Q: A client of mine has a standard server rack with vertical rails they use with an HP server (28″ deep server). Will the VDSXD mount to a standard rack’s vertical rails?

Jason Kraus
Systems Engineer
Deloitte

A: The VDSXD should fit in any 19” rackmount cabinet. Typically, Dell servers of the type you describe use Rapid Rails to mount into cabinets with square untapped holes in the vertical rails. The Rapid Rails mount to the back side of the rail, so they don’t need rack “ears.” Most other components use the front side of the rail, so rack ears are required. The VDSXD does have the rack ears. The only thing you will need to mount them is the appropriate size rack screw, or cage nut and screw.

Thanks, The Ranger

Google’s reported interest in laying a new trans-Pacific underwater fiber optic cable is the most prominent sign that, after a six-year hiatus, companies are starting to build massive conduits for internet data.

After the market collapsed in 2001, telcos stopped laying new cables. With a glut of capacity on the market, Google bought “dark fiber” — unused fiber-optic cable connections — at discount rates. Google won’t disclose how much fiber capacity it owns, but experts concur that it is a significant amount.

Now, with internet usage surging, telcos and assorted consortia are once again investing in undersea infrastructure.

While Google would not offer specifics on the U.S.-to-Asia connection, known at this point as Unity, it did confirm its interest in undersea cable, saying in a statement that “additional infrastructure for the internet is good for users and there are a number of proposals to add a Pacific submarine cable.”

Indeed, all indications are that we’re on the verge of some very large investments, both in terms of new cables and upgrades, says Eric Schoonover, a senior analyst at TeleGeography.

His research firm notes that trans-Pacific cable is particularly prized at the moment for two reasons: The dearth of existing undersea cable in the region and the huge swell in bandwidth demand coming out of Asia.

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Microsoft Corp. has approached Facebook Inc. in recent weeks proposing an investment that would give Microsoft a 5% stake in the popular social-networking company, The Wall Street Journal reported.

With Microsoft willing to invest between $300 million and $500 million, the deal would value Facebook at $10 billion or more, the Journal reported, quoting anonymous sources yesterday.

Google Inc. has also expressed an interest in acquiring a Facebook stake recently, according to the Journal. Thus, Microsoft could find itself competing for Facebook’s attention with Google.

However, Facebook’s discussions with Google and Microsoft are in the early stages and could end up with no agreement with either suitor, according to the newspaper.

Reached by IDG News Service, Facebook, Microsoft and Google declined to comment.

Founded in February 2004, Facebook is one of the world’s most popular social-networking sites with about 42 million active users. Facebook has been growing strongly in the past 12 months. In December, it had about 12 million active users.

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Q: If I were going to use blank aluminum panels to mount components, could I have the mounting holes pre-drilled by the manufacturer?

Valdis Volovskis, from California State University, Northridge

A: This can be done. The only questions we would need to pass on to the manufacturer would be related to the complexity of the job and then size of the job. We would need a drawing of where the holes need to be placed, and an indication of how many panels you would want customized. Then we can provide a quote on what the customization effort will cost in terms of dollars and time.

Thanks, The Ranger

Intel gave the first public demonstration on Tuesday of a new generation of computer processors that significantly increase performance without consuming more power.

The company’s chief executive, Paul S. Otellini, told developers at its semiannual technology conference that Intel expected to finish the new family of chips in the second half of 2008, in keeping with its promise of a new chip architecture every other year. The new family of chips, code-named Nehalem, will use as many as eight processing cores and will offer better graphics and memory-control processing.

Intel had been late to respond to technological challenges in energy efficiency and heat consumption, and it has spent the better part of two years racing to catch up with its smaller but feisty competitor, Advanced Micro Devices.

A year ago, Intel announced a painful corporate overhaul, including a round of cost-cutting that reduced the work force by 10 percent and trimmed $5 billion in expenses. Since then, the company has begun to regain lost market share, and last week raised its sales forecast for this quarter.

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Ten months ago, Intel Corp. shipped its first quad-core Xeon server proc­essors. Last week, chip nemesis Advanced Micro Devices Inc. finally answered back.

AMD took the first step in an effort to recapture its momentum in the server market by launching a quad-core version of its Opteron chip. Company officials hope the new device, which was code-named Barcelona, will have the same kind of business impact that the original Opterons did after being released into a world dominated by Intel’s 32-bit chips four years ago.

Opteron, the first x86 chip able to run both 32- and 64-bit applications, was an immediate hit with server vendors as well as businesses and high-performance computing users. Its arrival posed the biggest challenge yet to Intel’s dominance of the Windows server market.

But Intel has responded to that challenge — sending AMD’s share of the server chip market into retreat, according to research firm IDC.

In the second quarter of 2006, AMD-based systems accounted for 15.3% of x86 server shipments worldwide compared with 84.7% for machines with Intel chips, IDC said. But in the same quarter this year, AMD’s share slipped to 14% as measured by IDC, compared with 86% for Intel.

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The S&P 1500 Computer Storage & Peripherals subindustry index has seen an improvement in its rolling 12-month price performance over the past few weeks. Year to date through Sept. 7, the Computer Storage & Peripherals subindustry index gained 7.3%, vs. a 2.8% rise for the S&P Composite 1500 index, which consists of the large-cap S&P 500, MidCap 400, and SmallCap 600 indexes.

Take a look at the accompanying chart, which shows this subindustry index’s rolling 12-month price performance compared with that for the S&P 1500. Any point above 100 indicates sector outperformance vs. the S&P 1500 over the prior year, while points below 100 show sector under-performance. The red line is a rolling nine-month moving average, while the two green bands indicate one standard deviation above and below the index’s longer-term mean relative strength.

There are 13 companies in the S&P Computer Storage & Peripherals subindustry index. Seven have S&P STARS rankings, of which four have 4 STARS (buy) or 5 STARS (strong buy) designations: EMC (EMC; $19; 5 STARS), Network Appliance (NTAP; $27; 4 STARS), QLogic (QLGC; $13; 4 STARS), and Western Digital (WDC; $22; 4 STARS).

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Open-source database provider MySQL AB on Wednesday said it is injecting features into its paid subscription support service, which is aimed at simplifying management for large companies with tens or hundreds of servers running the database.

They include replication monitoring and advisory tools for database administrators that help them manage multi-server “scaled-out” architectures, where a database runs on multiple servers at a time. That is a popular architecture for Web 2.0 companies and other firms using MySQL and other open-source software in so-called LAMP stacks on generic PC servers, as it is considered cheaper than rolling out a few, expensive servers with many processorss in the same box.

One new tool, for instance, automatically detects a company’s replication architecture and advises clients of best practices, according to Zack Urlocker, vice-president of marketing for the Cupertino, Calif. firm.

The new tools build upon MySQL’s Network Monitoring and Advisory Service, which the company unveiled last fall.

MySQL is also offering 30-day free trial subscriptions to MySQL Enterprise, its paid commercial service.

MySQL has acknowledged it is actively seeking a public offering of its stock. Urlocker declined to comment on the timing of its IPO.

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Advanced Micro Devices is counting on a new high-performance computer chip to hold on to hard-fought market share it has won from its principal rival, Intel.

The company, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., is set today to release the next generation in its Opteron line of processors for computer servers. The new chip puts four processors on one piece of silicon, a technology known as quad-core, allowing for faster calculating and greater energy efficiency, features sought by companies running large data centers and server farms.

Mario Rivas, executive vice president for computing products at A.M.D., said the latest Opteron chip is the company’s most significant new product in several years.

For Advanced Micro, the stakes are high, with the new chip arriving just as it struggles to maintain its hard-earned gains from Intel, its far larger rival. A.M.D.’s product introduction comes less than a week after Intel tried to upstage it with a server update of its own: new Xeon server processors that bundle together two chips that each have the circuitry of two processing engines.

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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Intel Corp on Monday raised its third-quarter revenue forecast and said gross margins would be at the high end of its target range, citing stronger-than-expected global demand for computing products.

The news underscored recent investor confidence in technology stocks, which have emerged as a safe haven amid troubles in the U.S. credit and mortgage markets.

Shares of Intel, the world’s largest microchip company, were up 0.75 percent at $25.66, after rising as much as 2.9 percent earlier on the Nasdaq. The stock has risen about 25 percent this year, whereas chief rival Advanced Micro Devices Inc

Princeton Tech Research analyst Paul Leming said Intel’s bullish forecast suggests the personal computer market has fared well in recent weeks despite concerns about consumer confidence due to troubles in the credit and housing markets.

“A portion of this certainly is market share gains momentum continuing to move over to Intel, and, secondarily, I think this has some positive things to say about the state of the PC market in the important back-to-school season,” he said.

Intel raised its forecast for third-quarter revenue to between $9.4 billion and $9.8 billion, from its previous range of $9.0 billion to $9.6 billion.

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