March 2008
Features
- Tech Talk 01 Get ready for a new release of GroupWise. Wanna busy search a client's calendar? Go for it. Want more panels on your home view? Track a couple of Web sites in your home view too. Take your pick of these and many more new features in the next release of GroupWise.
- Tech Talk 02 Upgrading from NetWare to the next generation of technology doesn't have to be painful—or costly. Take advantage of all the benefits Open Enterprise Server 2 offers for less and without the pain of retraining your staff. See how this migration path stacks up against moving to the big unknown—Windows Server 2008.
- Tech Talk 03 Try it just once and it'll be the last time you'll want to call support. It's faster, cheaper and unlimited. See how this new support option is going to change the way you want support from Novell.
- Tech Talk 04 Does your enterprise have legacy systems that won't talk to other computers? The hotel industry had that problem-until Novell stepped in. Now, using code that Novell open sourced, the hotel industry can use identity management solutions-on their legacy systems! See how you can teach your old systems to talk.
- Tech Talk 05 The word spin can have a negative connotation—unless it's PlateSpin. Read how Novell's acquisition of Toronto-based PlateSpin is going to give your data center several positive benefits. If you want your data center tasks to manage themselves, welcome to the new Novell technology from PlateSpin.
- Tech Talk 06 For beginners, databases can be frightening. But with a little help in building effective forms, you'll be on your way to populating a database that can almost take care of itself. See how here in our OpenOffice.org series cover the database application included in the free office suite.
- Tech Talk 07 If you're like most companies, your end users' teams are comprised of people across the globe. Yet they want to feel like their teammates are just down the hall. Enter Sitescape. It's now a part of Novell and provides the engine to the new Novell Teaming + Conferencing products. Find out how this recent acquisition benefits you.
Connection Magazine March full .pdf
Departments
- Proof Point Toll Brothers, the leading builder of luxury homes in the U.S., had issues. One was managing desktops across 300 locations, including construction site trailers across 22 states. Keeping them in standard, working order was quite a problem. See how Novell automated that, increased the security of sensitive financial data, and much more.
- Trend Talk Are you up on your backups? Are you a synthetic backer upper? What about your recovery objectives? How will you recover after the crisis strikes? Learn what types of backup and recovery procedures are available, so when the crisis strikes, you'll be up on your backups and know just how to recover.
- Laura Chappell Analysis Session: TCP Connection Loss
The
Right Spin
Managing your data center
just got a whole lot easier
Tech Talk 5 By John Stetic
Key Features of PowerRecon
Workload and Resource Utilization Forecasting—PowerRecon enables organizations to better plan for infrastructure investment and server consolidation. By creating reports and charts, it accurately shows how one or a group of server workloads will use resources in the future based on historical trend data. Forecasted values for CPU, disk, memory and usage trends ensure that server consolidation projects can accommodate future growth.
Enterprise-Level Scalability—A single instance of PowerRecon supports robust data collection, analysis and planning for up to 2,000 servers in the network. Multiple instances of PowerRecon can run together in the data center, enabling the solution to scale well beyond 2,000 servers. The enterprise-class scalability puts PowerRecon in a category all its own when it comes to support for large-scale data center consolidation projects.
Broad Multiplatform Support—Customers with multiplatform environments can inventory, analyze and report onsite in the data center using a single data collection and analysis solution. Windows, Linux and UNIX physical systems are supported, as well as virtual platforms provided by VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and Virtual Iron.
Flexible IT Chargeback Reporting—Because virtualization creates a pool of computing resources, it can be difficult to manage and monitor how virtual resources are being used and by whom. PowerRecon allows organizations to effectively allocate and share virtual resources across various business units and departmental owners. PowerRecon’s flexible chargeback reporting capabilities improve virtual infrastructure management and financial accounting by allowing organizations to calculate IT costs based on actual resource usage.
VM Growth Reporting—Virtual machine growth reports monitor the proliferation of virtual machines and avoid the administrative headaches associated with virtual infrastructure sprawl.
Power and Cooling Analysis—You can compare and contrast potential power and cooling cost savings and ROI derived from different consolidation scenarios. Custom fields allow power and cooling requirements for major hardware platforms to be maintained in a central database, enabling organizations to analyze and cost-justify green computing initiatives.
PlateSpin PowerConvert
PlateSpin PowerConvert is an anywhere-to-anywhere Workload Portability solution that provides the flexibility to configure and optimize the data center. It streams workloads over the network between physical servers, blade infrastructures, virtual hosts and image archives. PowerConvert remotely decouples whole server workloads—data, applications and operating systems—from the
underlying server hardware and streams them to and from any physical or virtual host with a simple drag and drop. Figure 2
PowerConvert removes the dependency between a data center’s infrastructure layer and the business applications that run on it. Therefore, organizations can continually match service level requirements with available resources by rapidly reconfiguring, relocating and optimizing servers. All this from a single point of control without having to be in physical contact with source or target servers.
Key Features of PowerConvert
Anywhere-to-anywhere Workload Migrations—Server workloads are freed from the underlying hardware so you can move or copy them to and from physical and virtual hosts or images on demand. PowerConvert automatically configures the server workload to operate on the target environment, making driver, kernel and other necessary changes.
Live Transfer—PowerConvert Live Transfer enables the migration or image capture of active Windows servers without taking the source servers offline or having to reboot. It reduces system downtime during migration or creates regular backups of production systems. Concurrent live transfers are managed though a central administration point and help accelerate consolidation efforts.
Server Sync—You can greatly reduce the risks associated with workload relocation projects such as server consolidation and data center relocation. Perform an initial transfer to the target site or host, test the workload in the new location while continuing to run the source, and then perform a final sync before cutting over the workload. Server Sync also helps when the source and destination are geographically distributed. Removing the necessity for a full system replication can dramatically accelerate workload migrations over the wide area network.
Task-Based Wizards and Drag-and-drop Interface—With intuitive built-in workflows, PowerConvert reduces learning curves and simplifies workload relocation, protection and provisioning activities. Use the drag-and-drop interface to move, copy, protect, capture or deploy workloads. Intuitive task-based wizards for common actions and advanced job configuration capabilities make the process of configuring jobs easier and more reliable. Job reporting may be used to easily create the reports required for regulatory compliance or to qualify for utility rebates for power and cooling reductions and green computing initiatives.
On-the-fly Configuration—With PowerConvert, you can reconfigure and right-size CPU, disk, memory and network resources on-the-fly during the workload migration. You can also change critical parameters on restore and right-size the target server to match workload demands.
Figure 1
PlateSpin PowerRecon provides scenario modeling, forecasting and planning capabilities to take the guesswork out of server consolidation, disaster recovery, capacity planning and virtual infrastructure management.
Figure 2
With PlateSpin PowerConvert, enterprises can perform anywhere-to-anywhere server workload migrations across heterogeneous IT infrastructures spanning physical and virtual hosts.
Figure 3
The PlateSpin Forge recovery hardware appliance provides an ever-present Web-based dashboard that enables IT operations specialists to view the status of server workload protection at all times.
