Test Center Daily | InfoWorld Staff

Lab test: Infortrend EonStor B12S Iometer results

Doug Dineley — 2008-05-01T13:00:00-08:00

Enterprise storage is typically fast, reliable, large, and heavy, and consumes a good amount of energy. Infortrend's EonStor (see Mario Apicella's review) is fast, reliable, thin (1U), and a scant 45 pounds with 12 disks. All because it uses 2.5-inch, Small Form Factor SAS drives instead of the usual 3.5-inch disks. Better yet, Mario's tests show the EonStor draws significantly less energy than like-configured arrays based on 3.5-inch drives -- about 40% less. The key thing, of course, is that it doesn't sacrifice performance or reliability features. Spinning at 15,000 rpm, the little SAS drives hold up their end, and... READ MORE

One Fewer Excuse for Deploying Policy (aka NAC)

Stephen Hultquist — 2008-04-25T09:13:21-08:00

While most network staff give a nod to the general idea of policy-based networking, there have been a number of hurdles to its adoption, not the least of which is a need to understand the current state of the endpoints on the network. Without knowing what is happening with the endpoints, it's virtually impossible to know the implications of implementing policies. Answers to questions like, "How many non-compliant systems do we have?" "What kinds of non-Windows endpoints do we have?" and "What kinds of non-compliance issues are the most prevalent?" are exceedingly difficult to gather manually. Enter Great Bay Software's... READ MORE

Red Hat backs AMD virtualization

Paul Krill — 2008-04-22T06:35:47-08:00

Red Hat is announcing Tuesday its support for virtualization capabilities offered by AMD processors in new HP servers. The company's Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.1 platform supports AMD's Rapid Virtualization Indexing technology, for more efficient use of memory management on Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. HP now is offering systems equipped with these processors in its HP ProLiant DL585 G5 servers, Red Hat said. Rapid Virtualization Indexing improves the efficiency of virtual guest operating systems' memory management, Red Hat said. Red Hat also is offering para-virtualized device drivers to make IO workloads in virtual guests perform close to the bare-metal performance... READ MORE

Fujitsu double encryption on mobile drives

Mario Apicella — 2008-04-21T08:26:23-08:00

Fujitsu, (I mean Fujitsu Computer Products of America, Inc) is announcing today the MHZ2 CJ series, a new line of 2.5 drives with FDE (full disk encryption) capabilities, joining rivals Hitachi GST (Global Storage Technologies) and Seagate who have been shipping similar hardware based encryption on some of their models. The additional twist that Fujitsu puts on their MHZ2 CJ drives is 256 bit AES encryption, which should ensure an even stronger protection than what rival solutions provide, Fujitsu suggests. During a briefing, David James, vice president of advanced product engineering for Fujitsu suggested that without the right key it's... READ MORE

Trixbox 2.0 spins up some new trix

Paul Venezia — 2008-04-17T13:44:11-08:00

I've been working with Fonality's Trixbox for a little while now. I've run Asterisk via the old Asterisk@Home code (later, Trixbox CE) for years, so taking a close look at the Pro version has certainly been interesting. Fonality just released Trixbox Pro 2.0 this week, and my test system has been upgraded to this rev, which gives me the chance to take some of their new features for a spin. Trixbox Pro is a centrally-managed, Asterisk-based PBX in a box. It's managed through Fonality's Web portal, not locally on the server, and offers an extensive GUI to control and... READ MORE

Why a change to an AutoCAD file format is throwing some WAN accelerators for a loop

Keith Schultz — 2008-04-16T10:58:42-08:00

An innocent change to an AutoCAD file format has cut sharply into the ability of some WAN acceleration solutions to speed the transfer of these files, and caused grumblings in some widely distributed AutoCAD shops over slowed WAN performance. The problem affects users of AutoCAD 2007 and 2008 (specifically those who open and save the design program’s files over a WAN) and stems from a change to the DWG file format for AutoCAD 2007. Ironically, Autodesk’s changes to the DWG file format were designed to improve performance and reduce file size, among other things. But the new format, when... READ MORE

Connecting Vista to MySQL

Mario Apicella — 2008-04-16T08:29:38-08:00

Geometry quiz: Can we draw a straight that joins together Vista, virtual disks, a new version of Ajax development tools and MySQL? Well, geometry has nothing to do with that but I would bet dollars against pennies that a similar line can be easily drawn in your data center. Virtual to the core Depending on who you are talking to, and sometimes you may get different answers at different times, Windows Vista is described as either an embarrassing fiasco or the best OS you can ever load on a desktop or laptop. My personal opinion? Glad you asked. I am... READ MORE

Cross-generational Windows/Office preformance: About OfficeBench

Randall Kennedy — 2008-04-14T03:00:00-08:00

I created the OfficeBench test script back in 1999/2000 while my company, Competitive Systems Analysis (CSA), was under contract to Intel's Desktop Architecture Labs (DAL). CSA was responsible for a great deal of internal benchmarking and white paper development surrounding the Pentium III and Pentium 4 CPU launches. OfficeBench was designed from the beginning to be a "run anywhere" benchmark. By "run anywhere" I mean that the script will execute reliably under almost any Windows runtime environment. At the time it was being developed, this meant Windows 2000 and Terminal Server. As Windows evolved, so did OfficeBench. Today it supports... READ MORE

Preview: Sun's two-way eight-way

Paul Venezia — 2008-04-09T12:00:00-08:00

Sun's newest UltraSPARC CPU goes multi-socket in the SPARC Enterprise T5240 server Ever since Sun introduced the eight-core Niagara CPU a few years ago, the company has been the nominal leader in cores per socket. With the introduction of the Niagara 2 (known as the T2), Sun upped the ante, addressing some of the flaws in the Niagara 1, and pushing even more smarts onto the CPU die. Now, with the introduction of the T5240, they're doubling it up. [ Read Paul Venezia's review of the eight-core, single-CPU Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120. ] Sun introduced the T5240 today, showcasing the... READ MORE

Take your pick!

Mario Apicella — 2008-04-09T08:05:18-08:00

Be it Symantec future plans, simplifying the installation of OSS, sharing the pain of nasty updates or piercing one of the latest Microsoft apps stack , whatever your pleasure or your inclination you should find worthwhile reading today's Test Center Daily selection. Enjoy your visit and please come back . Turning the page on Veritas Not a moment too soon, after only two years of saber-rattling Microsoft and Symantec decided it was not worth fighting over an even older dispute. I am tempted to ask what caused this sudden change of heart after so much tough talking and after making... READ MORE

A service-oriented Test Center Tracker

Curt Franklin — 2008-04-08T13:25:00-08:00

It's Tuesday in the Test Center, and there's a wealth of blogging on services of one sort or another. There are services from large to small, internal to external -- it's just a service-oriented world out there. Google leads Salesforce in SaaS: Ephriam Schwartz looks at the SaaS battle between Google and Salesforce.com and sees the advantage in nearly every category going to Google. Google, he says, has the technology, the cash, and (most important) the strategic vision to be the same sort of giant in services that they've been in search. Is this good news? It depends, as so... READ MORE

Test Center Tracker: Packeteer sizzles at CIFS; RIA development heats up

Doug Dineley — 2008-04-07T09:14:43-08:00

WAN speed record: For several years running, our testing of WAN acceleration appliances has served mainly to chronicle the superiority of the Riverbed Steelhead, whose approach to byte- or segment-level caching and CIFS optimization has made it the perennial performance leader and our annual Technology of the Year Award winner. Only Silver Peak Systems, which inched closer year by year, could give Riverbed a run for its money. Last week we discovered that speedy wide area networking, or at least the branch of WAN acceleration concerned with file transfers, is a three horse race. Packeteer's iShaper may not be a... READ MORE

Managing Switches for Policy-Based Networking

Stephen Hultquist — 2008-04-02T12:29:06-08:00

My recent blog post about Lockdown Networks demise seems to have struck a chord. I've heard from a few enterprise users and product vendors as a result, and NetClarity recently disclosed their patented approach for connecting to switches in existing infrastructures. The point is this: it's not about access control. It's about actually designing an infrastructure that complies with policies that help you protect your infrastructure and key assets to the extent possible. This takes work. It takes thinking about your network infrastructure, considering possible design changes to enable enforcement, creating the policies that reflect your requirements, and then deploying... READ MORE

Preview: Globalpex's content certification uniquely verifies physical content in the envelope

Mike Heck — 2008-04-02T10:00:00-08:00

SaaS offering also certifies and retains e-mail and instant message conversations It’s easy to assume that technology ensures the integrity of our electronic communications. And in most cases that’s true. For example, products such as ReadNotify and RPost offer certified e-mail delivery notification and read receipts. Similarly, IBM Lotus Sametime and Jabber have excellent instant messenger (IM) security. But there’s a big gap when you need to certify paper documents. After all, the U.S. Postal Service and other expedited shippers only confirm that an envelope has been sent and delivered. Because Globalpex content certification services prove what’s in the envelope... READ MORE

Standards? What Standards?

Stephen Hultquist — 2008-03-27T21:07:22-08:00

In a comment to my recent blog entry regarding Lockdown Networks' departure from the marketplace, "Brian" takes issue with my comments about standards always win in the end. While it's clear that you need to take the time to consider which standards to support (whether de facto or de jure), it is equally clear that over any reasonable stretch of time, communications systems will consolidate around standards. Using Brian's example, even though ISDN never caught on in residential lines in the US, it became ubiquitous in many countries around the world, and still delivers last mile PRIs in many locales... READ MORE