Sun Memory

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Cloud Storage has Advantages, But Offsite Not For Everyone

Technology makes it easier than ever to accumulate data and harder to decide how to preserve it all. Do-it-yourself storage means investing in hardware and choosing a physical location for it. Farming out the job means trusting a third party to take care of it and make it easily available.

Businesses are turning to cloud computing at a fast rate, but it might not be the top choice for everybody. The cloud basically means relying on someone else’s servers for some combination of data storage, operating systems and applications. Research analyst International Data Corp. measured revenue from public information technology cloud services at $72.9 billion by 2015.

The advantage for small and medium-size businesses is being able to buy the capacity only as needed. With cloud computing, a business like that “can dial up a 20-lane highway of network capacity for its two busiest hours of the day, and scale back to two lanes of capacity for the other 22 hours,” said Steven Ostrowski, spokesman for the Computing Technology industry Association in Downers Grove, Ill. “The pay-as-you-go cloud model eliminates the startup costs associated with purchasing, maintaining and upgrading new IT hardware and software.”

Self-reliance

Not every business as its head in the cloud. If you lose your internet connection, you are dead in the water: Contracts should spell out how much downtime is acceptable, and what happens if the provider exceeds it.

Then there’s the question of moving data back and forth. If the data changes a lot from day to day, it can take a lot of time to update files stored off-site. Robb Moore, CEO of IoSafe Inc. in Auburn, suggest asking a third-party provider whether it will even accept a terabyte.

Depending on the connection, “It could take three to six months to push it up to the cloud, and it would take about the same amount of time to pull it back,” he said.

Let’s go to the Tape

Data storage can still involve old fashion media such as magnetic tape stored on a shelf. Some tapes can hold 500 GB’s, said Rob Rets, vice president of DataSafe. Putting a tape in a warehouse is much cheaper than storing it online, he said. For data that won’t change often and doesn’t need to be reviewed frequently, it might be the most practical storage option.

Data storage still also involves a good amount of old fashioned paper (Remember paper?) “A lot pager storage is for original documents, especially in the legal field,” Reis said. The amount in storage hasn’t changed much in recent years, though customers retrieve it less often now, most likely because they have electronic copies somewhere else, he said.

Data storage should never be a single solution, said IoSafe’s Moore. His company encourages customers to take a 3-2-1 approach: Keep at least three copies of data, on a least two different devices, one of which is either disaster proof or off-site. Moore keeps five copies of his own data.

The idea is that if the primary data storage fails, a company will have at least one backup. And if the backup fails, the company should still have the primary source.

“The one day you forget to take it off site will be the day you have the fire” Moore said. “It’s just Murphy’s Law coming into play.”

This story is brought to you by ACS who can supply all your hardware data center needs. Want a data center in a box? Or just need a deal on Sun/Oracle upgrade. We have solutions ranging from brand new Sun, HP or IBM servers to the latest storage from EMC, Hitachi Data Systems, HP or Dell. Call Steve Harshbarger at 408-288-7300 and find out if the cloud is the right solution for you.

Asset Conversion Services is a leading computer peripheral suppliers. Asset Conversion Services is offering wide array of Sun Memory like Sun Fire Memory, Sun Enterprise M4000, Sun Enterprise M5000, Sun Blade Memory, Sun Enterprise Memory, Sun SPARC Enterprise Memory, Sun Fire Memory and many more. Asset Conversion Services also buy and sell sun memory, Sun Computers, Sun/Oracle. If you have any question regarding this article you can reach Steve Harshbarger at Asset Conversion Services [email protected] or call him directly-- 408-288-7300

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Asset Conversion Services signs up Maintech for server coverage!

San Jose CA. 5/23/2012

Steve Harshbarger of Asset Conversion Services was quoted as saying “To select a service provider for our customers we did an exercise that asked several questions and used these questions as a measuring stick when researching different providers. The question we asked first was------does this vendor have the Experience to understand my customers business needs and operate in their environment, and is that experience verifiable? Do they place Quality in service delivery and account management at the top of their deliverables list? Do they have the Resources in their service delivery infrastructure to meet our customers SLAs? Do they take Ownership of my customers operating environment without engaging in finger pointing?

We have worked with several maintenance companies in the past, but with varying results. What we were looking for was a company that could handle our customer list. Asset Conversion Services has companies all over the world and we were looking for the most consistent and accurate coverage we could find. We have worked with larger maintenance companies than Maintech, but felt that sometimes those companies got so caught up in their own red tape that getting a quote from them took an act of congress.

At ACS we are extremely proud of our response to customers and understand the concept that time is money. We will even confess that this extreme attention to service does not allow us to have the luxury of patience…and our partners find out fast that we need very quick response times. We are all about retaining our customer base and building on those relationships to grow new business. One of the ways we retain our customer base is through excellent maintenance services. With more companies moving to collocation facilities there is large need for service providers to meet the need.

We also needed a company that knew how to service Sun Microsystems legacy products as that is one of our core competency product lines. When Sun does not have a particular Sun legacy product in hand they often will refer us to one of their customers to provide Sun memory or Sun CPU’s, power supplies and storage products. When you operate in a niche market you better have the big picture in mind, because if they need the Sun product to be installed and Sun will not do it, than a backup plan is mandatory.

Besides being able to handle Sun Maintenance contracts, we needed a service provider that could also tackle HP, IBM and Dell. Even though we specialize in Sun/Oracle new and used products, we also do a fair amount of business with new and used HP, IBM and Dell server products.

So, when it came time to answer all our questions with Maintech the answer was a solid “Yes” on all counts. We found that with Maintech you get an IT Infrastructure Services company that has spent nearly 40 years refining its product and market focus and building depth into its service delivery infrastructure. You get a company whose business philosophy is simple and straightforward.”

Asset Conversion Services is a leading supplier of Sun memory. Asset Conversion Services is offering wide array of Sun Memory like Sun T4 memory, Sun Enterprise M4000, Sun M5000 Memory, Sun Blade Memory, Sun Enterprise Memory, Sun SPARC Enterprise Memory, Sun Fire Memory and many more. Asset Conversion Services also buy used sun memory and sell used sun memory, Sun Computers, Sun/Oracle. If you have any question regarding this article you can reach Steve Harshbarger at Asset Conversion Services [email protected] or call him directly-- 408-288-7300

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CCSR - Collaborative Corporate Social Responsibility

Asset Conversion Services (ACS) in collaboration with Oracle and HP has joined together so they can bring more value, save time and support their customers in a more meaningful economic and environmentally conscious manner. ACS has invested in turning out high quality fully specs legacy Sun and HP servers that can fill the need for these server by today’s IT data center technicians.  This is a single example of one way that collaboration can fulfill business and social needs, using the data center as a case in point. In 2007, Fleishman-Hillard and the National Consumers League conducted a survey to examine the American public opinion of corporate social responsibility (CSR).Their results showed that “companies’ charitable and philanthropic giving is no longer enough to impress consumers. Perhaps it is now viewed as a standard expectation that consumers have – a bare minimum requirement – to even be considered as a socially responsible company.” These days they have to do more than make donations to build a good reputation among consumers, especially in the age of the Internet, where everyone can know everything about any company in an instant. Therefore, a growing number of companies are developing and publicizing new responsible programs. But, as FastCompany.com said last week, they’re finding it difficult to share their story without disclosing their secrets to their competitors. “That’s why Nike has partnered with nine organizations, including Yahoo, Best Buy, Creative Commons, IDEO, Mountain Equipment Co-Op, nGenera, Outdoor Industry Association, salesforce.com and 2degrees to form the GreenXchange (GX).” According to the Web site, the GX “is an innovative revolutionary partnership that brings together companies, people and ideas to create sustainable change that affects us all. “Transformational change will happen when individuals are willing to share ideas, work together and seek solutions that create more efficient, more profitable and more meaningful business opportunities/models.” Hmm. Sounds like people working together to develop and implement new ideas that create value. In this case, of course, the valuable results are more sustainable ways of working. With GX, and other similar crowd sourcing sites, like Eco-Patent Commons and Sustainability Consortium, the corporate world is taking collective responsibility for its role in saving the planet, at a time when many of our global heads of state seem less inclined to do so collaboratively. As Sustainable Strategist for Mohawk Group Lewis Perkins recently said in a Forbes.com interview with my colleague Renee Hopkins of Innosight, “what I’m seeing as the biggest mistake for established companies is trying to reinvent the wheel. Now is a tremendous time for partnerships because budgets are limited, venture capital is limited and executive leadership is focusing more and more on immediate returns.” According to NYTimes.com, “the program will include both patented technologies and forums for continuing exchange of innovations such as Best Buy’s system for rating the sustainability of a supply chain. Companies that contribute patents to the GX will have the option of charging users a fixed annual licensing fee and can also restrict any licensing by rivals for competitive use. In addition, even if no annual fee is charged, patent users must register so there is a record of who is using what technology.” TreeHugger.com said these licensing options “might mean that more companies will take part and that, in the end, more green patents will be more wildly used.” For years entrepreneurs in the United States have been calling for more lenient intellectual property laws. “In some remarkable ways, large enterprises like Walmart, Tesco and others can be as powerful as public officials and regulators in establishing policy and criteria that the supply chain and the rest of the business community needs to meet. Walmart can act a whole lot faster than the EPA, and their edicts and mandates can’t be challenged under provisions for being overbroad or burdensome,” CEO of strategy consulting firm GreenOrder, Andrew Shapiro, said in the Forbes.com interview. In other words, GX gives patent owners the opportunity to choose whether they want to share their patents with others for the greater good. So the optional licensing fee allows companies to continue to make money of their inventions. Imagine the possibilities of bringing together the best minds from the best organizations for the purpose of accomplishing common goals. “Corporations are finally realizing that sustainability is the key to thriving in the coming decades,”FastCompany.com said. “And they will fail or succeed together.” I look forward to following the results. This week’s article is brought to you by Asset Conversion Services and the makers of Sun/Oracle Memory and Servers. ACS was first on the scene with the new Sun T4 series servers and memory. This week they are going to be active on two front’s solidification of Sun Memory for the M5000 and M4000 64 GB memory kit and also the complete line of Sun T4 memory, which includes the following: 8GB   (2 slots occupied) Oracle Sun Product Number: 7101696 (2 x 4GB DIMMs) DDR3-1333, PC3-10600, Registered, ECC, 1.35V, 240-pin, 2 Ranks 16GB   (2 slots occupied) Oracle Sun Product Number: 7101697 (2 x 8GB DIMMs) DDR3-1333, PC3-10600, Registered, ECC, 1.35V, 240-pin, 2 Ranks 32GB   (2 slots occupied) Oracle Sun Product Number: 7101698 (2 x 16GB DIMMs) DDR3-1066, PC3-8500, Registered, ECC, 1.35V, 240-pin, 4 Ranks Contact ACS at www.assetcs.com or call 408-288-7300 Asset Conversion Services is a leading supplier of Sun memory. Asset Conversion Services is offering wide array of Sun Memory like Sun T4 memory, Sun Enterprise M4000, Sun Enterprise M5000, Sun Blade Memory, Sun Enterprise Memory, Sun SPARC Enterprise Memory, Sun Fire Memory and many more. Asset Conversion Services also buy and sell sun memory, Sun Computers, Sun/Oracle. If you have any question regarding this article you can reach Steve Harshbarger at Asset Conversion Services [email protected] or call him directly-- 408-288-7300

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Follow Splunk Into The Big Data Revolution That Changes The Jobs Equation

A recent AP story opens with a sobering line: “The college class of 2012 is in for a rude welcome to the world of work.”  Opportunities are weak, the article notes, and those with ‘soft’ degrees are having the most trouble.  Hardly news to the millennial generation.  And it’s no comfort that their parents (count me amongst them) faced the same type of dire job market when they graduated.

We boomers didn’t know it then, but good times were just around the corner. The burgeoning revolution of personal computing and the Internet (together with favorable government policies) unleashed several decades of growth that was bullish not just for the tech dweebs that built the revolution, but for the broad economic engine that the revolution unleashed.  Intel, Microsoft, AOL, Oracle, Sun, Apple and others changed the world.

 And it was not as if there weren’t already big competing tech companies at that time, like IBM, HP, Digital Equipment, Burroughs, Sperry Rand, Control Data, Wang, and many others (many gone now).   But much of the new hardware and software that made computing personal – - made it the domain of everyone — emerged from the new guys on the block.  It fundamentally changed and expanded our economy creating growth and jobs across the board.

That was then.  Can such a thing possibly happen again? You bet.  Bear with me as we find the evidence in a specific company like Splunk.

Splunk [NASDAQ:SPLK], founded just eight years ago and expected to hit $100 million revenues this year, went public this past Thursday in a smoking hot IPO with its stock doubling that day giving it a market value of $3 billion.   Splunk is amongst the first of many more such companies and IPOs yet to come, riding the wave of the Big Data revolution.

First, for those not daily surfing the techno-sphere, Splunk’s magic sauce is that they are “Google for machine data.”  That’s how Erik Swan, Splunk’s CTO and co-founder, presciently described it in an interview.   All machines and most especially the machines that comprise the entire information economy, generate staggering quantities of data about what they’re doing.  Data traffic is counted, logged, and categorized by all manner of machines in a network.

Consider what’s under the hood of your screen right now.  There is a nearly indescribable quantity of equipment, devices, connections, servers, routers, links, switches, microprocessors, drivers, illuminators and more working so that you can read some text on your screen.  All of that equipment – times billions in the network – must work in concert, perfectly and constantly to render your screen.  Much of that machinery is tracking and logging (or reporting) about it’s own operations – not about the content per se, but about how the content is being managed.

Machine data about the Internet is growing at a faster rate than even the explosive growth of information on the Internet, the people data.   And beyond the sheer quantity of machine data, there is the disordered nature of how it is generated, accessed and stored that makes control and forensics daunting.  Splunk is about taking this kind of big data to an entirely new level of functionality, much as Apple [NASDAQ:AAPL] and Google [NASDAQ:GOOG] did in the previous two information revolutions.

 The creation of intuitively simple systems/software that lets people manipulate structured data is what kicked off the first computing revolution.   Accessible computing (think Apple’s operating system, quickly copied by Microsoft [NASDAQ:MSFT) enabled the Internet to balloon, quickly growing into a massive domain.  Then came the search engines to make sense of that vast landscape of unstructured information – Netscape, Yahoo, Explorer, Firefox, and Google.

 The Google family of companies came up with entirely new software and search paradigms to make sense of the unstructured Web.  There’s no Dewey Decimal system for you to find a book on the Web.  Everyone knows how easy it is to just “Google it” to find something on the Internet.

Splunk lets companies Google search what’s going on under the hood of the Web in order to improve the operation of the Big Data machinery itself.   For the machines that make the Net, and for machines in general, gleaning trends and seeing patterns in unstructured data is deeply useful for improving operations, reliability, costs, security and even safety.  And, it is also profoundly useful for seeing patterns about what the humans using the machines are doing, planning and even thinking – what they’re clicking on, how long, how often, etc.

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Asset Conversion Services -----Moving up!

Steve Harshbarger of Asset Conversion Services stated “Recently we have seen a big up-tick in used Memory and used equipment sales. He attributed this increase in Sun Memory business was due partly because of the recent introduction by Sun/Oracle new T4 series servers. He also believed that their use a Splunk (a big-data analytical tool) has helped them zero in on the buying habits of companies that buy used Cisco, Sun and HP IT gear.  “We now know where to post our used equipment and more importantly, we now know what key words trigger the need for used IT equipment.  In the past, when going after fortune 500 end users we were really just doing massive amounts of outbound marketing, to try and find the right person (basically the shot-gun approach). Now we are zeroing in on specific company titles that would handle the purchasing of used equipment. In the old days, a person would just ask for purchasing and get sent to a place to leave a message and phone number, or what I refer to as the cellular circular file.

There is a lot more to sales now than there was when I first started. Just having product knowledge and the willingness to make 100 phone calls in a day, attend seminars, do mass outbound email and print marketing, just does not cut it anymore or even work.  If your sales person is not a full on Social Media Sales Strategist, they are going to be left in the dust by the sales person who knows how to make blogging, web development and social media work to their advantage. Outbound marketing is dead, inbound marketing is now the medium for sales success.”

Asset Conversion Services maximizes it small sales force by taking advantage of the new collaborative approach to inbound sales and marketing efforts. They are number one on Google rankings in several key work searches and are using those rankings to increase business; especially with leads for used equipment coming into them on a daily basses. One of the important results of using Splunk and inbound marketing efforts is the switch from just selling to the broker market, to now getting leads directly from the end-user. “When you can work directly with the end-user and cut out the middle-man, there is a direct benefit to the bottom line. Working directly with fortune 500 companies has allowed us to get them better pricing with the additional benefit of providing better service because of up-to-date feedback from their engineers and buyers. 

With direct market feedback from the end-users, we can use that intelligence to buy either used or new IT equipment in a ‘just in time’ manner. After talking to HP, EDS and Nike, we know what they like to buy and we can better predict their buying patterns. For HP they like us to hold a good inventory of DL380’s. For EDS, they buy legacy Sun servers and M4000 M5000 64 GB memory kits.” 

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Asset Conversion Services gets a leg up at EDS

Steve Harshbarger of Asset Conversion Services stated “That because of our Sun Memory line which encompasses one of the only supplies of the 64GB memory option for the Sun M4000 and M5000 (SELX2D1P (8 x 8GB DIMMs 371-4476) and the SELX2D1Z (8 x 8GB DIMMs as well as the Memory Board 541-0545, they were able to get a foothold at EDS in Plano Texas. That led to a PO for Sun X7058A 280R Memory, than Sun Hard drive orders and finally we started getting orders for Sun T6320 Servers. Eventually we went full circle and once again was asked if we had any legacy Sun Memory i.e. the Sun X7404A 2GB Memory kits.  In the movie “Field of Dreams” there is a line that keeps repeating “build it and they will come”, well we did not build it, but we did obtain and hold onto a great deal of hard to find Sun Memory with the hopes that someday someone would need a Sun Memory part that no one else had.  In this instance ‘no one’ was Oracle and all of its suppliers for hard to find Sun Memory parts and legacy Sun servers.

Embolden by their early success with Sun Memory and Sun Servers at EDS, Harshbarger went on to say that “we started to put two and two together and thought why not just go after all the HP business which includes HP380 servers and Cisco networking gear.  HP is very focused on customer service….. as long as we had good prices and could get the equipment to the customer within 3 to 4 days we were golden.  Sometimes that meant, building a system from scratch and testing it for 24 hours before shipping. We are just as hard-nosed about customer service as HP is and so it was a good match for HP and us.”

We asked Harshbarger what was next up for Asset Conversion Services and he went on to say “We need to shore up our networking line. We have Cisco, Brocade, Nortel and Juniper, but are looking to obtain contract agreements with Avaya, Shore Tel, Force 10 Networks and HP Procurve. We want customers to feel that they can depend on us for all of their data center needs. What is equally important is that the New and Pre-Owned Network Products and Telecommunications Equipment that we have in stock are ACS Certified.  That means all the product comes with a limited lifetime end-user warranty and that all the internal parts, down to the bare boards have been gone over by a technician and been tested and scrutinized for guaranteed performance.”

Comprehensive ACS inspection:

Ensure arriving equipment has no shipping damage

Make sure internal and external serial numbers match

Inspect manufacturer markings and labels to ensure they are intact

Ensure tamper labels are intact

    Harshbarger went on to say that there is a lot that I am not at liberty here in this short time frame to share with you that goes into the handling of our equipment, but you can see after 22 years, it is evident that we are in it for the long haul.”

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Where does your used Sun equipment come from?

Asset Conversion Services equipment comes from Sun and reaches us via indirect channels. Many manufacturers engage in “dumping” product to meet periodic financial targets, and these products oftentimes find their way onto the open market. In addition, the economic forces and virtualization technologies have caused many businesses to shrink their data center footprint, and if they can’t get a fair price from the OEM, they sell it on the open market, sometimes to us. Some products come off of lease and find their way into the open market as well. Our global network of companies and contacts, combined with our experienced broker personnel, enable us to provide customers with great prices on Sun hardware and Sun memory. We also have an expansive warehouse for storing equipment, and we can de-manufacture systems for parts and upgrades for customers, and sometimes we assemble them into fully-configured systems. Sun Workstations are globally known to be the high-end workstations of the industry (especially with the new T4 servers and T4 memory line). We offer new T4 Sun/Oracle servers and the complete T4 Sun memory line. In addition we have used Sun workstations that include warrantees to ensure you of long-term service and peak performance, at unexpectedly low price points. Choose from the popular Sun Ultra, Sun Blades, Sun Ray, Sun Java configurations and the new T4-1, T4-2 and the T4-4. OEM upgrades options and replacement parts are also available, including the M4000 M5000 64 GB memory kit with the memory board expansion riser. Asset Conversion Service (ACS) system builders assemble custom Sun workstations configurations to meet your specification for UNIX and Linux operation systems. ACS is a fast turn-around company that gives you shipping option designed to get you up and running as soon as possible. We have everything in one place; there is no need to deal with multiple suppliers when you can just let ACS handle all your Sun server and Sun Memory needs. You get DOA protection on used and refurbished Sun servers and Sun Memory parts. Workstations are hot-tested before packing and carry our standard or extended warranties. New systems include the full manufacturer’s warranty and carful packing and crating insures your Sun, HP, IBM and Dell servers will arrive damage free. ACS is also proud to announce its “Data Center decommission program”. It’s not uncommon for companies that have been in business for a while to have hundreds of legacy applications that deliver limited value--but still involve significant operational and maintenance costs. Many of those organizations are now asking some key questions: Why continue to waste money maintaining applications that no longer add value to the business? Why not redirect that money to where it will benefit the organization? But retiring legacy applications can be tricky. Some are reusable. Some need to be retired. How do you tell which is which? Do you retire all the data or just the data required for business needs and regulatory compliance? How do you preserve the business context of the data? How do you secure it? How do you access it after it’s been retired? Call ACS for decommission quotes and also quotes for new, used or refurbished Sun equipment, call ACS at 408-288-7200 or email [email protected].

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Asset Conversion Services Support of the Cloud

To offer true customer value in the cloud. Asset Conversion Services hardware offerings to the cloud must be broad, complete, and able to fully integrate with other environments. For more than 7 years Asset Conversion Services has provided complete end-to end hardware solutions across the entire operations lifetime. That includes keeping up with new T4 Sun Memory as well as HP, Dell and IBM memory to go along with Sun, HP, IBM and Dell, add storage and networking infrastructure and you have a complete hardware package to draw upon.

The right cloud hardware solution can offer CFOs in-depth technical expertise, lower IT cost, faster business returns, and peace of mind. But how does a CFO choose the right supplier? Executives should look for a vendor that has spent considerable energy and resources in making its hardware cloud solutions enterprise-worthy.

More customers are looking to support their businesses as a whole, including their manufacturing; customer and financial systems are now in the cloud. They choose Asset Conversion Services because the company’s hardware cloud offerings are enterprise-ready, scalable, highly reliable, available and interoperable with the rest of the IT infrastructure.

Expanding Data

Asset Conversion Services offers big data solutions to its customers for a reason. According to IDG, humans created 150 exabytes of data in 2005 and that number grew eight times to 1,200 exabytes by 2010. Researchers estimate that enterprise data grows nearly 60 percent per year (90 percent of that being unstructured) and the average amount of data stored per company is 200 terabytes.

Asset Conversion Services has invested large amounts of money in data and memory research they continue to offer both a large variety of Sun memory solutions as well as Hybrid data using both hard drives and flash memory to store data in a more economical and functional package. The reason they took this on is that four trends are driving the need for more memory and storage; detailed data more frequently across every customer interaction; the prevalent use of multimedia; the widespread adaption of social media; and the rollout of intelligent sensors embedded in physical devices that can sense, create and communicate data. For instance, a four engine jumbo jet can create 640 terabytes of data in just one crossing of the Atlantic Ocean. If you multiply that by 25,000-plus flights a day, you get a sense of the amount of data that is involved in insuring flight safety alone.

Asset Conversion Services is looking at a myriad of storage hardware solutions that could impact data delivery in their cloud offerings of the future. One solution would be to deploy the Oracle Big Data Appliance, which was outlined in October at OpenWorld, is an engineered system much like Exadata, but at a lower price point. How low? The big data appliance will run $450,000 with 12 percent hardware and software maintenance, which works out to be $54,000. Analysts had been expecting the Oracle’s big data system to fall in the $750,000 range. In October, Cowen analyst Peter Goldmacher estimated that the big data appliance will run about $750,000, significantly less than the $8 million a fully loaded Exadata box would run. More news of this will be coming in May 2012. For more information about this article email Steve Harshbarger at [email protected] or call 408-288-7300.

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Asset Conversion Services now Stocking Oracle T4-1 Server

Steve Harshbarger of Asset Conversion Services was quoted as saying “In the last press release I mentioned that we would start our foray into Sun/Oracle T4 platforms after we had the memory in stock. We now have the memory and have just started ordering the T4-1 Sun/Oracle server. The reason we like the T4-1 is that it packs a lot of power in a very cost efficient platform that deliver record performance on a highly scalable and sure platform.”

When asked how it stacked up against the competition, Harshbarger said “The T4 has 5x improvement in single threaded performance and it also has high overall system throughput, but since we are memory guys first, what we appreciated the most was that the SPARC T4-1 is equipped with one SPARC T4 processor and 16 DIMM slots, which can support a total of 256GB of memory when populated with 16GB DIMMs. Another nifty feature and one that saves money while also speeding up performance was the highly expandable internal storage network connectivity as the server has room for a combination of eight hard disk drives or solid state drives and six PCI Express card slots (Up to eight 300 GB or 600 GB GB 10000 rpm 2.5-inch SAS HDD drives or 100GB or 300GB SSD drives).”

Harshbarger went on to say “These machines are so feature rich, and Oracle and Sun seemed to buy into the old adage “give them more than they expected if you want to build customer loyalty”, because included are four 1GbE ports and up to two 10GvE XAUI ports. They also included at no additional cost, Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris, which support both Solaris 10 and Solaris 11.  To complete the free add-ons is Solaris Containers, Oracle Solaris ZFS and Electronic Prognostics.”

We thought we would quiz Harshbarger on what he thought Solaris Containers were, since we were not entirely sure ourselves….this is what he had to say, “Solaris Containers is a usage of  system level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems, that came into play in 2004. A Solaris Container uses resource controls and also the boundary separation that is provided by zones. This allows the servers to act like they are virtual and isolated. System Administrators like it because they can reduce cost by providing the same protections of separate machines on a single machine.”

Harshbarger wanted us to list the memory for the T4-1 machine, but told us that the only way to get up to 256GB on the T4-1 server was to use the 2x16GB DIMMs.

8GB (2 slots occupied) Oracle Sun Product Number: 7101696 (2 x 4GB DIMMs)

DDR3-1333, PC3-10600, Registered, ECC, 1.35V, 240-pin, 2 Ranks

16GB (2 slots occupied) Oracle Sun Product Number: 7101697 (2 x 8GB DIMMs)

DDR3-1333, PC3-10600, Registered, ECC, 1.35V, 240-pin, 2 Ranks

32GB (2 slots occupied) Oracle Sun Product Number: 7101698 (2 x 16GB DIMMs)

DDR3-1066, PC3-8500, Registered, ECC, 1.35V, 240-pin, 4 Ranks

[sun-memory-blog]

Best of Breed…Sun Microsystems T4 computing platform

David E Kelly recently wrote “In 2010 Oracle committed to delivering new SPARC chips and server hardware every 12 to 18 months. Over a five-year period, this SPARC roadmap called for improvement of 4 times the cores, 32 times the threads, 16 times the memory capacity, 40 times the database transactions, and 10 times the Java operations per second. So far, on the ground results exceeded those commitments. Instead of what was promised the SPARC and Oracle Solaris roadmap, Oracle is delivering more. The driving time to major SPARC milestones has gotten shorter, and with the recent release of the SPARC T4 chip, Oracle is providing better-than-promised performance.” Scott Myers of Sun/Oracle said “So far, our T4-based test system, a SPARC T4-2 server, is outperforming our (SPARC Enterprise) M5000 nicely. We’re pretty impressed with it.” Another advantage that Myers sees in the SPARC T4 chip is its improved single-thread performance capabilities. “Our T3 based-based systems, worked great for Web servers, but the T4 chip has improved single-thread performance so we’re running databases on the T4-based systems, and they’re performing every bit as well, if not better, than our current M5000 systems,” says Myers.  Eventually, Myers sees T4-based systems taking over the solutions running on the company’s SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers. “it’s a more energy-efficient chip, and it can handle more processes” says Myers. “It’s a revolutionary design with on-chip cryptographic acceleration and built-in 10 gigabit Ethernet, which improves performance, throughput, and I/O” The company is also looking forward to Oracle Solaris 11, with all its new features. “There’s so much good stuff baked into Oracle Solaris 11,” says Myers. “We’re really excited about moving to it.” “One thing that we’ve really appreciated about SPARC and Oracle Solaris is that over the course of all the upgrades and server switchovers, we’ve done since 1998, we’ve only needed about an hour of planned downtime for each upgrade, “says Myers. “We’ve never had an issue with the application binary compatibility, thanks to the Oracle Solaris Guarantee Program. We’ve never had a single issue migrating from Solaris 2.6 through Oracle Solaris 10 with different SPARC chipsets. Everything has just gone flawlessly.” For Asset Conversion Services this information validated our approach to continue to support the M5000 servers with the 64GB memory kit (SELX2D1Z  (8 x 8GB DIMMs 371-4476)   and the Memory Board  option 541-0545. Being one of the only sources for this memory has allowed us to be more-proactive in our approach to supporting Sun/Oracle “Harshbarger said.” “We think it can only help Sun/Oracle to have a silent partner….have their backs.” “There is bound to be some blind spots for any operation and Oracle is no exception, it protects them as well as us to fill in the blank spots.” Asset Conversion Services move into the new T4 server line is one that the company was committed to as soon as Oracle made the new platform announcement. ACS has started with supplying T4 memory for its customers following with T4-2 and T4-4 server offerings. For further information call 408-288-7300 or simply email Steve Harshbarger at [email protected]

[sun-memory-blog]

Asset Conversion Services now supports the Sun T4 platform

Steve Harshbarger of Asset Conversion Services was quoted as saying “as soon as Sun/Oracle announced the launch of the T4-4 SPARC Super Cluster we knew we had to support it 100%. We like what Sun/Oracle is doing. Not only do they come out with a new general purpose computing platform, but they come out with one that leap-frogs their closest competitor (IBM) in the collocation/Cloud environment.  We were just blown away with the T4 processor which is up to five times faster for single-threaded workloads than the SPARC T3 processor that it replaces.  What is really cool is that fact that you can get 16 eight-core processors and 4 terabytes of memory in a single rack. We are hardware guys and that kind of horsepower was just too much to ignore.  If Sun/Oracle keeps up this aggressive approach as we think they will, I see them easily staying on top of the mountain for some time to come. IBM has not really taken the cloud as seriously as Sun/Oracle, approaching it as more of a gimmick to market hardware and software.  That may have been true a couple of years ago, but not so today. In fact Sun/Oracle is so sure that the cloud, hybrid cloud and custom cloud are becoming standard talking points for solving many key business objectives, that they have launched the first Cloud OS with Solaris 11. How can you not get on-board when a company displays that kind of vision and that kind of commitment?”

When asked how Asset Conversion Services will kick off their support of the T4 Sun platform, Harshbarger said “ We will immediately begin selling the T4 server in all it configurations, but one of the ways we often go to market is by first having the T4 Sun memory in place before we start bringing in the T4 chassis. So with that in mind this is what our first offering will be, to support the Sun/Oracle T4 platform: 

7101696 8GB Memory Expansion (2 x 4GB) option

7014642 [c] 4GB DDR3-1333/pc3-10600 DIMM

7101697 16GB Memory Expansion (2 x 8GB) option

7014640 [C] 8GB DDR3-1333/PC3-10600 DIMM

7101698 32GB Memory Expansion (2 x 16GB) option

7020577 [C] 16GB DDR3-1333/pc3-10600 DIMM

7101696 8GB Memory Expansion (2 x 4GB) option

7014642 [c] 4GB DDR3-1333/PC3-10600 DIMM

7101697 16GB Memory Expansion (2 x 8GB) Option

7014640 [c] 8GB DDR3-1333/PC3-10600 DIMM

7101698 32GB Memory Expansion (2 x 16GB) Option

7020577 [c] 16GB DDR3-1333/PC3-10600 DIMM

We have always launched the memory first as that is often overlooked by traditional suppliers of Sun/Oracle systems, plus that is how our company got started in the first place and it is just a well ingrained habit by now…. it works for us and it is something we have been doing for over 20 years.

We still support Sun M3000, M4000 and M5000 with all the memory configurations. We take pride in the fact that we are only one of a handful of companies that still keeps stock of the 64GB memory kit for MK4 and Mk5 Sun servers (SELX2D1Z  8 x 8GB DIMMs 371-4476) and the Memory Board  option 541-0545.  Asset Conversion services will continue to support legacy Sun Product as well as the new Sun T4 server line.”

[sun-memory-blog]

ACS announces second release of M4000 and M5000 memory

Asset Conversion Services announced that the demand of M4000 and M5000 memory was more than they bargained for and because of it; they ran out of stock of the memory and the memory boards in late January. When asked how they remedied this Harshbarger said “ We have a very special relationship with the manufacturer, and we are really good at begging, but seriously we knew if we could entice them with a large enough order, they would have a good enough reason to do a second run for us. So in late January they made a run of the 64GB memory kit for the M4000 and M5000 servers using the 8x8GB configuration SELX2D1P ( 8 x 8GB DIMMs 371-4476). We also ordered a run of the Memory Board 541-0545).  Obviously it is a little risky pulling the trigger on a large memory run, so that is a last resort. We supplement our inventory by buying up Sun memory from brokers and re-sellers who have Sun original memory. We keep our eyes and ears open for great deals or sometimes we take memory as form of payment for bills past due. You have to be creative, you cannot always think with the left side the brain to get a job done. We are good at thinking outside of the box and in my opinion companies that are not open to that approach are not going to make it in this economy.”

Harshbarger of Asset Conversion Services acknowledges the fact that they are working in a niche market and need to expand their influence in other areas. Harshbarger explained “We have been pretty much tied solid to the Sun Microsystems Memory and server world for over 22 years, and we will continue to source and expand our Sun Memory and Sun Servers distribution efforts. However, we recently gained a very good foothold in the HP marketplace and will allocate and hire more manpower to exploit that area as well. This will not impede our efforts to support our Sun Memory, Sun CPU’s and Sun Server divisions as well as keep a substantial stock of Sun Memory.”

 All memory That ACS sell comes with a lifetime warranty and most can ship the same day that the order is processed! Asset Conversion Services (ACS) offers a choice of Sun bar-coded original memory or third party solutions.

ACS grants all government and educational institutions automatic Net30 terms with a PO. The following is the list of Sun Microsystems Memory that Asset Conversion Services carries:

 Sun Blade Memory

Sun Enterprise Memory

Sun SPARC Enterprise Memory

Sun Fire Memory

Sun Java Workstation Memory

Sun Netra Memory

Sun SPARC Memory

Sun Ultra SPARC Memory

[sun-memory-blog]

Sun/Oracle no longer support M4000 and M5000 64GB memory upgrade

An insider at Sun/Oracle revealed today that the 64 GB memory kit and memory board (SELX2D1P (8 x 8GB DIMMs 371-4476) and the SELX2D1Z (8 x 8GB DIMMs and the Memory Board 541-0545) will no longer be available. The Sun insider went on to reveal that the supply chain was the main culprit, and as of now, only the 32gb memory upgrades for the M4000 and M5000 will be available from Sun/Oracle.

Steve Harshbarger went on to say that while that is not particularly great news, there is a limited supply of the 64 GB upgrades available and the 64 GB upgrades available from Asset Conversion Services. Harshbarger added “Servicing older Sun Microsystems servers is part of our core business and over the years we have maintained good stock on some hard to find items because of our generous Sun trade-in policy”.  Asked how long their stock will last;  Harshbarger had this to say “ depends on the supply chain, right now we see no movement from their current supplier, if we become the only supplier of the 64gb upgrade, then we are looking at weeks instead of months before we are out completely”.

[sun-memory-blog]

ACS Announces ‘Memory That Works’ Data Center Memory

When asked to explain the term ‘Memory that Works’ Asset Conversion Services spokesman Steve Harshbarger went on to explain “Memory that Works is memory that ACS has plugged into real servers and tested. We keep on hand Sun, IBM and HP servers to test all the latest memory as well as older systems that can test legacy products. We test Sun original memory as well as third party offerings (if that is what our clients prefer) to make sure that they have memory that can be relied upon in their data centers. Our memory comes with a full warranty, not limited like most memory suppliers now offer. We do that for OEM as well as third party.”

When asked how they can realistically offer that kind of warranty, Harshbarger went on to explain: “Since we go to the trouble and expense to buy USA memory products, we feel we have more leeway to make the full memory warranty guarantee. We have greater control over our supplier when it is a US product and we both operate in the same time zone, so the lines of communication are readily available. Also, most of our clients are fortune 150 companies housed in the USA, so if we have to replace a memory module, we can do it cheaply and fast”.

When asked why are they making this announcement now, Harshbarger told us: “Even though we have had the seem policy since 1987, we have noticed more and more suppliers offering limited warranty. Some of this is due to the fact that a very large percentage of memory suppliers only offer third party memory made in the Pacific Rim, thus their return policies have to reflect that reality. When you supply memory to companies like HP, Sun and IBM and Cisco, they demand and get quite a few concessions, for us having life time warranty, it is just the price of doing business with fortune 150 companies”.

ACS offer to buy your used Sun servers,IBM servers and HP servers, yet you seem to focus quite a bit in the memory area, is there a reason for that? Harshbarger answered “yes, when you make the claim that you have the worlds best selection of older server memory, you better be able to back it up and buying used servers is one way we keep our shelves stocked with server memory. Although most of the used memory is going to support legacy products in the USA, quite a few of the older memory request come outside of the country. You would be surprised at the number of older Sun servers that are still up and running. We got a call for some Sparc 20 memory a couple of weeks ago, I was surprised we still had a few in stock, you just never know what someone will need. We also buy the used servers for the obvious replacement parts like CPU’s, fans, drives ET, so we don’t just mine them for memory alone.”