It takes mucho computes and terabytes to create the 3D models used in Microsoft’s Virtual Earth online mapping service. So how do they cram 5,000 cores and 10,000 terabytes - 10 petabytes - of storage into 3 40 ft. shipping containers? microsoft - comments - 25.3.2009
Windows 7 has got revamped taskbar also known as superbar. Windows 7 taskbar has number of excellent features like Jumplist, Thumbnail preview, Aero peak, etc. download - comments - 7.10.2009
Microsoft® System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006 Service Pack 1 (SP1) enables you to protect more types of file servers.. download - comments - 24.10.2006
Since the introduction of the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack, the Redmond company has sold in excess of 10 million units of the package of solutions, and on September 15, the R2 version of MDOP 2008 was released to manufacturing. windows - comments - 16.9.2008
Developed under the codename Windows Fiji, and released to manufacturing under the label Windows Media Center TV Pack 2008, the first major update to the Windows Media Center component included by default in the Home Premium and Ultimate SKUs of Windows Vista RTM and SP1, is right on track to be a disappointment. windows - comments - 11.8.2008
VSLive this week wasn't only about team-development tools. The Softies also provided demonstrations of how they expect developers to piece together Windows-Live-style services, going forward. Microsoft showed off new mashups made from Windows Live beta components. And execs committed to making Microsoft's Live.com aggregator "the front door to Search in the coming months." windows - comments - 4.2.2006
The Board of Directors of Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today sent the following letter to Steve Ballmer, Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft Corporation. microsoft - comments - 7.4.2008
The Windows 7 road show debuted at the end of October, with the start of the Professional Developers Conference 2008 in Los Angeles. windows - comments - 25.11.2008
Microsoft warned that testers of Windows 7 could come across data-corruption issues on various machines including computers from Lenovo and HP. windows - comments - 31.3.2009
Windows Vista plans to offer you spiffy new graphics, as long as you're not a pirate.
With the new operating system, Microsoft is offering plenty of new graphics tricks, including translucent windows, animated flips between open programs and "live icons" that show a graphical representation of the file in question.
windows - comments - 17.4.2006
Microsoft CRM Live is slated to make its public debut on Wednesday at the company's Convergence 2007 conference in San Diego. microsoft - comments - 14.3.2007
Intel will give its first public look at an 8-core Xeon processor in less than two weeks at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference, the show's schedule (PDF) reveals. common - comments - 29.1.2009
Disk drives are marvelous devices. Especially when they go “clunk” and stop working. I’m not kidding: at least you know your data is hosed. I prefer that to the silent data corruption you don’t find out about until you can’t access a file or your OS starts freezing. Or a RAID rebuild fails. common - comments - 8.8.2007
Windows 7 has long evolved past its precursor, Windows Vista. One key aspect of this evolution is the operating system's ability to stretch Windows Explorer well beyond the limitations of a local machine, or even a local network. windows - comments - 24.3.2009
Windows Vista shows a lot of promise. With beta 2 of Microsoft's much anticipated operating system nearly ready to be released to the public, users will soon have the ability to judge for themselves how Microsoft's next generation operating system is coming along. windows - comments - 19.5.2006
Thanks to Steve Sinchak of Tweak Vista who uploaded these 2 videos of Bill Gates appearing on the Daily Show to talk with Jon Stewart about the launch of Windows Vista. windows - comments - 30.1.2007
MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- Former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on Monday asked Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates to intercede on behalf of a Russian teacher accused of using pirated software in his classroom. common - comments - 5.2.2007
This week I/O Data is launching its new line of TV tuners -- the company is ready to set the mark for Vista friendly video hardware. windows - comments - 1.1.2007
Hackers stole information from the Department of Transportation and several U.S. corporations by seducing employees with fake job-listings on ads and e-mail, a computer security firm said on Monday. common - comments - 17.7.2007
A Windows Vista feature which I make use of regularly is the Reliability Monitor. While being far from an ideal metric for measuring reliability, it does offer users a simple way to tell if their system is behaving or misbehaving. windows - comments - 25.3.2008
On September 29, 2009, Microsoft released the beta version of the third generation of System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM), previously called “DPM v3” or “Zinger”. download - comments - 30.9.2009
Windows Vista plans to offer you spiffy new graphics, as long as you're not a pirate.
With the new operating system, Microsoft is offering plenty of new graphics tricks, including translucent windows, animated flips between open programs and "live icons" that show a graphical representation of the file in question. windows - comments - 13.4.2006
In a paper entitled Spam-Double Funnel: Connecting Web Spammers with Advertisers , researchers at Microsoft and the University of California Davis show the path whereby the ads of legitimate web site owners come be shown on spam pages. microsoft - comments - 21.3.2007
Gates will demo TouchWall, which could be used by business people to give presentations, and talk about his ideas for the future of user interface technology. microsoft - comments - 14.5.2008
Microsoft has released its own tests that show IE8 can load many websites faster than two open source browsers: Firefox and Chrome. microsoft - comments - 12.3.2009
States across the USA are furiously removing sensitive data from official websites.
The task highlights challenges facing states with sites full of personal information on residents, from Social Security numbers to bank account numbers. microsoft - comments - 24.4.2006
Symantec has warned of a Trojan that has posed as a Windows activation program and duped users into entering credit card information. windows - comments - 7.5.2007
As the 2008 VMworld conference kicks off, VMware is detailing a new roadmap that will take the company beyond virtualization as a server and data
center infrastructure consolidation tool and into the world of cloud computing. VMware executives believe that they will be able to offer a
combination of virtualization software and services that will allow an enterprises data center to resemble what Google has done. VMware is also
looking enhance its ability with desktop virtualization.
With today's announcement of EMC's MozyEnterprise, you can now encrypt, back up, and store your laptop or desktop PC data in a high security data
center for not much more than $5 per month... betanews.com - 23.01.2008
Jesse Robbins: James Hamilton is one of the smartest and most accomplished engineers I know. He
now leads Microsoft's Data Center Futures Team, and has been pushing the opportunities in data center efficiency and internet scale services both
inside & outside Microsoft. His most recent post explores misconceptions about the Cost of Power in Large-Scale Data Centers...
Interest in modular data centers is growing, fueled by high-profile endorsements from Microsoft and Google. But the model raises new management
concerns, and efficiency claims may be exaggerated.
Modular, containerized data centers being sold by vendors such as IBM, Sun
and Rackable Systems fit storage and hundreds, sometimes thousands of servers into one large shipping container with its own cooling system. (See
photos in our related slide show.)
Microsoft, using Rackable containers, is building a data center outside Chicago with more than 150 containerized data centers, each holding 1,000 to
2,000 servers. Google, not to be outdone, secured a patent last year for a modular data center that includes "an intermodal shipping container and
computing systems mounted within the container."
Kicking off a global series of “Get Virtual Now events that will reach more than 250,000 customers and partners, Microsoft Corp. today announced
strong customer and partner adoption of Microsoft virtualization software, new tools and programs to drive partner success.
Microsoft
also announced the upcoming availability of System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008, Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.5 and the new Microsoft
Hyper-V Server 2008 as a no-cost download during today’s keynote addresses streamed live at .
Microsoft executives will
further outline virtualization solutions for customers and also demonstrate the live migration capabilities of the upcoming release of Windows Server
2008 R2.
“Now is the time for customers to get virtual, said Bob Kelly, corporate vice president of infrastructure server marketing
within Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business. “With desktop and data-center virtualization offerings available from Microsoft and its partners,
customers are adopting Microsoft solutions because they have better value and will make IT operations more dynamic. At a lower cost than other
data-center virtualization solutions, Microsoft software meets customers’ needs from the desktop to the data-center in an integrated offering on the
platform they know.
Microsoft is in the process of building the industry's first container-based data center.
Microsoft first said a year ago that
it was considering the idea, and now the concept is coming to fruition, Michael Manos, Microsoft's senior director of Data Center Services, said
April 1 in a keynote address at the AFCOM Data Center World conference here.
The new center will be located in Northlake, Ill.,
near Chicago. Microsoft is also building new data centers in San Antonio; Quincy, Wash.; and Dublin, Ireland. The Chicago facility will be the only
one with a "containerized" floor.
Microsofts first Data Center that
makes use of shipping containers as a primary server-packaging unit, has moved into the testing phase. The facility in Chicago is the first
purpose-built Data Center to accommodate containers on such a large scale. When completed the Chicago Data Center will be one of the largest in the
world with its capacity to house hundreds of thousands of servers, each shipping container holds approx. 2,500 servers!
Yahoo on Friday forged ahead with a deal to build both a customer care center and a data center in Nebraska, even after reporting a 64 percent drop in
third-quarter profits on Monday of the same week... betanews.com - 27.10.2008
Talk about your portable servers. Rackable Systems brought its ICE Cube Modular Data Center to LinuxWorld, demonstrating how companies can literally
ship their data centers from city to city, even overseas, in cool comfort... betanews.com - 08.08.2008
A plugin has
been released for Media Center that updates your Facebook status, telling Facebook what you are watching. Facebook status messages are often
updated to show what a user is up to or feeling, and this plugin checks what you are watching, and updates your status to say śJoe is watching Dexterť
or śMike is watching Goodfellasť. It will show if you are watching live or recorded TV, DVDs or movies, and runs in the background.
Microsoft plans to install solar panels on the roof of its new Internet data center in San Antonio to provide renewable energy for some of the
facility’s massive power requirements. The $550 million, 470,000 square feet facility will ultimately use more than 50 megawatts of power,
making it the largest single customer of the local utility, CPS Energy. The facility will house thousands of servers to power Microsoft's Live
online services.
Microsoft's decision to use solar panels in this setting is unusual. Data centers use enormous amounts of electricity,
but few of these facilities use solar power because of the cost and scalability issues. Only one small data center, AISO, is known to be powered
entirely by solar power.
HealthVault Connection Center is a utility you can use with your HealthVault account to add data to your Health Records from health and fitness
devices such as heart-rate monitors and blood pressure monitors. When you use HealthVault Connection Center, data from your device is imported into
your computer and then uploaded to HealthVault. You can view the data in HealthVault Connection Center before and after uploading it. You can also use
HealthVault Connection Center to launch HealthVault programs such as HealthVault Search.
In a startling new take on data center engineering, Google has filed a patent for a śwater-based data centerť that uses the ocean to provide power and
cooling. The patent also confirms Googles development of a container-based data center,
describing ścrane-removable modulesť to power the computing platforms.
The floating data centers would be located 3 to 7 miles
from shore, in 50 to 70 meters of water. If perfected, this approach could be used to build 40 megawatt data centers that dont require real estate or
property taxes...
CNet was able to get an exclusive look inside one of the largest data centers in the world, owned by Microsoft to help power cloud-computing with
Windows Azure. The secret location of the data center, located somewhere in Chicago, is not your ordinary data center setup, they're in shipping
containers. The new data centers are brought in by shipping containers, housing anywhere between 1,800 and 2,500 servers each. Once the shipping
containers arrive, the team can install each of the server groups in under a day, where it would normally take months to setup and install servers.
The servers remain inside the shipping containers inside the facility, where they are placed side by side and stacked two high.
For one local IT services company, an unused bank vault became the ideal secure site for a new data center to enter the hosting market.
Australia-based Networking Plus Pty. moved into an old Commonwealth Bank of Australia branch. It converted a large vault into a modern data
center with overhead cabling and fully redundant air conditioning.
Infrastructure manager Robert Warren said Networking Plus
moved into hosting when the new data center went live in July 2007. "It's certainly secure, as the door takes two people to move," Warren said. The
power service is also top-notch, since the building shares the same grid as an adjacent hospital, he said.
Microsoft may be afraid to
show its sidebar, but Google
apparently has no such qualms.
The company on Thursday rolled
out the final version of
Google Desktop 2.0, its
venerable search utility that
has morphed into a
full-fledged desktop
application with scriptable
plug-ins... betanews.com - 04.11.2005
Microsoft Corp.'s plan to
fill its mammoth Chicago data center with servers housed in 40-foot shipping containers has experts wondering whether the strategy will succeed.
In Microsoft's plan, each container in the data center, still being built, will be filled with several thousand servers.
Computerworld queried several outside experts including the president of a data center construction firm, a data center engineer-turned-CIO, an
operations executive for a data center operator and a "green" data center consultant to get their assessments of the strategy. While they were
individually impressed with some parts of Microsoft's plan, they also expressed skepticism that the idea will work in the long term.
In a world already populated by the Green Grid Alliance and other industry groups oriented to energy efficiency, IBM has just rolled out a data center
alliance with some similar interests... betanews.com - 06.05.2008
Bill Snow and Ed Eades are a couple of IT managers with very different businesses and data center setups.
But they are totally in
sync on at least one thing: their data recovery systems are of supreme importance, and nothing is left to chance.
Snow, IT
manager at Moss & Associates building contractors in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., has a hub-and-spoke kind of system, in which each construction site
becomes a remote location for the main data center. He has two data center locations in the Southeast and can switch them on and off at will, using a
single Web-based control console.
SSD market researcher iSuppli says the increased deployment of SSDs could enable the world's data centers to reduce their cumulative electricity
consumption by a whopping 166,643 megawatt hours from 2008 to 2013. This amounts to slightly more than the total electricity generation of the African
nation of Gambia for the entire year of 2006.
Microsoft 2008: From Desktop to Data Center