Despite industrywide marketing spin espousing politically correct intentions to make data centers more environmentally sound, few IT system managers actually have any specific plans in place. Furthermore, most IT managers give their operations failing grades in reducing energy consumption, a new industry study reported.

Lack of funding and operational resources–at least in this year’s budgets–were the reasons most often cited in the new research conducted in February and released April 24 by the BPM (Business Performance Management) Forum.

IBM on Wednesday outlined its entry to be the hardware vendor of choice among Web 2.0 companies with a server dubbed iDataPlex.

Big Blue calls the iDataPlex a new server category designed to be one of thousands crammed into a data center. IBM claims iDataplex uses less than 40 percent less power, can use a liquid cooled wall to run at room temperature, has a small footprint so you can double the number of servers in a rack and uses Linux and other industry standards. IBM’s iDataPlex is designed as a rack system.

The technology giant unveiled the server at the Web 2.0 conference in San Francisco so it can pitch a lot of potential customers, but it could appeal to a lot of enterprises too.

Disasters happen to businesses of any size. They can take a variety of forms–ranging from fire and flood to janitorial accidents. Consultant Dave Sobel, CEO of Evolve Technologies, explains how you should plan for what is probably inevitable.

Every small and home-based business owner should resolve to implement a workable disaster recovery plan to divert looming IT failure and potentially permanent data loss. With some simple advance planning, it’s possible to avoid mistakes that can lead to data collapse, which could stop your business in its tracks. How can your company prepare its IT infrastructure?

Learn the steps involved in migrating your environment to that of a Linux client, including technical planning. Based on customer experiences, this article offers a comprehensive guide to planning and executing your migration while minimizing disruption to your users.

IBM announced it has completed its acquisition of FilesX, a privately held storage software company based in Newton, Mass., and Haifa, Israel. FilesX specializes in continuous data protection and nearly instant data and application recovery software for enterprises and remote/branch offices. Financial terms were not disclosed.

IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire FilesX on April 10, 2008. The FilesX technology will become part of the Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM) family of products, IBM’s flagship suite of leading data protection and information infrastructure offerings, with proven compatibility in customer environments today.

With a day to go before a critical Pennsylvania Democratic primary, Barack Obama’s team has been busy patching security holes.

According to Netcraft, a hacker exploited security flaws in Obama’s site to redirect traffic to Hillary Clinton’s site. Anyone that visited Obama’s community blogs section of the site was sent to Clinton.

eWEEK’s Ryan Naraine puts together a list of 10 free must-have consumer security utilities to help keep hackers at bay.

Canonical announced the upcoming availability of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition for free download on Thursday 24 April. In related news, Canonical also announced the simultaneous release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Server Edition.

Ubuntu 8.04 Long Term Support (LTS) provides a stable platform for software and hardware vendors, developers and users. With three years of support and maintenance on the desktop, 8.04 LTS is a great choice for large-scale deployment. A substantial and growing ecosystem of free and commercial software built for Ubuntu provides a rich set of choices for desktop users. This is the eighth desktop release of Ubuntu.

Western Digital announced the introduction and availability of a powerful new internal hard drive called VelociRaptor, the fastest SATA drive available on the market. The new drive is the successor to the WD Raptor series drives but with twice the capacity, increased performance and overall speed. The new WD VelociRaptor offers 300GB of high-performance storage with a spin rate of 10,000 RPM.

In addition, the drive’s new form factor includes a 2.5-inch HDA but ships mounted inside the new WD IcePack to fit nicely inside traditional 3.5-inch frames and allow proper cooling of the drive for maximum and sustained performance.

We’ve all been there: in a place where we feel that our career has stalled or that we’ve stagnated and stopped growing professionally. If your work life is a little like the movie Ground Hound Day, it may be time to look at your skills and figure out how to get back on top of your game.

Read this DominoPower article.