Reviews and predictions start off this new year. Take a look back on our top 2007 articles covering Sun news [19232]. And, did you know one of 2007's most underreported IT stories is Sun's turnaround, so says InfoWorld [19218].
Peering ahead, Systems EVP John Fowler offers his perspective on the upcoming year for Sun storage [19182]. IDC also weighs in with its top 10 storage predictions for 2008 [19225].
In OpenSolaris, learn how to enable Solaris CIFS [19203], integrate its application runtime platforms along with NetBeans [19186], and how to install the OS into a virtual machine [19196].
A new program called Sun Sales Connect is aimed at improving sales opportunities for ISVs [19183]. Sun recently realigned its former EMEA region, splitting into two sections [19133]. Find out more of the latest from Sun partners [19227].
Sun is offering up to 20 percent off its Sun Fire X4150 Server and Sun Fire X4450 Servers fully loaded with memory and disks. The eco-designed Sun Fire X4150 Server and the Sun Fire X4450 Server provide an innovative way to cut power costs significantly while delivering world-class performance.
Considering purchasing a server/storage solution? Then take a look at this special offer available from Sun that teams enterprise-class performance and reliability of Sun Fire x64 servers combined with a storage solution that delivers the highest availability in its class.
Sun is introducing a "no pain, all gain solution" by offering 10 percent off the list price of its Backup Optimization Analysis service that can show you how to get maximum results from your existing backup system and provide you with guidelines for improving your future storage strategy by analyzing backup, tape library, switch and HBA products, storage and performance information.
Labeled number two of 2007's most underreported tech stories, InfoWorld's Bill Snyder highlights Sun's comeback from the dot-com bubble burst to its "...four profitable quarters in a row plus record margins — as well as a growing list of wins, point to a company on the upswing," he reports.
Mark your calendars. Sun's second quarter fiscal year 2008 financial results will be released on Thursday, January 24, with the company hosting a conference call beginning at 1:30 p.m. PT/4:30 p.m. ET. Sun's financial results will be posted on Sun's Investor Relations website, which also is where the public can tune-in to the conference call.
In his article "The New Face of the TOP500," Gil Shainer of Mellanox Technologies notes the change in the composition of the list, remarking that there has been a shift from pure high-performance computing (HPC) to include enterprise-based solutions such as enterprise datacenter (EDC)-based, interconnected, rack-mounted systems. He goes on to analyze the historical and current technological trends in HPC and provide an updated analysis model for the TOP500 project.
The "Good News" from Sun for January 2008 includes the Solaris Operating System's (Solaris OS) continued lead in the UNIX system market with almost half of all UNIX server shipments and Sun's maintained number four ranking year over year in overall disk storage systems units shipped. Also see Sun's competitive advantage, customers' business results using Sun technology, plus much more.
System News posts items of interest for Sun users on a regular basis on the System News For Sun Users blog. Some of those items will become detailed articles in this newsletter. A quick recap of posts for the last week includes TACC's Ranger Set to Go into Full Production, A Review of the News from 2007, Solaris Application Programming by Darryl Gove, and Sun's Comeback One of the Most Underreported Stories of 2007.
ISVs who are members of the Sun Partner Advantage Program may now have access to a new program called Sun Sales Connect that provides new resources and services for improved collaboration and coordination of sales opportunities with Sun and its extended sales community.
Sun has undertaken a reorganization of its marketing operations in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and Africa (EMMA) reports ITWeb Features Editor Samantha Perry in her article on the company's efforts to become more competitive in these regions.
Some of the latest partner activity at Sun over the last few weeks includes New Sun Program for ISVs to Improve Sales Opportunities, QLogic Offers First SANblade Fibre Channel HBAs for OpenSolaris Storage Community, Sun Startup Essentials Program Welcomes New Members, and more.
Sun welcomed FortiusOne, Postful, Inc., and SearchForce to its Sun Startup Essential program, which provides discounted access to technologies like the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS), Sun Fire x64 servers, Sun Fire SPARC servers with CoolThreads technology and Sun's storage products. The program also offers Web. 2.0 and early-stage companies free technical advice via email, access to free software, and reduced price Web hosting services.
Sapotek Inc., a developer of open source web products and applications, is another successful migration from Linux to the Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS). "Being Linux people, we were hesitant to switch," said Sapotek CEO Joshua Rand, but now,"We no longer need to do all those chores we had to do with Linux. I can't even quantify the number of man-hours we freed by moving to Solaris."
Business is good for Sun in the Philippines, where, Lawrence Casiraya reports for INQUIRER.net, Telco and government accounts are causing a "boom" for the company.
Did you know in about 10 minutes you can enable the new Solaris CIFS/SMB server in workgroup mode? Tim Thomas recently did just that and links readers of his blog to instructions on getting started using the CIFS service in OpenSolaris (Build 79).
The NetBeans.org wiki has created a page specifically designed for investigating, documenting and improving the integration between NetBeans and the application runtime platforms available in Open Solaris, including PHP, Ruby, and Java.
When a pre-installed VMware image of OpenSolaris is made available for general download, Christopher Kampmeier's blog "Installing OpenSolaris Developer Preview on VMware Workstation 6 and Ubuntu 7.10" will become redundant but, until then, it is a handy how-to that lets users gain the use of this tool.
By accessing the web logs, we have determined that the following list of 270 articles were the most popular with subscribers. We have grouped the articles by topic to give you a view of what were the most important news articles for 2007. The most popular news topics for 2007 were:
Servers, Servers (Futures): Rock & Niagara II, Servers: UltraSPARC T2, Servers: UltraSPARC T1 (T1000/T2000), Servers: M Series, Servers: Intel, based, Servers: Sun Blade 6000, Servers: AMD, based, Servers: Upgrades/EOL, Software, The Solaris 8 Migration Assistant, xVM, LDoms, ZFS, Solaris, Solaris Updates, Solaris Admin, OpenSolaris, Zones/Containers, SunRay/SGD, DTrace, Windows Integration, FOSS, Workstations, Security, Performance, Java, Storage, Service, , JavaFX, Sun Cluster, Networking, OpenOffice, Developer, Sun Leadership
Sun's embracement of Microsoft this past year has Enterprise Networking Planet's Charlie Schluting analyzing the move in a piece entitled "Sun's Game: Friends Close, Microsoft Closer." The Sun-Microsoft deal will play well for Sun, according to Schluting, and enterprise customers as well.
Sun will be hosting an OpenEco Energy Camp on Thursday, January 10th at the Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco. This free event will provide access to environmental leaders and creative tools in order to inspire ecology leaders, business representatives, open source developers, and anyone else interested in the environment to make positive environmental changes at work and at home.
"Making High Performance Computing Simple" is the slogan for this year's 2008 London Mathematica HPC Conference set to take place on Thursday, January 17th. The conference, of which Sun is a sponsor, will focus on how Mathematica users can easily take advantage of the latest multi-core hardware to make High Performance Computing simple.
IDC's top 10 storage predictions for 2008 address three areas: new data storage models such as object-based storage; green storage technology, which helps companies reduce their carbon footprint and energy expenditure; and new forms of storage delivery such as online storage services.
A Sun and Symantec project has produced a script and Sun Doc article that may be of interest. The x4500samconfig (tar.gz) script configures SAMBA, ZFS, and SAM-FS on a Sun Fire X4500 Server so it can be used as Network Attached Storage (NAS) for Windows Servers running an archiving application. Tim Thomas explains the project in "Symantec Enterprise Vault Integration With the Sun StorageTek 5320 NAS Appliance."
The third generation of fixed content storage systems is now available, notably in the Sun StorageTek 5800 system, an on-line, highly reliable storage system developed to solve the unique problems associated with large-scale file storage applications typically classified as fixed, static, or reference data, which consume greater than 20 terabytes (TB) in storage and scale over time as data collections grow.
Given the increasing volume of digital content coming under the administration of libraries and information organizations, new solutions are called for to enable its management. Carl Grant considers some of these, along with strategies that are useful in the planning and development of digital collections in his white paper "Delivering Digital Repositories with Open Solutions."
Brocade is the first vendor to offer read pipelining over the long-distance extended FICON channel with the release of the USD-X and M3000 products. Pair these solutions with the Sun StorageTek Virtual Storage Manager 5 (VSM5) and you can significantly reduce backup and restore times as well as improve disaster protection by enabling backup data to be placed at a different location.
Each week, we determine which articles have been most frequently referenced by logged-in subscribers to provide you with a list of the most popular articles for the last 4 issues. The top 10 articles for last week, Vol 118 Issue 4, were:
Solaris Costs Less, Does More, and Runs More SPARC, X86/X64 Platforms than Red Hat [19156]
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