Inside a Microsoft data center
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?
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25.3.2009 New Microsoft data center powers Web services push
SEATTLE--In a century-old farming town in central Washington state, Microsoft has built a farm for the Internet age.
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17.4.2007 Inside a Microsoft data center
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?
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25.3.2009 Microsoft 2008: From Desktop to Data Center
Year In Review. Microsoft had a pretty good year, despite the fourth quarter's global economic crisis.
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30.12.2008 New Microsoft data center powers Web services push
SEATTLE--In a century-old farming town in central Washington state, Microsoft has built a farm for the Internet age.
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17.4.2007 Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager 2006 Service Pack 1 Released!
Microsoft® System Center Data Protection Manager (DPM) 2006 Service Pack 1 (SP1) enables you to protect more types of file servers..
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24.10.2006 Stop the Windows Vista Features and Services Harvesting User Data for Microsoft
There is a constant flow of communication between Windows Vista and Microsoft. A collection of features and services across Microsoft's latest desktop operating system exchange data with locations on the Internet, including those belonging to the Redmond company.
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19.8.2007 Windows 7 Data Corruption
Microsoft warned that testers of Windows 7 could come across data-corruption issues on various machines including computers from Lenovo and HP.
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31.3.2009 50 ways to lose your data
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.
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8.8.2007 Windows 7 Search for Data Anywhere It Lives
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.
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24.3.2009 I/O Data Vista Approved Tuners Announced
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.
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1.1.2007 Hackers steal government, corporate data
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.
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17.7.2007 Analyzing 3 months of Vista reliability data
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.
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25.3.2008 Data Protection Manager 2010 Beta
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”.
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30.9.2009 Microsoft Updates Media Center
Microsoft has announced the availability of a new software update for Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 that will provide new entertainment experiences for Media Center Edition customers around the world.
Update Rollup 2 for Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005, will enable customers to stream digital music, videos, photos, and standard and high-definition television and movies from Media Center PCs, to any television in their home via the Xbox 360 gaming system.
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Microsoft Download Center: Silverlight or not?
Thanks for Ben's comment to my last post and a reality check! :) The new download center with Silverlight is in its beta, there are a number of usability issues we need to improve on especially that there are no accessibility features in the current version.
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14.1.2008 States rush to remove data on residents from websites
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.
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24.4.2006 Trojan poses as Windows screen to collect data
Symantec has warned of a Trojan that has posed as a Windows activation program and duped users into entering credit card information.
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7.5.2007 Napping data centers could cut energy use by 75%
Researchers at the University of Michigan have announced a plan to save up to 75 percent of the energy that power-hungry computer data centers consume by putting idle servers to sleep when they’re not in use.
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8.3.2009 Microsoft looking for beta testers with Media Center
Yesterday I received the following email in my in-box.
Interesting that they are offering/needing hardware testers and the testers can keep the hardware after the beta is complete.
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22.1.2006 Microsoft Previews New Malware Protection Center
Microsoft may be a desktop software powerhouse, but when it comes to security tools it is still bulking up.
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27.4.2007 Microsoft System Center gets the services treatment
Microsoft officials weren’t kidding when they said they were working on a services complement to just about every one of the company’s software products. The latest to get a Software+Services (S+S) makeover: System Center.
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1.10.2007 Microsoft HealthVault Connection Center 1.1 Beta
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.
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17.11.2007 Is Microsoft working on software center for Windows?
Questions arise as to why Windows Vista and Windows 7 have renamed the "Add and Remove Programs" to "Programs and Features", alongside "Windows Updates".
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23.1.2009 No fix for data corruption bug in Windows Home Server
Two months after acknowledging a serious data corruption bug exists in Windows Home Server, Microsoft has admitted it still has no fix.
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27.2.2008 Microsoft Xbox 360 Media Center Extender
The Xbox nation can't play games round the clock. ("Wanna bet?" someone's already saying.) For those other times, the new Microsoft Xbox 360 offers the ability to stream, in high-definition video and surround-sound audio, all manner of music, photo and video files, TV, and recorded TV, from a Media Center Edition PC located elsewhere in the house. It's a nice benefit if you're already buying Xbox 360. But Microsoft stopped one decent remote control and a couple features shy of making media streaming a killer side benefit of its second-generation Xbox.
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22.11.2005 Sources: Microsoft to set up MSN center in China
Software giant Microsoft is setting up a research-and-development center in Shanghai for its online MSN service, its first such center outside the United States, sources familiar with the plan said on Wednesday.
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1.2.2007 Microsoft Outlines System Center Road Map
Microsoft plans to ship its long-awaited Operations Manager 2007 application management software on April 1, which will mark the first product released under the System Center brand.
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28.3.2007 Microsoft Outlines System Center Road Map
Microsoft plans to ship its long-awaited Operations Manager 2007 application management software on April 1, which will mark the first product released under the System Center brand.
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29.3.2007 Microsoft plans big Vancouver, B.C., software center
Microsoft announced this morning that it will open a software development center this fall in the Vancouver, B.C., area, with room for hundreds of workers.
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6.7.2007New Microsoft data center powers Web services push
In a century-old farming town
in central Washington state,
Microsoft has built a farm for
the Internet age.
But rather than corn or
cows, this farm teems with
computer servers and data
stor..
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17.04.2007Biodiesel fuels build of Microsoft data center
Hydroelectric power isn't the
only green energy driving
Microsoft's new data centers
in eastern Washington.
The trucks ferrying cement
to and from the massive
building site and equipment
used..
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26.07.2007Iowa chosen for next Microsoft data center
The Iowa city of West Des Moines now has two things to celebrate.
The same week that
hometown hero Shawn..
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22.08.2008Microsoft Building 'Containerized' Data Center
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.
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02.04.2008Microsoft HealthVault Connection Center Beta (1.1)
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.
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17.11.2007Yahoo to build $100M data center and add new jobs, despite financial woes
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...
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27.10.2008Data Center Power Efficiency
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...
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30.11.2008LinuxWorld shows off the latest data center-in-a-truck
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...
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08.08.2008Inside Windows Azure's data center, one of world's largest
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.
Read full story.....
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02.11.20096 reasons why Microsoft's container-based approach to data centers won't work
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.
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09.05.2008Microsoft to Use Solar Power in Huge New Data Center
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.
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25.09.2008The Green Grid launches data center energy initiatives
Spearheaded by Microsoft, Sun, and other high tech vendors, The Green Grid is generating support among industry groups, users, and government agencies
for building standards for efficient data center energy management...
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04.02.2008Creating a Greener Data Center
Many data centers cost more to build and power than the IT services they support, so Microsoft is leading the industry to make data centers more
efficient...
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02.04.2009Microsoft plucks Yahoo! data center efficiency expert
Microsoft has hired a Yahoo! data center veteran to help build an energy efficient infrastructure beneath its planned cloud and online services.
The company said Monday that Yahoo! vice president of operations Kevin Timmons has joined its Global Foundation Services operation
where he'll head up the recently-created data center services unit.
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23.06.2009Microsoft Begins Container Testing At Chicago Data Center
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!
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21.10.2008IBM launches its own data center alliance
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...
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06.05.2008IT Managers Put Data Recovery to the Test
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.
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09.05.2008Can EMC convince you to do online data backups?
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...
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23.01.2008Microsoft's data center chief to leave company
Michael Manos, the general manager of Microsoft's Data Center Services division, is leaving the company to work for wholesale data center provider
Digital Realty Trust.
Manos has been leading Microsoft's efforts to build a global network of data centers to support its online
services. He has been a champion of containerized data centers, which place servers and storage gear in shipping containers to achieve highly
energy-efficient designs.
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09.04.2009University Breaks All the Storage Rules
Like people, jobs and most other things on Earth, data centers evolve. And, as they are modernized, some things are improved more than others.
In an IT era of ever-more-powerful data servers and storage machines, Georgia State University's cutting-edge data center is a
real-world example of change for the better.
Here is a data center that has improved its output and service levels, yet has cut
back on the amount of electricity it takes from the national grid by as much as 80 percent.
In fact, the Atlanta institution,
which opened its first computer center in 1968 with three Unisys mainframes, has evolved its central data center into one that can almost stand on its
own feet powerwise. In the most fundamental terms, Georgia State has acquired and installed enough self-generating power to meet all the university's
daily computing requirements.
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12.10.2007
