Hints of a New Market for Cheap, Power-Sipping Servers – Digits – WSJ Blogs

Super Micro, which is based in Milpitas, Calif., thinks its Atom-based systems will mainly be used by companies that want to package just a little bit of computing power with software for specialized applications. Don Clegg, Super Micro’s vice president of marketing and business development, cites such examples as creating a data-storage or networking device, a kiosk for a store or a video-surveillance system. “It’s more of an appliance,” he says.

Will Energy Accelerate the Computer Refresh Cycle? – Greentech Media

Rising energy cost is generally considered the primary driver of the trend. Any way you look at it, data centers aren’t very efficient. Close to half of the power in an average data center goes toward fans and air conditioner. That air conditioning, however, exists to eliminate waste heat, which is really power that was purchased but not consumed in an optimal or functional way by a computer. Data centers also need to convert power from AC to DC. Cooler, more energy efficient servers thus can have a ripple effect on total energy consumption.

Power-hungry gadgets must learn to diet – New Scientist

COME 2030, electronic gadgets will gobble three times as much electricity as they do today, requiring 280 gigawatts of new generating capacity, unless we do something about it.

More On-Server SSDs: Is This the End of Storage Networking? – ITBusinessEdge

IBM made its first major move toward local SSD storage with a new set of drives for both the Power and System x servers. The Power6 line will see 69 GB 2.5- and 3.5-inch SSDs using the SAS interface, while new System x systems will have a number of optional 50 GB SATA drives available. While the capacities are relatively light, the company says that the SSDs can improve transaction performance on databases like the DB2 by as much as 800 percent, while cutting energy consumption some 80 percent.

Vizioncore updates virtual backup & recovery tool – TechWorld

Key features of the new version include more flexible backup and restore options, including instant file level restore, backup and restore to and from SFTP and CIFS repositories, direct to target backups, as well as PowerShell access and full integration with VMware vCenter and vMotion.