Network Storage

NETGEAR debuts four new Gigabit Ethernet Plus switches

NETGEAR has announced the availability of four new PoE+ Gigabit Ethernet Plus switches (GS305EP, GS305EPP, GS308EP, and GS308EPP). NETGEAR Plus switches provide the fundamental network management features that small businesses demand. Small and home-based business networks are expanding by adding power over ethernet IP-connected devices such as Voice-over-IP (VoIP) phones, IP cameras for surveillance, WiFi access points and many other applications. To provide businesses and home offices with even more control and security together with easy management over their expanding networks, an all-in-one solution which also provides power for these IP-based applications is crucial. To address this need for an affordable all-in-one solution, NETGEAR is introducing four new Gigabit Ethernet Plus switches with PoE+ power and essential management capabilities. Providing businesses and home office workers with uninterrupted PoE and PoE+ capabilities with advanced per port controls, GS308EP, GS305EP, GS305EPP and GS308EPP include simple management features like VLANs, QoS, port mirroring, and uninterruptable PoE to help optimize the performance and troubleshooting of business networks. Available at a minimal added cost over that of unmanaged switches, while offering the benefits of essential advanced network management, the Plus switches feature a new, modern, and intuitive business and consumer-friendly Graphical User Interface that is both browser and mobile friendly in 3 languages. “As businesses further develop their networks to provide IP-based solutions, they have a need for easy-to-use network management capabilities in a secure environment,” comments Richard Jonker, vice president of SMB product line management for NETGEAR. “These new PoE+ switches deliver on this capability, with the power to host IoT devices and wireless access points along with an intuitive graphical user interface for management while providing a secure environment with separated network segments over VLANs, all in a budget-friendly package.” With auto-sensing 10/100/1000 Mbps non-blocking Gigabit Ethernet ports with a total bandwidth of 10Gbps (5-port) and 16Gbps (8-port), these new Plus switches provide power budgets up to 123W for powerful PoE+ deployments and easy configuration of advanced features for the network. The new Plus switches deliver 4 or 8 PoE+ ports with 62W to 123W (model dependent) to provide power and network connectivity to PoE+ devices. Along with PoE+ capabilities, the new Plus switches include management features such as advanced per port PoE controls to simplify management of connected devices and uninterrupted power to keep devices connected and active even during firmware or software updates. Work from home offices and businesses can rest assured that the PoE power to their IP security cameras, VoIP phones and wireless access points is always on with this feature.  These new NETGEAR Plus switches also include the following power saving features: Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az) for maximum power savings —Latest energy-saving abilities including per-port power management to reduce port power when the port link is down, or idleFanless, with versatile mounting options –Completely silent operation in a desktop small form factor that is also wall-mountableAdvanced per port PoE controls – Power management of the PoE connected devices by enabling and disabling PoE power per port, PoE prioritization, PoE power limit per port and more. Simplifies management of Wireless APs, IP security cameras, LED lighting, secure access door locks, IoT devices and moreUninterrupted PoE – Keep PoE power on to connected devices even when the switch is updating firmware or performing a soft reboot And, to safeguard the security of the network, the VLANs can be configured separately for each sub-network. For example, set up a VLAN for guests, one for admin and a separate one for IoT devices. The Plus switches also include the following added security and reliability features: Port Mirroring - For network diagnostics and troubleshootingComprehensive QoS - Advanced controls for optimized network performance and better delivery of mission-critical traffic such as voice and videoIGMP Snooping - Improved network efficiency on delivering multicast traffic. Save cost and improve network efficiency by ensuring multicast traffic only reaches designated receivers without the need of an extra multicast routerVLANs – Port-based and 802.1Q-based network separation into smaller groups for more secure and efficient use of network resourcesLoop Detection and Auto DoS Prevention - Detect accidental network loops and protect against DoS attacksCable Test – Easily identify the health status of Ethernet cables to quickly resolve connectivity issues With multi-language support in English, German, and Japanese, along with a category-leading 5-year warranty and 90-days free technical support via phone/email/chat, the Plus switches are now available worldwide.

Ionos receives planning approval for Worcester Six development

A major data centre is to be built on Worcester Six, the flagship business park, after Wychavon District Council approved plans by property developer Stoford. The development of plot 6 will deliver a 51,479sq ft unit to be undertaken on behalf of 1&1 Ionos, which is the largest European-based data hosting company. The new site is earmarked to become a highly energy-efficient, cutting-edge data centre totalling 38,501 sq ft for IONOS and its subsidiary brand Fasthosts for UK and overseas customers. The development will also include 12,978sq ft of ancillary offices. Edward Peel, Development Manager at Stoford, comments: “The approval for the IONOS development will bring another world-class operator to Worcester Six, which recognises the strategic location, excellent infrastructure links, and talented workforce that businesses can draw upon. “We believe this is the first data centre to come to Wychavon and it is a clear indication of the confidence that IONOS, which is the largest cloud and hosting provider in Europe, has for the area, and for the business park. “The excellent central location of Worcester Six, plus the availability and diverse routing of services that we have installed to the site, made this a forerunner for IONOS; we are proud to be delivering this building for them.” Achim Weiss, IONOS CEO, says: “We are thrilled to start construction of the Worcester Six data centre soon. The demand for cloud services has been growing even more in these difficult times and with our new site we will be able to provide a variety of hosting, computing, and storage solutions to customers across the UK. We are very grateful that Wychavon District Council has approved our application so quickly.” Councillor Richard Morris, Deputy Leader and portfolio holder for economic growth at Wychavon District Council, adds: “IONOS choosing Wychavon as a base for their new data centre and offices is a tremendous vote of confidence in our local economy and will create high quality jobs in a growth industry.  I look forward to having a tour of the new centre when it opens next year.” Councillor Ken Pollock, Cabinet Member with Responsibility for Economy and Infrastructure at Worcestershire County Council, adds: “We look forward to working with IONOS, as a potential new occupier of the Worcester Six Business Park. This news is testament to the teams who have worked tirelessly in the most difficult of circumstances to maintain the county’s extensive progress in the business development and growth area. “Data has become one of the world’s most valuable commodities in recent years and the pandemic has not altered this. Data centre demand continues to be driven by the rapid adoption of cloud services and the emergence of business models. This development not only solidifies Worcester Six Business Park as a first-rate business location but also provides Worcestershire with a highly valued asset, bringing substantial economic benefits for the county.” IONOS was established in 1988 and is the largest hosting company in Europe, managing more than eight million customer contracts and hosting more than 12 million domains in its regional data centres around the globe. The IONOS group operates in fifteen countries around the world and employs 3,500 people worldwide. In the past two years, Worcester Six has welcomed Marmon Food and Beverage Equipment, Siemens, Spire Healthcare, Kimal and Kohler Mira at Worcester Six. Once fully developed, the business park will provide 1.5 million sq ft of accommodation. Stoford also obtained consent for a speculative unit of 37,000 sq ft in February this year, which it says can be delivered within a 10-month period.

Europe on track for quantum leadership: IQM raises €39m.

IQM Quantum Computers has announced that it has raised €39m in Series A funding, bringing the total amount of funding raised to date to €71m.  This ranks among the highest fundraising rounds by a European deep-tech start-up within a year. MIG Fonds has led this round, with participation from all existing investors including Tesi, OpenOcean, Maki.vc, Vito Ventures, Matadero QED. New investors Vsquared, Salvia GmbH, Santo Venture Capital GmbH, and Tencent, have also joined this round. “IQM has a strong track record of research and in achieving high growth. They continue to attract the best global talent across functions and have exceeded their hardware and software milestones. We are thrilled to lead this round and continue to support IQM as the company accelerates its next phase of business and hardware growth,” says Axel Thierauf, Partner at MIG Fonds, and Chairman of the Board of IQM. Since 2019, IQM has been among the fastest-growing companies in the quantum computing sector and already has one of the world’s largest quantum hardware engineering teams. This funding will be used to accelerate IQM´s hardware development and to co-design application-specific quantum computers. A significant part of the funding will also be used to attract and retain the best global talent in quantum computing, and to establish sales and business development teams.  ”Today’s announcement is part of our ongoing Series-A funding round. I am extremely pleased with the confidence our investors have shown in our vision, team, product, and the ability to execute and commercialize quantum computers. This investment also shows their continued belief in building the future of quantum technologies. This is a significant recognition for our fantastic team that has achieved all our key milestones from the previous round. We’re just getting started,” comments Jan Goetz, CEO of IQM. “It is impressive to be a part of the IQM journey and see the progress of their technology. We’re proud to see another startup from Finland making a global impact. IQM will have a lasting impact on the future of computing, and consequently will help solve some of the global challenges related to healthcare, climate change and development of sustainable materials among many others,” adds Juha Lehtola, Head of Direct VC Investments at Tesi (Finnish Industry Investment).  IQM delivers on-premises computers for research laboratories and supercomputing centres. For industrial customers, IQM follows an innovative co-design strategy to deliver quantum advantage based on application-specific processors, using novel chip architectures and ultrafast quantum operations. IQM provides the full hardware stack for a quantum computer, integrating different technologies, and invites collaborations with quantum software companies.  “We want to invest in deep technology startups that shape the future and advance society. IQM is the perfect example of a company that is on top of its game; their work on quantum computing will make an impact for generations to come,” concludes Herbert Mangesius, Founding Partner at Vsquared and Vito Ventures. While quantum computing is still under development, governments and private organizations across the world are investing today to retain their competitive edge and become ready for the future. The next decade will be the decade of quantum technology, and we will see major breakthroughs with real-world applications using quantum computers in healthcare, logistics, finance, chemistry and beyond.

Aruba formalises its GAIA-X status as a Day-1 member

Aruba, formalizes its status as a Day-1 member of the GAIA-X project. With the aim of making a strong contribution to the development of a secure, reliable and certified network infrastructure for sharing and accessing data across Europe, the GAIA-X project is a step forward towards enabling a Cloud offering based on European values. Officially presented at the Digital Summit 2019, GAIA-X was formed with the intention of creating an interoperable and secure cloud infrastructure, based on compliance with European standards and regulations. It helps to create a free and transparent data environment, in which the potential for vendor lock-in is eliminated, and encourage competition between cloud solution providers, providing the highest level of certification, with the guarantee of the full protection of the European law. GAIA-X, due to be launched as early as 2021, acts as a legal entity supported by the European Commission according to the standards set out by its members. It is a project open to all countries that decide to contribute to its growth and join in as members, with the goal to provide European companies with a secure cloud network, using standards guaranteed by the European institutional system. Judging by the number of companies participating in the project and the country they are based in, Italy ranks third, behind only German and French firms. In total, 22 companies and founding associations are behind the project and there are also further providers that have been recently officialised, one of them being Aruba, which is named as a Day-1 Member of the project. “We’re aware how valuable and how much of a strategic resource data represents to every European company and beyond. GAIA-X aims to dictate a new European standard for the creation and provision of cloud services ideal for managing, storing, and processing data for everyday citizens and their businesses. This will most certainly strengthen the innovation and adoption of cloud computing while promoting European digital sovereignty” says Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba S.p.A. He continues, “we joined the project as a Day-1 member because we believe that any service provided to citizens and businesses - either Italian or European - must comply with the same laws and regulations, the same principles and technical standards, in order to guarantee total interoperability between operators that adhere to the project by giving advantages to the users. " The newly formed GAIA-X company is a non-profit company that will oversee the creation, implementation, and promotion of this digital ecosystem, based in Belgium, Europe’s institutional heart.

Kao Data Partners with Vorboss, offering Specialist Low-Latency Connectivity for Fintech

Kao Data, has today announced a new partnership with Vorboss to expand its low-latency, resilient connectivity capabilities at its Harlow campus. Vorboss, a leading London-based connectivity provider is continuing to engineer its fibre network, which offers resilient high-capacity connectivity across the UK and into Europe. Kao Data’s Open Compute Project-Ready (OCP) data centre design provides Vorboss with a strategic Point of Presence (PoP). Their direct fibre connection offers increased resilience for end-users with even the most complex of requirements using direct links from London’s financial hubs to the UK Innovation Corridor and into all European metropolitan cities. The collaboration offers superior connectivity alongside high density, scalable HPC environments of 25kW and above to cater for AI applications delivering quant and grid computing. “Financial data science is a complex and high-growth market sector, requiring data centres that can truly support the demands of AI and compute-intensive research and trading platforms,” says Spencer Lamb, VP, Kao Data. “Expanding our carrier neutral partnerships with fibre from Vorboss provides direct access to additional high-quality network capacity and will help meet customer requirements for dedicated low-latency and high-performance connectivity.” Vorboss provides market leading enterprise connectivity including wholesale leased lines, DIA, MPLS and public cloud connections over a world-class network resiliently engineered for exceptional uptime. Using Vorboss-owned fibre, Kao Data clients can benefit from low latency, high-performing connections with handoffs available in over 25 data centres throughout the UK and Europe. “Vorboss is known for its innovation and expertise in the financial services sector, and Kao Data understands the competitive advantages that dedicated fibre offers to this crucial segment of UK businesses,” comments Vorboss CEO, Timothy Creswick. “It’s particularly fitting to be offering fibre connections to the site where fibre optic technologies were discovered over 50 years ago and we’re excited to see this collaboration maximise return on investment for many organisations.”

Schneider Electric and Elite Partner APT Deliver Data Centre Digital Transformation for Newcastle City Council

Schneider Electric, has delivered a new data centre digital transformation project for Newcastle City Council in collaboration with Elite Partner, Advanced Power Technology (APT). The initiative included consolidation of existing data centre capacity, upgrades to infrastructure and deployment of next generation management software to ensure efficient digital service delivery for the council’s e-government strategy. The project aims to improve Newcastle City Councils ability to deliver e-government services to 300,000 citizens and businesses. Applications within the facility include council tax collection, social and library services, education and road traffic management, whilst supporting other essential public service bodies such as the NHS and the Police. The data centre replaces three server rooms, each containing a number of disparate UPS and cooling systems which in need of maintenance. The Council chose EcoStruxure for Data Centers and Schneider Electric’s system architecture for its new data centre. The system, designed and built by APT, consolidates the council’s IT infrastructure in a single data hall. To guarantee uptime in the event of a power outage, the Council installed Schneider Electric modular and scalable range of Galaxy range UPS’s, offering N+1 redundant configuration and extended runtimes. APT has also deployed EcoStruxure IT Expert, Schenider Electric’s next-generation DCIM software to drive efficiency and provide monitoring, improved maintenance schedules and proactive alerts to system issues. The new data centre improves Newcastle City Council’s ability to ensure service continuity and increases efficiency for a lower cost of ownership. A benefit of EcoStruxure IT Expert software is the ability for operators to monitor power consumption. With the new data centre designed to house IT and network devices in contained aisles, visibility of energy consumption and environmental data, enables the power and cooling systems to be operated with optimum energy efficiency. EcoStruxure IT Expert enables the facility to deliver cost-effective hosting services to other local bodies. Around 10% of the data centre’s real estate is leased out to other public sector organisations. By carefully monitoring the power supply to each rack, the Council can accurately charge for hosting services, producing a revenue stream that helps to offset its operating costs. “Previously, we were able to withstand a loss of power for 20 minutes,” says James Dickman, Senior ICT Solutions Analyst, Newcastle City Council. “we can operate for three hours on UPS batteries if required and can use our backup generator to provide alternative power in the event of a loss of our mains supply.” “The management capabilities of EcoStruxure IT has resulted in improved visibility of the data centre operations and offers a ability to mitigate issues,” states John Thompson, MD of Advanced Power Technology. “With more detailed insight, Newcastle City Council can increase the resiliency of the IT Service to improve the customer experience.” “With IT, connectivity and digital demands growing, the data centre plays a crucial role,” comments Marc Garner, VP, Secure Power Division, Schneider Electric UK&I. “APT’s expertise in data centre design, build and installation have been pivotal in the success of this digital transformation project.” “As a public body we are looking for ways to improve cost and energy efficiencies,” continues Dickman. “Schneider Electric and APT were able to design and deliver a data centre that meets our needs and expectations. The facility enables us to meet our service commitments to stakeholders while minimising the carbon impact.”

HPCnow! helps the ALBA synchrotron improve data storage performance with Excelero’s NVMesh

Excelero, a disruptor in software-defined block storage for AI/ML/deep learning and GPU computing, said that its partner HPCnow!, a provider of advanced supercomputing and high performance computing (HPC) services for scientific and research organisations, is helping major life science researchers around the world to accelerate research on COVID-19 and other diseases through more efficient data storage with Excelero’s NVMesh software. HPCnow! has performed a pilot at ALBA, a synchrotron light facility near Barcelona, to demonstrate how existing storage technologies can effectively deploy elastic NVMe based data storage to support the acquisition and processing of the massive volumes of scientific data generated by its high performance beamlines, which use soft and hard X-rays’ intense light source beams to help to characterise materials, their properties and behaviour. The pilot report will be published in a market consultation of the CELLS in 2020. Over 2,000 researchers in biosciences, condensed matter (magnetic and electronic properties, nanoscience) and materials science obtain unique information from ALBA’s beamlines each year. With a new initiative to support small to medium enterprises performing COVID-19 research, in addition its many other scientific data processing and analysis workloads, ALBA’s IT Systems department needs an efficient scale-out storage to enable timely analysis and conclusions. Excelero’s NVMesh is software-defined distributed block storage that delivers Elastic NVMe for high performance computing workloads as well as AI/ML/deep learning, data warehouses and containers. Customers benefit from the performance of local flash with the convenience of centralised storage while avoiding proprietary hardware lock-in and reducing the overall storage TCO. Its low-latency, high throughput distributed block storage makes it fast and easy to scale up storage capacity as datasets grow – ensuring HPC applications don’t become bottlenecked, and providing the agility, elasticity, price/performance and ROI that are often hard to achieve at scale. “Top research institutions need far more throughput than traditional storage systems can provide to power data-intensive microscopy and other research, and we’ve been tremendously impressed with the high IOPS and low latency that Excelero delivers with its NVMesh software,” says David Tur, CEO at HPCnow!, who directed the ALBA proof of concept project. “We are already in the early stages of exploring several large-scale deployments where scale-out storage such as Excelero’s NVMesh can help researchers achieve their goals faster and at lower cost.”