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Tuesday, November 30, 2010

High Performance Computing Virtualization | Virtual SMP | ScaleMP

High Performance Computing Virtualization | Virtual SMP | ScaleMP: "The innovative Versatile SMP™ (vSMP) architecture aggregates multiple x86 systems into a single virtual x86 system, delivering an industry-standard, high-end symmetric multiprocessor (SMP) computer. Using software to replace custom hardware and components, ScaleMP offers a new, revolutionary computing paradigm."

Another way to scale-out server virtually: Build a big "logical" x86 server out of multiple relatively inexpensive x86 servers, instead of getting big Sun (ahem ... Oracle) or IBM SMP servers. Servers are connected via Infiniband. Unlike Vmware/Xen hypervisors, this method allows a workload to transparently span the resources of multiple physical servers. But even with Infiniband, the memory latency can still be very significant. I remember experiencing very poor scale-out performance on DB2 with the IBM x3950 multi-chassis setup.

Some good articles that describes virtual SMP solutions:


I would love to see some real world benchmarks of these virtual SMP solutions vs hardware optimized SMP servers.

Write a Chrome extension in 15 minutes | Analysis | Features | PC Pro

Write a Chrome extension in 15 minutes | Analysis | Features | PC Pro

Sniff Your iPhone's Network Traffic - Jerod Santo

Sniff Your iPhone's Network Traffic - Jerod Santo
This should come in handy for troubleshooting.

Friday, November 26, 2010

Fon - A world of free WiFi

Fon - A world of free WiFi

Fon - Freedom to WiFi

Fon - Freedom to WiFi: "Fon is the world's first global WiFi network built by people like you. We think of it as crowdsourced WiFi. As a member of the Fon community, you agree to share a little bit of your WiFi at home, and get free roaming at Fon Spots worldwide in return. Sharing WiFi with Fon is safe and secure , and you wont even notice when others are connected because Fon only uses a tiny portion of your bandwidth. Fon has over two million Fon Spots across the globe. Imagine enjoying videos, movies and games at WiFi speeds while you're away from home - for free! Anyone with a broadband connection can join Fon. Just buy a Fonera and connect it to your ADSL/broadband, or activate Fon through one of our partners. Once your Fon Spot has been connected and registered, you're ready to enjoy all the benefits Fon has to offer!"

▷▷Best▷▷pocket : All Computers

An extensive list of pocket routers
The Asus WL300-gE is still the best :)

Asus WL-330gE Portable 4-In-One Wireless Router Overview | Wireless Drivers

Asus WL-330gE Portable 4-In-One Wireless Router Overview | Wireless Drivers
Awesome little travel router. Best feature is the "hotspot" mode which allows you to share a wifi connection. It replaced the Apple Airport Express in my travel kit about a year ago and I haven't looked back since.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Tuesday, November 23, 2010

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Extensible NetApp: Thinking outside of the box

Extensible NetApp: Thinking outside of the box: "Kostadis Roussos"

Although Kostadis doesn't work at Netapp any more, I (and many other Netapp fans and storage geeks) still visit the archived blog (thanks, Netapp) from time-to-time to refresh our understanding of Netapp's many innovations. Kostadis' opinion pieces are both entertaining and educational too :)

DB2 pureScale

DB2 pureScale
purScale scales out easier than Oracle RAC

While we are on the subject of DB2, here's a Netapp technical report on DB2+Netapp best practices.

Cisco eats own cloud food • The Register

Cisco eats own cloud food • The Register: "Cisco has deployed its own 'California' Unified Computing System blade and rack servers in its data centres and has standardised its application platforms and procedures for configuring and managing its software stack. This means that only 40 per cent of the IT budget is going towards acquiring and maintaining the IT platforms. The remaining 60 per cent is going to new application development. The company has 65 per cent of its servers virtualised and it takes 15 minutes or less to put a new virtual box out there for developers to put apps upon."

The Ultimate Wallboard - What's on your wallboard?

The Ultimate Wallboard - What's on your wallboard?

The official contest site. While you are thinking about wallboard and media displays, also check out my favourite digital signage cloud service http://www.digitalsignage.com/

Beyond the wallboard - information radiators for extreme feedback - Atlassian News

Beyond the wallboard - information radiators for extreme feedback - Atlassian News

Tuesday, November 16, 2010

Performance Analysis of Commodity and EnterpriseClass Flash Devices

Performance Analysis of Commodity and EnterpriseClass Flash Devices

Fusion-IO ioDrive Review | Brent Ozar - Too Much Information

Fusion-IO ioDrive Review | Brent Ozar - Too Much Information

Beyond the wallboard - information radiators for extreme feedback - Atlassian News

Beyond the wallboard - information radiators for extreme feedback - Atlassian News

Blades Made Simple™ � Blog Archive � What is the Truth About Cisco’s Blade Server Market Share?

Blades Made Simple™ � Blog Archive � What is the Truth About Cisco’s Blade Server Market Share?

Hehe .. Cisco's is mindf***ing the competitors and a few bloggers :)

NetApp - The Virtual Storage Guy: EMC Benchmarking Shenanigans

NetApp - The Virtual Storage Guy: EMC Benchmarking Shenanigans

The lesson: read the details behind the benchmark before you drink the kool-aid :)

Microsoft and Intel Push One Million iSCSI IOPS – Gestalt IT

Microsoft and Intel Push One Million iSCSI IOPS – Gestalt IT: "Microsoft and Intel Push One Million iSCSI IOPS"

More info on how M$ and Intel did it. Btw, they used StarWind Software's iSCSI SAN.

Intel and Microsoft test iSCSI

Intel and Microsoft test iSCSI: "Microsoft and Intel perform a test and get 1 Million IOPS with iSCSI"

Calling for an End to Invalid SSD vs HDD IOPs Comparisons - article on STORAGEsearch.com

Calling for an End to Invalid SSD vs HDD IOPs Comparisons - article on STORAGEsearch.com

Official Google Voice iPhone App Released | iPhone in Canada Blog - Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

Official Google Voice iPhone App Released | iPhone in Canada Blog - Canada's #1 iPhone Resource

Load Impact - Free web site load test

Load Impact - Free web site load test

15 Free Functionality And Load Testing Tools For Web Applications

15 Free Functionality And Load Testing Tools For Web Applications

Saturday, November 13, 2010

coconut-flavour.com - [coconutIdentityCard 2.4]

coconut-flavour.com - [coconutIdentityCard 2.4]: "Tells you where and when your Mac, iPod or any other Apple-Product was born"

Also checks the serial number against Internet databases of stolen Apple products. Currently checks against www.powermax.com. Not sure how accurate/useful this actually is.

HAProxy - The Reliable, High Performance TCP/HTTP Load Balancer

HAProxy - The Reliable, High Performance TCP/HTTP Load Balancer

USB Geek, Your USB Solution!!

USB Geek, Your USB Solution!!