Apple's Lion Server Takes A Different Turn

So Mac OS X Lion has just been released and the first app to hit the Lion app store is surprising many users. That app is Mac OS X Lion Server, which will cost you $49, a mere fraction of the $499 price tag that was on Snow Leopard's Server. With that the Mac OS X Server that everybody knew is no more. In addition to that, just to make the deal a little sweeter, Apple is giving you Xsan, the SAN software that the company used to sell for $999. With Mac OS X Lion Server you can turn a Mac Pro with a fiber channel card into a super fast bulletproof distributed storage server for Mac networks.

While you may already be drooling over these kinds of prices, it all seems a little odd, and it raises a few questions. Many critics will undoubtedly point the Lion Server drop in price, the abolishment of node-locked licensing, and simplification of the administrative GUI as a foreshadowing of Apple leaving the server market completely. The price of $49 does not mitigate the risk of implementing a server platform that appears to be in decline.

On the other hand, Lion Server doesn't really resemble a last ditch effort by a dying market. Instead it seems to signal a shift in mission. As opposed to trying to displace enterprises Windows, Linux and Unix servers, Lion Server seems to focus primarily on providing easily managed native network services to work groups of iOS and Mac users. Lion Server's Profile Manager is key to enterprise deployments of iOS devices. Profile Manager has the ability to configure a user-owned device that is connected to a company infrastructure for company services that include ones not hosted by Mac OS X or iCloud.

Mac devices, like iPads or iPhones, that are owned by the company can also be locked down with profiles that apply certain defined groups of users or devices. All you have to do as the user is visit a web portal that Lion has set up and hosted automatically. After the profile is loaded, updates can be pushed to a certain device over the air and so can emergency commands such as remote wipe and password change. And that is only one of the many services offered by Lion Server. $49 equips your network with any combination of file, email, calendar, Web, chat, podcast, VPN, directory or backup services. And you know how committed Apple is to standards, so you can rely on the fact that Lion Server remains a good candidate for everyday use.

Source: InfoWorld - Apple's radical new Mac server strategy

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Microsoft Announces General Availability of SBS Essentials 2011

Microsoft just recently announced the general availability of Windows Small Business Server 2011 Essentials last week. The server, which was designed to support small businesses with around 25 users, is able to be purchased via Microsoft's volume licensing channels or from original equipment managers and retail outlets. Microsoft's volume licensing customers are also supposed to have had access to Windows SBS 2011 Essentials since May 1.

This announcement claims that most of Microsoft's OEM partners currently offer SBS 2011 Essentials server products. While that may be true, only HP's offering is easy to find at the moment. It's a little confusing because Microsoft provides links to six OEMs on its Windows SBS purchasing options page with most of those links leading to Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard offerings. Windows Small Business Server 2011 Standard is slightly different in that it supports up to 75 users. Microsoft released SBS 2011 Standard to OEMs as well as volume licensing customers back in March.

Microsoft's announcement did indicate that more OEM server products using SBS 2011 Essentials software will be available "in the next few months". Windows SBS 2011 Essentials is designed to rely on cloud-based services, more so than Windows SBS 2011 Standard that is. One benefit that SBS 2011 Essentials has over SBS 2011 Standard is that no Client Access Licenses are required to use the Essentials version.

Microsoft is planning a means for better integration with Office 365, the latest collection of cloud-based services from Microsoft. This integration will be carried out via a Microsoft connector known as "Office 365 Integration Module for SBS Essentials". Microsoft expects the release of this module sometime this fall.

IT professionals can currently create new users manually in SBS 2011 Essentials as well as Office 365 and they can also use the same alias name in both the premises-based Essentials as well as in the cloud-based Office 365 suite. The integration module will automate porting user aliases created in Essentials into the Office 365 cloud.

More improvements to SMS 2011 Essentials will be coming in the future, either from Microsoft or one of its many partners. Microsoft did state in the announcement that "many more solutions for cloud backup, hosted email integration and online productivity are already on the market or will be available soon."

In addition to that, there is also an experimental connector currently available for Windows 7 users that is able to assist them in remotely monitoring SBS 2011 Essentials servers via their smartphones. It also works with the Windows Home Server 2011 as well as Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials. The connector is currently available as a release candidate test version and is not recommended by Microsoft for use in production environments.

Source: Redmondmag.com - Windows SBS 2011 Essentials Released Broadly

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Embotics Releases V-Commander 4.0

Managing private cloud deployments is no small task. Virtualization is supposed to help enterprises consolidate server sprawl as well as realize operational efficiencies. However, it requires the right amount of management infrastructure in order to do so. Software vendor Embotics is looking to deliver on the promise of private cloud virtualization management with its new V-Commander 4.0 release. This new release is targeted specifically at the mid-market for enterprises that have between 250 to 2,000 servers. It also delivers provisioning and service automation features.

According to Founder, CEO and President of Embotics Jay Litkey, "It's infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and we also integrate virtualization management capabilities. Traditionally, people look at IaaS vendors that are just focused on the provisioning of virtual machines, we have all of that and have included the same product real-time monitoring and virtualization management."

The V-Commander 4.0 release includes a new service catalog as well as approval workflow and rapid provisioning capabilities. The approval workflow component allows an enterprise to have a system which lets administrators approve which users gain access to virtual machine assets. In addition to that, the system also tracks the workflow of a service requests allowing both users and administrators to monitor status.

The service catalog is built by the organization using a drag and drop form builder. Litkey also explained that a lot of companies make a template of approved services available. The service catalog portal can also be used in order to request changes to an existing service. The rapid provisioning component comes into play once the service catalog item workflow request has been approved. The V-Commander software is able to run on either a physical or virtual appliance, and currently Embotics doesn't offer the product in a hosted Software-as-a-Service cloud model.

"We don't do that today, it's a conceptual type of deployment, and we haven't seen strong demands for it," Litkey stated. "Clearly, as the world evolves and the world moves to more cloud driven approaches, you can expect that we'll see an uptick in more people asking for it."Litkey explained that a lot of enterprises are more comfortable having automated management software deployed on-site. "People want to first be comfortable with automation within the walls of their own private cloud first."

V-Commander is also currently limited to the management of on-site private clouds as opposed to some form of hybrid deployment which includes public cloud components. Litkey did, however, hint that this could change in the future. "Since we have monitoring of capacity and the automation for creation and destruction of virtual machines, we'll have more investment to tie that information together to make intelligent decisions."

Litkey also noted that in V-Commander 4.0, there is an intelligent placement feature that determines where a new VM should be provisioned. With an improved tie-in to monitoring, the placement feature can be enhanced with historical and compliance data as well. "In 4.0, we started the process and we have more planned in terms of tying this knowledge together to do provisioning in an intelligent, automated fashion."

Source: A Serve Watch - Embotics Takes Command of Private Cloud Servers

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HP Not Letting Oracle Drop Itanium Support Without A Fight

So, if you haven't already heard, HP has no plans of letting Oracle off the hook for supporting Itanium. Oracle publicly announced back in March that it was officially discontinuing support of Oracle applications running on HP's Intel Itanium powered servers.

Jump forward three months and HP is starting to fight back by claiming that Oracle has a legal obligation to continue supporting Itanium. According to a statement made by HP, "HP believes that Oracle's March 22 statement to discontinue all future software development on the Itanium platform violates legally binding commitments Oracle has made to HP and the more than 140,000 shared HP-Oracle customers. Further, we believe that this is an unlawful attempt to force customers from HP Itanium platforms over to Oracle's own platforms."

HP has sent Oracle a formal legal demand letter telling the company that it needs to reverse its decision on abandoning Itanium. "HP believes that Oracle is legally obligated to continue to offer its software product suite on the Itanium platform and we will take whatever legal actions are available to us necessary to protect our customers' best interests and the significant investments they have made," HP stated.

Oracle, back in March, made numerous claims that HP apparently disagreed with. Not only did Oracle announce publicly that the company was discontinuing support for HP's Itanium but they also claimed that Intel was hopping on board and doing the same thing. According to Oracle, "Intel management made it clear that their strategic focus is on their x86 microprocessor and that Itanium was nearing the end of its life."

The unfortunate thing, for Oracle at least, is that both HP and Intel are refuting Oracle's claims. According to HP, "HP remains committed to a long-term mission-critical server roadmap, including Intel's Itanium processor. Similarly, Intel has repeatedly reinforced its ongoing commitment to the Itanium roadmap."

While HP is going after Oracle for Itanium support, other vendors have already begun abandoning the platform. Microsoft announced back in April of 2010 that it was ending support for Itanium. Will HP win out over Oracle or will Oracle's claims that Intel is dropping Itanium as well come true?

Source: Server Watch - HP Demands Oracle Support Itanium

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Asia-Pacific Server Market Experiences Growth

The first quarter of 2011 saw strong growth in the Asia-Pacific server market. Shipments rose 21% compared to the first quarter of 2010, just one year ago. In addition to that, server revenue increased 29% year-over-year.

The Australian market also experienced growth, however, the market growth was modest. Server revenue in the Australian market increased by 10% this quarter despite shipments falling 5% compared to last year's first quarter.

According to Erica Gadjuli, Gartner Principal Research Analyst, "Enterprise spending on server consolidation using virtualization technology continued to be a key driving factor for server market growth in this region." x86-based server sales also grew 21% in shipments as well as 31% in revenue.

IT investments in key verticals like financial services and the public sector led to year-on-year revenue growth in mainframe and RISC/Itanium Unix servers. Mainframe and RISC/Itanium Unix servers grew 137% and 15.3% respectively during the first quarter.

Blade Servers, which include x86 and non-x86 based, did better than the rest of the market by growing 38% by shipments and 68% in revenue year-over-year compared to other servers like rack mounted, rack optimized, tower and standalone.

The leader in the server market for the first quarter was HP with shipments with a 30% share overall in Asia-Pacific. IBM held the leadership position in revenue, accounting for 41% of the entire market.

Dell was second in shipments with 21.8%, followed by IBM with a 20% market share. Lenovo trailed in fourth with 5.1% with Huawei topping off the top five with 3.7%. All of these vendors in the Asia-Pacific region had their own moments of success during the first quarter of 2011 in both shipments and revenue, experiencing double digit growth year-over-year.

Source: ARN - Asia-Pacific server market on the rise

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Mon.itor.Us Introduces Free Server Monitoring as a Service

Mon.itor.Us has recently announced that it has become the only cloud-based systems monitoring solution of internal servers for organizations at no cost. Mon.itor.Us is the free monitoring section of Monitis, Incorporated and has launched no-cost internal server and network monitoring as one of its services.

Mon.itor.Us has offered users, which consists of entrepreneurs, small to medium-sized businesses, large enterprises, government agencies, schools and non-profit organizations, free external website monitoring since 2005.

According to Founder and CEO of Monitis Hovhannes Avoyan, "The growing popularity of Mon.itor.Us proves there is a high level of demand among the world's companies for free cloud-based website monitoring to easily and accurately check their web servers' uptime and end-user experience, as well as to ensure that all runs smoothly. Our outstanding growth in transactions and users shows that today's enterprises (small or large) want it all - reliable on-demand monitoring tools that are hassle-free to set up and use and are thus more cost-efficient than even free monitoring software."

Mon.itor.Us has recently celebrated its fifth anniversary and extended its free monitoring as a service offering to include systems and network performance monitoring. Mon.itor.Us has significantly enhanced the monitoring services it provides by offering free 24/7 monitoring of internal servers' CPUs, memory, system processes and hard disk space as well as corporate Intranet applications through on-demand, hosted monitoring. This frees up system administrators from worries about poor performance on their IT infrastructure.

"Now consider hosted server monitoring," Avoyan noted. "Having a single small-footprint agent within the firewall and using HTTP(s) protocol for communication eliminates the need for system administrators to alter their firewall just so monitoring software can work properly. We enforce the best monitoring architecture at no dollar and time cost, and the whole setup may take just minutes with hosted monitoring solutions."

The main benefit to hosted monitoring is the fact that it frees up system administrators from long setups, configurations and continual maintenance on software-based monitoring systems. The benefits are pretty easy to spot, Avoyan added, "We are the first and only cloud-based monitoring solution to offer free all-in-one server monitoring."

Source: The Open Press - Mon.itor.Us Introduces World's First Free Server Monitoring as a Service (Monitis)

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Amazon Makes an Apology for Server Outage, Offers Credit as Compensation

Amazon.com has released an apology today for a data-center outage that brought down a bunch of major websites including Foursquare as well as Reddit. In addition to the apology, Amazon.com also offered customers of its Web services a 10-day credit.

Amazon isn't, however, disclosing how much the credit will be. Amazon Web Services accounts for only a small percentage of Amazon's total revenue. However ,the company does have high hopes for the business. The Web service rents out computer time by the hour.

The outage took place at a data center near Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C. and was a major stumble for Amazon's service. The company is still trying to restore some of the computers brought down in the incident which started eight days ago.

In a post-mortem report that was released today, Amazon, which is based out of Seattle, stated that human error set off the outage. An automated error-recovery mechanism then went out of control causing many computers to become stuck in recovery mode.

Amazon set up the service in a way to provide redundancy by letting computers in a different zone of availability take over if another one fails. Amazon stated that customers who were set up properly to run their computing tasks over multiple zones were largely unaffected, however, that error made it difficult to switch zones on a whim. It is, however, making changes to prevent that error from recurring.

The 10-day credit applies to each and every customer using the zone that went down, despite whether they were directly affected or not. Amazon has also not revealed exactly how many customers were affected.

Source: Associated Press - Amazon apologizes for server outage

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