IDEAS Insights

IDEAS Trend Analysis Shows Server Efficiency Growth Rate May Be Slowing

GaryBurgess — Tue, 29 May 2012 22:48:05 -0400

IDEAS has released an update to the Server Efficiency Trend that shows that long-term server efficiency, defined as server performance per watt, continues to improve, although the growth rate may be slowing. Figure 1. IDEAS Server Efficiency Trend (Server Performance/Watt) The Server Efficiency Trend provides a “whole market” view of...

HDS Device Manager Unifies Block and File Management

David Negrin — Fri, 18 May 2012 14:02:47 -0400

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) recently introduced the Hitachi Unified Storage (HUS) 100 platform to replace its Adaptable Module Storage (AMS) 2000 family of midrange products. HUS employs the gateway-based architecture of HDS's NAS solutions, featuring an enhanced version of the AMS 2000 FC/iSCSI SAN arrays attached to the Hitachi NAS...

IDEAS Research Predicts Server Performance Will Double by the End of 2013

GaryBurgess — Mon, 14 May 2012 19:34:59 -0400

IDEAS has released an update to the Server Performance Trend, which predicts that server performance will double from today’s levels during the second half of 2013. The Server Performance Trend is powered by RPE2, the atomic unit of compute, and provides a “whole market” view of how server performance is...

Emulex-Myricom Partnership Makes Low-Latency Ethernet Mainstream

Daniel_Bowers — Thu, 10 May 2012 10:25:30 -0400

Emulex has announced a new line of 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) network adapters called OneConnect Network Xceleration (NX). The technology comes from Myricom, a networking vendor focused on high-performance computing (HPC) and other niche markets. By combining Emulex’s position in the mainstream network interface card (NIC) market with Myricom’s low-latency...

HP Lowers the Bar to Entry for Proactive Services

GaryBurgess — Mon, 07 May 2012 23:43:46 -0400

Over the past few years, HP has been the “package king” of proactive maintenance, leading the way with transparent, part-number-based, fixed-specification, fixed-price, proactive support offerings. The company has built a portfolio of such support services targeted at large and small installations. The latest addition is Proactive Care, which emphasizes automation...

Oracle Systems Strategy Remains Steady, Focus Turns to Execution

Jim Burton — Fri, 04 May 2012 19:42:31 -0400

Several IDEAS analysts attended Oracle Industry Analyst World 2012 at its campus in Redwood City, CA a few weeks ago. At this annual event, Oracle provided an update on its strategy to maximize the value that can be gained from integrating its hardware and software assets into complete solutions. The...

TPC-DS: A New Decision Support Benchmark (Part 2 of 2)

Daniel_Bowers — Wed, 02 May 2012 10:22:18 -0400

Part 1 of this series discussed the TPC’s new decision support benchmark, TPC-DS, and pointed out several concerns with the current TPC-H benchmark. Part 2 explores how TPC-DS targets those concerns and how you can use its results. TPC-DS to the Rescue? TPC-DS attempts to address some perceived shortcomings of...

TPC-DS: A New Decision Support Benchmark (Part 1 of 2)

Daniel_Bowers — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:05:18 -0400

The Transaction Processing Performance Council (TPC) just released a new system-level database benchmark. The new benchmark, TPC-DS, fixes technical problems that limited the success of its predecessors, though it’s up to hardware and database management system (DBMS) vendors to start publishing results. Here’s what to expect from the new benchmark...

Buying Datacenter as a Service? Measure Capacity, Not Units

Chris Gaun — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 10:28:30 -0400

It is seductive to say that "more is better," but when it comes to datacenter infrastructure, the number of servers is a misleading metric to judge value. Public cloud computing is sold in nebulous units called "instances" that often come without capacity or throughput specifications. This makes it hard for...

IBM PureSystems Raise the Bar for Preintegrated Systems

Tony Iams — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:09:32 -0400

After more than three years of development, $2 billion of investment, and its acquisition of Blade Network Technologies, IBM has jumped headfirst into the market for preintegrated systems, which has been dominated until now by Cisco, HP, and Oracle. In a recent series of high-profile worldwide announcements, IBM revealed the...