VMware announced it’s newest product dubbed vSphere 4. What does vSphere do you ask well, it allows a small business to tap seamlessly into much more processing power via commercial cloud computing service such as Amazon’s EC2. Or it allows large business with multiple data centers to consolidate resources together seamlessly. vSphere is a collection of some of VMware previous tools such as ESX and HA and some new ones like vStorage VMFS a clustered file system and vNetwork Distributed Switch for virutalized networks. These and other products make up the vSphere suite and available in different versions with more or less features depending on the business’ needs.

Sources:

eWeek

VMware vSphere

InfoWorld has an interesting article about a new upcoming trend in datacenters; using DC power instead of AC. The whole idea behind this being is that as much as 50% of the energy consumed in datacenters is wasted in the AC to DC conversion. The typical path of electricity is AC from power company to racks, then converted to DC then back to AC by a UPS, then in the server power supply converted back to DC for the internal electronics. Each conversion loses a little energy but multiply that by the amount of servers and the loss starts to add up.

The solution is to forget AC all together and run DC directly to the servers. HP, IBM, and Sun are all starting to make their servers with optional DC power supplies and trying to get a standard wiring, voltage, and connector ratified. This move will help companies with limited space expand their datacenter. This is because the energy lost in the conversion from AC to DC and back is released as heat, so the fewer conversion the less cooling needed the more servers you can pack into a datacenter.

AMD’s new 45nm processor the Phenom II looks to be set to take the on Intel again. While being demoed for the press they were able to overclock the quad-core processor to 5Ghz using dry ice. It had been leaked earlier that 4Ghz was possible using on air but no reports have officially come out on that. It was also reported that the chip hit 6Ghz using liquid nitrogen, which I don’t know about you but I don’t have an abundance of.

Source: PC Perspective

The Linux Foundation has calculated the total cost of developing a Linux Distro. They used Fedora 9 as their basis. The total cost estimated to be 10.8 billion dollars. With 1.4 of that developing the kernel alone. They came to this figure through calculating based on the number of lines of code and the average salary of a software developer. It has estimated that to develop from scratch it would take 24 years. There are more interesting stats in the Whitepaper.

A little while back I wrote about NetSol nefarious domain front-running. Well they’re at it again. NetSol will put up parking page with their own adverts on your sub-domains that aren’t being used. Now it seems that unless you read the 59,000 word long EULA you wouldn’t even know about it and the fact that you can opt out.

This is an excerpt from their EULA:

You also agree that any domain name directory, sub-directory, file name or path (e.g.) that does not resolve to an active web page on your Web site being hosted by Network Solutions, may be used by Network Solutions to place a “parking” page, “under construction” page, or other temporary page that may include promotions and advertisements for, and links to, Network Solutions’ Web site, Network Solutions product and service offerings, third-party Web sites, third-party product and service offerings, and/or Internet search engines. You agree that Network Solutions may change the content and/or appearance of, or disable any of these temporary pages at any time, in its sole discretion, and without prior notice.

Edit: I came across this personally when looking at my position in the Google ranks. This site comes up before me and has an under construction page. You wouldn’t really know it was under construction except for a tiny little text box in the top right corner.

Source: The Register