Pimp My Datacenter

snydeq writes “InfoWorld has put together an in-depth, hands-on feature detailing the complete pimp-out makeover of Hawaii Institute of Geophysics’ 1950s-era server room into a bona-fide 21st century datacenter equipped with ’some of the glitziest and most functional gear known to datacenter-building man.’ The project — completed neither on time nor on budget — resulted in improved rack and cable management, more efficient cooling, higher security, and a wealth of remote management functionality to keep University of Hawaii IT staff from having to leave the beach to service glitches. Editorial coverage includes essential tips for completing a datacenter overhaul, video interviews, and deep-dive coverage of the technologies implemented, including state-of-the-art datacenter-planning software, power and cooling equipment, out-of-band management systems, physical security solutions, remote rebooting capabilities, and more.”

Anatomy of a Runaway Project

JCWDenton recommends a piece by Bruce Webster revealing some insights into a failed multi-million-dollar IT project. “The following document is the actual text — carefully redacted — of a memo I wrote some time back after performing an IT project review; names and identifying concepts have been changed to preserve confidentiality (and protect the guilty). The project in question was a major IT re-engineering effort for a mission-critical system; at the time I did this review, the project had been going on for several years and had cost millions of dollars; it would eventually be canceled and the work products abandoned. The memo itself provides an interesting glimpse into just how a major IT project can go so far off the tracks that nothing useful is ever delivered.”

R2-D2 Monitors Your Web Servers

1sockchuck writes “What happens when you hire Star Wars enthusiasts as the system admins for your data center? You end up with the R2-D2 server monitoring system. The staff at Japan’s Syun (only if you read Japanese) have converted an R2-D2 DVD projector into a Nagios-based server monitoring system that alerts them whenever a server goes offline.” Say what you will, but that’s a lot harder to ignore than a beeper.

Visualizing Open Source Contributions

An anonymous reader writes “A student at UC Davis has created some stunning visualizations of open source software contributions, including Eclipse, Python, Apache httpd and Postgres. From the website: ‘This visualization, called code_swarm, shows the history of commits in a software project. A commit happens when a developer makes changes to the code or documents and transfers them into the central project repository. Both developers and files are represented as moving elements. When a developer commits a file, it lights up and flies towards that developer. Files are colored according to their purpose, such as whether they are source code or a document. If files or developers have not been active for a while, they will fade away. A histogram at the bottom keeps a reminder of what has come before.’”

Building the Green Data Center

blackbearnh writes “O’Reilly News talked to Bill Coleman, former founder of BEA and current founder and CEO of Cassett Corporation, about the challenges involved in building more energy-efficient data centers. Coleman’s company is trying to change the way resources in the data center are used, by more efficiently leveraging virtualization to utilize servers to a higher degree. In the interview, Coleman touches on this topic, but spends most of his time discussing how modern data centers grossly overcool and overdeploy hardware, leading to abysmal levels of efficiency.”

‘Modern’ Computers Turn 60 Years Old

Christian Smith writes “Stored program computers are 60 years old on Saturday. The Small Scale Experimental Machine, or ‘Baby,’ first ran on the 21st of June. 1948, in Manchester. While not the first computer, nor even programmable computer, it was the first that stored its program in its own memory. Luckily, transistors shrank the one tonne required for this computing power to something more manageable.”

Doubts Over Intel’s WiMAX Service Pricing Claim

Ian Lamont writes “An Intel executive has suggested in a blog post that WiMAX could lead to massive savings on broadband Internet, mobile voice, and mobile data service prices. His post lists a WiMAX-based package of services including home broadband, mobile voice and broadband, home phone service (including international) and even video phone service for $50 to $100 total. It sounds great, but unfortunately for Intel and consumers, it’s unlikely to happen any time soon, thanks to factors ranging from costly WiMAX buildouts to the telcos’ lucrative business models based on existing wired and 2.5G/3G infrastructures. There are also questions about WiMAX’s actual range following a messy Australian rollout, although the vendor there claims the Australian service provider under-provisioned the network.”

Light-Emitting Particles Yield Faster Computing

schliz writes to tell us that researchers at the University of California San Diego are developing new transistors based on particles called ‘excitons’ in an attempt to speed up the interaction between computing and communications signals. “Excitons are formed by linking a negatively-charged electron with a positively-charged ‘hole’. An exciton decays when the electron and hole combine, emitting a flash of light in the process. By joining exciton-based transistors to form several types of switches, the UCSD physicists were able to achieve switching times on the order of 200 picoseconds.”

Via Debuts Mini-ITX 2.0

DeviceGuru writes “Via Technologies has launched the second generation of its signature mini-motherboard standard. Mini-ITX 2.0, an evolutionary update to the seven-year-old 170×170mm form-factor, introduces new and emerging buses and interfaces such as PCI Express, SATA, Gig-E, and HD A/V, while preserving backwards-compatibility with the original standard. Mini-ITX has been a popular form-factor for a range of space-constrained hobbyist and commercial applications.”

Nokia’s Cellphone Anthropologist

holy_calamity writes “New Scientist have an interview with a Nokia researcher who uses anthropological methods to study how people use their phones. His work currently focuses on watching how people in emerging markets like Africa use their devices to inform designs. For example, after finding that in Uganda many people use one handset, they shipped a version with multiple separate address books. There’s also a slideshow of Chipchase’s research images.”