DataCenter

Apr 6 2009   1:46AM GMT

IBM takes back SUN offer - BAD IDEA SUN!

Posted by: David Vasta
IBM, SUN

I think everyone at SUN is happy for now. I am not sure how good this is for them long term. I don’t think SUN has what it takes to keep selling nothing. I don’t know what SUN has to offer the IT world. Solaris is free, OpenSolaris is even more FREE and the hardware they are putting out is lack luster and not even as good as anything DELL or HP has. Sadly I think SUN should have taken the offer and called it  day. Next thing they will be asking the government for a hand out.

LINK :: Linux Journal - IBM Lets Sun Set

Mar 27 2009   12:33AM GMT

Where is the SUN buyout?

Posted by: David Vasta
IBM, SUN

I really thought SUN was going to get purchased by IBM and then come to find out IBM may be laying off 5000 employees? Come on IBM, you know you didn’t have to do that? Seems like the past 20 years of IT have been very up and down. I wish it would level out for just a bit.

Mar 18 2009   7:37PM GMT

Is IBM about to buy SUN for $7 billion?

Posted by: David Vasta
IBM, SUN, Buy Out, Solaris

LINK :: NYT - IBM said to be in talks to buy Sun for $7 Billion

I think this is long over due. Sun has been twisting in the wind for way to long with way to many decent products (Solaris, StarOffice, SSO, EIM, Java, OpenSolaris,MySQL), that they like IBM can’t figure out how to sell any of it.

IBM has, in recent years, done a better job than SUN but not by much. Part of the problem SUN has is Jonathan Schwart. He is has said nothing innovative in the past 7 years to spur on anything but declining sales and even less innovation from SUNs staff.

SUN also has a bad habit of brain washing executives and releasing them into the wild so that they can convert IT, all the while these brain washed zombies who think SUN is going to save the world end up destroying companies, ruining IT departments and in the end are nothing more then SUNs evil puppets. Sadly all to often they end up in decent hard working IBM shops trying to find chinks in the armor and can’t so they just start ripping the walls down like gorrilas who is unhappy with the decorations in thier painted white cages. They should have stayed at SUN where they belonged, in the fold, on the mother ship.

OK, to be fair, IBM has zealots too, and I know that, but you don’t rip and replace when something has been working well for over a decade. I have been in more than one place where some past executive from one of the big three has shown up and decided his former company could come in and do it all for less. Well if that was the case then why didn’t we do that 10 years ago smarty pants, oh I know because SUN has been on the edge of DEAD now for so long no one trust the investment.

You don’t buy a car you want a warranty on from a car company that is going out of business, why the heck to you think GM is not selling cars right now? No one will know if they are going to be there in 6 months.

You can have the best widget in the world with the best colors, but if you are not going to be around to support it in 6 months or a year then no one will want it, except the stupid, and that is what you end up with when you hire a former IT Exec from SUN or Microsoft who wants to rip and replace everything  for no decent reason. You also have to question everyone sanity who hired he or she.

SUN is the expensive IT choice, nothing they make is cheap or even FREE unless you pick thier OPEN lines. Even those can be supported for a cost. A big cost but a cost none the less.

SUN has failed to do anything with SPARC and also has failed to really break open the server market with it’s pathetic little pizza box servers that are so sad looking when you open them up that you wonder which laptop company sold them the bits to barley fill the case?

Apple and Sun would have made the most sense, but Apple has a problem thinking about big IT, and IBM seems to have a pretty good hold on big IT, while strugguling with small IT.

So I did use this post to rant a bit about the demise, thank goodness, of SUN and the rise of IBM. I think if IBM were smart they would take everything SUN has in house, close up shop on SUN. Retain the decent people. I do know a few, and take that technology I mentioned before, port it to POWER and offer it up. IBM at that point in time will have a killer offering. Please don’t kill the OPEN projects, we need them for the sake of innovation. IBMs next move, NOVELL!

Well in the long term if IBM does take in SUN I hope to have OpenOffice in every Lotus product soon, and move to what I consider a better office suit than the “other guy”

Good Luck IBM.

Nov 15 2008   4:54AM GMT

This can’t be good - SUN to lay off 6000 employees

Posted by: David Vasta
SUN, Just Blogging, Bad Economy

It’s not going to be easy to get throught this hard economic time. Sadly SUN was not in a position I think to survive it anyway. They have been on the bubble for years. I wish all the empoyees who got thier walking papers good luck, there are jobs out there you just have to be creative.

LINK :: Sun to lay off 6000 Workers

Nov 5 2008   8:40PM GMT

Running a Users Group - Jim Grisanzio

Posted by: David Vasta
SUN, User Groups, Offtopic, Just Blogging, Other Blogs, Japan

Jim writes an blog post that I found is not just for OpenSolaris User Groups, but could be used for all User Groups. Thanks Jim for the great post and sharing you thoughts on the matter.

LINK :: Jim Grisanzio -  Running Successful OpenSolaris User Groups

I tried at one time to get the Colorado Lotus Users Group back up and running and kind of hit a brick wall after the first year. In Charlotte by accident I kind of started a group of users we call, Lunch Time Geeks or LTG, and we just meet for lunch. No agenda, no meeting, just hanging out and eating. Maybe I can grow it from there? Maybe not?

Sep 30 2008   2:48AM GMT

System i Network - Server consolidation article - Recommended reading

Posted by: David Vasta
Microsoft Windows, DataCenter, Linux in System i, David on System i, IBM News, i on Power, i, i for business, IBM i, New Technology

I try to stay up to speed on all things IBM i, even if they confuse me from time to time. Server consolidation has never confused me and it should be on your list of things to do, or at least think about in the next 12 months. IBM is pushing it hard and it just makes sense. I am going to link you to a really well done article over at System i Network and hope you enjoy it.

LINK:: System i Network ::  Server Consolidation: It’s Not Just for Data Centers Anymore

Aug 1 2008   4:18AM GMT

OpenSolaris keeps making baby step and Jim Grisanzio is documenting every one

Posted by: David Vasta
SUN, Open source, OpenSolaris

I am a fan of Open Projects and OpenSolaris all be a SUN product is still something to watch, and I do ofter from Jim Grisanzio’s Blog. I read Jim’s blog for two reasons, one he is interesting and is honest about the progress of the project and two he lives in Japan and I think I am living vicariously through him living there.

Hats off to Jim and make sure you stop by and read what he is up to.

“OpenSolaris keeps making baby step and Jim Grisanzio is documenting every one”

Jun 22 2008   2:48AM GMT

New Site is coming

Posted by: David Vasta
Linux, Lotus, SUN, FreeBSD, Apple, System i, Ubuntu Linux, Linux in System i, Domino on System i, David on System i, Lotus News, i on Power, AIX on Power, Linux on POWER, POWER Systems, i, i for business, OpenSolaris, IBM i

I am working on a new site, so between work, this site, writting for Search400 (which I hope they change the name of soon) and family, I have also found little time to start building a new site that will in the end be a hub for all things POWER based. I have to bring the community together under one web site.

So with that said, I am going to need people to provide content for the site. I need really dedicated insane people to help build the community from all parts of this equation. IBM i, AIX, Linux on Power, and POWER hardware. We need to come together in a big way and share. I am also going to cover Lotus, Ubuntu, OpenSolaris, OpenSuSE, FreeBSD and other things that interest me that I think are changing the way IT does IT.

Please send me an email and I will get you in on the fun, and if you know Joomla that would be great too…I am no expert on that CMS kit.

May 23 2008   12:37AM GMT

Feeding IT - you should never let it starve

Posted by: David Vasta
DataCenter, Offtopic

Feeding IT 

I was talking to someone just the other day who works for a large company with a nice set of offerings for sale and a hearty market, short for they have money to spend, but the “C” level people in the company still see IT as a bottomless pit of money. Something they could soon live without and this is not a new conversation. I have heard this many times that if the money hungry IT was removed from the company we could be more profitable. This is like saying if I could get the heavy engine out of my nice shinny Porsche 911  then this car would be much faster without all that dead weight in the rear of it. A-hem, I apologize for interrupting your conversation about the “dead weight” and the “Porsche” but that heavy thing in the back is the heart and soul of the car, the engine kind sir, you might wan to keep it around unless you needed a garden planter? Most companies today still see IT as the dead weight in the back of a car and would rather ignore it and starve it only to find out later it needs a little maintenance and money to fix it up from time to time. Without IT companies fail to operate. That’s right I said it if you pull the plug on the server and fire the IT staff your fine company with all it’s nice things to sell will grind to a halt.

May 23 2008   12:36AM GMT

Planning for the perfect data center - It’s not possible

Posted by: David Vasta
DataCenter, Offtopic

The Data Center

I have been in big IT for over 18 years. I have seen data centers grow from back rooms and basements to multi-million dollar facilities with fences, security, and other features. With all this planning there is still something that can go wrong and lately I have been thinking about what the perfect data center would look like. What would perfection cost and is it obtainable? Certainly not most would add and like anything in life it’s impossible to predict everything that could cause you pain in a well planned out data center. I say a hosting company today that is selling server hosting and web hosting and the office is located in down town San Francisco. I am not making this up. They have a nice 5 story building in the heart of downtown and while I am sure they have done everything to keep it from rumbling to the ground I would not have placed a high up time, mission critical data center in the heart of Earth Quake country. It’s not a selling point to me when I am looking for server co-location.

Where is the perfect place to put a data center? That is of course the question that most CIOs are looking at today and no one had the “perfect” answer.

An abandoned oil rig off the cost of the UK? No I would guess not, hard to commute to work daily.

Just outside a large city? Well maybe but which large city and how far out?

If you look at the earth you have to pick a place that is close to your customers or close to large amounts of cheap bandwidth so that you can be close via a ping rather the proximity. That is not an easy bill to fill right now as most place with load of pipe are also close to major cities and no one wants to be in down town anywhere the next time something bad like 9/11 happens.  You don’t want it down South near the Gulf of Mexico or Florida since there are hurricanes. You don’t want it in California, Oregon or Washington there are earthquakes. You don’t want it in the North East the salaries are to high and everything is so close together that your risk of anything happening goes way up. The south west? Nope the cooling cost are much higher and if the power goes out you need tons of on site electricity and that gets very expensive. What about the Mid-West? Tornadoes and hard to attract good technical talent. So where is the perfect place to put a data center?

Even if you did find a good place for a data center how would you build the building? I might place it underground so that it would be safer, but then you have to think about flooding in the case of heavy rain, so the list goes on and on and in the end you are stuck with a truck full of servers, switches and racks that can’t be located anywhere. Then you think maybe that is the answer, we put it all in an 18 wheeler and drive it to the safest place in the country at the time and never stop rolling…while it sounds like fun it would be a logistical nightmare.

There is no perfect data center and if there was everyone would want to be in it and no on would place on in the heart of down town San Francisco ever, not even on a bad day and think that was a good idea.