Saturday, June 28, 2014

SLES for VMware End of Availability Announcement

On June 25, 2014, VMware is announcing the End of Availability (EoA) of all SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) for VMware offerings.  As a result, the SLES for VMware offering will be removed from the VMware price list on July 25, 2014.  After July 25, 2014, customers that purchase VMware vSphere Standard, vSphere Enterprise, or vSphere Enterprise+ (either standalone or as part of a suite) will no longer be eligible to a free SLES for VMware offering.

All Support and Subscription Services for the EoA product will be unaffected and will continue as per VMware's Support Lifecycle Policy through the published support period until August 25, 2016.

Customers are not required to take any immediate action.  This notification in no ways impacts customer's ability to use SLES for VMware past June 25, 2014.  However, if customers want to take advantage of their eligibility to receive SLES for VMware, they must do so before July 25, 2014.

For any further inquiries, please contact VMware Support.

SLES for VMware End of Availability Announcement

Tuesday, June 17, 2014

HP OneView v 1.1 demo from HP Discover

Calvin Zito (@HPStorageGuy) was able to record Tom Joyce demo of HP OneView v 1.1

OneView is a great product, once you see it in action you can understand the true value of this type of management software.

Here's the video:


Original Post:

Five Reasons to Move to Desktops as a Service [feedly]

When it comes to accessing business services, employees want their data and apps now. Gone are the days when workers expected to be tied to a desktop PC. In the age of mobility, they want to access their desktops on any device, at any time, and from anywhere.

This is all a strong argument for moving from stationary PCs to desktops as a service (DaaS). The DaaS model migrates desktops—and the related applications and infrastructure—to the cloud. But it's not the only reason to consider DaaS.

There are five compelling reasons to move to DaaS, which are outlined in a new white paper from VMware. Here is a quick summary of the Top 5 reasons to consider DaaS:
- Gain financial advantages—Many organizations are moving to DaaS to avoid large capital expenditures on client hardware upgrades as they migrate from Windows XP to Windows 7 and 8. In addition, DaaS reduces the need for IT deployment resources and in-house technical support.
- Enable faster, easier deployment for various use cases—From onboarding new employees to setting up test beds for software development teams, DaaS gives your IT organization the ability to provide desktops to users in a matter of hours.
- Support pervasive mobility—DaaS is perfectly in step with the bring-your-own-desktop movement, which is sweeping across the corporate landscape. DaaS helps you ensure a consistent user experience, regardless of device format or brand, while standardizing deployment, security, and support.
- Enhance security—DaaS puts data and applications in the cloud, rather than end-user devices that are more prone to security risks. It enables a consistent set of security protocols across users' own mobile devices, regardless of mobile operating system or hardware brand.
- Avoid a drain on internal IT skills—DaaS puts minimal burdens on your IT staff. It requires less time and expertise than a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployment, and once the environment is up and running, virtual desktops can be set up with a few clicks.

For a closer look at how DaaS could help you address key IT challenges, check out the new white paper on the subject: Top 5 Reasons to Deploy Desktops as a Service.

Goodbye #Earbits - You will be missed

I am saddened to say that the best music streaming service on the net has shut down on June 16th after 4 and a half years of fantastic service.

 

I’d like to thank Joey and the Earbits team for their great services and also would like to wish each member of their team the best of luck in their future endeavors.

 

Read more at:  www.earbits.com

 

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

HP Discover Announcements - Day 2

A number of major announcements have been made by HP at Discover in the past 24 hours, here is a highlight of just a few of them:

 

New HP 12Gb SAS Enterprise Value SSDs for HP ProLiant Servers Offers Breakthrough Performance

The HP 12Gb SAS Enterprise Value SSDs deliver the correct balance between performance, cost-of-ownership, and reliability. Optimized for real performance driven workloads such as read caching and web servers, these HP Enterprise Value SSDs have industry-leading performance up to 96,000 read IOPS (random 4KiB, Q16) and deliver the enterprise reliability customers count on. HP Firmware on these SSDs ensures consistency, compatibility, and performance inside the HP ProLiant Servers.

 

Mind Blowing Performance: The ConvergedSystem 900 beats the Competition by 2x

We all like a winner, but if it's our team playing for the championship or trying to get to the next round of the playoffs  many  prefer a blow-out versus a close game.  Yet blow-outs are rare when facing the best teams.  The competition is tough and gaining any advantage is difficult to do.

However, with HP's recent SPECjbb2013-MultiJVM benchmark results on the new HP ConvergedSystem 900 for SAP HANA running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP3 for SAP Applications HP did just that - blow-out the competition.

 

New HP 5400R Switch Series Delivers Resiliency & SDN

he HP 5400R zl2 Switch Series is our next-generation modular switch specifically designed for enterprise edge as well as SMB and branch office core deployments. Based on our 5th generation HP Networking Provision ASIC, the 5400R:

·         Simplifies network management with unified, single policy across wired & wireless with IMC

·         Enables business continuity with redundant management, hitless failover & nonstop switching

·         Delivers future-proof SDN capability with OpenFlow 1.3 support & programmable ProVision ASIC

·         Consolidates services with integrated module: unified wireless, UC&C and virtualization

·         Removes hidden costs with license-free, fully featured software and HP Lifetime Warranty 2.0

 

HP announces new data encryption innovations

Announced today at HP Discover 2014 in Las Vegas, the new HP Atalla solutions support data whether it’s at rest, in motion or in use—across cloud, on-premises and mobile environments—to ensure continuous protection of an organization’s most sensitive information. Designed for organizations that need to protect sensitive information, including financial institutions, retailers, energy companies, healthcare providers and governments, HP Atalla solutions provide added protection against the exposure of sensitive data while supporting optimal performance and flexibility.

 

Tuesday, June 10, 2014

HP Discover - Storage Announcements

As HP Discover is now fully underway,  I’m going to take some time over the next couple of days to highlight some of the major things that are being announced.

 

Please see Calvin Zito’s great ChalkTalks around a couple of the announcements from HP Storage

 

HP 3PAR StoreServ All Flash gets dedupe

Here are the highlights:

 

·         Intelligent sparing reduces$/GB.  In addition, we have 1.9TB cMLC SSD with more than 30% more usable capacity per drive and patented Adaptive Sparing.

·         Hardware-accelerated inline deduplication

·         Patented Express Indexing - this is the method we use to do hashtag look up and because of it, we can scale a 7450 All Flash System to over 1.3 PB, significantly higher than other all-flash systems.

·         We are offering a 5 year warranty on all SSDs.

·         One last highlight is the Get 6-Nines Guarantee.  With proven tier-1 features like synchronous remove replication, long distance 3-site replication, and peer persistence (just to name a few), the 7450 All-Flash array is a tier-1 platform; and we're so sure of it, we're offering a 99.9999% availability guarantee. And note this HA guarantee is available across all HP 3PAR systems with 4 nodes or more.

 

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/HP-3PAR-StoreServ-All-Flash-gets-dedupe/ba-p/163768#.U5dwifldVAg

 

 

Blockbuster storage news from HP Discover

·         HP 3PAR StoreServ All-Flash gets dedupe

·         HP StoreOnce Federated Catalyst

 

http://h30507.www3.hp.com/t5/Around-the-Storage-Block-Blog/Blockbuster-storage-news-from-HP-Discover/ba-p/163630#.U5dw6_ldVAg

 

Friday, June 6, 2014

Server Essentials for a New Era of Compute at HP Discover

How amazing would it be to have the capability to boost application performance by four times while lowering your total cost of ownership?

At HP Discover, you can uncover the best kept secret as we unveil new HP PCIe Workload Accelerators and HP Enterprise Solid State Drives.

Server Essentials for a New Era of Compute at HP Discover

by Thomas Brooks, Worldwide Product Marketing Manager, HP Solid State Products and Tiffany Owens, NPI Marketing Manager, HP Solid State Products