all this stuff?

From a data center perspective what catches the eye is the 2TB storage appliance.

For compute you can use your own device or there is a Nexus 7 or a Chromebook.

To try out Google Fiber you can visit the fiber space.

And who thought the US gov't would shut down their data centers on the first try, maybe the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th try will show a 10% reduction

There was all kinds of news when some of the first announcements were made that the federal gov't would reduce the number of its data centers.  Virtualization vendors and consultants were excited. Data center companies joined in.  

What I think almost everyone misses is this not a technology issue.  Data Centers are socialist programs that keep lots of people employed who get paid really well, and can cripple an organization.  When United Airlines cut over to the Continental reservation system there were all kinds of problems.  People have little incentive to make things work smoothly when they are eliminating their jobs.

The GAO has their press release.  The GAO recommends to solve the problem to get everyone to count things the same way with a standardized cost model.

What GAO Recommends

OMB’s Federal Chief Information Officer should ensure that agencies use a standardized cost model to improve consolidation planning, and the 5 selected agencies should implement recognized best practices when establishing schedules and cost estimates for their consolidation efforts. OMB and 3 agencies agreed with, and 2 did not agree or disagree with, GAO’s recommendations.

This situation will go on for years and years as people have little incentive to get ride of their job.

Monty Python has a skit on a failed execution.  You could probably write a skit about the people who are asked to shut down their data center.

If you want some night time reading you can read the 124 page GAO report. http://www.gao.gov/assets/600/592696.pdf

Marines learning lessons of operating power systems to reduce power consumption

Forbes has an article that goes into some details of the challenges of the US armed forces in places like Afghanistan.

Marines Pursuing Climate Control Solutions To Reduce Battlefield Fuel Consumption

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In the pre-dawn hours on July 18, an explosion ignited a fire that destroyed 22 NATO fuel tanker trucks parked overnight in Samangan province, Afghanistan. The Taliban claimed credit for planting the bomb that struck the convoy, which was carrying fuel to coalition forces in the south. The attack, the first-of-its-kind in northern Afghanistan, according to the BBC, was the latest in a years-long effort by the Taliban to cripple the fighting capability of NATO forces by targeting fuel convoys.

One of the lessons learned is that running systems in energy efficiently can lead to lower maintenance costs and better uptime.

Though relatively reliable, such a system is woefully inefficient. Newell explained that Marines who handle utility services are taught to match the peak load to an 80% load on the generator – if the maximum load is 8 kilowatts, it calls for a 10 kilowatt generator. “I’m in the middle of nowhere; I can’t go without power,” he said.

The problem with a system designed to meet the peak load is straightforward – outside of winter, when demand peaks because of the heating load, the generators are not operating optimally. The median demand in the field, Newell said, is about 32% of the capacity of the generator. This leads to “wet stacking,” where unburned fuel ends up in the exhaust system. Run the generator this way for long and maintenance goes up, the life of the system goes down, and fuel is wasted.

So, to solve this problem, the Marines tried using batteries.

Partner energy storage with a generator, Newell said, and “I can ensure that anytime that generator is on, it’s running at 80% to 100% load. My fuel efficiency went up, my hours went down. I have more quiet hours.