Blog Posts

  Muchas veces al usar una computadora no sabemos que conexión a banda ancha tenemos y, por ejemplo, cuanto tardaremos en bajar cierto video, programa o documento. Para solucionar ese problema Intel creo el Brand Speed Test que con sólo un click te permite averiguar que velocidad tiene tu banda ancha. Además en la página puedes acceder a una calculadora digital que te permite averiguar cuanto tiempo tardarás en bajar un archivo solo indicando su peso y tu tipo de conexión

Links

• Intel.

Who wants to win a free t-shirt?  Follow these steps to enter the contest:

• Between 10:00am and 2:00pm PST every weekday from 11/9 to 11/20, the @IntelOpenPort twitter account will announce the daily t-shirt giveaway in a tweet
• Simply retweet the t-shirt giveaway message within an hour of the original tweet to be entered to win (5 winners per day drawn randomly from those who retweet)
• Intel will publicly announce the winners weekly on the community site and through Twitter
• Intel will contact winners for mailing address
• Limit one t-shirt per person
• We only have 50 Large t-shirts and they are going to go fast!
• And if you haven't seen it, check out Episode 4 of The Website is Down: Sales Demolition.

Official terms:

No Purchase Necessary.  A Purchase Or Payment Will Not Increase Your Chances Of Winning.

Eligibility

The "Website is Down" ("Sweepstakes") is open only to legal residents of the fifty (50) United States and the District of Columbia and nine (9) provinces of Canada (Quebec excluded) who have reached the age of majority in their state or province of residence at the time of entry.  Employees of Sponsor and its parent companies, affiliates, subsidiaries, distributors, advertising and promotion agencies and members of the immediate family (defined as spouse, parent, sibling, child and respective spouses regardless of where they reside) and/or those living in the same household of such employees are NOT ELIGIBLE to enter.

How to Enter (Twitter "Website is Down" Contest):

During the period from November, 9, 2009, at 12:01 AM PST through November 20, 2009, at 11:59 PM PST (the "Sweepstakes Period") entrants must retweet the IntelOpenPort tweet signaling that the contest has started to be considered an official entry.

Alternative Entry: To prevent limitations, if entrant is unable to enter via Twitter, he or she can submit a postcard version of his/her entry to 1900 Prairie City Rd, MS: FM4-19, Folsom, CA 95630 during the sweepstakes period.

Limit one entry per person per day. All entries must be received during the Sweepstakes Period to be eligible. Sponsor's clock is the official time clock for the Sweepstakes.

Prizes/Retail Value and Odds of Winning

Odds of winning depend on the total number of tweets received during the contest time period.

Five t-shirts will be given away each business day from November 9^th, 2009 to November 20^th, 2009, for a total of 50 t-shirt prizes.

T-shirts will be shipped to winners between November 16th, 2009 and December 31^st, 2009. These dates are dependent on timely responses from the winners with contact information.

Entries

Entries using macro, robotic, script or other forms of automatic entry will be disqualified.  Entries become the property of the Sponsor and will not be returned.  No mechanically reproduced entries permitted.  Proof of submission does not constitute proof of receipt.  Sponsor is not responsible for lost, late, mutilated, misdirected, incomplete, inaccurate or postage due entries.  If there is a dispute as to the identity of an online entrant, the prize will be awarded to the authorized account holder.  The "authorized account holder" is defined as the natural person to whom the email address or Twitter account is assigned by an internet service provider, online service provider or other organization (e.g., business, educational institution, etc.) that is responsible for assigning email addresses or accounts for the domain associated with the submitted entry.

Conditions of Participation

Entrants agree to be bound by the terms of these Official Rules and by the decisions of judges, which are final and binding on all matters pertaining to this Sweepstakes.  Winners may be required to sign and return an Affidavit of Eligibility, a Liability Release and, where legally permissible, a Publicity Release within 7 days following the date of first attempted notification.  Failure to comply with this deadline may result in forfeiture of the prize and selection of an alternate winner.  Acceptance of the prize constitutes permission for Sponsor and its agencies to use winner's name and/or likeness, biographical material and/or entry (including an altered form of the entry) for advertising and promotional purposes in any media without geographic or time limitation, and without additional compensation, unless prohibited by law.  By participating in the Sweepstakes, entrants agree to hold Sponsor, its advertising and promotion agencies and their respective parent companies, subsidiaries, affiliates, partners, representative agents, successors, assigns, officers, directors, and employees harmless for any injury or damage caused or claimed to be caused by participation in the Sweepstakes and/or acceptance or use of any prize.  Sponsor is not responsible for any printing, typographical, mechanical or other error in the printing of the offer, administration of the Sweepstakes or in the announcement of the prize.  Sponsor may be collecting personal information in accordance with its privacy policy.  See Sponsor's privacy policy for details regarding Sponsor's information collection practices in connection with a Sweepstakes.

Internet

Sponsor is not responsible for electronic transmission errors resulting in omission, interruption, deletion, defect, delay in operations or transmission, theft or destruction or unauthorized access to or alterations of entry materials, or for technical, network, telephone equipment, electronic, computer, hardware or software malfunctions or limitations of any kind, or inaccurate transmissions of or failure to receive entry information by Sponsor or presenter on account of technical problems or traffic congestion on the Internet or at any Web site or any combination thereof.  If for any reason the Internet portion of the program is not capable of running as planned, including infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes which corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of this Sweepstakes, Sponsor reserves the right at its sole discretion to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Sweepstakes.  Sponsor reserves the right to select winners from eligible entries received as of the termination date.  Sponsors further reserve the right to disqualify any individual who tampers with the entry process.  Sponsor may prohibit an entrant from participating in the Sweepstakes if it determines that said entrant is attempting to undermine the legitimate operation of the Sweepstakes by cheating, hacking, deception or other unfair playing practices or intending to abuse, threaten or harass other entrants.

Caution: Any attempt by a participant to deliberately damage any Web site or undermine the legitimate operation of the Sweepstakes is a violation of criminal and civil laws and should such an attempt be made, Sponsor reserves the right to seek damages from any such participant to the fullest extent of the law.

Disputes/Choice Of Law

Except where prohibited, each entrant agrees that: (1) any and all disputes, claims and causes of action arising out of or connected with this Sweepstakes or any prize awarded shall be resolved individually, without resort to any form of class action, and exclusively by state or federal courts situated in Santa Clara, CA, (2) any and all claims, judgments and awards shall be limited to actual out-of-pocket costs incurred, but in no event attorneys' fees; and (3) no punitive, incidental, special, consequential or other damages, including without limitation lost profits may be awarded (collectively, "Special Damages"), and (4) entrant hereby waives all rights to claim Special Damages and all rights to have such damages multiplied or increased.  Delaware law governs the Sweepstakes and all aspects related thereto.

Sponsor

The Sponsor of this Sweepstakes is Intel Corporation.

Winners List

The winners list may be obtained by contacting:
Mike Armstrong
1900 Prairie City Rd

MS: FM4-18

Folsom, CA

95630

Para nosotros la tecnología ecológica es una parte esencial del trabajo de desarrollo de los productos de Intel. Utilizando los recursos con inteligencia hemos desplegado diversas iniciativas para seguir innovando aunque poniendo todos los esfuerzos en evitar que el crecimiento tecnológico sea negativo a nivel ambiental.

1. Iniciativa Open Energy: Intel se ha propuesto colaborar al desarrollo de una industria de energía limpia. El objetivo es encaminarse en la transición  hacia la tecnología inteligente, mediante la utilización de fuentes de energía renovables (solar o eólica).

      
   
        
   

2. Climate Savers Computing Initiative: Es una iniciativa desarrollada inicialmente por Intel y Google para aumentar la eficiencia energética de las computadoras a partir del trabajo conjunto entre industria, consumidores, gobierno y organizaciones de conservación. Para 2010 el plan busca reducir las emisiones de CO2 de las computadoras en 54 millones de toneladas, lo que equivale al gasto de la producción anual de 11 millones de automóviles. Las compañías que deseen también ser parte del programa deberán proveer a sus empleados de equipos y servidores que tengan una administración eficiente de la energía.

   

     


3. The greed grid es una iniciativa orientada a la eficiencia energética en los centros de datos, también llamados datacenters. El  objetivo es que se creen normas para la utilización inteligente de la energía. The Green Grid está trabajando estrechamente con los usuarios finales, proveedores de tecnología y gobiernos de todo el mundo para crear normas para un uso más eficiente de la energía en los centros de datos. La utilización, recopilación de datos y su análisis, y la evaluación de nuevas tecnologías, es una de las tareas que actualmente se está realizando para mejorar las prácticas en los centros de datos.

Diversos sectores pueden unirse y participar de los proyectos. La industria informática y los fabricantes de componentes que quieran colaborar deben comprometerse a que sus productos cumplan con las normas de eficiencia que fija la iniciativa. También las propias empresas energéticas tienen un rol en este tipo de programas, puesto que en caso de estar interesadas en participar, deberían comprometerse en ofrecer descuentos en los productos verdes, que sean menos perjudiciales para el medio ambiente por su eficacia en la utilización de energía. Por último, los mismos usuarios deberían tomar conciencia de que la compra de productos que utilicen el recurso energético de manera eficiente redunda en un beneficio sustancial para todos, al mejorar la calidad de vida actual y las posibilidades de nuestros descendientes.

Links


• Intel.


---




                   

Take a look at the posted document on Radmin (Remote Administrator).  This free tool (Viewer) allows technicians to gain access to AMT basic functions and will work with any provisioned ISV under SMB or Non-TLS Enterprise Mode.  This tool can be provided to IT Techicians who may not have access to the ISV console to perform the basic AMT functions on a provisioned client.

http://communities.intel.com/docs/DOC-4309

Most of the time, server ROI is measured on the data center scale, replacing tens, hundreds, or even thousands of servers with fewer higher-performing and more energy efficient servers.

But...have you ever wondered how much power you could save if you replaced every 4 year old server in an entire country with Xeon 5500 Nehalem-based systems?  What about how much CO2 that could be removed for those same 4-year old servers – and number of cars it effectively removes from the road?

Well, wonder no more!  Check out this short paper for an eye-opening comparison of the UK, Germany, and France, and how big of an ROI they can realize if the entire country refreshed ALL of their 4-year-old servers.  It looks at power savings, land reclamation, and monetary savings in slightly different terms, like how much space can be saved in comparison to the floor area of Notre Dame Cathedral?  You’ll need to read on to find out more… J

Additionally, all calculations were done using the Xeon ROI tool, so check it out and come up with some more interesting comparisons based on your city, state, or country data.  Be sure to post them here!

When Intel decided to pilot Windows 7 internally I was keen to be involved being the Microsoft Alliance manager at Intel in EMEA.  I got a new Centrino 2 with vPro laptop and I was soon running the Beta version of Windows 7.

I was amazed at the responsiveness of the platform and the speed at which I was able to get things done.  All my applications worked straight away with no support required from IT and so far all my hardware peripherals have also worked straight away.  Some of the new features in Windows 7 such as the new Task bar make navigation a lot simpler and the whole operation of Windows 7 seems quicker with fewer clicks to get to the end goal e.g. finding a file and opening it.  The snap feature is great for comparing two documents side by side and the shake feature is nice when I have opened too many Windows and I just want to de-clutter my desktop.  On top of all this the battery life is exceptional and I no longer seem to be looking for seats next to power sockets.

I am now running the 64 bit finished version of Windows 7 and it’s a marked difference to running my old PC with Windows XP.  Work colleagues and family who have seen the new platform are also impressed with the new features and the overall look and feel of the PC.  As Intel starts to roll out Windows 7 across the company it will be great to see how vPro technology will be used to enable the migration and to continue to manage the platform on an ongoing basis through our IT help desk.  I can’t wait to see the new business features in operation e.g. Direct Access, and I know the data I put on to my USB sticks will now be more secure with Bit-Locker-To-Go.  If you want to read more about Intel ITs experience of running a Windows 7 pilot see here: http://www.intelalliance.com/microsoft/download/brief/Win_7_IT_Intel_Brief.pdf

The next step for me is to get Windows 7 installed at home and I know for sure my children will be looking for a new laptop for Christmas.  I have seen the new Windows 7 Home Group feature and this will be great in order to be able to connect up the PCs in my house to share photos and music.  We will be spending much less time hanging around whilst we import music in to iTunes or creating a panoramic photo in Windows Live Photo gallery.  With the new Intel Core family of processors and Windows 7 we’ve just managed to get some time back to do the jobs a PC can’t do  - like walking the dog (see everyone’s happy).

In my blog tomorrow, I’ll summarise why Intel based PCs are the right choice to run Windows 7, and why you should be looking for the Core Processor as the essential element of your new PC.

     It has been said there are lies, darn lies and statistics.  Well here in the Wired Ethernet world, we tend to frown on that saying.  The statistics can be down right useful in figuring out problems, in either your software or your network.  Today I'll look at using the stats for maximizing the performance of your implementation when it comes to dropped packets.  And a kitchen sink will show us the way.  Hope you brought your towel.

     The Intel 1 Gigabit productshave two sets of stats that are useful in this regards.  First is the Receive No Buffer Count or RNBC.  It will increment when a frame has been successfully loaded into the FIFO, but can't get out to host memory where the buffers are because there are no free buffers to put it into.

Second is the Missed Packets Count, or MPC. This is the count of frames that were discarded because there was no room in the MAC FIFO to store the frames before they were DMA'ed out to host memory.  You will typically see RNBC growing before you will see MPC grow.  But, and this is a key point, you don't need to have a event increment RNBC before you can MPC increment.

     First a primer on the MAC architecture that Intel Wired Networking uses.  Coming from the physical layer, either Copper or SerDes (or other), the packet will be stored in the MAC FIFO.  It gets processed to get there, and it gets processed some more before going to the DMA block for the actual trip out to host memory.  If there is a buffer available, the DMA block sends it on its way.  The descriptor associated with the buffer is updated and the world is good.  Well good enough.  In the case RNBC, the frame is happily in the FIFO, but without a buffer to head home to, it has no where to go.  In the MPC case, the poor frame can't even get into the FIFO and is dropped off the wire.  MPC is also sometimes called an overrun, because the FIFO is overrun with data.   An underrun is a TX error, so that's out of bounds for this talk.  Plus they are pretty rare these days.

     As you can tell, RNBC is not too bad, but points to bigger problems.  MPC is pretty bad, because you are dropping frames.  So how can you have MPC without RNBC?  Imagine if you will, an interconnect bus that is slow.  Very slow.  Like a PCI 33hz bus.  Now attach that to a full line rate 1 Gigabit 64 byte packet data stream.  At one descriptor per packet, that's about 1.4 million descriptors per second.  In this case the software is very fast, faster than the bus.  So the number of available descriptors is always kept a level that keeps the buffers available to the hardware to conduct a DMA.  But because the bus is so slow, data backs up into the FIFO.  Now that is what the FIFO is for.  By buffering the packet, it tries to give the packet the best chance at making into host memory alive.  In our slow case, the buffering isn't enough and the FIFO fills up.  It is draining slower than its filling, its just a like a slow draining kitchen sink.  Eventually it overflows and makes a big mess.  Thank goodness things like TCP/IP will tell the applications data has been dropped, but if using a lossy frame type like UDP its just too bad, your frame is lost to the ether.  If you need to keep track, but need to use UDP, you'll need to monitor the MPC count and decide what you want to do when it goes up.

     As already noted, RNBC doesn't always lead to MPC, but it is a warning flag that it will happen.  Here is how the RNBC can climb while MPC stays low.  Imagine we have a slow CPU, but a wicked fastbus.  The software is very slow to process the descriptors and return them, but once the descriptors are given to the hardware, it empties the backlog (read the FIFO) faster than the incoming frames are filling the FIFO.  Returning to our kitchen sink analogy, the water is coming in at a fairly constant rate.  But imagine the stopper is down, making the sink fill up.  Just before it over flows, the drain is opened and down it goes.  Once the water doesn't go down the drain would be the same moment our RNBC would be incremented.  The kitchen sink itself becomes our FIFO and if the FIFO is big enough, it can save frame for quiet some time.  This is 1 Gigabit (or faster) that we're talking about, so with a good sized FIFO (24K RX for example) that's only 375 frames at 64 bytes, or 267microseconds of data.  That's not very much time.  But in a world full of 2 and 3 Gigahertz CPUs that's long enough.  If you have 2048 descriptors for it to dump into, that is almost 8 times the amount of packet time before the FIFO starts filling up.

     And you're probably sitting there saying "I was told there wasn't going to be math on this blog!"  Moving on(and that's enough about the bad news), lets talk about the good news.  Both RNBC and MPC are either treatable in software, or can be minimized by careful design.  RNBC is really a software problem at its core, but a fast bus never hurt.  If you‘re getting the RNBC moving up, add more descriptors and buffers.  Make sure your ISR or polling loop is running often enough to get back to the business of adding more resources to the card before the descriptors stash runs out.  Using our example from above, if your expecting 64 byte frames, you'll need to poll every millisecond or so if you have 2048 descriptors.  Looking at it from the other direction, if your trying to do 1 Gigabit of traffic with only 8 descriptors, RNBC is going to jump around like a cat in a rocking chair store.  Consult your documentation (link goes to the 8257x Open Source SDM) on how to add more descriptors, all our major O/S products support it.  There may be times when you've added all the buffers the driver will let you and your still seeing RNBC errors.  When this happens, it's a sign that the stack might be the limit.  In modern operating systems, the buffers are O/S buffers and while we might have 2048 of them, if the O/S has ownership of 2047 of them, RNBC will be just part of life.  Most stacks have their own buffers that you can tinker with their count, so that can help.  Check the stats of your stack to see if it is having troubles keeping up.  There will be times when the RNBC will go up, but it will look like the stack and driver have a ton of buffers but work is not being done.  If you have a task that is eating up the CPU, the ISR or polling routines won't refill the buffers fast enough and RNBC will happen.

     MPC is treatable depending on what RNBC is doing.  If RNBC isn't moving around much, there is room for the data, its just not getting out of the FIFO fast enough.  Much like the movie where if the bus goes below a certain speed bad things will happen, the same applies to MPC.  Maybe without all the flash of a Hollywood movie, but the principle is the same.  The bus is the limit.  Move to a more traffic friendly slot. While slot topology and its impact on performance is a whole 'nother post; it's only common sense that a x4 card may drop frames if put into a x1 connected slot.  Give that card room to DMA and most MPC errors will go away when the slot speed matches the maximum speed the card supports.  If you have MPC and RNBC climbing at the same rate, most likely the bus isn't the limit, the buffer reload speed is.  Treat the RNBC issue first and then see if MPC is still going out of control.

     Even with a super fast bus and a ton of buffers, there will be times when RNBC will happen and there will be time when MPC happen.  Sometimes a big burst of traffic comes just as the descriptor count gets low, sometimes the ISR doesn't run exactly when you hoped it would.  The trick is not letting either one be a big percentage of the total number of packets.  When it does get out of control, follow this post and you'll see improvement in the percentage.

Time for the big finish.

1.  RNBC is a warning sign of a slow drain from the MAC and can be treated by adding more buffers.

2.  MPC is a failure condition leading to dropped packets and can be treated with more buffers and faster interconnect buses.

3.  Thanks for using Intel networking products.

Otra vez me concentro y vuelvo al diario, es que en este último tiempo se ha transformado en el mejor medio para contar todo aquello que me pasa.

Hoy fue un día agitado, evidentemente hasta ahora Martín estaba de seudo-vacaciones porque nunca me había exigido tanto como hoy. Lo que sucedió es que fuimos a una conferencia de prensa, podría decir, desde mi trabajo como computadora portátil, que hoy estuve en una especie de carrera, una competencia muy peleada porque la computadora que funcionara mejor sería la que llevaría al podio a su jefe y al medio en el que este trabajara, la que lograría llegaría a publicar la primicia.

El lugar era fantástico, humanos y computadoras se fundían en un continuo y rápido tecleo, que incluso, para mi era una acompasada melodía.

Así fue como todo tipo de computadoras acompañaron a los periodistas en esa jornada, tanto laptops como netbooks, era interesante ver  los diferentes perfiles de los profesionales y cómo cada uno había optado por una computadora que no solo se adaptaba a su uso, sino que, además, fuera compatible con su personalidad, eso hacía la competencia más peleada porque cada uno sabía lo que poseía.

No había grandes diferencias de tiempo, todos estaban trabajando a máxima velocidad y lo más bello fue notar que la mayoría de nosotras gozaba de perfecta salud, los ventiladores no se escuchaban. Éramos un conjunto de jóvenes portátiles con sus dueños.

Mirando más específicamente reconocí algunas computadoras que nunca había visto. Un hombre de anteojos, un periodista bastante parecido al estereotipo que vemos en los libros o las historietas, tenía una portátil negra, ya desde lejos se distinguía su potencia, era una Intel® Core™2 Quad.

Del otro lado del salón un jóven de rastas, sentado sobre un escalón, seguramente porque había llegado tarde y no había encontrado lugar, usaba una netbook con Intel® Atom™ , supe luego que daba mayor libertad al usuario porque tenía un rendimiento superior de la batería, además estaba cómodo pese a no haber encontrado asiento, gracias al diminuto tamaño del dispositivo.

Finalmente Martín y yo nos ubicábamos en el medio, con mi corazón Intel® Core™2 Duo me convertía en la joya del lugar, fina, liviana y además potente como para procesar o editar videos y fotos era la mejor opción para satisfacer al máximo las necesidades de mi dueño.

Finalmente ese día fue extenuante, pero en la carrera llegué a la meta y estuve muy bien de tiempo. Mi jefe, Martín, llegó a publicar la nota en la página del medio donde trabaja, twitteo toda la conferencia sin inconvenientes, e incluso en ese mismo lugar también respondió mails, editó fotos y se fijó el estado de sus colegas en las redes sociales habituales. Fue un día completo e interesante, conocí a otras de todas las especies, chicas, grandes, gruesas, livianas, pesadas, de ahora en más ya nada me sorprendería.

Links

•Intel

The Best Choice for Business PCs: Notebook and desktop PCs powered by Intel® Core 2 processors and Windows 7 - increase PC responsiveness for greater productivity while driving down management costs.  On average, a four-year-old PC can cost 59% more to support than it did in its first year. Notebook and desktop PCs with Intel® Core 2  processors with vPro technology and Windows 7 provide the tools to meet business needs while driving down IT costs.

Notebook & desktop PCs powered by Intel® Core 2 processors with vPro technology are specifically designed for businesses, providing greater IT control and cost savings with Intel’s most advanced security and manageability technologies. Windows 7 Professional works the way you want for your business, helping you get more done while safeguarding your work. Together, these technologies bring increased PC responsiveness while driving down management costs.

You can read more about the value of Intel® Core™2 processors with vPro™ technology and Windows 7 by clicking on the following link: http://www.intelalliance.com/microsoft/windows7.aspx

Tomorrow you can read about my personal experiences of running Windows 7 for the past few months.

Mirá este video y descubrí como Intel e IBM pueden transformar un datacenter.

Links

• Intel.

Intel designed Core processors for great performance and energy efficiency. Windows 7 is designed to make your PC simpler and the things you do every day easier. Imagine how they can work together to help you get things done faster.

So if you are thinking about running Windows 7 on your 4 year old PC think again – the performance improvements to be gained by buying a new PC with Intel® Core™ processors is up to 6 times faster!

What have you found faster and better with Windows 7 versus what you had previously?

If you are thinking of buying a new Windows 7 based PC for your business read my blog tomorrow to find out why you should consider vPro technology as an essential purchase.

I was recently involved in a project where Intel IT SMEs from disciplines including Server, Storage, Data Center, Network, and Finance reviewed and updated our Data Center Strategy (Intel IT Data Center Solutions: Strategies to Improve Efficiency) for Intel IT.  The primary focus of the paper was to provide an update on value realized, shifts in strategy, and key execution lessons learned.

Our execution highlighted the need for finance to participate as an active partner in the influence planning and internal communications.  At some point, especially in economically challenging environments, cross organization investment decisions boil down to a tradeoff between limited resources and a number of good projects. Being able to clearly articulate the value added by a "portfolio of projects" (like the Data Center Strategy) and how you will track progress doesn’t mean that the project(s) will be funded – but it does increase the likelihood that you will be in the game at the end.  For us, having this coordinated communication strategy for technology solutions,cost efficiency, and operational efficiency was a key consideration for successful execution. 

We currently estimate that the cumulative projected financial impact over eight years will be ~$500-650M NPV - this range has changed in upper and lower limits based on updates to forecasts.  Over the first three years, Intel IT has realized ~31% of the projected benefits through execution to the Data Center strategy.  The primary value driver has been the impact of our server strategies (multi-core refresh and virtualization) that enable demand growth within the existing data center footprint and affordability targets.  Moving into 2010, we are evaluating new forecasting and value metrics to enhance customer reporting of data center activities.  This approach will incorporate our activity driver methodology into comprehensive unit costing and forecasting framework, creating a holistic cost forecasting process to improve future decision making.

One area currently under review is establishing the right unit of measure for a data center infrastructure housing different compute environments.  Is this something you or your business partners are exploring or looking to explore?

For those of you implementing the infrastructure of a cloud, often called IaaS or Infrastructure as a Service, one of the challenges can be “where to start?”. With the myriad of hw options and variety of software solutions finding a starting point can be daunting.

For example:

·         What server configurations are optimal?

·         How to structure the network?

·         What is the optimal storage configuration?

·         I really don't want to write this software , therefore, what is the cloud management stack that best suits my needs?

Assuming that cost reduction and/or agility are the reasons you are building a cloud (true for the vast majority of customers), then there is huge benefit from using a largely homogenous architecture: identical server, network, storage, and management configurations across the cloud implementation. This architecture addresses the maintenance aspects of the infrastructure (remove from service if it fails, replace when enough are out of service to justify a visit to the data center) as well as the operational aspect (no special cases). Getting to the point where workloads can be hosted in this environment requires effort but has a fairly quick payback once you complete the transition.

Even with this in mind, you still have to design the hardware infrastructure and then select a set of management tools.

Intel recognizes this need and has formed the Intel Cloud Builder program to help in this ‘getting started’ phase. If you are already well down the road to building a cloud, you will likely find the output from this program useful to understand the options available in the market.

Intel(r) Cloud Builder is a fairly simple program with a powerful output:

* using a defined hardware blueprint,

* using a cloud management software stack,

* run the combination on a Intel hosted cloud test bed,

* and document the results.

For more information, please go to Intel Cloud Builder Program.

Billy Cox

Director, Cloud Strategy

Intel Software and Services

Energy Use in the Office PoC (phase 2)

It’s been a while since I’ve talked about Energy Use in the Office.  The small PoC we did early this summer had some pretty interesting results but due to the size of the PoC and time constraints, it’s was unclear as to how the data we obtained would scale up.  So, building on the results from the first phase, we are planning a second phase of this PoC on a much larger scale: We are involving about 1,000 users, and the second phase will not be subject to the limiting time constraints that characterized the first phase.  During this second phase, we will focus on user awareness and enforced energy profile settings. We are also building a real-time energy-awareness user interface that PoC participants will be able to access with web browsers, as well as view on large screens in the building’s lobby and cafeteria.  I’ll keep you up to date as the project progresses.

Making IT Real!

By the way, the second video in the “Making IT Real!” series has been released.  If you haven’t already seen it, you can see it here and in case you missed the first video, you can see it here.

-Mike Breton

IT Technology Evangelist