America: Maxxan cuts tape with virtual blade
Chris Mellor, Techworld.com
Maxxan Systems Inc. has added virtual tape products to its product range, hugely reducing the time it takes to do backups and to restore data.
The new SVT200 blade slots into the chassis of Maxxan's MXV320 director, and is termed an intelligent application card. The SVT100 is a standalone product that can integrate with existing SAN switches or be used on its own, for example, in remote offices.
Writing backup files to tape is slow compared to writing them to disk. A 100GB backup, for example, would take several hours to write to a tape drive - often too long for business with systems active for most of the day. By writing the data to disk first, and then onto tape at a company's leisure, the backup period is shortened dramatically, from hours to minutes. A virtual tape system means the company's existing backup software doesn't have to change.
Both Maxxan products use Falcon Stor Software Inc.'s IPStor virtual tape library software and support most backup products including those from Computer Associates
International Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP), Legato Software, Veritas Software Corp. and IBM Corp.'s Tivoli. LTO, SDLT and Storage Technology Corp. (StorageTek) 9840 tape drives are emulated. Advanced Digital Information Corp., HP, IBM Corp. and StorageTek tape libraries are supported.
America: Apple confirms Xserve G5 delay
Jonny Evans, Macworld.co.uk
Apple Computer Inc. announced its new Xserve G5 in January at Macworld Expo San Francisco - but the original ship date has been delayed, Apple has confirmed to Macworld.
The upgraded server product is the first Apple product to exploit IBM Corp.'s award-winning PowerPC 970FX processor. The latter chip offers the best performance yet of a G5, operating at higher clock speeds at a lower temperature.
Despite the technological advances implemented in the new processor, Apple did have to sacrifice one of the four hot-pluggable drive bays in order to build-in a cooling system to ensure its product doesn't overheat. (...)
The company has high hopes for Xserve. It offers 60 per cent better performance than the previous generation of G4 Xserves with "over 30 gigaflops of processing power per system" claimed by Apple.
Apple has confirmed the delay. "We're working hard to start shipping the new Xserve systems in March 2004, not by the end of February as originally announced."
While Apple has declined to offer specific details about the delay, online Mac rumor sites have suggested the delay may have been caused by cooling difficulties, but this has not yet been confirmed.
America: Belkin offers wireless keyboard, optical mouse
Peter Cohen, MacCentral.com
Peripheral maker Belkin Corp. is offering a new wireless keyboard and mouse combination that's compatible with both Macs and PCs. The US$70 combo is expected to hit store shelves by the end of the month. The keyboard and mouse attach to any computer equipped with USB and PS/2 interfaces, and is molded in metallic silver and dark grey, equipped with a foldaway wristrest. The keyboard is outfitted with programmable keys that can provide instant access to Web sites, e-mail, applications and files.
The mouse is a two-button model with a scrollwheel as well; it features a design optimized for right-handed users. The optical mouse features 800dpi tracking.
Belkin said that both the keyboard and mouse operate at a distance of up to 6 feet away from the computer. The keyboard and mouse are compatible with Mac OS 10.x or Mac OS 8.6 and higher, as well as various versions of Windows.
America: HP to ship new blade, SMB servers
Robert McMillan, IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)
Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) on Monday will announce two new ProLiant servers, including a new US$499 system designed for small to medium-sized business (SMB) customers. The SMB server will be the first of the company's new ML100 line of SMB systems. Called the ML110, it will be a single-processor "tower" shaped server with a starting list price of $499. It will ship with either a 2.6GHz Celeron processor or the 2.8GHz or 3.0GHz Pentium 4 from Intel Corp.
On Monday, HP will also announce plans to release the slimmest member of its BL line of blade servers. Called the BL30p, the new blade is designed to fit into the same chassis as HP's BL20p and BL40p blades. The BL30p is half as thick as a BL20p blade, and it uses a newly designed "sleeve" mechanism that lets two BL30p units plug into the interconnects used by one BL20p. (...) To make the BL30p smaller, it will include only one IDE (Integrated Drive Electronics) hard drive, unlike the BL20p, which has two SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) drives. Customers will be able to fit 16 of the BL30p blades into HP's standard BL p-class blade enclosure. Both the BL30p and the ML110 will support the Linux and Microsoft Corp.'s Windows operating systems. The ML110, which will be available as of Monday, will also support Novell Inc.'s NetWare OS. HP did not have pricing or specifications for the BL30p, which will begin shipping by the end of June.
Europe: Hitachi unveils 'über hard-drive'
Macworld.co.uk staff, Macworld.co.uk
Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced what it proclaims as the world's largest capacity 3.5-inch, 7,200rpm ATA hard drive, its 400GB Deskstar 7K400.
The company, a division of Hitachi Ltd., says its new drive has been custom-built for audio-visual and other uses in which high-capacity drives are vital.
Hitachi's hard drive general manager Jose Antelo said: "We are now in a position to extend our consumer electronics portfolio to include the high-end device segments, notably the market for high-capacity digital-video recorders (DVRs)."
The drive contains features purpose-built for the DVR market. One such feature - Streaming Command Set - is a new industry-standard technology for enhancing streaming functionality in digital-video applications. (...)
In a release, Hitachi quotes The Yankee Group analysis which predicts that DVRs will be found in 24.7 million homes by 2007. This adoption is boosted by the appearance of High Definition TV (HDTV) in the U.S., which is driving data storage demand. (Each hour of HDTV content requires 8.7GB of storage).
Hitachi's new drives will ship with Parallel ATA and Serial ATA (SATA) interfaces. SATA offers a maximum data transfer rate of up to 1.5GB/s. This interface technology is also hot-pluggable.
These drives carry an 8MB memory buffer and ship with a three-year warranty. The drives are currently only available in limited quantities.
Europe: Germany unveils plans for national computing grid
Peter Sayer, IDG News Service (Paris Bureau)
The German government will officially launch D-Grid, an initiative to promote a grid-based communication framework for scientific research in Germany, at the Global Grid Forum in Berlin on Wednesday.
D-Grid has been under discussion since February 2003, as part of a planned transformation of Germany's scientific research establishment to one based on "e-Science." The aim of the e-Science transformation is to use IT to enable collaborative research by virtual, or geographically-dispersed teams, according to researchers involved.
The role of D-Grid in this is to create a durable grid computing infrastructure; to develop grid computing middleware; to establish information-sharing networks for e-Science, and to establish e-Science pilot projects.
Research centers behind the D-Grid project include the Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe, the Leibniz Rechenzentrum in Munich, the Alfred Wegener Institut in Bremerhaven, and the Zuse Institute Berlin. Companies including IBM Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Cray Inc. have also been involved, according to minutes of preparatory meetings.
Initial D-Grid participants will come from six scientific fields: astrophysics and particle physics; computational science and engineering; medicine and bio-IT; climate research and earth sciences; high-performance computing; and science publishing.
Edelgard Bulmahn, Germany's federal minister for education and research, will present D-Grid and the country's e-Science plan during the opening plenary session of the Global Grid Forum at Berlin's Humboldt University on Wednesday. Bulmahn is due to speak at 2 p.m. local time, and will hold a press conference after her speech, according to her office.
More information on D-Grid can be found (in German) at
http://www.d-grid.de.
Aisa and Pacific: China's Legend develops PC security technology
Sumner Lemon, IDG News Service (Taipei Bureau)
Legend Group Ltd., China's largest PC maker, is developing technologies that could be used to make computers more secure. (...) The official China Daily newspaper reported on Saturday that Legend had been appointed by the Chinese government to draft a national standard for computer security chips that would be used on computer motherboards. The first draft of the standard is expected to be completed later this year, the report said, citing a Legend executive. (...) PC security chips is the latest in a growing number of technology areas where China's government has sought to develop national standards. The most prominent - and controversial - of these efforts has been the creation of a national standard for wireless LANs (WLANs) that relies on a Chinese-developed security protocol called WLAN Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI).
Vendors are required to have all WLAN equipment products sold in China comply with this standard by June 1. In addition, foreign companies are required to license the technology from one of 24 Chinese companies that have been granted rights to the technology by China's government. Various industry groups and senior U.S. government officials have criticized the move and have called on the Chinese government to work out a compromise over the issue
Aisa and Pacific: OS-free laptop draws interest
Matthew Cooney, Computerworld New Zealand Online
Dick Smith Electronics (NZ) Ltd.'s test marketing of a laptop sold without an operating system generated enough interest that the company has started placing the computers in its bigger stores. Electronics buyer Chris Day won't give sales figures but says interest "exceeded our expectations". The laptop, featuring a low-heat Transmeta Crusoe processor, 256M bytes of RAM, DVD-ROM/CD-RW, 30G-byte hard drive and a 14.1-inch screen was offered to customers of Dick Smith's Web site for NZ$1,499 (US$1,010) including goods and services tax.
He hopes next week to decide whether to brand the computers with the Dick Smith name, and also whether to offer a branded desktop computer without an operating system. A forthcoming computer in the Samurai range will also be sold without an OS, he says.
Almost all retail computers sold today are bundled with a copy of Windows, but the buyers of the OS-free laptops are expected to either install Linux themselves or to transfer a copy of Windows from an older computer. Day says the company sells both Linux and Windows and is trying to provide its customers with a choice of software and hardware.
Dick Smith will be recommending the Mandrake distribution for customers who aren't familiar with Linux, says Day. The company will offer a four-disk CD set, including three Mandrake 9.2 install disks and a "live boot" CD, for about NZ$8. A collection of office productivity programs will sell for NZ$5, he says.
At that price, support will be limited to a basic installation - the same support the company offers Windows users.
Aisa and Pacific: Linux, Windows run equal on hosting costs
Rodney Gedda, Computerworld Today (Australia)
There's little TCO (total cost of ownership) difference between Linux and Windows, according to a hosting giant but its customers' preferences fall in favor of Windows.
OzHosting.com Pty. Ltd. said the open source operating system results in "insignificant" cost reductions in a hosting environment and most of its customers prefer to host their sites on Windows.
OzHosting.com's CIO Adam Keher said the acquisition cost of Linux is actually higher than that of Windows. "Linux is more expensive at A$45 (US$34) per server per month for Red Hat compared with A$12 to A$30 per month for Windows under the service provider license agreement," Keher said.
"Here, Windows has a lower TCO and delivers the same level of availability and Red Hat only has the option of a 12-month payment cycle. We choose Red Hat Linux because of the support it offers and how it is certified by hardware vendors."
OzHosting.com now claims second spot among Australia's hosting companies with upwards of 30,000 domains, of which about 80 percent are on Windows and 20 percent are on Linux.
"The default operating system in our sales process is Windows but customers can get Linux if they request it", Keher said.