Top Companies Looking at ELE Servers

Some of the top names in the computer industry, including Dell, HP and SeaMicro (which is owned by Advanced Micro Devices), are looking into developing low-power servers for data centers. Recent reports have indicated that extremely low-energy servers will take up 2.4% of the market for servers that run on Intel chips by the year 2015.

The key thing that these companies are looking into is energy costs due to the power needed to cool large server farms. Some of the newer data centers that have been built recently pack in tens of thousands of computer servers that generate internet content and cloud services.

According to Kiyomi Yamada, an analyst for Gartner, "Currently, the extremely low-energy server market consists of small providers, such as SeaMicro, now under AMD, and Super Micro. Some major OEMs including HP and Dell have announced that they would enter the market, as well as smaller vendors like Boston Limited."

AMD was a rather surprising addition to the market when it acquired SeaMicro back in February for $334 million. According to a recent report from Gartner, the worldwide server market reached $52.8 billion in 2011. Profit margins, however, were thin, causing vendors to look into branching out to emerging categories like extremely low-energy machines.

Source: Investors.com - HP, Dell, AMD Target Low-Energy Servers, A Hot Market

Toshiba Developing Flash-Based Data Center Products

Toshiba announced on Tuesday that it has started developing a line of products designed for storing large amounts of data and that these new products would be based on the company's flash memory chips. Toshiba is working on a three-tier strategy that it hopes will spur in-house demand for NAND flash memory.

Toshiba will offer memory chips for use in storage hardware, data servers that combine hard disks, solid-state drives and flash and software services for analyzing and handling large amounts of data. According to Senior Engineer at Toshiba Masaki Momodomi, "Up until now we've sold mostly to outside companies, but we want to strengthen our own offerings."

NAND flash makers like Toshiba are in a constant race to out-do each other and create chips with finer circuits, ultimately offering cheaper storage and better efficiency. However, they are closing in on the physical limits possible with our current technology. Toshiba has, until recently, focused on out-shrinking rival companies and was the first to launch solid-state drives with 19-nanometer memory.

Momodomi also added that Toshiba will offer chips smaller than 19-nanometers, but will remain in the teens over the next two years. In addition to that, Toshiba stated that it is working on 3D storage, which could be a possible successor to the current NAND flash technology that stacks memory in layers, allowing for greater density. Toshiba also says that it will have prototype samples ready by 2013.

Toshiba announced this new effort as part of the company's new research and development strategy. Toshiba showed several upcoming products at its central headquarters in Tokyo, including quantum encryption and home lighting based on organic light-emitting diodes. Toshiba also announced that its strategy going forward is also focused on adding headcount outside of Japan.

70% of the company's new research personnel through the fiscal year ending in March 2015 will be hired outside of Japan and the bulk of the new hires will come from China, India and Vietnam, countries where projects will focus on technologies and products meant for the countries where they are developed. According to Akira Sudo, a Research and Development Executive for Toshiba, "We have to keep a firm grasp on the global trends."

Source: Computer World - Toshiba to develop data center products based on its flash memory chips

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4 Data Center Migration Mistakes You Need to Avoid

No matter what part of business you are in, there are going to be some mistakes that you can potentially make along the way. Some of these will sneak up on you and are completely unavoidable. However, there are also some pretty big mistakes that CAN be avoided and need to be if you want things running smoothly.

In the world of Data Center migration, there are four big mistakes that you can make that are fairly common and potentially career damaging. Thankfully though, these mistakes, if caught soon enough, can be avoided. If you can identify these mistakes and avoid them before they happen, then your data center migration will go a lot smoother and so will your job.

For most companies moving a data center is a huge ordeal. In addition to that, a successful move can also act as a nice resume booster for any IT professional. A move that goes according to plan can showcase an IT professional's skills in large-scale project planning, project management, technology integration and even interpersonal communications. Migrating a data center provides a chance for exposure across the entire company considering nearly every department is touched by the IT organization, as well as affected by a data center move in some way or another.

The only problem is that a data center move can be littered with problems. Not just problems but potentially career-ending failures. There isn't an IT professional out there that wants to be on the receiving end of memos and discussions describing lost orders, missed deadlines or customer dissatisfaction that occurred because of something that got disrupted by a data center move that didn't go as planned.

There a four key mistakes that can occur in a data center migration that could spell doom for your job: Ignoring the Data, Combining the Move with Other Projects, Failing to Plan Appropriately and Not Creating an Inventory of Equipment, Applications and Processes.

Taking the time to address these issues one by one up front will significantly improve your chances of successfully migrating any company's data center. By having success, the personal recognition that is sure to come afterward is one of the best payments you could receive, aside from your actual paycheck.

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