servers

Meet a retired World of Warcraft server

A game like World of Warcraft requires several thousand servers to operate the hundreds of online realms within its ecosystem. Earlier this year, Blizzard Entertainment auctioned off several of those server blades "used during World of Warcraft's early days."

A Reddit post brought up the subject again recently, and contains a few pictures of a server blade used for the European server Sunstrider from February 27, 2005 to August 24, 2010. There's little doubt that countless gamers spent thousands, if not millions, of hours playing during that time frame. A special clear enclosure reveals the innards of the server, which contains 6 gigabytes of RAM (DDR-400MHz). It did not come with the original hard drives. … Read more

Google Public DNS prevails as the world's largest service

Handling more than 70 billion domain name system (DNS) requests each day, Google is now the largest public DNS service on earth, the Web giant announced today.

"We launched Google Public DNS in December 2009 to help make the web faster for everyone," software engineer for Google Public DNS Jeremy K. Chen said in a statement. "Today, we're no longer an experimental service."

According to Chen, the way DNS works is it acts like the phone book of the Internet. "If you had to look up hundreds or thousands of phone numbers every day,&… Read more

What's different about storage for virtual desktops?

It is often said that data center-level server virtualization projects created a renewed demand for networked storage, both NAS and SAN.

If that's true, then efforts to virtualize desktops--aka virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) projects--will create renewed demand for high-performance storage, both network-attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN).

Storage performance is a major determinant in successful deployments of VDI. Why? VDI is a storage input/output-intensive environment.

When you lift the hood to find out what's going on inside a disk array that's supporting virtual desktops, you see the following:

The typical virtual desktop running Windows … Read more

Nginx tries converting Web-server popularity into money

Nginx, a Russian startup that has succeeded where others have failed at challenging the dominant Apache software for housing Web sites, has begun trying to convert its popularity into actual money.

Nginx (pronounced "engine X") yesterday unveiled corporate support offerings for the product, a traditional business model for open-source software. It offers three grades--Essential, Advanced, and Premium--with three- and twelve-month contracts for services including installation, configuration, performance tuning, and maintenance.

"Subscribers to the Advanced and Premium options receive design, implementation and optimization assistance, as well as prioritized development. Premium subscribers will have access to an additional set … Read more

Tech spending was strong in 2011, despite sluggish economy

Spending on technology around the world managed to rise last year, despite economic woes in Europe and a severe hard-drive shortage, research firm IDC said yesterday.

Overall, IT spending rose just 5 percent in 2011, but that proved to be a healthy gain in the face of worldwide challenges.

The 5 percent figure was calculated using constant currency, a method that does not take into account fluctuations in the exchange rate. In U.S. dollars, the picture was even rosier, with tech spending rising by almost 9 percent last year.

A surge in demand for smartphones, tablets, and software kicked … Read more

Free Windows servers float onto Amazon's cloud

Anyone can download Linux for free, so it was no surprise that Amazon offered the open-source operating system on the free tier of Amazon Web Services.

But now the company has added a free version of Windows Server to the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, too.

"We are excited to announce that starting today, the AWS Free Usage Tier will now include Amazon EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server," Amazon told EC2 customers today. "Customers eligible for the AWS Free Usage tier can now use up to 750 hours per month of t1.micro instances running Microsoft … Read more

Cool stuff: Seagate contemplates 4G LTE for mobile storage hot spot

LAS VEGAS--When on the go, you want to stay connected at all times and carry as much data as possible without having to physically carry a lot, right?

Soon you'll be able to do just that.

Seagate revealed and demonstrated at CES 2012 the prototype of a product tentatively called the Personal Server 4G LTE Wi-Fi. This is basically a combination of what the company's GoFlex Satellite has to offer and a 4G LTE mobile hot spot in one compact box.

Seagate said this is result of a 1.5-year collaboration with Verizon, which will be the exclusive … Read more

Iomega StorCenter ix2 angles for business users

LAS VEGAS--Iomega here at CES today announced the new Iomega StorCenter ix2 Network Storage, which offers up to 6TB of storage space.

This is the upgrade to the previous version of the same server.

Iomega says the new server comes with many advanced business capabilities, including video surveillance capability and support for online storage services, including Mozy, Amazon S3, and EMC Atmos-enabled cloud backup services offered by service providers. On top of that the server itself can also work as a "personal cloud."… Read more

WD My Book Live NAS server now supports RAID

Western Digital today announced an upgraded version of the WD My Book Live that can host two internal hard drives.

The new NAS server is called My Book Live Duo and comes in 4TB or 6TB capacities. The server's two internal hard drives can be combined in a RAID 0 configuration for maximum storage space and performance or in a mirror RAID 1 configuration for double data backup. These two RAID setups are a common feature of any dual-volume storage solution.

Like the original My Book Live, the My Book Live Duo supports personal cloud storage, meaning remote users can access data stored on it from anywhere in the world by pointing a browser to www.wd2go.com. It comes with WD mobile apps for iOS-based devices and Android-based mobile devices.

The My Book Live Duo features a built-in DLNA-compliant media server that can broadcast digital content to a networked media player, such as a WD TV Live player, a Blu-ray player, a PlayStation, or an Xbox 360.

The new My Book Live Duo is compatible both Windows (XP or later) and Mac OS (10.5 or later) and is available now, costing around $400 for the 4TB version or $500 for the 6TB version.… Read more

Storage talk of 2011: Apple takes control

Though not a storage vendor, Apple had arguably the biggest influence on consumer-grade storage products during 2011.

And just like the way the company has always been trying to control its products, this influence didn't always turn out to be a good thing for consumers, including Apple fans. Let's take a look at a few major examples of how Apple changed the face of computer storage in 2011.

1. The lack of support for USB 3.0

USB 3.0 was first introduced in late 2008, and by late 2010, most new and high-end Windows computers were equipped … Read more