Traffic spikes strain Nokia servers

Nokia has rolled out Ovi Store, a marketplace for handset applications, but has seen its servers struggle to deal with user demand, says Silicon.com.

The Ovi Store, launched on Tuesday, is designed to support around 50 Nokia models. The storefront can be reached using a mobile browser or using a standalone Ovi Store application that can be found in the device's 'download' section.

The browser-based Ovi Store suffered from poor performance on launch day, with registration issues and server time-outs widely reported on the Web and Twitter.

Memphis-based NexTek has found a niche in the IT business through the use of virtual network servers while eliminating most of the overhead for the company itself, writes BizJournals.

NexTek was founded by Wayne Randall in 2005 as an IT services company that helped manage and maintain servers for its clients. In December 2007, the company branched out into virtual networks when a medical client lost its IT department and needed to replace its servers.

Randall says the company had been experimenting with virtual networks, which replace a client's on-site equipment with off-site servers at NexTek's collocation centre.

Intel will start producing a more powerful version of its Xeon multiprocessor chip for servers, a spokesman said on Tuesday, according to Reuters.

The new chip, code-named Nehalem EX, will go on sale in the first quarter of next year. No prices have been announced for the new chip, which will succeed the Xeon 7400, priced from $1 100 to $2 700.

The Nehalem EX will provide two improvements. First, it will increase the number of cores inside a single chip from six to eight. Second, each core will be able to handle two 'threads' of software instead of just one.