Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X Series unveiled for data centers

By tech2 News Staff /  20 Mar 2017 , 11:27

Intel has unveiled a fast and responsive solid state drive for data centers. The Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X Series is designed to boost scale per server and accelerate applications.

The solid state drive provides industry leading capabilities such as high throughput, low latency, high endurance and a high quality of service. The Optane series of Solid State Drives by Intel offers good performance at low queue depth.

The drives remain responsive even under heavy load, and consistently delivers highly predictable and fast service. The drives will allow data center operators to increase the capacity of the same data centers. The Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X expands the reach of cloud computing solutions, and is designed to be used for emerging applications such as artificial intelligence, electronic trading, machine learning and medical scans.

The Intel Optane SSD DC P4800X with Intel Memory Drive Technology increases the size of memory pools, or allows a portion of the DRAM to be displaced. The drive is designed to seamlessly integrate into the memory subsystems and presents itself as DRAM to the operating system.

The drives are available immediately to Intel customers in the early ship program. More variants, in terms of capacity and form factors are expected to be available from the second half of 2017.

"AWS outages"--AWS is investigating S3 issues, affecting Quora, Slack, Trello (updated)

Above: Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Image Credit: Thomas Cloer/Flickr

Cloud infrastructure provider Amazon Web Services (AWS) today confirmed that it’s looking into issues with its widely used S3 storage service in the major us-east-1 region of data centers in Northern Virginia. Other services are affected as well.

“We are investigating increased error rates for Amazon S3 requests in the US-EAST-1 Region,” AWS said at the top of its status page.

The issues appear to be affecting Adobe’s services, Amazon’s Twitch, Atlassian’s Bitbucket and HipChat, Autodesk Live and Cloud Rendering, Buffer, Business Insider, Carto, Chef, Citrix, Clarifai, Codecademy, Coindesk, Convo, Coursera, Cracked, Docker, Elastic, Expedia, Expensify, FanDuel, FiftyThree, Flipboard, Flippa, Giphy, GitHub, GitLab, Google-owned Fabric, Greenhouse, Heroku, Home Chef, iFixit, IFTTT, Imgur, Ionic, isitdownrightnow.com, Jamf, JSTOR, Kickstarter, Lonely Planet, Mailchimp, Mapbox, Medium, Microsoft’s HockeyApp, the MIT Technology Review, MuckRock, New Relic, News Corp, OrderAhead, PagerDuty, Pantheon, Quora, Razer, Signal, Slack, Sprout Social, Square, StatusPage (which Atlassian recently acquired), Talkdesk, Travis CI, Trello, Twilio, Unbounce, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), The Verge, Vermont Public Radio, VSCO, Wix, Xero, and Zendesk, among other things. Airbnb, Down Detector, Freshdesk, Pinterest, SendGrid, Snapchat’s Bitmoji, and Time Inc. are currently working slowly.

Apple is acknowledging issues with its App Stores, Apple Music, FaceTime, iCloud services, iTunes, Photos, and other services on its system status page, but it’s not clear they’re attributable to today’s S3 difficulties.

Parts of Amazon itself also seems to be facing technical problems at the moment. Ironically, it’s restricting AWS’ ability to show errors.

The dashboard not changing color is related to S3 issue. See the banner at the top of the dashboard for updates.

— Amazon Web Services (@awscloud) February 28, 2017

AWS outages do happen from time to time. In 2015 an outage lasted five hours. And AWS plays an increasingly prominent role in the finances of Amazon; in the fourth quarter it yielded $926 million in operating income and $3.53 billion in revenue for its parent company.

Update at 10:30 a.m. Pacific: AWS has provided slightly more information about the S3 outage. “We’ve identified the issue as high error rates with S3 in US-EAST-1, which is also impacting applications and services dependent on S3. We are actively working on remediating the issue,” AWS said on its status page.

Update at 10:51 a.m. Pacific: AWS has another S3 status update. “We’re continuing to work to remediate the availability issues for Amazon S3 in US-EAST-1. AWS services and customer applications depending on S3 will continue to experience high error rates as we are actively working to remediate the errors in Amazon S3,” AWS said on the status page.

Update at 11:40 a.m. Pacific: A bit of good news from Amazon. “We have now repaired the ability to update the service health dashboard. The service updates are below. We continue to experience high error rates with S3 in US-EAST-1, which is impacting various AWS services. We are working hard at repairing S3, believe we understand root cause, and are working on implementing what we believe will remediate the issue,” AWS said on the status page.

Update at 11:52 a.m. Pacific: Among the services based out of Northern Virginia that are affected today, according to the status page, are Athena, CloudWatch, EC2, Elastic File System, Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Kinesis Analytics, Redshift, Relational Database Service (RDS), Simple Email Service (SES0, Simple Workflow Service, WorkDocs, WorkMail, CodeBuild, CodeCommit, CodeDeploy, Elastic Beanstalk (EBS), Key Management Service (KMS), Lambda, OpsWorks, Storage Gateway, and WAF (web application firewall). Yikes, that’s a lot.

Update at 11:59 a.m. Pacific: AppStream, CloudWatch, Elastic MapReduce (EMR), Kinesis Firehose, WorkSpaces, CloudFormation, CodePipeline are also dealing with issues now, according to the status page.

Update at 12:06 p.m. Pacific: Some more services are down now. We’ve got API Gateway, CloudSearch, Cognito, the EC2 Container Registry, ElastiCache, the Elasticsearch Service, Glacier cold storage, Lightsail, Mobile Analytics, Pinpoint, Certificate Manager, CloudTrail, Config, Data Pipeline, Mobile Hub, and QuickSight. Wow.

Update at 12:15 p.m. Pacific: Added information on issues affecting Apple.

Update at 12:51 p.m. Pacific: On its status page, Trello just said that “S3 services appear to be slowly coming back up now.”

Update at 12:52 p.m. Pacific: And now we hear from AWS! “We are seeing recovery for S3 object retrievals, listing and deletions. We continue to work on recovery for adding new objects to S3 and expect to start seeing improved error rates within the hour,” AWS said on its status page.

Update at 1:19 p.m. Pacific: Things are looking better now. “S3 object retrieval, listing and deletion are fully recovered now. We are still working to recover normal operations for adding new objects to S3,” AWS said.

Update at 2:35 p.m. Pacific: The S3 problems have been resolved! “As of 1:49 PM PST, we are fully recovered for operations for adding new objects in S3, which was our last operation showing a high error rate. The Amazon S3 service is operating normally,” Amazon said in a 2:08 p.m. update. But several other AWS services are still having problems.

Update at 6:38 p.m. Pacific: Almost all the services affected in today’s outage are back up and running. CloudTrail, Config, and Lambda are still not fixed.

Update at 10:16 p.m. Pacific: The status now indicates that all of today’s issues have been resolved. Back to work, everyone, move along.

Long time rivals VMware and AWS recently partnered to offer VMware's SDDC platform within the AWS data center, but questions remain.

Image: iStockphoto/peangdao

By Keith Townsend | October 14, 2016, 5:13 AM PST


VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger and AWS senior vice president Andy Jassy announced a significant partnership between the two companies on Thursday when the pair appeared on stage together to introduce VMware Cloud on AWS. According to VMware's press release, the VMware Cloud on AWS is an expansion of VMware's Cloud Foundation Program. VMware also announced a similar partnership with IBM's Softlayer. The VMware Cloud on AWS solution is now in preview with full availability expected mid 2017. VMware will manage, sell, and support the service directly.
The technology

It's helpful to understand the technology architecture associated with VMware Cloud on AWS and how it differs from existing solutions. Oracle's Ravello Systems offers a solution that runs VMware-based virtualization images on top. Oracle is essentially reselling AWS instances with a proprietary hypervisor that translates the VMware instructions. Ravello Systems' solution comes with a significant performance cost and is positioned for non-production workloads. Ravello Systems also doesn't support full integration with VMware's management interface or software-defined data center (SDDC) concept.


AWS has an existing vCenter plugin that allows for simple migration of VMware workloads to AWS. The AWS solution is production-class use cases. Similar to Ravello Systems, the AWS vCenter plugin is limited in the integration with extensions of the VMware SDDC platform.

Coming from the other side, VMware had an ill-fated attempt to build a large-scale public cloud. VMware's vCloud Air public cloud service leverages the vCloud Director (vCD) orchestration platform. VMware Cloud on AWS is a completely re-engineered cloud offering. VMware and AWS have teamed to run the entire SDDC portfolio on bare metal servers within AWS data centers. VMware Cloud on AWS supports vSphere, NSX, VSAN, and vRealize. Unlike vCloud Air, which required a vCD plugin, a VMware Cloud on AWS data center is managed directly from a customer's existing vCenter Plugin.
No mention of hybrid cloud


I found it curious neither VMware nor AWS called the solution hybrid cloud. Integration of operations between public cloud and traditional on-premises data centers has proven an elusive goal. The partnership highlights the business challenges of each vendor. VMware experienced many stops and starts with gaining traction as a public cloud provider. Likewise, AWS found it difficult to entice enterprises to move VMware-based workloads to EC2.

The theory of this partnership is that customers wanting to use their existing VMware software and operations strategy can leverage VMware Cloud on AWS. Customers seamlessly move workloads from their on-premises data center to vSphere servers running on AWS infrastructure. The use case is a similar value proposition as VMware's vCloud Air public cloud, but with the important distinction that the infrastructure is AWS.
More questions than answers

I walked away from this announcement with more questions than answers. VMware and AWS essentially presented hosted VMware in AWS. Today, the primary advantage over other hosted vSphere implementations is the proximity to AWS solutions. It's as close to co-location as VMware customers get into an AWS data center.


However, it doesn't solve the problem of building a hybrid infrastructure. Missing in the announcement were advanced tools for integration of the VMware Cloud on AWS with other AWS products. While possible for a customer to run NSX in the VMware Cloud on AWS, there isn't integration between AWS VPC and NSX. There's also the inverse challenge. VMware Cloud on AWS doesn't bring a private version of AWS to VMware infrastructure. Customers wanting a serverless computing option that leverages private data center resources still have to look toward solutions such as AzureStack.

I'm expecting more meat on the bone from both VMware and AWS. While an attractive technical solution, both companies have to fill in some blanks on what business challenges the solution solves. I'm looking forward to seeing further integration from products such as VMware Cross-Cloud and AWS Lambda.
What are your thoughts?

Is VMware Cloud on AWS a game-changing announcement? What use cases come to mind? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Why data center managers shouldn't overlook object storage backends

Object storage is mainly associated with web-based applications and the cloud. But, the backend is proving to meet the needs of traditional NFS use cases as well.

By Keith Townsend | October 7, 2016, 7:49 AM PST

When hearing the term object storage, the first thing that comes to mind may be cloud. Amazon has made S3 synonymous with the term, and it's common to see object storage in cloud-native applications. However, outside of cloud-native applications, there is plenty of interest to the enterprise. Enterprise data center managers would do well to pay attention to object storage backends.
A matter of perspective

It's tough to make a case for object storage at the presentation layer in the enterprise. Solutions such as Dropbox utilize object storage on the backend. However, the front end is a traditional, tree-based presentation layer. Even the web interface for Dropbox presents the common file/folder view of your data.

It's the backend that offers an interesting objection for enterprises. I asked storage expert and consultant Enrico Signoretti of Juku.IT about enterprise use cases, and he said that the API nature of object storage is an awkward fit within the enterprise. Signoretti advised to look beyond the front-end, as object storage offers many advantages for backend systems. And, IT vendors have started to pay attention to the qualities of object storage for enterprise solutions.
Scalable backend

Object storage doesn't carry with it the burdens of a file system. Object storage relies on the application to present data in an organized manner to end users. As such, object storage systems don't

How to run VirtualBox virtual machines from the command line

By Jack Wallen | October 5, 2016, 8:15 AM PST

VirtualBox virtual machines can be run without working with the GUI. See how to take advantage of the VBoxManage command to start, pause, and power down your VMs.

If you're using VirtualBox as a virtual machine (VM) server in your data center, chances are you're going to want to know how to run those VMs without having to rely on the VirtualBox GUI. This makes it much easier to run your VMs without having to be at the host machine (you can ssh into the host and then manage the VMs) or without having a number of GUI windows open to clutter your server desktops (or be readily available for prying eyes).

To make this happen, you'll use a very powerful command that comes with VirtualBox called VBoxManage; it allows you to manage a number of aspects of your VMs. I'll show how to use VBoxManage to start, stop, and pause your VMs. I assume you have VirtualBox installed, and your VMs are ready to run on the host machine.

SEE: Building the Software Defined Data Center (ZDNet/TechRepublic special feature)
Before you fire up a VM



If you go directly to the VBoxManage command and fire up a VM, you'll probably find that VM isn't reachable via network—this renders the VM worthless, especially if it is a server.

In order to get the networking of your headless VM up and running, you have to install the VirtualBox extension pack. Here's how.
Download the extension pack that matches your VirtualBox release.
Open the VirtualBox GUI.
Click File | Preferences.
Go to the Extensions section.
Click the downward-pointing arrow (Figure A).
Navigate to where you saved the Extension Pack and select the .vbox-extpack file.
Click Open.
When prompted, type your admin password for the host machine.
Click OK.

Figure A
Image: Jack Wallen
Installing the VirtualBox Extension Pack

You're ready to run your VMs, which will include the ability to

Microsoft follows AWS into France with plan for new Azure data center

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella spoke at a company event in Dublin on Oct. 3, 2016. Credit: Microsoft via IDG News Service


Peter Sayer
IDG News Service
Oct 3, 2016 9:22 AM
French businesses will be able to access Office 365, Dynamics 365 and Azure services from local servers, Nadella says

Microsoft is adding to its European cloud infrastructure, with plans to open new data centers in France next year, CEO Satya Nadella said Monday.

The company has already spent US$3 billion growing its European cloud capabilities. These include data centers in the U.K. hosting Azure and Office 365 services, and in Germany hosting Azure.

The French data centers will host Dynamics 365, Microsoft's new ERP and CRM offering, in addition to Azure and Office 365.

The company has already won over the the U.K.'s Ministry of Defence and German auto parts manufacturer ZF to its cloud services. Ireland's Health Service Executive and the Franco-Japanese car-making partnership Renault-Nissan Alliance are also customers, it said.

Key to winning European customers is the issue of "data sovereignty," according to Microsoft.

Data sovereignty is typically about ensuring data remains under the control of local laws, and in Europe those come at two levels.

Government rules on secrecy typically require that government data remain within national borders -- so data centers in the U.K. are vital if the U.K. government is to remain a customer, for example.

The storage and processing of personal information about European Union citizens faces other restrictions: It must only be done in jurisdictions offering the same level of privacy protection as EU law. While it's possible to export such data to the U.S. using legal mechanisms such as Privacy Shield, many companies are opting to keep things simple and keep the data within the EU.

The UK's recent "Brexit" referendum vote to leave the EU threatens to halve Microsoft's EU data center capacity, though, by putting UK servers outside the boundary if and when the exit happens. Adding more locations inside the EU will give Microsoft diversity.

"Trust and scale are some of the most important elements of our design plan for Microsoft cloud," CEO Satya Nadella said at a Microsoft event in Dublin on Monday.

Microsoft is not the only cloud company thinking of such things: Amazon.com last week announced that it will add a French location to its Amazon Web Services offering next year to increase geographic diversity. The company already has two data centers in the EU, in Ireland and Germany, and, in anticipation of Brexit, is building one in the U.K.

Mindful of recent attempts by U.S. authorities to subpoena email messages stored on its servers in Ireland, Microsoft has taken a hands-off approach to customer data in Germany, placing it under the control of a data trustee, T-Systems International, owned by German telco Deutsche Telekom.