Privacy Concerns

The participation of Insight Online is opt-in, so it doesn’t automatically just start sending information from your servers to HP.  Insight Online has also been certified through the TRUSTed Cloud certification program to ensure sound data management practices.  In order to keep this certification HP has to work with TRUSTe to get re-certified annually and have to go through a strict listing of requirements for the program.

Interface

The interface of HP Insight Online is a breath of fresh air.  It goes along HP’s new design scheme where pages without a lot of text has a black background (which @mattvogt doesn’t like) but I think it was easy to read and to follow.  Very simplistic but it allows you to drill down on each server to gain more information. You can also add users to specific servers so they only have access to the servers that they need to manage.

Hardware Fails

It happens, even to the market leaders.  Hardware, especially the pieces that have moving parts, fail.  In the past, your monitoring system would send you an alert and you would investigate and then call support.  Then you would spend at least 30 minutes (if not hours, especially if they want logs) going through prompts and giving the technician the information.  Why can’t this be easier?  Well, with HP Insight Online it is.  If you opt in, your new Gen8 HP Proliant will communicate failures to your local CSM server that pushes the information out to HP (they are working on a direct connection for those instances where you do not have a CSM server).  It gathers the needed data, automatically opens up a ticket, emails you the information, and (depending on the problem) earmarks a shipment out to your location.  If you need to contact a technician about the issue, you already have an open case and HP has all of your information.

Not only will they detect problems, they can also detect trends with hardware failures.  If they see a lot of a specific type of hardware failing in mass they can cross check that hardware to see if it all came in on the same batch.  If they find a pattern they will automatically send out a replacement part to the clients that haven’t reported any issues before the part fails.

Warranty Tracking

This is a feature I am sure many HP fans will love.  In the same interface with your server status you can also see which service contracts you have and when they expire.  No more spreadsheets!  Something small, but it is a feature that is low overdue.

VAR Access

HP is very VAR friendly, and their Insight Online product is no different.  You can give your VAR permission to have a lot of the same information that you see in your portal.  They will see a similar interface but have all of their clients grouped in the main dash board.  This allows var’s to show their clients more valueadd as well as strengthen their relationship with the client.

Wrapup

You can tell HP put a lot of thought into this product before it was launched and went through the scenario’s from the system admins viewpoint.  This is a win-win for both the customer and HP.  The customer gets better service from HP and HP can take the information they get and use it to improve their products. This is one of the many solutions that came with Gen8 that is adding value to the Proliant line to differentiate the product from the competition of commodity based server providers.  I believe it is a welcome addition to any IT toolbox and will benefit you if you have 1 or 500 servers in your organization.

 Jeffrey Powers from Geekazine recorded the presentation by Jeff Carlat.  It is located below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oduIu98vNzM

Disclaimer:  HP invited me to the Gen8 Blogger Tech Tour and paid for all accommodations while I was there.  I received some swag and a 32GB thumb drive but I was not required to blog anything good or bad about this trip.  My opinions are my own and cannot be bought.

Day 1 of the HP Gen8 Blogger Tech Tour is over and there was a lot of information I need to digest.  One thing is for sure, the face plate wasn’t the only major change that HP made to this generation of servers!  I will be going more in depth about some of this items but I wanted to quickly share what I thought was most important from the presentations and demos today.

Less Headache for the Customer

One of the biggest transformations was the focus on making things easier for the client and less time spent fixing the server when there is an issue.  When there is a hardware failure instead of your monitoring software notifying you, you investigate and then contact HP Support and answer questions/gather logs to send the server can (not a requirement, but the functionality is there) notify HP with all the pertinent information.  HP can already start processing the RMA for the failed part and getting your replacement into your hand.  This, to me is a must have.

Smarter Hardware

HP added “intelligence” to many components on the servers to allow each component to save logs about possible issues or operating conditions to each piece of hardware, instead of on each specific controller.  If a RAM chip starts failing, the Insight software doesn’t just show that the RAM slot has a bad chip but saves this information onto the RAM stick itself. This way if the stick is accidently placed in another machine it will show immediately as a failed chip instead of running and possibly causing problems.

This same functionality is also built into the new hard drives.  However, instead of just making the hardware “smart”, they also helped the end user from being dumb.   I have never pulled the wrong hard drive out of a working server, but I have pulled the wrong card out of a working PBX, and I am sure that is almost as fun (as in not).  This seems to happen a lot, afterall the majority of us are human and we make mistakes.  With Gen8 HP has put a “dummy” LED that gives the user a little reminder that bad things may happen if you pull this drive.  This to me is something small that makes a big impact.

HP has also re-designed the way the processesers are installed to the servers.  They even called it a “Smart Socket”.  This new socket allows for you to slip in a Intel CPU and install it without worrying about bending the pins on the system board.  This will not only help out for customer installed upgrades, but also with pins that get bent in the factory.

Firmware Upgrades

I am sure the majority of small to medium sized shops have probably never upgraded the firmware on their hardware.  When you are short staffed, don’t have the expertise and things are working properly you usually don’t want to mess with things.  This can cause problems down the road as well as security concerns.  With HP’s new Smart Update Manager, they make this a fairly pain free automated process.  It will download the updates, check dependencies, apply them in order and if one of them fails, roll back to the previous versions.  Instead of taking hours or even days to patch a few racks of servers, this can be done painlessly in minutes.

Mobile iLO

HP released a mobile iLO application back in Feburary for iOS/Android phones and tablets.  This brings iLO functionality to the mobile sysadmin.  Gone are the days of lugging that laptop bag with you everywhere and trying to find a corner and wifi to check on an alert you received from Solarwinds on one of your servers.  You can now perform these same duties from a very mobile friendly app and can be done on your portable tablet or phone.

I am looking forward to what HP has in store for us tomorrow.  We will be going more in depth with HP’s Automated monitoring and management, power and cooling ideas and also CloudSystem Matrix.

Disclaimer:  HP paid all expenses for my trip to Houston to experience the HP Gen8 Blogger Tech Tour.  I was not required in any way to write anything about the trip, good or bad.  I was given a reusable HP branded grocery store bag, a nice water bottle, a polo shirt and a Gen8 DL380 server (if you really think they gave me a server, then you must be drinking).  My opinions are my own and if I cannot be bought by a iPad2 I for sure can’t be bought by a re-usable grocery bag.

Like many others the announcement that HP would discontinue all current WebOS devices surprised me. I knew it wasn’t selling as well as HP expected (especially with the Rumors about Best Buy wanting to return a huge chunk of their stock) but I didn’t think they would give up this easily.

I went on the hunt to get one after the $99/$149 fire sale started. Since I was traveling that Saturday I didn’t get my hands on one until this past Wednesday. I am not a complete newb to WebOS. My wife used the original Pre on Sprint for a year and after she upgraded to the Evo I swapped it to my account as my primary device a couple of times. I really like WebOS but the Pre’s hardware killed the experience for me. I was exited to see how WebOS had evolved since version 1 as well as the experience on a piece of quality hardware.

Overall the WebOS interface hasn’t changed much, but it seemed much more polished over version 1.45. The hardware seemed solid but I was surprised to experience a little lag when doing some basic tasks. I would think the Dual Core Snapdragon system wouldn’t have small performance issues like this. Even with the performance shortcomings I didn’t use my laptop for three days after bringing the tablet home which surprised me.

The HP Touchpad had potential to be a great device, but with the previous price point I can understand why it wasn’t selling as well as it’s competitors. VPN Functionality and LAN Printing are great features but without apps like Remote Desktop, no support to access network files (CIFS Support is available in a Homebrew kernal, but no file manager supports it yet) and the crazy limitation to only be able to print to HP Printers it almost renders these features useless. There were also a number of applications in the HP Market that I was surprised not to see.  No Google Voice (there was an app to send SMS messages through your Google Voice account), no LogMeIn and no Dropbox just to name a few.

Overall I am happy with my purchase.  Would I have paid $499+ for the device?  Absolutely not but I don’t think I would pay that much for an iPad even with it’s ever mounting list of applications. Will my Touchpad force me to leave my trusty Thinkpad on the charger? I am not sure, but after using the Touchpad I do know some tablet (not sure which at this point) will.

Today was an interesting day in the tablet world. We learned that what was left of Palm has now officially been smashed into HP, and that HP is serious about really building on the momentum that Palm had started to build with webOS. HP announced a plethora of new things today (which you can read more about over at Engadget, who I stole/borrowed the wonderful chart above from) but the most interesting today was their new tablet, the HP TouchPad.

I have been getting a lot of crap from people for talking a lot about Apple on this site recently. If you’re bothered by this, feel free to stop reading now, or write your own articles. Fact of the matter is, they’re key to a lot of the technology I’m interested in right now and they execute it better than anyone else.

Apple created a new market last year when they unveiled the iPad. Now I know that Microsoft had been doing tablet PC’ long before that, but they sucked. It should be obvious by now, that even if you hate Apple, you have to pay attention to what they’re doing because they will set the trend for consumer technology in the next year.

That said, you now have three competing platforms that are looking to take a notch out of Apple’s belt. HP and their webOS platform, RIM and their new PlayBook and all new BlackBerry Tablet OS, and Google with Android 3.

I’m aware that there are already Android tablets out on the market, but even Google will tell you they wished they didn’t exist, because they’re running versions of Android that Google has actually come out and said are not designed for a tablet. So I’ll give Google and the Android platform a pass on the lackluster Galaxy Tab or the Dell Streak, which are something short of giant phones you can’t make phone calls on.

There is a lot of excitement about the three major contenders to take Apple down a notch. However, here is why they won’t make a huge dent, at least not yet.

HP TouchPad

I’ll start off by saying that of the three contenders, this is the one I think has the best chance of success, but the hardest road ahead. It strikes me as the one that is most like the iPad, but as of yet we have no pricing or firm release date. Like Apple, they are in complete control of the operating system and all of the hardware. Palm has had years of experience building phones and other mobile devices, and HP is the leader in PC hardware, the combination gives HP a major leg up on their competition.

But for HP to be competitive they’re going to have to price this device at or below the retail cost of an iPad. Otherwise, consumers are going to go with what they know will work and what is going to give them the best bang for their buck.

It’s also not due out until summer, chances are at least a month after the release of the iPad 2, which should set the bar even higher than it already is. If HP wanted to really make a splash, they should have released this device soon after announcing it. Otherwise it’s still hard-vapor-ware.

What is also missing from this is a solid community of developers who will make applications for this device. There are already webOS developers, making apps for the Palm Pre, but it remains to be seen if they’ll rally around this device, especially if HP sinks it in advance by not pricing it right.

Motorola Xoom

Of the three, this is the one I’m the most disappointed with. It has awesome specs, and Android 3.0 looks incredible and really looks and feels like a solid tablet operating system. However, Motorola has priced their hardware starting at $799, almost $200 more than what you could buy an iPad equipped with a 3G radio. (or $300 more if you’re not interested in cellular data networks)

The second kick to the family jewels is that Verizon is holding the WiFi connection hostage on this platform. In order to use WiFi, you have to pay for at least one month of their EVDO service. If you’re interested in doing that, then it’s no big issue, but if you’re like me and want to use Wifi or already pay for a personal hotspot through Mifi or another phone, it’s just an added cost to an already inflated price tag.

(BTW, Motorola is already on my list for inflating the pricing of the Atrix laptop dock, $500 for a netbook without any guts is insane.)

Motorola, Google and Verizon should rethink their strategy with the pricing of this device before it’s too late. The Xoom is due out at the end of this month.

BlackBerry PlayBook

This is by far the most confusing of the three devices. It’s the smallest of the three (and the iPad) and has the lowest resolution. It also has the lowest battery size (although that can be made up for by more effeicent usage) and runs an operating system that no one has actually seen yet. According to RIM, it’s not based on their current BlackBerry OS 6, but a brand new platform.

It’s hard enough for me to use BlackBerry OS, or find good applications for it as it is. I just don’t see this device really taking off in the consumer space. While it has the same advantages that Apple and HP hold in terms of controlling the hardware and the software, I’m just not confident in RIM’s ability to deliver a solid product. The other three are building on years of already existing software and RIM is writing a new platform from scratch. Maybe it will work to their advantage, but it all depends on if they can really match the other three feature for feature and deliver regular updates.

And of course, developers have to embrace the platform to motivate consumers to buy into their platform.

Pricing is still just rumors, although I did read today that Office Depot is going to sell the 16GB WiFi only model for $499 (same as the iPad) — so maybe RIM won’t do as horribly as I expect them to.

Apple iPad 2

If I were a betting man, this would be the horse I’d be rooting for. As with any unannounced Apple product, it’s all up for rumor, but the ecosystem that Apple has already built combined with the technologies that are expected to make its way from the iPhone 4 into the next version as well as a faster processor and more memory, make this the one the three contenders really need to beat.

It’s not enough to play catch up to a product that is a year old. HP, RIM and Google need to beat the next thing Apple has up their sleeve. Not an easy task, especially when they will struggle to beat the year old product.

Due to hit Verizon any day now, and possibly AT&T later, the Palm Pre 2 is starring in it’s own little video trailer showing off some of the new features of WebOS 2.0.

Sporting a 1GHz processor and 512MB of RAM, it’s the most powerful smartphone Palm/HP has ever produced. Although it’s specs are becoming more and more common and are being quickly outranked by many of the new Android phones and almost all of the new Windows Phone 7 handsets.

And oh yeah, it has Angry Birds.

I have noticed over the years the same customers I gave my recommendation to were complaining about increased problems but I just shrugged it off. I then was given 30 machines from around 1999 – 2001 to build a temporary training class with, half HP, Half Dell. I had problems with almost each one of the Dell’s. Everything from not posting to the heat sink clip being broken. The HP’s also had a couple of issues but not near as many as the Dell’s.

I thought at the time it might have been a coincidence, until my company decided to buy 500 off lease Dell GX260′s for a fresh build out. I was horrified, not because they were Dell’s but because they were old and ratty. We made due with what we were given and put them out to production and have seen nothing but issues. Everything from BIOS batteries going out to smoke coming out of the power supply. We have between 4 – 6 of these off lease Dell’s go bad every month and at least 2 of them have “caught fire” from the power supply.

Now I hear that Dell knowingly covered up that they sold faulty motherboards? Not just one or two, but 11.8 million!  How can I recommend for anyone to get a Dell product when they try to sweep this under the rug? How am I to know that they didn’t cover up a faulty power supply design in the GX260′s that we have so many issues with and they just haven’t been caught yet?

If you are looking for a new build out of any type I would steer clear of Dell, I know I will be for quite some time.

I will be attending keynotes, hands on sessions as well as trolling the floor and talking to the many HP Partners that will be presenting at the expo.  I will be tweeting about anything I hear and see that I find interesting and snapping shots and uploading them to Flickr as the day goes by.

If you have anything you would like to see or if you want to get answers about specific technology from HP Execs let me know!

Disclaimer:  HP has provided my flight and accomidations for this event.  However they have no control over the content I produce.  My opinions, tweets and blog posts are my own.

Microsoft has also announced that it will be providing full support for HTML5 video in Internet Explorer 9, and will be doing so using the H.264 protocol. Recently Apple has also been throwing support behind H.264 as the HTML5 video codec of choice for Safari. Apple has somewhat famously taken on Adobe in recent weeks saying Flash video is no longer the preferred option for Internet users going forward. Awkwardly, Microsoft agreed.

Ubuntu 10.04 LTS was released on April 29. The latest version is a long term support release, meaning updates will be published for 3 years on the desktop and 5 years on the server versions, compared to only 18 months with standard Ubuntu releases. This makes LTS a great platform for business deployments where doing full release upgrades every 6 to 12 months can be a major hassle. The latest version is lighter on features than normal Ubuntu releases are, but still sports the latest stable and public versions of GNOME, X.org and the Linux kernel. It also features a refreshed theme, ditching the brown and orange for a purple and black theme. There is also a new optional “lighter” theme that has a hint of brown instead of the standard Ubuntu color scheme. Boot times, especially on SSD drives have also been dramatically improved.

Palm is dead. Well, actually, HP purchased Palm for $1.2 billion.  The only hope for the WebOS platform now rests with HP and their commitment to “double down” and release new and improved hardware. Pending regulatory approvals, the deal is expected to close rather quickly in July of this year. Hopefully we’ll start seeing some HP branded WebOS devices starting this fall or winter.

I will be blogging and tweeting about anything that catches my eye.  Here is a list of the other Expert Bloggers who will be attending the event.

Kevin Houston - @kevin_houston – http://bladesmadesimple.com
Greg Knieriemen - @Knieriemen – http://www.storagemonkeys.com
Chris M Evans – @chrismevans – http://www.thestoragearchitect.com
King John Obeto – @JohnObeto – http://absolutelywindows.com
Rich Brambley - @rbrambley – http://vmetc.com
Simon Seagrave - @kiwi_Si – http://www.techhead.co.uk
Martin McLeod - @martinmacleod – http://www.bladewatch.com
Devang Panchigar – @StorageNerve – http://www.storagenerve.com
Stephen Foskett – @sfoskett – http://blog.fosketts.net

Calvin Zito from HP will also be attending with us.  His blog link is below.

http://www.communities.hp.com/online/blogs/datastorage/default.aspx

You can follow all the action by searching for the Twitter hastag #hpbladesday.  Greg Knieriemen has also put together a Twitter list of all attendees.

Updated: Added more info and someone I missed to the list!

This trip was sponsored by HP.  HP paid for the travel arrangements and most meals for 10 bloggers to visit the HP Houston campus.

After starting late due to power issues (which fried one of the Microsoft demo units on stage) the keynote got off to a rather boring start with Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, giving various statistics about how well recently released products like Windows 7 and Bing are doing. For the first half hour, the audio stream for the webcast was so bad, it kept cutting out and then required constant volume adjustment. Note to Microsoft, hire a decent sound engineer next time.

If you’d like to watch the keynote for yourself, you can see the saved version on the Microsoft website.

It was all pretty much downhill from there. The much discussed “Courier” tablet that many in the tech press was excited they would announce never came, and there were no details about Windows Mobile 7… at all. Only “we’ll have more about mobile at Mobile World Congress.” So overall, the keynote failed to deliver much of anything that we didn’t know or have not seen already. But, here is a breakdown of what was covered, after the break.

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• Microsoft has three goals in 2010: screens everywhere (meaning more PC and other devices), cloud services and natural UI.
• Since it’s launch, Microsoft has sold over 39 million Xbox 360s. No data was provided on how many of those are replacement units after the first one suffered from a RRoD (red ring of death) — in addition, there are currently 500 million games for the console, generating retail spending of over $20 billion.
• Xbox Live membership is now at over 20 million people.
• Project Natal, the natural motion capture interface for the Xbox 360, will be available for the holiday season of 2010.
• One interesting bit of news, is that HP and Microsoft will be teaming up to make Bing the default search engine and MSN the default homepage on their newly sold systems. Although it would seem that the agreement is something like “don’t change the Internet Explorer defaults to Google.”
• In the world of car multimedia: Ford will be rolling out updates for the next version of their Sync platform that include HD radio tuners that feature iTunes tagging. Blue&Me has now been sold in 1 million FIAT cars and KIA announced their UVO system rolling out in late 2010. Both Blue&Me and UVO are based on the same Windows Automotive embedded technologies as Ford Sync.
• While Windows Mobile 6.5 came out last year, it has generally been received with tepid enthusiasm. Ballmer refused to talk about Windows Mobile 7 last night, which is seen as the last ditch effort to save the platform. We shouldn’t have very long to wait for more information though, as MWC is February 15-18 and Ballmer promised to have more during that time.
• What Ballmer did focus a lot on was Windows 7, which he said (and I would agree) is “faster, leaner, less busy… simpler to complete common tasks” – while we learned most of this during the launch back in October, it’s still interesting that there were 3,000 engineers, 50,000 partners, 8 million beta testers for Windows 7.
• According to Ballmer, NPD says PC sales jumped 50% at the Windows 7 launch, and Black Friday was up 64% over last year. Gardner also says that in 2010 there will be a 12% PC growth over 2008. While Microsoft believes that has a lot to do with Windows 7, and they may be partially right, it should probably also be considered that the economy in late 2009 wasn’t quite as bad as the “OMG! PANIC!” economy of late 2008, and that consumer spending was stronger last year overall.

“The range of PCs with Windows 7 is virtually limitless … it has broadest ecosystem of developers in the world … over 4 million Windows applications, 800,000 of them unique to Windows 7 just since the beta was released”

After Ballmer came Ryan Asdourian, Senior Product Manager for Windows, who came out to highlight all the different devices that run Windows 7. Sort of a “hey Apple, look we have cool and sexy hardware too!” A couple of the ones I liked were the Dell Adamo XPS notebook, which isn’t new, but it always great to look at. Asdourian highlighted the fact that the notebook is thinner then a poker chip and also wakes up from sleep mode faster then you can open the lid. Another system I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on was the HP Envy 15, which features a DirectX 11 video card with 1GB of memory. Not bad for a notebook.

Watching Ballmer on stage with Asdourian was almost painful though. Seeing poor Ryan get teased and attacked by his boss in a failed attempt at humor. It was uncomfortable to watch, and makes me wonder what it’s would be like to have to deal with him on a regular basis.

One of the things that I did see some significant benefit to was the new collaboration feature of Windows Live Skydrive and Office 2010. In it, files that are stored and shared out of Skydrive can be opened by multiple users, and changes merged back into one document. The example that Asdourian used was students working on a PowerPoint presentation, in that each student could be simotaniously working on the same file, without having to share one computer. I can see this being useful at work, where all of our students already have Skydrive accounts though Live@edu.

Next Microsoft turned it’s keynote focus to uniting software with the cloud, which is an approach I tend to be a fan of. My view, and also that of Microsoft, seems to be that the best approach for software going forward is having locally installed applications that communicate back into the cloud to instantly receive data. This is in contrast to Google’s approach to the cloud which tends to be “put everything there and use a web browser to get it” … which works for some applications and users, but not all, especially when access to an Internet connection is slow or non-existent.

Microsoft also announced last night that their Mediaroom 2.0 software will be available for IPTV operators to start testing next month. Mediaroom is the world’s most deployed IPTV platform, powering such operators as AT&T U-Verse. The new version will allow providers to offer on-demand TV service to Windows 7 based PCs using Windows Media Center as well as on the Xbox 360. They can also offer on-demand programming to any web-browser on the PC or Mac, as well as compatible smartphones in the near future.

Mediaroom 2.0 will also add support for Silverlight and IIS Smooth Streaming.

Again, if you’d like to watch the entire keynote, you can do so over on the Microsoft site, but I wouldn’t suggest it. As more information comes out of CES that is Microsoft related (or if I see something interesting that comes from someone else) you can be sure to read about it here later this week.