OpenSSO Enterprise
Next-Generation Access Management, Federation and Secure Web Services Solution
Sun OpenSSO Enterprise software is the first open, high-performance and unified solution for access management, federation and secure Web services capabilities to address the core single sign-on (SSO) problems that organizations face today. OpenSSO Enterprise was built in collaboration with OpenSSO, the world's largest open source, identity management project. With the addition of OpenSSO Enterprise, Sun's comprehensive identity portfolio provides easy-to-use, flexible and scalable solutions that streamline and simplify the process of managing user identities across a variety of applications.
Mike Dillon, (EVP , General Counsel and Corporate Secretary for Sun) has been blogging about the on-going litigation between Sun and NetApp.
On August 27th, 2008, the Court held a "claim construction hearing to construe the disputed
terms". After reviewing the order he says, "we were very pleased", and "the court agreed with Sun's interpretation on six of the disputed terms (two of which the court adopted with slight modification) and with NetApp on one."
Mike also states that, "the Court found each of the asserted claims in NetApp's 7,200,715 patent relating to RAID technology to be 'indefinite' ... In effect, unless NetApp appeals and this finding is reversed, the '715 patent is effectively invalidated in this case and against others in the future."
The OpenSolaris COMSTAR project is one of Sun's leading Open Storage initiatives. It separates and abstracts back-end storage however access is allowed. Through COMSTAR's SMTF users can allocate some raw disk and then provide it to SAN through an FC Target, iSCSI Target or SAS Target etc. Users can now, with 100 percent open source software, turn a white-box PC with a bunch of SATA disks and a Fibre Channel HBA into what appears to a SAN to be an enterprise grade Fibre Channel array.
Interview with Jim Grisanzio focalized the synergy of OpenSolaris with the global community. "I think that the focal point, to kind of tie these things together," said Grisanzio, "is the OpenSolaris binary distribution, and the fact that it’s surprisingly good... because Solaris is so strong technically, but, people seem genuinely happy with it."
A leading provider of consulting and outsourcing services for Oracle applications,
Core Services Corporation, found it was possible to double capacity with both a reduced footprint and reduced power and cooling costs by implementing the Sun M-Series Server solution. Further gains noted by Core Services were improved application availability and increased CPU power and speed.
Core Services' upgrade included Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 and M4000 database servers, along with the Sun Fire T2000 server as application servers and migrating from its Linux-based systems on Dell to Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 M2 servers.
"Energy Efficient Datacenters: The Role of Modularity in Datacenter Design" is a Sun BluePrints On-line document by several staff members of the Sun Global Lab and Datacenter Design Services that explains the rationale underlying the modular, pod-based approach to datacenter design that Sun has adopted.
Innovating @Sun recently featured an interview on "Sun xVM - a slice of Virtualization with a side of Management" with Mike Wookey, CTO and distinguished engineer for xVM at Sun. Host Hal Stern and Wookey discuss the technology innovations behind Sun's new xVM Virtualization Portfolio, and how Sun is revolutionizing the software market...again.
Sun released the first update to its open source desktop virtualization program, Sun xVM VirtualBox 2.0, which brings improved performance and 64-bit operating system support. VirtualBox, in Sun's xVM series, runs on host operating systems: 32- and 64-bit versions of Linux, Mac OS X, OpenSolaris, Solaris, and Windows.
The Solaris Operating System—supported on over 1000 x86 and SPARC platforms—delivers performance, stability and security. The latest update to the Solaris 10 OS includes significant enhancements to the innovative Solaris ZFS file system as well as virtualization enhancements and support for the latest systems from Sun and other vendors.
Sun’s Wiki site has a deployment example on how to install Sun Java Communications Suite 6 software on one computer for a functioning deployment. This instruction wiki/document is intended for any evaluator, system administrator, or installation technician who wants to install and evaluate the services delivered by these components. The deployment example now uses Directory Server 6.3 instead of Directory Server 6.2, which is no longer available due to database integrity problems.
Sun Ray Technology users can now select either the Sun Virtual Desktop Connector or VMware's Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) as their preferred broker for virtual desktop deployments. With the addition of VMware Virtual Desktop Manager, VMware VDI now delivers an integrated solution for centralized virtual desktop computing.
The Sun Ultra 24 Workstation is the first Sun workstation in more than 20 years to feature an Intel processor, as well as the first ever with both a quad core processor and PCI-Express Gen2 graphics bus that supports top-end NVIDIA graphics. With the best of Sun, Intel and NVIDIA under its cover the Sun Ultra 24 Workstation is one of the highest-performance single-socket workstations on the market.
A recent Sun
Innovation Insider podcast features Tony Warner, HPC Initiative Marketing Manager and Rich Brueckner, Community Manager for HPC Systems at Sun Microsystems
Through Sun, High-Performance Computing (HPC) expands to mainstream small and large businesses, no longer limited to the "large mainframe device" image. Businesses are using HPC technology to create to gain a competitive edge, to solve complex problems, to produce a better product, to complete complex tasks, and to save money.
The title Sun Grid Engine 6.2 for Dummies clearly would not have worked, since natural selection alone excludes that segment of any possible audience, so Daniel Templeton prudently titled his white paper "Beginner's Guide to Sun Grid Engine 6.2: Installation and Configuration." The author's credentials could not be more authoritative. Templeton is Strategic Liaison Manager for the Sun Grid Engine product team.
The Sun Fire X4100 M2 server is a one or two socket x64 server in a 1 RU form factor. It contains supports one or two quad-core or dual-core AMD Opteron processors, and is a compact power-saver which can run Solaris, Linux, Windows, or VMware.
Sun Fire X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 Standard Configurations that are newly available are similar to the existing Sun Fire X4100 M2 and X4200 M2 Standard Configurations with the exception that many configurations now use 2GB DDR2-667 Single-Rank DIMMs providing larger memory capacity.
A recent 65-page, Sun white paper, "Sun SPARC Enterprise servers - System and Resource Management", explains how the software and hardware features of the Sun SPARC Enterprise servers can be used to maximize business value by consolidating applications.
The Sun SPARC Enterprise servers are the most powerful and innovative enterprise-class systems available from Sun today. With the ability to partition the system into sub-board level domains, isolate applications into containers, and manage resources with fine-grained and dynamic control, the systems are ideally suited for consolidating applications and optimally utilizing resources.
Sun's Customer Ready Infinite Archive System (IAS) is a preconfigured, multi-tiered storage data archiving and Information Life Cycle platform, that provides capacity improvements, flexible configuration options, and increased system performance. The IAS is the renamed, third generation of Sun's Content Infrastructure System (CIS).
IAS comes preconfigured and ready to run with all the complicated work already done, resulting in an efficient implementation and faster time to production.
Policy-based, tier-to-tier migration lowers the cost of an IAS system which can
scale from 9.6 TB to 180+ TB in a single configuration.
IAS meets SEC compliance requirements for document storage, retention, and retrieval.
Ryan Arneson's BigAdmin guide, "Sun Storage J4400 Array as Disk Storage for Symantec Veritas NetBackup 6.5 Software," is an introduction to configuring the Sun Storage J4400 array as a disk cache for the Symantec Veritas NetBackup 6.5 application.
Given the phenomenal growth in networks, storage and the hunger for bandwidth, NFS is becoming eclipsed as a standard and may well be replaced by parallel NFS. At least that is the contention of Thijs Stuurman in his paper on the subject.
As data volumes grow and budgets continue to shrink, datacenter managers are looking for ways to scale storage infrastructure and reduce operating costs. Sun’s latest tape drive and tape library solutions can help companies grow automated tape environments without disruption, and consolidate mainframe and open system operating environments while minimizing power, floor space, and operating costs. Solutions are available, as the Sun white paper "Consolidate Storage Infrastructure and Create a Greener Datacenter" demonstrates.
OpenOffice.org version 3 has a fan in Simon Phipps, whose blog SunMink reports on a quartet of new features. He first remarks on the Add-On Manager and platform-neutral UNO API that makes dealing with the new slew of add-ons in v.3 much simpler. Then Phipps turns to the four features themselves:
OpenOffice 3.0 Release Candidate 3 (build OOO300_m8) is available through the OpenOffice.org website. The software is not recommended for production deployment at its current stage. It is recommended for new users to chose one of the previously released more stable versions such as OpenOffice 2.0. The new OpenOffice 3.0 Release Candidate contains many updated features and Native support for Mac OS X.
The OpenOffice.org 3.0 release brings new core features: It is now able to run on Mac OS X; supports the upcoming version 1.2 of the ISO standard OpenDocument Format (ODF); and is capable of opening files created with Microsoft Office 2007 or Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac OS X.
In a recent blog entry, Markus Weber describes the demo he helped create for the launch
of the Sun xVM portfolio.
He quips, "who would have thought a few years ago that we'd have such offerings, and such a launch, including representation from both Microsoft and Intel?"
He continues to describe the demo for xVM VirtualBox: "The idea is to be able to do cross-browser and cross-platform application testing, such as to test how certain web pages or web applications render on those different browser and operating systems."
As part of a users Solaris Patch Policy it is recommended to always include updating the Firmware and LDoms stack as well as the Solaris Patches.
In a blog Damien Farnham explains why Sun SPARC Solaris system administrators favor the OBP, which was on SPARC platforms as far in the past as the SPARCstation 1. OBP allows sys admins to rapidly boot net or boot disk1 to boot from a different OS image from the default. The firmware did little after the OS booted and in general most users never really needed to upgrade their OBP. Now that firmware stack on T1/T2 based systems has advanced to include the OBP and also features only found in the operating systems in the past such as as a Hypervisor with Logical Domains software.
In an essay blog, Bob Netherton of Sun explains how to put applications in a container (zone) or an LDOM. The two technologies are not mutually exclusive, and in practice their combination can yield some very interesting results. All virtual machine technologies are similar enough to treat them as a class, so it is easy to generalize zones vs virtual machines.
Registration is open for the Mobile, Media & Embedded Developer Days, which will take place January 21-22, 2009, at the Sun Santa Clara Campus Auditorium in California.
Sun announced additions to its Sun Netra carrier-grade server family, driving new levels of performance, efficiency and scalability in the datacenter for telecommunication service providers. Sun Netra servers are the only carrier-grade servers in the industry that give customers a choice of DC or AC power options and a variety of operating systems, including the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), Linux and Windows.
Glenn Fawcett of Sun and Andrew Holdsworth of Oracle have put together a really well done presentation that was given at Oracle Open World. Entitled "Growing Green Databases with UltraSPARC CMT," the presentation contains some surprises.
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