Clearspace Server Syndication Feed

Great Debate: Security versus Productivity

Catherine Spence — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 13:41:33 GMT

Background

Traditional corporate information is stored in highly secure repositories within enterprise boundaries. New forms of data are being created in emerging mediums such as blogs and wikis. Cloud computing and network-based systems offer new venues for processing and storage.

The Big Question

What are good ways to balance the potential productivity advantages of open collaborative computing versus the data security needs of the organization? Consider several examples:

Does having access to social media make you more productive? Is it secure?
Is having access to raw corporate data more productive than secure, specialized tools?
Does IT need more control or less? What new tools and/or methods are required, supporting a more open environment?

These questions may never see wide consensus and the decision is crucial to every CIO. We will use your feedback for IT analysis.

Make Your Opinion Heard

Become one of the first to test MIT's new collective intelligence tool called Deliberatorium. Join the fun in two simple steps:

1. Create your account and log in to the MIT Deliberatorium

2. Add your perspective to the discussion

View, rate or comment other author's posts using pros & cons
Add your own ideas for new solutions and issues

This discussion topic will be available until September 29, 2008, and then results will be shared on Intel.com. Feel free to forward this invite to any interested parties. However, please refrain from posting it on any large volume, public websites.

It's Cool to Argue

Research shows that a large group of diverse individuals tends to get the right answer because they bring different perspectives into the discussion. Help Intel and MIT learn more by participating in this web-based argument.

For More Information
Watch the ten minute video clip for a concise overview.

Musings about Data Center Energy Usage

egcastroleon — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 05:19:36 GMT

The energy spent spinning up a flywheel, recharging a battery or pumping water up a reservoir can be recovered at a later time with with the appropriate infrastructure, minus a percentage loss lost to heating. This behavior is governed by the First Law of Thermodynamics.

Alas, there is no such luck in the operation of a data center. There is energy stored in the UPS batteries and the capacitors in the equipment, but this amount is minuscule compared to the total amount of electric energy fed into the data center. Hence, it is fair to say that all the electricity fed into a data center eventually gets converted into heat, warming up the air, ground or water around the facility. Again there is no way around the First Law of Thermodynamics.

In any case, the useful output for a data center is not the amount of energy that eventually gets to the UPS batteries or recharges capacitors in servers. It's the amount of computation done at the data center. However, counting CPU instructions is difficult and controversial. Hence it is common practice to settle for the next best metric as a proxy for computation, namely, the power consumed by the CPUs in all servers.

Measured as percentage of total data center power consumed, the CPU power consumption is rather small. Ainsworth, Echenique et al. from IBM (Figure 1-1, page 3) report that only 35 percent of the data center power goes to the IT equipment load. Likewise, power consumed by processors represent 30 percent of the IT equipment load. The number needs to be further derated to the CPU utilization, 20% on the average. If we do the math, the power dedicated to computation is about 2 percent of the total data center power.

John Pflueger from Dell (figure 1, page 9) reports a remarkably similar result. He estimates that 41 percent of the data center power is consumed by IT equipment, broken down into compute servers, storage and communication devices and other IT equipment. The compute server portion is 63 percent, and out of that 31 percent is consumed by the CPUs. If we apply the same 20 percent CPU utilization ratio from IBM, the end result is 1.6 percent, still within the ballpark.

Where does this analysis leave us in terms of actions we can take as part of a first order strategy? The data above is hierarchical, and hence a pyramid is a useful way to organize it:

Changes toward the top, namely in the CPU application workload will have a minuscule impact power consumption for the data center as a whole, yet they can have a dramatic impact in the data center efficiency, that is in the amount of useful computations done as defined above. These changes can take place in two ways.

First, due Moore's Law, a server refresh can potentially double the per output CPU if the servers are two years old, or more than quadruple it if the servers are four years old.

Second, a consolidation or virtualization exercise can address the low utilization numbers for CPUs from less than 20 percent to 60 to 80 percent. Higher numbers are possible, but it is desirable to reserve some headroom to make the servers more responsive to workload peaks. These benefits are attained through the deployment of software technology from VMware, Xen, or, more recently, Microsoft Hyper-V technology that comes with the newly released Microsoft Windows Server 2008, formerly code named Longhorn. A Microsoft white paper, Windows Server 2008 Power Savings reports up to 10X linear power savings in a study with Hyper-V. Results may vary. A basic assumption is that utilization factors are low to start with. Workloads that take multiple servers or workloads that need a server cluster to run, such as large database applications or mail servers might not see such large benefit if the utilization factor is initially high. However, that also means that that the CPU utilization efficiency was high to start with, so there is less room for improvement.

Near the bottom of the pyramid we are talking real megawatts. In many cases the low hanging fruit comes not from from pulling all the stops with technology, but from plain energy conservation. A homeowner intent on lowering electricity bills should not rush to install solar cells. The first step is to conduct an energy audit to identify areas of greatest impact. A data center is no different. In an engagement I was involved with, a team was investigating whether 300 servers could be landed in an aging 25,000 square foot data center without hot spots developing. The energy audit using thermal modeling tools indicated that the data center could actually support a whooping 1,800 additional servers with very minor changes, essentially plugging air leaks in the floor tiles and repositioning a few rows to define hot and cold aisles. Of course, these results must be taken with caution, becase supporting the extra servers would probably have required a power feed upgrade.

So far we have analyzed possible actions that can be taken at the top an at the bottom of the pyramid. What happens in the middle? This is a more complex question and requires the inclusion of process factors. Furthermore, a specific answer always requires a context. Below is a case study presented by Gregg Wyant and James Chen at the recent Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco. Gregg is the Intel IT CTO, Chief Architect and General Manager; James Chen is the Director for Engineering Computing. In this case study, a server refresh was conducted over 4-year old servers. The application requirements did not change, yet running the application in the newer servers allowed reducing the number of machines from 126 to 17. The potential payoff from Moore's Law is a bit over 4X, yet the actual power draw reduction was 8X. The rest comes from application optimization and IT process improvement, a tribute to the Intel IT engineers carrying the application migration.

The reduction from six cabinets to one actually understates the gain. If the cabinet is populated with 1U servers, it will be only half full. The energy density per cabinet however will have gone up. These cabinets need to be housed in a data center designed to handle higher power densities.

MS SCE - vPro Use Cases Supported

josh.hilliker — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 06:27:49 GMT

Here are the key use cases supported by MS SCE (Microsoft System Center Essentials). Each of the use cases below will reference a certain page in the Manageability Pack located @ http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/isn/downloads/Manageability/Intel_AMT_MP_Guide.pdf. Therefore I highly recommend you download the PDF and then cross reference the list below.

System Discovery
Discovery allows the Management Pack to locate Intel® AMT systems. During the discovery process, the Management Pack retrieves asset information from the Intel® AMT subsystem. Discovery needs to be performed before you can perform any other Intel® AMT-related tasks.
For details on the different ways to perform discovery, see “Discovering Systems” on page 87.

Viewing Asset Information
You can view information about the Intel® AMT system’s hardware assets (CPU, memory, and more).
For details on viewing asset information, see “Retrieving Asset Identification Information” on page 97.Intel® AMT Management Pack for Ops Manager and Essentials • Installation and User’s Guide 6

Power Control Operations
Power control operations enable you to remotely control the power states of Intel® AMT-supported systems.
You can apply the following power control operations to Intel® AMT systems:
•power-up
•power-down
•power cycle
•reset
You can specify the way that a system should boot, depending on the specific system implementation.
For details on power control operations, see “Power Control Operations” on page 101.

SOL/IDE Redirection Operations
The SOL/IDE Redirection feature enables you to remotely perform the following redirection operations on Intel® AMT-supported systems:
•Serial Over LAN (SOL): Allows you to display the non-graphic boot screens of an Intel® AMT machine, thereby allowing you to modify BIOS entries or to change the way that the system boots.
•IDE Redirection (IDER): Allows you to boot the Intel® AMT machine from a boot image located elsewhere on the network.
For details on redirection operations, see “Redirection Operations” on page 109.

System Defense
The System Defense feature allows you to define multiple system defense policies and apply them individually to a system.
For details on the System Defense feature, see “System Defense” on page 121.Chapter 1 • Introduction7

Event Handling
You can configure Intel® AMT systems to send PET (Platform Event Trap) events to multiple event collectors, and view these events in Ops Mgr/Essentials. For information on the PET protocol, refer to the ASF specification at http://www.dmtf.org/standards/asf/.
For details on registering for PET events, see “Registering and Unregistering for PET Events” on page 137.
For details on monitoring PET events, see “Monitoring Alerts (PET Events)” on page 157.

Looking ahead to the next post..
the plan is to showcase each use case in quick video's and post out.. stay tuned for more..

Josh H

Cut Network Security Costs in Half

Paul_advantech — Sat, 06 Sep 2008 14:38:52 GMT

Network threats require enhanced security for access control, user authentication, and attack protection, concerns which require a leap in performance-particularly VPN performance. VPN performance is critical, yet many medium-sized businesses have typically been priced out of VPN acceleration, resulting in compromised features and performance.

To address this, a new breed of platforms based on Intel's new EP80579 Integrated Processor deliver untouchable performance for less than half the price of previous platforms. With as much as 1600 Mbps of VPN throughput, they deliver a "no-compromises" approach to security for medium-sized businesses.

Advantech's new Intel® EP80579-based FWA-3240 illustrates these advantages. Initial results yield 1600 Mbps IPsec VPN throughput, with as little as 10% CPU utilization, power reduction of almost 20%, and decreases in board size of nearly 45 percent.

OEM's can forgo specialized co-processors and dedicated security hardware while remaining cost-effective (up to 50% reduction) and extremely power-efficient.

The SoC is backwards code-compatible with earlier Intel® processors allowing security vendors to run existing software applications on Intel® EP80579.

Intel® EP80579 delivers performance without sacrificing programmability, providing enough CPU margin to respond to dynamic threats while offering the capacity for additional value-added software services. Medium-sized businesses can benefit from VPN acceleration without having to compromise on features and performance.

Compared to past solutions, Intel® EP80579 offers dramatic improvements in cost, power, and board space, while offering major advances in throughput and headroom. With all of these advantages, Intel® EP80579 is set to revolutionize the network appliance market.

New issues posted to Known Issues, Best Practices, & Workarounds!

michelegartner — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 21:38:45 GMT

Check out new issues posted today!

Cannot provision a system that uses an underscore in the host name

Does the Intel SCS automatically push updates to the CLR (Certificate Relocation List) to clients?

Firewalls may not let Intel(R) AMT clients communicate with management consoles

Implementing network filtering with Symantec Altiris

michelegartner — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:13:06 GMT

If you are using Altiris as your management console, then check out this new use case document for implementing network filters!

Altiris Use Case: Network Filtering and System Defense

Experience Using Windows* Server 2008 in a Demonstration Project for the Intel Developer Forum

egcastroleon — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 21:12:17 GMT

If you attended the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on September 22-24, you may have stumbled upon Booth 425 in the Eco-Technology Community. The theme of the booth was Energy Efficient Data Center Power Management with Windows Server* 2008 Hyper-V* and Intel* Dynamic Power Technologies. The demo was a joint project between Microsoft and Intel to showcase the integration of power management features supported by Windows Server 2008 and Intel-based platforms in a virtualized environment.

Logically, development work for the demo consisted in integrating four main technology ingredients: server hardware based on the Bensley platform provisioned with Harpertown CPUs, firmware running on the baseboard of the managed nodes known as Node Manager, virtualized instances of the Microsoft Windows* Server 2008 operating system running on top of the same OS with the Hyper-V virtualization role enabled and a management console application built by Intel, Data Center Manager (DCM).

The relationship between the technology components is shown in the figure below:

I would like to share my personal experience in putting together this demo, an angle not always obvious when looking at the finished product. Personal means people. Let me introduce you to some of the really nice people who participated in the project. This is only a very small portion of the team, so I will apologize up front to team participants not represented here for lack of space.

Here is Susmita Nayak , based in California, who officiated as the project manager greeting some of the booth visitors:

... and here is Haim Cohen, a software engineer based inthe Israel Design Center and yours truly, a technical architect and chief gopher, part of the Oregon team.

The next picture captures an overall view of the booth. It is a pre-conference picture when the setup was almost finished. You may notice the empty boxes, cabling not yet hidden and the rack of servers discreetly tucked on the side. Don't be swayed by rack's apparent small size. The whole rig weighs about 400 pounds (200 kilos). It was shipped to the conference site prefabricated, in one piece. Racking the servers would take about half a day of lifting, bolting, rewiring and sanity testing, which we decided not to do at the conference site.

The demo consisted in four 5U SC5400 managed nodes with a S5000PSL (Star Lake) baseboards running Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and hardware virtualization support turned on. The management console server consisted of a S5000PAL baseboard on a 2U chassis running Microsoft Windows Server* 2003. The logic block diagram of the rig is shown below. The configuration of the nodes was similar; node 1 has been expanded for detail.

In addition to the main CPU, the S5000PSL baseboard carries a baseboard management controller (BMC). The BMC is an embedded computer. Node Manager is firmware that runs on the BMC. Data Center Manager actually communicates with the BMC to carry its functions using the server's Ethernet interface. The BMC supports a TCP/IP stack and carries an IP address separate from the CPU. This is necessary to support bare metal management capabilities. The server platform has an instrumented power supply providing real time readouts of the server power consumption. The information is carried through an out-of-band (OOB) network in the baseboard.

Finally, here is the console display of Data Center Manager:

Data Center Manager supports the notion of logical groups. In the picture above the the four servers were placed in two groups, namely Group 1 with one servers and Group 2 with three servers. The graph shows the power consumption over time of server named "Win11". On the left side, the graph starts with the server idling. The workload used in this demo is SPECpower. There are four instances of Microsoft Windows* Server in each physical machine, also running Microsoft Windows* Server 2008. The graph shows an idling power of about 160 watts. SPECpower was scripted to go through a calibration period of a few minutes and then settling at about 50% CPU utilization. Power consumption is proportional to the workload. Hence we see power peaking at 247 watts for a few minutes and settling at 219 watts thereafter. For a more detailed walkthrough of the demo, please take a look at Dialing in your Datacenter - using Intel Dynamic Power Datacenter Manager.

There were quite a few challenges in integrating the various technology components. Windows Server 2008 however, was a standout; its behavior was rock solid throughout in spite of being a recently introduced product. I never experienced hangs with the Hyper-V manager and the system was always good at saying what it was doing. These positive behaviors contributed to the general sense of robustness. A system configured with four virtual machines requires about 120 GB of hard drive space and 8 GB of main memory.

I found Windows Server 2008 very easy to install. Support for the newer platform features was right out of the box. On the other hand I had to tweak the BIOS SATA controller settings into legacy mode before the installation of Windows Server for Windows Server 2003 could proceed. The administrative functions for Hyper-V such as replicating virtual machines were easy to carry out, with Hyper-V Manager taking care of fixing the MAC addresses and SIDs in the clones.

Walking the Fine Line Between Standard and Custom with Small Form Factors

pmitchell_radisys — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 21:17:08 GMT

Embedded boards are shrinking at a fast rate. Shrinking in size, that is, and growing in volume. More performance needs to be packed into a smaller space to support the portability and size of the end equipment that these boards are designed into.

Form Factor	PCB Size(mm)
Micro-ATX	171 x 171
Mini-ITX	170170
EPIC	165 x 115
Nano-ITX	120x120
Pico-ITX	100 x 72
COM Express	95 x 125
PC104-Plus	96 x 90
Mobile-ITX	75 x 45

The trend towards small also lends itself towards custom. Cost is king for handheld or portable equipment - and one way to cut cost is to cut features that are not required. There are two paths; build ground-up as a custom, or start with a standard and reduce. Ground-up custom probably will reach the lowest cost but have by far the highest development cost, paid for by the customer. Alternatively, the design can start with a standard product and for a reasonable fee, de-populate the unnecessary components and connectors to get to an optimal high volume cost point.

RadiSys designs small form factor boards with depopulation options for high volume, cost conscious opportunities. Starting with a standard is the fastest option to get products to market the fastest. Saving the depopulation option for when the product reaches high volume production, saves cost and time. Options are good.

Peter Mitchell
Sr. Product Line Manager

Información Tomelloso

tomelloso — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 20:49:01 GMT

Obtener información sobre Tomelloso no es nada facil debido al escaso contenido de calidad existente en Internet sobre esta localidad y su comarca. Para paliar esto en la medida de nuestras posibilidades se ha publicado una web para ofrecer información general sobre Tomelloso, su localización, costumbres y signos de identidad más significativos como su caraterístico uso del lenguaje con términos y giros propios de la localidad. Información general e información particular sobre asuntos como desarrollo económico o promoción de empresas. Actividades tan necesarias en estos tiempos de crisis que vivimos y que desde esta y otras webs se está llevando a cabo. Esta bitácora se integra en la red de sitios web para ofrecer información sobre Tomelloso y su comarca, red que está abierta a contribuciones de cualquier usuario de Internet, sea o no de Tomelloso.