Issue 6: Performance Monitoring

ADMIN editor Joe Casad chats with Bill Mannel, SGI's Vice President for Server Marketing, on the latest release of SGI's Altix ICE high performance computing platform.

Simulations and the ability to predict the future can show what effect adding new hardware, or changing the load, can have. Armed with the right know-how, anybody can use this tool.

SUSE enters the cloud fray with an OpenStack-based product that integrates easily with SLES and even comes with an Android admin app.

Performance can be a problem if you run additional services like Sharepoint, Exchange, or SQL on a Windows server. Luckily, the Windows tools described here can help administrators identify and resolve these problems.

Virtualized systems are inflationary when it comes to RAM requirements. Storage access is faster when excess RAM is used as a page cache, and having enough RAM helps avoid the dreaded performance killer, swapping. We take a look at the current crop of RAM.

ownCloud is an alternative to the many online storage services whose data protection promises could turn out to be as nebulous as their offerings.