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Green with Hyper-V

Virtualisation rollout cuts Chester Zoo’s energy bill by £11,000 a year and gives ROI in under three years.

In terms of both customers and acreage, Chester is the UK’s biggest zoo. The 450-acre site receives around 1.3 million visitors each year, and has more than 7,000 animals and 400 different species, including many endangered ones.

As the zoo’s data-storage requirements have increased over the years, so has the need for additional servers, and the server room’s air conditioning system was beginning to struggle with the levels of heat being released.

Chester Zoo IT manager Phil Morris said: “I’d started to feel that we shouldn’t increase the number of servers because of the limited air conditioning capacity – increasing storage in that way simply wasn’t sustainable.”

To control the over-heating problem the zoo decided to reduce the number of physical servers in the server room and maintain its model of one application per server. It decided to deploy virtualisation.

After rejecting what Morris claims was a “colossal” quote from VMware to virtualise Chester Zoo’s server estate, Morris looked at Microsoft’s Hyper-V system.

He said: “They gave us an affordable price, particularly as Chester Zoo’s registered charity status meant we received a good concession with our licensing fees.”

Initially Chester rolled out test environments using the Hyper-V R1, but didn’t want to perform a full migration until the R2 version shipped, because it was keen to deploy R2′s Live Migration feature, which allows virtual servers to be moved in real time.

Chester virtualised its accounts, time attendance, and personnel systems as well as two electronic point-of-sale (Epos) servers plus a number of databases.

Morris said: “We’re committed to virtualising as much physical tin into our virtualised environment as possible.”

It took between one and two hours to virtualise each server, which are all now 64-bit; the previous servers were 32-bit.

The system saves the zoo money as a result of the reduced power required. Morris said: “We’re saving almost £11,000 per year, and we’ll achieve a return on investment in under three years through these savings and not having to buy extra hardware.”

Chester Zoo’s green credentials have always been impressive – it has twice won the Queen’s Award for Enterprise (Sustainable Development) – and virtualising its servers will further reduce its carbon footprint.

However, the virtualisation project was justified on the basis of the savings the business would make.

Chester Zoo has yet to virtualise its Exchange server, but has plans to do so. “We’ll look to move to Exchange 2010 and put that on a virtual system. Currently we’re on Exchange 2003,” said Morris.

Chester Zoo now has six 64-bit systems, three of them are dual CPU, quad-core Dell 2950 servers running 3.2GHz processors with 32GB of system memory.

There are several factors that can limit application performance; they are the CPU processing power, and how much memory is available, with memory being the more costly thing, according to Morris.

“When we bought the boxes we insisted that they were configured with the biggest [memory] chips in such a way that we could purchase new chips and take memory up to the maximum allowable [64GB],” he added.
Source: computing.co.uk

McAfee Labs: Facebook, Twitter to face more hacker attacks in 2010

A U.S.-based Web security firm says it expects social networking Web sites to face increased hacker attacks in the new year, but foresees overall progress in the fight against cybercrime.

In its 2010 Threat Predictions report, issued this week, McAfee Labs said sites like Facebook and Twitter have given cybercriminals new technologies to work with and new centers of activity that can be exploited.

McAfee said users of social networking sites will become “more vulnerable to attacks that distribute rogue applications across their networks” and that cybercriminals will take advantage of users trusting their “friends” to get them to click on links they might otherwise treat cautiously.

The California-based firm says it also expects to see increased threats to banking security and a rise in e-mail attachments delivering malicious software, or malware.

McAfee says 2010 will also bring changes in the world of “botnets,” armies of infected computers used to spread malware. The firm says law enforcement has already been successful in taking down botnets and predicts many more successes in the pursuit of cybercriminals in 2010.

Plan for a Migration to Windows Server 2008 R2

This article will be the second part of 4-part series articles on deployment of Windows Server 2008 R2. This 4-part series articles will talk about the options available to move to Windows Server 2008 R2, and what planning and considerations are required for a successful migration.

With the introduction of Windows Server 2008 R2, x86 (32-bit) architecture hardware is no longer supported. Due to this change, for the major server hardware out there, a migration process would be required. A typical migration process involves the following steps:

1. clean installation of the operating system
2. installation of server role(s)
3. move data and settings from source to destination (new) server
4. point the clients to the new server

Migration steps are different based on the server role or the applications to be migrated. There is no single step to migrate all types of server roles or applications, hence there are quite a lot of factors we will need to consider, which will be covered below.

A Look Back at the 7 Top Security Acquisitions of 2009

Many IT pros watched their budgets get trimmed in 2009, but security was the one area that proved relatively resilient. That was good news for security companies, who did not sit still during the year. In the last 12 months, there were a number of acquisitions in the security space that gobbled up companies big and small. In a look back at the year soon to be in the history books, eWEEK lists the corporate acquisitions that caused the biggest ripples in the IT security industry.
Read More

Rogue Antivirus Operations Thrive in 2009

From serving malicious ads to poisoning search engine results for recently deceased actress Brittany Murphy, rogue antivirus operations have been going strong all year long.
- There was no recession in the rogue antivirus industry in 2009.
According to Microsoft, four of the top 11 threats cleaned by its Malicious Software Removal Tool between Dec. 8 and Dec. 16 were tied to rogue antivirus software. Just how much damage the scareware rings behind these types of malware.
Read More

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

Do you really need a server?

So what is server and what it can do for you?

Let’s take an example of a small office having around 10 desktops and few laptop computers. You all work on your files. Where would you save them and how do you share with a colleague? You will share a drive on your computer. Well, what if your computer is off, you are concerned with if she can delete files or may get access to some confidential files also.

Server can help you:

You can share your files on a server. Create a users and groups and allow access to only people who should have permissions, you can set read only or read-writer permissions. Not only that, you can prevent deleting your files also.

Server with RAID configuration can add another level of protection by replicating content of one hard drive to other hard drive in real time. (Means you don’t need to copy from one drive to other)

RAID can keep your server running even if one disk fails and you can replace disk. In some servers with hot-swap features you even don’t need to shutdown server to replace hard drives.

Before you buy server:

Branded or Unbranded: You have two choice, If you are looking for a mission critical applications and you really need performance and you are going to run your servers 24×7 you must opt for Branded Servers. You can choose from IBM, HP, Dell Servers.

Unbranded servers are good for small business or companies to run non-mission critical services like and budget is a problem. You can still use non-branded servers for mission critical use or running 24×7. It all depends on how your server is build, what components are used.

Rack or Tower: Rack servers can save lots of space compared to tower. If you are planning to co-locate your server in ISP data center you have no option but to buy Rack Mount servers. Rack mount servers are bit expensive compared to tower servers.

If you need only one or two servers and you do not have dedicated server room and rack. You must buy tower servers.

Hardware or Software RAID: Operating system like Windows 2003 or 2008 provides you option of having software RAID where you can do mirroring or even RAID 5. But this will effect performance. If you are looking for server for small set of users and your budget is limited, you may go for software RAID. Software RAID is created after Operating System is installed.

To setup hardware RAID you need a raid controller. Many server motherboard have onboard RAID controller with RAID 0,1 or 5. Hardware raid donot require processor resources hence you will get better performance. You may get features like Hot Swap which allows you to replace disk while server is running. You must opt for hardware RAID if you are using your server for mission critical applications like Exchange server or ERP server.

Running servers 24×7: If you are hosting mail server; website or running a mission critical business applications like SAP you may want your servers to run 24×7. You will need to plan and design your data center to run servers 24×7. It’s not only running servers at 24×7 but your entire data center would run 24×7 to maintain availability. The first thing is providing enough power backup, cooling and redundant links. You cannot ignore security. Your server should be protected behind firewall which is configured well. Only required inbound ports should be opened. You must monitor event logs, disk space, processor and memory usage.

Click here to see the range of our Dedicated Server

New Intel Atom Processors: Smaller and More Efficient

Intel unveiled a trio of new Atom processors and a new chipset today. The new Intel chips will enable hardware vendors to create smaller, cooler, more power efficient netbooks and nettops (the desktop equivalent of a netbook).
The three Atom processors include Intel’s integrated graphics functionality in the CPU, as well as the memory controller functionality, which eliminates the need for one of the two chips that make up the traditional motherboard chipset. The new Atom CPU’s are 60 percent smaller than their predecessors, and consume 20 percent less power–50 percent for the nettops processors.

The new processors, dubbed Pineview by Intel, and the NM10 Express Motherboard chipset, combine to form the Pinetrail platform. It also makes Intel the first to combine graphics processing with an x86 CPU–technically speaking. The resulting Pineview CPU and Pinetrail platform are not really comparable to what Intel has planned for the recently scrapped Larrabee Project, or to what AMD is working on for its Fusion processor.

At first glance, the power consumption ratings of the new processors seem to be higher. However, when you take into consideration that they now include additional functions previously managed by additional chips, the overall power consumption of the system is less.

Combined with new hardware like the Seagate Momentus Thin drives and Pulsar SSD drives that squeeze storage into 7mm of thickness, the new Intel processors and chipset are another step in the march to even smaller, cooler, and more energy efficient netbooks.

Drawing less power also means generating less heat. The new Atom processors and Pinetrail platform run cool enough that netbook manufacturers may be able to leave out the cooling fan. Combined with more energy efficient SSD drives, the resulting netbook hardware could run virtually silent and extend battery life at the same time.

Intel has already been shipping the new Atom processors and motherboard chipset to hardware manufacturers. Systems built on the new architecture will be available the first week of 2010 from a variety of vendors including Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Lenovo, and others.

The new Atom processors and Pinetrail platform let Intel end the year on an up note–barring any unforeseen revelations over the next week or so. Following on the heels of Intel’s various legal issues, and the FTC filing formal antitrust action, I am sure Intel execs are happy to cap off 2009 with a successful new product launch.

Top tech predictions for 2010

PCs: Intel’s Core i3 processors will become the desktop processor of choice for most PCs. Thanks to their twin cores that support HyperThreading, they are effectively quad-core chips. Many PC monitors will also make the switch to LED backlights which, as with HD TVs (below) will reduce power consumption and should increase contrast.

Cloud computing: Online apps also look like they’re going to become popular in 2010. Google Docs is a great example, as the benefits for consumers are immense: no need to invest in Microsoft Office, you can access your documents and calendar from any internet-connected device, plus collaborate in real-time with others on the same documents.

Security: Online criminals will target ‘cloud’ services and devices like television sets and PVRs. To most people cloud computing refers to applications that run in the web browser. Criminals will look at how they can abuse such services to steal money and other valuable resources from their victims. As internet-connected domestic electronics (such as the Cello iViewer TV and the latest PVRs) become more common, people will start to use them to bank online. Then the criminals will target these devices with viruses and other threats.

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