Servers & Data Center

What's big and yellow and Google all over?

New project manager takes over administration of the server room where this pilot fish hosts an internal application, so fish figures it's a good time to ask for a few updates.

Virtual machine software and new hardware may be the breakthrough thin client advocates have been waiting for.

It's IT Blogwatch: in which folks worry about lock-in at Google's new App Engine. Not to mention a slightly pointless game...

Andy Baio claims an "exclusive":

One of the biggest criticisms of Google's App Engine have been cries of lock-in, that the applications developed for the platform won't be portable to any other service. This morning, Chris Anderson, the Portland-based cofounder of the Grabb.it MP3 blog service, just released AppDrop — an elegant hack proving that's not true. AppDrop is a container for applications developed with the Google App Engine SDK, running entirely on Amazon's EC2 infrastructure. Just like Google's Appspot, anyone can use a modified SDK to deploy their App Engine apps directly to Amazon EC2 instead of Google, and they work without modification ...

More broadband is not the answer to better performance of "cloud computing."

You will never go wrong if you take official forecasts and plan and prepare as if the event is at least one category higher than predicted.

Monitor your virtual machine environment while keeping VM sprawl in check.

It's IT Blogwatch: in which Google launches App Engine, predicting sleepless nights for Amazon and Microsoft. Not to mention bad gamer tattoos...

In Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire, Heather Havenstein hardly happens:

Google Inc. launched a preview release of its new Google App Engine yesterday, ...

Green IT initiatives are taking over, but it isn't about altruism. It's about cold, hard business decisions to be more cost efficient by being more energy efficient.

IBM just gave a new lease on life to the system formerly known as the AS/400.

Rabbits, white rabb-it's IT Blogwatch: in which the world goes to heck in a handbasket. Not to mention Portal in Flash...

Sir Richard Branson is over the moon:

I'm delighted today to announce Virgle, Inc., a joint venture between the Virgin Group and Google ... [its] goal is simple: the establishment of a permanent human settlement on Mars. Larry Page, Sergey Brin and I feel strongly that contemporary technology is sufficiently advanced to make such an effort both successful and economical, and that it's high time that humanity moved beyond Earth and began our great, long journey to explore the stars and establish our first lasting foothold on another world ...

Have you survived an IT disaster? Slogged through a water-soaked headquarters or hurricane-ravaged data center?

It's time for the monthly servicing of this server room's air conditioning, and when the sysadmin pilot fish lets the AC guys in, he notices that none of them have ever visited this office before.

One SaaS provider can manage and bill your customers for as little as 10 cents per invoice.

Mainframe hardware pilot fish works in a big data center that's about to get a major upgrade of all its mainframe equipment -- once a few things get nailed down.