If you have used a PC during the last three decades or so, you should be familiar with the PC’s Basic Input / Outpit System, or BIOS. The fact that it has been around for so long should also be all the indication you need that it has outlived its usefulness. UEFI is poised to replace it, and take our PC experience to the next level.
Amazon EC2 Reaches Out To Windows Developers
Amazon EC2 is upping the ante with Microsoft’s competitive cloud platform, Azure, by matching its free offer of up to 750 hours per month, for up to a year, of developer time for Windows Server 2003 R2, 2008 and 2008 R2 editions. As part of its AWS Free Usage Tier, customers can select from a range of pre-configured Amazon Machine Images with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2, and once running, connect via Microsoft Remote Desktop Client to build, migrate, test, and deploy their web applications on AWS in minutes.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Are There No Fans for the FAN?
A few years ago, Bran O’Neill, then an analyst with the Taneja Group, coined the term FAN (file area network) to describe a virtualized file storage system. Organizations that build FANs that integrate multiple heterogeneous file stores presenting a single unified, optimized name space should be able to save a significant amount of time, effort and money. The collapse this month of AutoVirt is just another example of how this promising technology has never gained any traction with paying customers.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Thai Flooding Drives Disk Prices Up, Warranties Down
The effects of fall’s record-setting flooding in Thailand continue to reverberate throughout the storage industry. The flooding put several factories that made both completed disk drives for Seagate and Western Digital and components like platters, spindle motors and heads under several feet of water for weeks. The estimated production shortfall of 20 to 50 million drives in the fourth quarter has had a significant impact on the storage industry.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Without Action, SOPA Online Protests are Just Preaching to the Choir
The Web has gone dark. OK, maybe not the entire Web, but a good portion of the Web is joining its symbolic hands today in solidarity to oppose the SOPA and PIPA legislation currently being pushed in the United States Congress. Turning off websites sends a message, but hopefully that message reaches the right audience – Congress.
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Categories: General.
Port 80 Report Highlights Network Risks
If IT security professionals think that by securing Port 80 on their network — the firewall port through which Web traffic passes — that they are protected from Web application-related threats, they need to think again, according to a new report from a network security provider. The latest “Applications Usage and Risk Report” from Palo Alto Networks discloses that 35 percent of the Web applications and 51 percent of the Web traffic in enterprises does not traverse Port 80.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Nearbuy Brings Shopper Analytics To Retail Wi-Fi Spaces
As more consumers prowl store aisles equipped with smartphones, retailers have multiple reasons to want to harness the capabilities of these user endpoints for their own benefit. Nearbuy Systems is bringing an interesting tool set to merchants that should also benefit tech-savvy shoppers with its new Captive Portal and analytics utilities.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Virsto Software Beefs Up Storage Hypervisor
Virsto Software, who claims to have coined the phrase ‘storage hypervisor’, is now shipping Virsto for VDI, vSphere edition and Virsto for Hyper-V 2.0, adding advanced storage management functionality to the two most popular server virtualization solutions. The company says its products increase existing physical storage utilization by up to 90 percent, accelerate virtual machine provisioning by up to 75 percent, and reduce the cost of storage in virtual environments by up to 70 percent.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.
Microsoft’s System Center 2012: Building A Private Cloud
Microsoft is beefing up it’s private cloud offering by enhancing existing modules in System Center 2012, adding an application controller which disconnects apps from the OS, an orchestration module which automates application and virtual machine deployment and management tasks. Microsoft is also reducing System Center 2012′s licensing options from 113 different combinations to two editions–a standard edition and a data center edition. This is Microsoft’s big move into private cloud which should make it easier for enterprises to get into the game, but it is a first step along a longer path in Microsoft’s march to private cloud.
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Categories: General.
Big Switch Networks Intros Open-Source OpenFlow Controller
Big Switch Networks, a new vendor in the nascent, but growing field of OpenFlow-based networking, has introduced an open source controller for companies that want to build applications on top of the controller in an environment where the network intelligence is in the software-based controller rather than in the physical hardware of routers and switches. Big Switch, which also has a commercial controller offering in beta release, said it is offering the open source controller, called Floodlight, to stimulate development on the OpenFlow protocol.
Network Computing
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Categories: General.