Grid Computing News : Oracle Focuses on Grid, Developer Tools

SAN FRANCISCO -- Oracle's harnessing the power of the grid. Today here at Oracle OpenWorld 2008 at the Moscone Convention Center, the company unveiled a revamped edition of BEA's WebLogic application server designed for the latest trends in application development and deployment: virtualization, resource consolidation and a focus on efficiency. The upshot is that switching to a grid infrastructure can help cut costs, better use power and capacity and more effectively scale applications, according to Thomas Kurian, senior vice president of Oracle Middleware Fusion. On top of the WebLogic Application Grid, Oracle will "build open and best of breed middleware for [service oriented architecture (SOA)], transaction processing, content management, business intelligence, user interaction with identity management and a common way to manage these," Kurian said. It also includes Oracle WebLogic Server, which is built on top of JRocket, and Coherence data management and caching technology for computing clusters, which "can pre-fetch data into the in-memory data grid" for better performance and throughput," Kurian said.... read more

Grid Computing News : 3Tera Goes Global

is rolling out new cloud computing services based on its AppLogic grid operating system . The company's new global cloud services will be offered by partners on four continents, with redundant online resources worldwide and more to come. 3Tera and its partners are running data centers in the U.S., Japan, Singapore, Argentina, the UK, the Netherlands and Serbia, with additional resources planned for South America and Australia. 3Tera says the global offering lets customers choose their location and expand or move to different regions as business demands, without having to change a single line of code in their applications. "On-demand services, offered from a single data center, lack many of the benefits of cloud computing," stated 3Tera CEO Barry Lynn.... read more

Grid Computing News : DataSynapse, Cisco Connect at VMworld

DataSynapse used this week's VMworld conference in Las Vegas to announce that its FabricServer software platform has been integrated with Cisco's VFrame data center provisioning and infrastructure orchestration technology. DataSynapse said data center architects will now be able to "dynamically scale a complete application service stack as virtualized application and hardware infrastructure objects." FabricServer and VFrame treat the application and infrastructure as service components, the grid computing pioneer said, adding that the products can "dynamically apply or remove these services in unison. Customers benefit from right-sized hosted infrastructures and enhanced capacity with real-time utilization policies." FabricServer manages service levels of complex enterprise applications and their platforms by configuring, activating and scaling applications based on business policies and demand. VFrame can then reprogram the underlying hardware to meet service requirements as defined within each application group. "Many customers want to deploy virtualized infrastructures all the way from the infrastructure up to the application layers," Bill Erdman, senior marketing director for Cisco's Data Center Technology Organization, said in a statement.... read more

Grid Computing News : Univa UD Makes Cluster Management Easier

Univa UD has overhauled its open source cluster software to make HPC management tasks easier. UniCluster 4.0 Test Drive, available at grid.org , includes new systems management functionality that "helps to automate repetitive and homegrown administrative tasks that significantly reduce time to value and total cost of ownership for cluster owners," the company said. "UniCluster 4.0 sets a new standard for high performance computing systems software," Gary Tyreman, vice president and general manager of Univa UD HPC, said in a statement. That goes far beyond what a scheduler alone can provide." UniCluster is a "fully integrated, community-enabled open source cluster software stack with unrestricted support for all its components," the company said. It simplifies cluster deployment, configuration and management, from installation and job scheduling to monitoring and remote access.... read more

Grid Computing News : Saving a Bundle with Grid Computing

Grid computing can save companies a lot of money, and not just in hardware and software costs, according to a new report. A white paper published by The FactPoint Group, a Silicon Valley-based research and consulting firm, said an unnamed top five global pharmaceutical giant using Univa UD's Grid MP software to accelerate its high-performance computing (HPC) applications saved more than $3.7 million in the first year of implementation and another $3.3 million annually after that. The cost savings didn't include Grid MP licensing costs, the report said. All the data came from the customer, and the analysis results were approved by the customer's grid team." The study found significant savings in hardware, software and associated costs, but the biggest savings were in areas like improved drug screening and time to market that continued long after the initial cost savings. But it actually goes way beyond that.... read more