This past week, Sun officially began reselling Microsoft Windows Server
2003 on Sun's x64 systems [19031]. The commercial release
of Sun xVM Ops Center 1.0 [19120] has been delayed until next month. For an indepth technical look at
xVM, see article [19127] covering Chien-Hua Yen's Sun BluePrint.
Three Sun products nabbed 2008 Technology of the Year awards from InfoWorld. See which products were deemed outstanding [19266]. Sun also entered into an agreement with the Israeli education system, disrupting Microsoft's former monopoly [19219].
Some of Sun's top executives discuss technology trends for 2008 [19255]. Sun Executive VP of Systems John Fowler shares his outlook on virtualization in the x86 market along with other thoughts on the server/storage market [19175].
This week's edition also offers information on using version control software for managing configuration file revisions [19152], Sun Service Tags availability for Linux and Windows [19170], three scripts to use to perform your system checks [19176], and more.
Don't forget the summary of the top stories of 2007 [19232].
Get your hands on the first 64-thread, general purpose servers powered by UltraSPARC T2 "System on a Chip" processor and save up to 25 percent with a trade-in of your current Sun, IBM, HP or Dell server. Upgrade to the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 servers and receive greater performance and savings on power, space and money.
Sun Ultra 20 and Ultra 40 workstations are available as part of the Try and Buy Program that allows you to test Sun products for a full 60 days with no risk, no commitment and no charge. The Sun Ultra 20 and Ultra 40 workstations are part of Sun's roster of eco-responsible servers, powerful workstations, and secure storage units currently available for trial.
Sun is offering bundled pricing on selected services for the Sun Storage 6000 series modular storage array when you buy services of your choice from the menu of services in the Sun StorageTek 6000 series Performance Plus Pack.
Sun customers now have the choice of deploying the top three server operating systems - the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS), Microsoft Windows Server 2003, and Linux - on Sun's energy-efficient x64 systems. January 10th was the date set for general availability for Sun's offering of Microsoft Windows 2003 on its x64 systems and additional utilities and software offerings, such as the Java Runtime Environment (JRE), to server systems carrying Windows Server 2003.
The Sun xVM Ops Center 1.0 commercial release which was set for general availability on January 8th has been postponed to February 2008. xVM Ops Center offers customers an easy-to-use systems management platform for Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) and Linux. Sun xVM Ops Center provides customers with tools to efficiently manage systems on their network and reduce datacenter management complexity through the consolidation of Sun Connection and Sun N1 System Manager into an all-in-one tool.
InfoWorld's Test Center staff selected three Sun products as top technologies to impact IT in 2008 by awarding them each a Technology of the Year award. They are the Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS) as the most innovative server OS, Sun Fire X4500 Server as the best storage server, and ZFS as the best file system. A total of 45 products from across eight general categories were honored.
The Israeli government has authorized a three-year agreement with Sun under which the company will help integrate new programs for use by schools, partially underwrite the required teacher training, and help establish new computer laboratories in a move that could dislodge Microsoft from its stronghold there.
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 configuring the x4500 with Symantec Enterprise Vault, what does Sun mean by RedShift, Sun to supply gear to 2010 Winter Olympics, Brunette's Top 5 Solaris 10 Security Features and Warner Bros. to Exclusively Release on Blu-ray Disc Format.
A number of Sun executives shared their views with the media at last month's Innovation and Trends Dinner, including Greg Papadopoulos, John Fowler, Bob Worrall, Chris Melissinos, and Subodh Bapat.
It isn't that virtualization is a new technology -- IBM developed it back in the 1960s, after all -- but that it has come to the x86 market. That's what has given rise to some confusion in the minds of users, says Sun Executive VP of Systems John Fowler in a recent interview.
Dave Douglas, Sun VP for Eco Responsibility, aired his take on the issue of carbon neutrality in a recent Business Week article. His point, which he clarified in a subsequent blog, is that carbon neutrality alone fails to do the necessary job of addressing a corporation's responsibility to the environment that it inhabits and affects.
According to Al Riske, transactional memory involves making sure the right operations take place at the right time...and quickly. His interview with Sun contrarian Mark Moir delves into the subject and its timeliness as a technology, given the emergence of multicore microprocessors, such as Sun's Rock, which hardwires support for transactional memory into its design for higher speeds.
According to Galen Gruman of Infoworld, Santa didn't quite get it right, leaving some geeks a bit disappointed with what they found under the tree. He suggests the indulgence of getting the "must-have" Sun Microsystems Project Sun Spot Development sensor and robotics kit.
March 14th is the day and San Francisco is the place for the first DTrace (un)conference: dtrace.conf(08) where interested technologists will come together to share their latest applications with the dynamic tracing framework. Attendees will be given the opportunity to speak for at least fifteen minutes on what they are doing with DTrace.
In the 10-minute webcast "Sorting Out Solaris Releases" Dan Roberts, director of Solaris & OpenSolaris Marketing, and Larry Wake, Solaris Group marketing manager, discuss the different versions of the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) with particular emphasis on variations between the Solaris 10 OS and the Solaris Express Developer Editon (SXDE).
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 119 Issue 1, were:
Sun's Comeback One of the Most Underreported Stories of 2007 [19218]
Enabling Solaris CIFS Service in Workgroup or AD Domain [19203]
Don't Wait for a Download of VMware Image of OpenSolaris [19196]
GullFOSS, the OpenOffice.org Engineering blog at Sung, recently posted two announcements of interest to the open source community. The first highlights the upcoming OpenOffice.org feature release, noting some of the key features and enhancements. The second focuses on the PDF import extension that has reached a noted milestone - the ability to import typical PDF documents with good layout fidelity in Draw and Impress.
pgAdmin III is now part of the OpenSolaris/Solaris from Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE) build 79 and the Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS), Update 5, reports a Sun blog. This feature-rich open source administration and development platform for PostgreSQL is considered one of the most popular.
Sun is one of six companies that has passed Liberty Alliance's full matrix SAML 2.0 interoperability testing and the US GSA SAML 2.0 profile, meeting the prerequisite interoperability requirements for participating in the US E-Authentication Identity Federation.
There are many of them out there, but it may still be worth your time to watch a SYS-CON.TV webcast with NetBeans Technology Evangelist Gregg Sporar, who gives an in-depth glimpse into the many new features of NetBeans 6.0 in five "live" demos.
Chien-Hua Yen argues in the Sun BluePrints "Solaris Operating System Hardware Virtualization Product Architecture" for the use of hardware virtualization vs. either the application level or the operating system level. This is because hardware level virtualization provides stronger isolation of operating environments and enables a system to run multiple OS instances, requiring less sharing of system resources than OS level virtualization.
In the BigAdmin wiki, Joseph Kwan offers three reasons to use version control software on configuration files: it keeps the system tidy, properly documents changes over time of configuration files, and makes it easier to keep track of changes. He adds a not unimportant fourth reason, which is that users also have a means to roll back a configuration file to a previous state.
If you haven't already heard, Sun Service tags are available for Linux and Windows along with the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS). So now Sun Inventory (formerly known as the Sun Connection Inventory Channel) can be used to track, organize, and report on just about any x86 or SPARC server running these major operating systems.
If you're a systems administrator who is not using checkdisk script and other automated scripts for system checks, then take some time to read Victor Feng's tech tip that explains how to use three different scripts for automating system checks on systems running the Solaris 8, 9, and/or 10 Operating System (Solaris OS).
The BigAdmin feature article "Implementing IBM DB2 UDB V9 HA in a Solaris Cluster 3.2 Environment" provides step-by-step instructions on how to install, create, and enable DB2 Universal Database (UDB) V9 for high availability (HA) in a two-node Solaris Cluster 3.2 environment.
Customized news reports about Sun Microsystems. Just the news you need, none of what you don't. 50,000+ Members. 20,000+ Articles Published since 1998.
