Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate Goes Live

Microsoft has just unleashed the Release Candidate of Server 2012. Release Candidate versions are usually the very last beta versions of a Microsoft server operating system before the launch of the actual release and this Server 2012 Release Candidate confirms that Microsoft is dedicated to the Metro interface.

Many IT professionals were skeptical about the usefulness of including a consumer-oriented touch UI in a server product, especially one that is target towards businesses and professional use. However, despite all that Metro remains in Server with a GUI install option. The Release Candidate edition also has a couple of minor changes over the Server "8" beta, though most of them are purely cosmetic.

The most noticeable change is that the moniker Server 8 Beta has been completely replaced with Server 2012 in the splash screen and installation screens whenever you perform a Server with GIU installation. In addition to that, the background color during installation has also been changed as well as in the Metro-style Start screen. The dull green has been replaced by a vivid dark blue, though server administrators have no ability to change this, unlike in the beta release of the Windows 8 client operating system.

An extra setting has been added under the Server 2012's Charms Menu and is known as Tiles. This option doesn't provide any new settings controls over the beta release, though it does launch the settings that allow you to enable and disable administrative tools as well as allow admins to have clear personal info from the tiles. In the beta version, these same options were available directly under Settings, Microsoft has simply added an extra step in order to access them.

The Release Candidate's Start screen has eight tiles by default, which comprise the Start menu whereas the beta only had seven tiles. These tiles are labeled as Server Manager, Windows PowerShell, Administrative Tools, Computer, Task Manager, Control Panel, IE and Desktop. The final change is that when you right-click on the Start screen the "All Apps" icon is now on the bottom right-hand side instead of the left.

There also doesn't seem to be any way to disable Metro in the Release Candidate, though it is safe to assume that the user interface will be in the final release product. Server administrators can also choose to bypass the Metro user interface and simply use the Desktop and Server Manager for administration. If that doesn't do it for you then you can also choose to install Server 2012 in command-line Core mode.

This Release Candidate is probably going to be very close to what they final product is going to be like for Server 2012. There weren't a lot of things that were changed from the Beta version to the Release Candidate version and you can expect that any changes made before launch will be mostly under-the-hood.

Source: PC Mag - Windows Server 2012 Release Candidate: Metro Lives!

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Dell Announces PowerEdge C5220 Microserver with Ivy Bridge Xeon Chips

Dell recently announced an all new microserver that has Intel's first Xeon server processors that are based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture. The funny thing is that the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture hasn't even been officially announced by the chip maker. The PowerEdge C5220 from Dell is one of the first servers with Xeon chips based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture and is targeted at web 2.0, cloud and high-performance applications, according to Dell.

The server will run on Intel's Xeon E3-1200 V2 series of processors which are said to be faster and more power-efficient than the previous E3 chips that were based on Intel's Sandy Bridge processors. A spokesman for Intel said that the new chips provide more performance-per-watt, and a server with E3-1200 V2 processors drawing 17 watts of power in a 3U rack space could provide as much as 53% more performance than a 20-watt Sandy Bridge Xeon CPU.

According to Dell, the Xeon E3-1200 V2 chips draw between 17 to 45 watts of power and are made using the 22-nanometer process. In addition to that, these chips include 3D transistors, which are faster and more power-efficient than the 2D transistors that are found in the existing 32-nanometer process chips. Unfortunately, Intel was unable to disclose any other information on the new Xeon processors though the company did announce in April that it was planning on releasing its first Xeon server chips based on the Ivy Bridge microarchitecture towards the end of this quarter. These would be targeted at microservers, which are low-power servers with shared components designed primarily for web serving and cloud applications.

The PowerEdge C5520 is able to scale performance while simultaneously reducing the number of servers in a datacenter according to Dell. The company also noted that this new microserver has already helped one company consolidate four servers into one while running a software infrastructure based on the Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (LAMP) software stack. Dell says that the microserver will be available on May 22 for a starting price of $12,210.

Source: PC World - Dell Announces First Server With Intel's Ivy Bridge Xeon Chips

Oracle Executives Regret Sun Acquisition

According to a filing by HP in a dispute with Oracle over the porting of its software to the Itanium platform, HP stated that Oracle had gone with an aggressive strategy against HP's Itanium servers after sales of competing Sun's Sparc servers have dropped considerably. In addition to that, HP stated that Oracle executives believed that the 2010 acquisition of Sun Microsystems was a mistake.

Oracle announced back in 2011 that it would not support HP's Itanium platform on future products, which marked the latest move by the company that made running software on the HP platform more expensive. HP also submitted the filing to the Superior Court of the State of California, Santa Clara County, in opposition to Oracle's motion for summary adjudication.

Oracle decided not to support servers running the Itanium processors due to the fact that the processors were nearing the end of their life. When Oracle made this move, HP decided to sue because HP uses the chip in its high-end servers. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison made the decision not to port the software, a decision that was only shared with a few Oracle executives. Not even Oracle's Senior Vice President of Database Development was consulted on the issue.

Last month HP filed for a pretrial ruling that Oracle is contractually required to offer future versions of its software on the Itanium platform and claimed that an agreement between Intel and HP ensured that the Itanium was not an end-of-life processor. Oracle, on the other hand, stated that HP fraudulently induced it to enter into the agreement, stating that the company withheld information that it was secretly paying Intel $88 million per year to artificially continue the Itanium processor's life span.

The most recent filing points out that Intel had refuted Oracle's claims regarding the supposed end-of-life of the Itanium platform. A testimony from the Intel Executive in charge also made it clear that, "far from being near its demise, Itanium had just gained new vitality when Oracle made its announcement."

Oracle's internal sales communications shows the real reason the company decided to drop support for Itanium. The sales force was exhorted to take full advantage of the Itanium announcement according to the new filing, which quoted a sales executive from Oracle saying that, "we are the ones dictating IT/Itanium obsolescence."

According to a statement from HP, "This new information that has come up during the discovery period further underscores Oracle's behavior as 'anti-customer'. It reinforces the fact that Oracle breached its contractual agreement with HP in a bad faith attempt to drive hardware sales from Itanium to Sun servers." Deborah Hellinger, spokeswoman for Oracle, declined to comment on the filing.

Source: Computer World - HP: Oracle executives believed Sun acquisition was a mistake

Is Too Much Changing with Windows Server 8?

Many tech professionals expect Windows Server 8 to come out sometime this year and, amid many reports, to be a little different from past installments. There are supposed to be a lot of new things that will come with the introduction of Windows Server 8, which leads many to wonder if these changes will boost the sales of Microsoft's Windows Server products or be too much too quickly?

In terms of revenue, Microsoft is the world's largest software maker. The greatest revenue generator by far for Microsoft is its business sector. This portion of Microsoft's business accounts for almost 32% of Microsoft's total revenue with 90% of this coming from Microsoft Office Systems. Microsoft is expecting big things from Windows Server 8.

According to ZDNet reported Jason Perlow, "Server 8 will unleash a massive tsunami of new features." Perlow recently wrote a review of Windows Server 8 after going to a two-day introductory workshop. Perlow also added, "By the end of the second day at the Windows Server 8 Reviewer's Workshop, I was literally ready to pass out from the sheer amount of stuff being shown to us."

One foreseeable problem is that almost half of all PC users on the market these days are still using Windows XP, the Microsoft operating system that is nearly 10 years old. In addition to that, Windows 7 is still fairly new and Windows 8 seems best suited for touchscreen devices, which would leave many users uninterested.

The biggest thing for Windows Server 8 will be whether or not it is easy enough for your average PC user to pick up and learn. Many people wonder if Windows 8 will be more suited for tablet and tablet users and less for computer and technology professionals.

Source: MSNBC - Is Windows Server 8 Too Radical of a Change

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Amazon's Cloud Powered by Estimated 454,400 Servers

Ever wonder what it takes to run a cloud operation? What kind of infrastructure is needed and what kind of hardware is used? Probably not because most typical users never really get a chance to see the entire infrastructure that supports the plethora of services they use on something like Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud. However, it was recently estimated by by Huan Liu, Research Manager for Accenture, that an astonishing 454,000 individual blade servers are currently being used to power it.

Liu made the estimate in a personal blog post recently, stating that he used a combination of data and DNS queries within EC2, all of which were publicly available, to come up with that number. The number indicates just how many physical server racks are used by Amazon's Cloud Service multiplied by the number of individual servers that could be housed in each rack.

However, Liu did mention that there are a number of different obvious holes in his number. Liu notes that the total number he gave is a complete estimation on his part and that Amazon could very well configure its systems differently than he thinks. In addition to that, if Amazon has any racks without an active server running on it then it would be impossible to count, which would also displace Liu's accuracy in the total.

Regardless, Liu's post has stirred up quite the buzz in the media, though that could be because it is one of the best estimates to Amazon's cloud size currently on the web. Amazon is pretty secretive with their information on their Elastic Compute Cloud, making these hypotheses a necessity.

Source: PC World - Nearly a Half Million Servers May Power Amazon Cloud

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First Licensed Server Refurbishing Plant Opened in China by IBM

Last month, IBM announced that it had just opened its first facility in China with the main purpose of refurbishing and reselling old computer servers. Financially, this is a great move for IBM as the market for refurbishing and reselling computer servers is expected to increase to $2 billion in China by 2014.

The United States and Europe's exporting of electronic waste to Asia over the past 20 years has brought up some major concerns about the impact this has on local environments as well as the low-paid workers who are in charge of dismantling the toxic-heavy computers and other components to recover valuable metals and parts.

However, the increasingly profitable economy in China has created a significant e-waste problem of its own. China's government even has a 5-year economic plan that encourages recycling and remanufacturing computers in order to keep them out of landfills. According to General Manager of IBM Global Asset Recovery Services Richard Dicks, "In China, they'll use them for five, seven or nine years and they're basically landfill when they come out."

IBM's plant opened back in February in Shenzhen, very close to another IBM factory. The factory is expected to refurbish 100,000 servers and PCs every year by 2014. This feat will be accomplished by installing new memory and storage and packaging them for resale to the domestic Chinese market. According to Dicks, "The Chinese market is huge from a server perspective."

The supply of old servers came mainly from China as equipment leases expired and customers started to turn in old machines and equipment. IBM also operates other refurbishing plants around the world, taking in 33,000 metric tons of old equipment every week. That diverts nearly 97% of the weight of old machines away from landfills according to IBM.

Dicks also stated that IBM had also been negotiating with the government in China for the last 2 years to license the Shenzhen refurbishing plant and that he expects IBM's competition to eventually establish their own facilities. "The thing we talked to the Chinese government about is that it's really easy to buy a new computer but it's really hard to get rid of one. We're the first licensed facility and we have a first-to-market advantage," Dicks said.

Source: Forbes - IBM Opens China's First Factory To Refurbish Old Computers, Tapping A $2 Billion Market

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Windows Server 8 Beta Now Live

Microsoft, right on the heels of its public viewing of Windows 8, has just released a beta version for the company's Windows Server 8 operating system. Windows Server 8, which was officially announced last September, updates the code base for Microsoft's flagship server OS, the current version of which is Windows Server 2008.

The beta version will allow administrators to test the operating system and give feedback to Microsoft who will then use that feedback to finalize the software for commercial release. However, Microsoft did not disclose any information on when the final production ready version of Windows Server 8 would be available for purchase.

Windows Server 8 is a very major update for the operating system and contains a plethora of improvements to virtualization, multi-machine management and application hosting capabilities, according to Corporate Vice President for Server and Cloud at Microsoft Bill Laing.

In terms of virtualization, Windows Server 8 will allow administrators to create virtual networks, allowing different business units or customers to share one physical network while simultaneously maintaining complete independence from the other virtual networks. Another new feature will allow you to move shared files between nodes without ever having to stop the server applications that use these files, which will help greatly in disaster recovery and maintaining continuity in operations.

As far as hosting applications are concerned, Windows Server 8 will also include a copy of .NET Framework 4.5, which also includes new capabilities to run a program concurrently across multiple processor cores. The Web server software Internet Information Server (IIS) has also been upgraded to provide better security isolation as well as manage more sites per server. The PowerShell command line interface has also been increased with the addition of 2,300 commands.

If you want to give the free beta version a run through, then all you need is a 1.4 GHz 64-bit processor, a minimum of 512MB of working memory and 32GB on a disk. In addition to that, users have the ability to upgrade to the new beta operating system from existing versions of Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2008 R2 though you will be unable to upgrade to subsequent releases from this release. Click here if you want to download the Windows Server 8 beta.

Source: PC World - Microsoft Releases Windows Server 8 Beta

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