Are you going multi-core?

Servers This newsletter is sponsored by Arsenal Digital Solutions Automated Off-Site Data Protection for SMBs Would you bet your company on the data saved during your last backup? Statistics show that only 6% of companies suffering a catastrophic data loss will survive beyond two years. And yet many organizations struggle to maintain a regular backup schedule, especially as more and more employees work from remote locations: branch offices, home offices, and while traveling. Join us for a timely, interactive presentation to find out how automated, off-site data protection can help SMBs to meet and overcome their backup, recovery and business continuity challenges. Click here to register today and learn how to protect your mission-critical data! Network World's Servers Newsletter, 05/15/07 Are you going multi-core? By Jennifer Mears Earlier this month Sun made another multi-core related announcement, and soon we should be seeing AMD’s quad-core Opteron. All this got me thinking about the whole multiple cores on a single piece of silicon issue. Sun announced another step in the development of Rock, saying that it had gotten its Solaris operating system up and running on the chip that boasts 16 processing engines on a single CPU. Getting the OS to work smoothly on the multi-core, multi-threaded chip is important, so it’s an encouraging step for Sun, which says it should have Rock shipping by the end of next year. Sun began shipping eight-core Sparc systems at the end of 2005 and says that sales of the UltraSparc T1, also known as Niagara, now account for more than $100 million of Sun’s revenue each quarter. From servers to storage: Virtualization saves It's touted as one of the fastest and easiest ways to better manage and control your infrastructure. Download this guide today and see how network IT execs are making virtualization pay off in the real world; discover the 8 virtualization gotchas you need to know; and much more. Click here to download. Sun expects to have its second generation Niagara servers, Niagara 2, shipping in the second half of this year and claims the servers, which will handle up to eight threads (or application instructions) per core, compared to four threads for the T1, will provide twice the throughput of the existing Niagara servers. While customers seem to be interested in Niagara, those systems are geared for network-related tasks. Rock, on the other hand, is seeking a place deep in your data center running databases, ERP or CRM. I’m just curious. Where do you stand when it comes to multi-core servers? I wrote a couple of stories about multi-core servers last year and at that time buyers were slowly transitioning to multi-core platforms. There were concerns about how per-CPU software licensing would be handled and the worry of single-point of failure with multiple workloads being managed on single systems. Read those stories here and here. Now that multi-core servers are the norm, where do you stand on the issue? When do you plan to bring multi-core systems in? Where are they going? What workloads are they handling? Would you bring in something like Rock? Let me know.   What do you think? Post a comment on this newsletter

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Contact the author: Jennifer Mears is a freelance journalist based in Arizona. She was previously senior editor at Network World focusing on server issues. E-mail her at jlmears@gmail.com.   This newsletter is sponsored by Arsenal Digital Solutions Automated Off-Site Data Protection for SMBs Would you bet your company on the data saved during your last backup? Statistics show that only 6% of companies suffering a catastrophic data loss will survive beyond two years. And yet many organizations struggle to maintain a regular backup schedule, especially as more and more employees work from remote locations: branch offices, home offices, and while traveling. Join us for a timely, interactive presentation to find out how automated, off-site data protection can help SMBs to meet and overcome their backup, recovery and business continuity challenges. Click here to register today and learn how to protect your mission-critical data! ARCHIVE Archive of the Servers Newsletter. BONUS FEATURE IT PRODUCT RESEARCH AT YOUR FINGERTIPS Get detailed information on thousands of products, conduct side-by-side comparisons and read product test and review results with Network World’s IT Buyer’s Guides. Find the best solution faster than ever with over 100 distinct categories across the security, storage, management, wireless, infrastructure and convergence markets. Click here for details. PRINT SUBSCRIPTIONS AVAILABLE You've got the technology snapshot of your choice delivered to your inbox each day. Extend your knowledge with a print subscription to the Network World newsweekly, Apply here today. International subscribers, click here. SUBSCRIPTION SERVICES To subscribe or unsubscribe to any Network World newsletter, change your e-mail address or contact us, click here. This message was sent to: networking.world@gmail.com. Please use this address when modifying your subscription. Advertising information: Write to Associate Publisher Online Susan Cardoza Network World, Inc., 118 Turnpike Road, Southborough, MA 01772 Copyright Network World, Inc., 2007