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'Project Triforce': How Facebook tested its new data center

The company provisioned a huge cluster of servers in Virginia to simulate its new Oregon data center

When Facebook built its first company-owned data center in Prineville, Oregon, designing and managing the facility was only part of the challenge. In a blog post Monday, the company explained how it had to stress-test its entire software infrastructure by commandeering a giant cluster of production servers on the other side of the country.

The Oregon data center marked a change of tack for Facebook, which had relied exclusively on two leased facilities in Northern California and Virginia. The Prineville data center was the first to be designed and built from scratch especially for Facebook.

That it could afford to build its own data center at all shows how big Facebook has become. It also shows the pressure that fast-growing social-networking sites are under to keep outages to a minimum. Twitter is also moving into its won date center, citing a need for more control over its infrastructure.

Facebook had never tested its News Feed, search engine and ad network outside of the two-data-center configuration. The company needed to ensure that "our entire software stack would be able to evolve and work smoothly in the new region, without interrupting what our users do every day on Facebook," 

"The solution was to simulate a third region of data centers, even before the new servers in Prineville came online. We called this effort and the simulated third region 'Project Triforce,'" he wrote.

Facebook took over a cluster of production servers in Virginia and configured them to look like its new "third region." To do so it built a software suite, called Kobold, that allowed it to "build up and tear down clusters quickly, conduct synthetic load and power tests without impacting user traffic, and audit our steps along the way," Kumar wrote.

Kobold enabled it to provision and image tens of thousands of servers, and bring them online, in less than 30 days.

"Production traffic was served within 60 days. Traditionally, companies turn up production traffic manually with many people over a period of weeks. Now it takes one person less than ten minutes to turn up production traffic," Kumar wrote.

He didn't say if Kobold could be useful to other companies or if Facebook might release the tools for use by others.

With online service providers under some pressure for the environmental impact of their operations, Facebook has been more open lately about how it operates its data centers. 

SAP revs up mobile application strategy

New applications, an SDK and a partnership with Accenture were announced Tuesday

SAP is giving its ongoing push into mobile applications an extra shove with a series of new products aimed at verticals such as utilities, energy, retail and manufacturing, the company announced Tuesday during the Sapphire Now conference in Orlando.

As was expected, the company also announced a version of the Sybase Unwired Platform for mobile application development, which it gained through last year's acquisition of Sybase. A new SDK (software development kit) for Unwired will be released in the next few months, according to a statement.

Among the new mobile applications is Field Service, a product aimed at technicians and other workers who are frequently away from a central location, servicing customers. The application will deliver these employees alerts about new assignments and provide mapping services, among other features.

A related product, EAM Work Order, gives technicians information about work orders, parts inventory and customer histories.

Another new product, Retail Execution, gives access to product lists and customer contact information, and allows employees to track and store information about visits to retail locations.

Roughly 20 mobile applications will be generally available in the next few months, according to SAP. Other areas tackled include human resources, supplier relationship management and customer relationship management.

SAP is not planning to build out a mobile portfolio by itself. Instead, the company has combined its own development efforts with an aggressive outreach to partners.

Many of those companies already have familiarity with Sybase Unwired and the related Afaria mobile management platform. SAP is hoping to spur even more interest in Unwired with the new SDK.

SAP's mobile development technologies include support for iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile, with Android support coming soon, SAP said. Certified connectors can tie the mobile applications to back-end SAP systems, and security features include encrypted HTML5 Web storage and encrypted data transportation, SAP said.

The company also announced a major new partnership around mobility with systems integrator Accenture on Tuesday.

Under the pact, Accenture's Mobility Services division and SAP will jointly use Unwired to develop new mobile applications, with initial ones targeting oil and gas, utilities and consumer products, according to a statement.

Mobility is one of three strategic areas SAP is pushing of late, along with in-memory computing and SaaS (software as a service).

SAP executives are expected to discuss all three topics during a keynote address Tuesday.

Yahoo! wins verdict in Bedrock patent trial

Jury finds no infringement on the part of Yahoo!

You remember that lawsuit Google recently lost against patent portfolio company Bedrock Technologies, LLC in the United States District Court Eastern District of Texas?

You know the one. That's when Bedrock, which holds patents over processes that are allegedly infringed by Linux, decided to sue two local Texas users of Linux (Softlayer Technologies, Inc. and CitiWare Technology Solutions, LLC) as well as some decidedly non-local users: Google Inc., Yahoo! Inc., MySpace Inc., Amazon.com Inc., PayPal Inc., Match.com, Inc., AOL Inc., and CME Group Inc.

It's the one where Bedrock actually won a jury verdict against the first defendant up in the trial, Google, and was awarded damages of $5 million. This was a paltry amount compared to the original $183 million Bedrock was originally seeking, but this did not stop a lot of people from gleefully predicting the end for Linux was nigh.

I think the doom and gloomers will be a bit tempered this week.

"First off, Bedrock had a stronger case against Google. Cawley put on evidence that Google used Bedrock's Linux code on its servers (although Google got rid of the code before trial). Yahoo, on the other hand, used a different form of Linux, and its lead trial lawyer, Yar Chaikovsky and Fay Morisseau of McDermott Will, were able to argue that Yahoo never executed the Bedrock code."

"Yahoo!, the story adds, "also benefited mightily from going to trial second."
And that's certainly true. By watching the Google trial, Yahoo!'s defense lawyers were able to tailor their defense more strategically against a plaintiff that could not change its witness testimony.

Unfortunately, while Bedrock lost this particular round, it appears they may have gotten their greedy hands on what they were probably really after: licensing agreements.

The court docket indicates that on April 29, Bedrock settled its claims against MySpace and AOL and then on May 9, just one day before the Yahoo! verdict came through, also settled its claims against Amazon.com and SoftLayer Technologies. Match.com had already settled with Bedrock on March 28. By my score card, then, that leaves just PayPal, CME, and CitiWare still defending against Bedrock's claims.

Too bad the other defendants didn't wait just a bit longer before settling.

That may not be entirely fair, since the amount of settlement each defendant made with Bedrock in their respective settlements was undisclosed. I am assuming Bedrock gave out some sort of license to each defendant to use the hashing technique with external chaining and on-the-fly removal of expired data asserted in US patent 5,893,120. But that's just an assumption, albeit one very likely to be true.

And the trial is not over. The other defendants are still waiting their respective turns, and Red Hat filed its own declaratory judgment (DJ) suit against Bedrock in December 2009 to get 5,893,120 declared invalid. In June 2010, Red Hat tried to unsuccessfully intervene in this case, too, which Bedrock fought, claiming "this case isn't about Red Hat" and besides, Red Hat had already filed the Dec. 2009 DJ suit. But while Bedrock was successful in its attempts to stave off Red Hat, that DJ suit against 5,893,120's validity could still blow this whole thing out of the water.

In the end, Yahoo!'s win is a sign that patent plaintiffs don't have it entirely their way in the Eastern Texas district, and that this particular infringement claim isn't the slam-dunk people thought it would be after Google's loss.

The whole abuse of the patent system still leaves a bad taste in the mouth, even with a win.

 

Cloud-based security as a service: It's catching on and here's why

When technology manager Lincoln Cannon wants to give his company's employees and business partners controlled access to various internal resources or cloud-based services the company uses, he goes to one cloud-based single sign-on security service to assign access privileges.

"Our users have a portal for single sign-on access," says Cannon, director of sales and marketing technology for medical-device manufacturer Merit Medical Systems, who notes both employees and distributors can gain access to this portal via PC or mobile devices such as the Apple iPad. "You just load up our single sign-on app."

The cloud security service for single sign-on is provided by Symplified and today about 350 employees and more than 50 distributors for the medical-device manufacturer log on to designated internal resources or external cloud services, such as Google Docs or eLeap training, through the one portal. In use for several months, it's proven reliable and fast to deploy, Cannon says.

Cloud-based security services, as they're known, are catching on as technology managers find them to provide more flexibility than they found when running their own network and security equipment.
NetSpend Corp., the Austin, Texas-based business that provides reloadable payment cards and other financial services, recently migrated from running its own Web proxy to using a service from Actiance (formerly Facetime Communications) to set controls on how its 500 or so employees use social networking sites such as Facebook.

"We deal with confidential information quite a bit," says Denis Brooker, NetSpend's vice president of information security, who notes that it's critical to set controls on how information is shared. The company's policy also prohibits speaking on behalf of NetSpend online unless it's part of a work effort. "And nobody is allowed to play games, like Farmville," Brooker says.

"Actiance gives us very granular controls on what happens on a social-networking site," says Brooker. For instance, not only does the company establish controls for read-only groups, but it also has moderators working with managers in departments to review each posting. If it's approved, it gets posted. Using the Actiance service was a very fast way to deploy, Brooker says.

Troy, Mich.-based auto parts manufacturer Inteva Products, with 8,000 employees, is shifting gears into a cloud-based service to secure and manage smartphone devices. The company is expected to soon start migrating from use of BlackBerries to Android devices for a number of reasons, one being that the company's workflow approval application is easier to see and use on it, says Dennis Hodges, chief information officer at Inteva.

Inteva Products, which already uses cloud-service provider Virtela for services that range from URL filtering to ordering wide-area network circuits for its offices, will now turn to Virtela for security and management controls on both BlackBerries and Androids. The cost per month per user is about $5, says Hodges, which he sees as quite reasonable.

The security service, based on an agent running on the Virtela device, will continuously monitor that password policy is enforced, will provide the ability to remotely wipe or lock the device, and will keep unwanted apps off the smartphones, as well as facilitate configuration management.

And also important for the firm, which does business internationally in 18 countries, the Virtela service will be able to spot when someone falls into the trap of roaming charges. "International roaming is a huge piece of our cellphone costs," says Hodges, adding that the managed service from Virtela could be a way to hold down costs. With monitoring round-the-clock, Virtela will be able to send alerts within 15 minutes of when it detects mobile activities that fall afoul of the established corporate policies.

Intel, partners push for cloud standards

Chip maker's strategy is to let big users drive change, while it builds underlying technology in lockstep

There is no shortage of criticism about the cloud, about its lack of interoperability, fear of vendor lock-in as well as the security risks.
Its critics include Vinton Cerf , a father of the Internet and Google's chief Internet evangelist, who compares the status of cloud computing today to the early days of email.
"Today, cloud computing is like the email of the 1980s, [when] things were not interconnected, you couldn't interchange things between email (systems). {Now] you can't interchange things between clouds - that is going to change," said Cerf, at the Interop conference this week. "There will be the same pressures to get cloud systems to interoperate."
Mark Deibert, who is responsible for global enterprise architecture at a pharmaceutical firm that he asked not be identified, agreed with Cerf.
The cloud is "either going to mature or it's going to fade away," said Deibert. "I think it's going to mature - I think the cost promise is going to prove to be increasingly compelling and I think the marketplace will drive it to maturity," he said.
Deibert said his firm is creating a private cloud as a proof of concept. "It gives us a chance to get our feet wet in a measured way," he said.
But how will the market force cloud providers to interoperate?
One effort is Open Data Center Alliance, whose members include BMW, Deutsche Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed, Marriott, Shell, Terremark, UBS, Baidu, eBay and Kraft Foods.
The alliance was formed late last year and its membership has since doubled to more than 150 firms, representing, in total, about $85 billion in annual IT spending, according to Kirk Skaugen, a vice president at Intel and general manager of its data center group.
Intel helped to create the alliance, but Skaugen says the chip maker serves in an advisory, non-voting, role. The roadmaps and recommendations that come out of this group will be software and hardware agonistic, he said.
The alliance isn't creating standards, but what it will do is work with existing standards organizations, such as Distributed Management Task Force, to help develop them, said Skaugen.
Some of the alliance members are contributing senior IT staff to help create a roadmap, said Skaugen.
What Intel appears to gain by its close working relationship with the alliance is an understanding of user needs.
"We want to be on the forefront of standards, and we want to lead the industry as standards evolve," said Skaugen, in an interview, "so once we understand the requirements, our desire is to be on the front end of those requirements."
Intel has also created a Cloud Builders program for vendors, who are working with Intel to ensure their products meet emerging technology requirements. The vendors are "trying to do it in parallel" what will emerges from the alliance, said Skaugen.
The role of chip technology will be through things such as Intel's Trusted Execution Technology, a hardware-based security feature to ensure code is executing in a protected environment.

"We want to make sure that data can be protected both at rest and in flight - whether you are moving from a private cloud to a public cloud or between public clouds," said Skaugen, as well as being "independent of which vendor is the underlying infrastructure within those clouds," he said.