Links List 4.4.08

We talked about blade servers this week with Blade Watch’s Martin MacLeod, and at the same time saw this report from the Server Specs blog which points us to a website that allows users to compare and rate blade servers. Launching on Monday, the site lets users compare various components of the servers that fall under the umbrellas of platform functionality, environmental footprint, virtualization functions, reliability, serviceability and manageability, and deployment considerations.

Talk about a successful (or not) April Fool’s joke! On Tuesday, virtualization.com posted a story that Parallels had been purchased by Sun Microsystems. Unfortunately, the story was just an April Fool’s prank, but was not revealed before numerous blogs picked up on it.

VMBlog reports that Gartner says virtualization will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through 2012. Philip Dawson, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner says, “…as both server and PC virtualization become more pervasive, traditional IT infrastructure orthodoxy is being challenged and is changing the way business works with IT.”

Forbes also posted a story about how virtualization is heating up in a recession economy, but warns that companies should keep security concerns in mind. We would add the concern of downtime due to untested changes in complex virtualization environments, as we blogged about last year.

Troy DuMoulin expands on the Wizard of Oz story he eluded to in our interview series, and uses the yellow brick road as an analogy between ITIL v.2 and ITIL v.3.

The Wall Street Journal MarketBeat blog gives a prime example for how downtime affects business revenues: MEMC Electronic Materials shares fell 10%, after the company cut its first-quarter revenue forecast to $500 million from $560 million, due in part to extended downtime and maintenance issues at its Pasadena, Texas facility.

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Filed Under: Downtime, IT Operations, ITIL, Security, Virtualization