http://sun.systemnews.com System News for Sun Users http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/BigAdmin/19964 Articles have been posted to BigAdmin in the last couple of weeks include: OpenSolaris on the HCL New Jobs Section on BigAdmin Workaround for Xorg Server's Failure to Start on IBM x3850 M2 Server Resetting the 'admin' Password in Sun Java System Directory Server Community Submission: Scripts for Automating Network Systems Checks Case Study: Using DTrace and truss in the Solaris 10 OS Chinese version on BigAdmin Multilingual Hub http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/FOSS/19883 The new NetBeans IDE 6.1 supports a wide range of open source scripting technologies, offers improved performance and extends language support beyond Java technology through a rich set of features for C/C++, JavaScript and the Ruby language, including Ruby on Rails. Another new arrival is the NetBeans IDE Early Access for PHP that offers developers intelligent editing features. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/FOSS/19945 Sun and Liferay, Inc. are developing a common, open source, standards-based Web presentation platform under the Sun/Liferay Initiative that will combine technologies from both companies to enhance and maintain web aggregation and presentation technologies. Liferay Portal 5 and Sun's Project Web Synergy are the first version of the new product families resulting from this initiative. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/FOSS/19809 In his two-part blog debunking myths about OSS, enterprise architect Mike Kavis takes on several common misconceptions about open source software, conceding at the outset that he sees room in the grand scheme of things for proprietary software as well. "The trick is to know when to use the right tool for the right job," he writes. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/FOSS/19522 Like so much else of Sun's product line, the company is open sourcing the hardware and operating system for its Sun Small Programmable Object Technology (Sun SPOT). In an interview with Arshan Poursohi, staff researcher at the Sun SPOT lab, Mary Grush of Campus Technology explores some of the implications of this further opening of Sun technology. Sun SPOT is a sensor networking product based on Java technology. Grush was particularly interested in how higher education institutions can incorporate Sun SPOTs in research and instruction. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/HPC/19841 Josh Simmons' April 21st blog covers his presentation as part of the Interconnect Panel during the recent IDC HPC User Forum meeting in Norfolk, Va. He considers the use of Ethernet and InfiniBand as important HPC interconnects, noting the increasing levels of 10GbE integration on system motherboards rather than as plug-ins. He notes that, the latency and bandwidth advantages that InfiniBand enjoys over 10GbE has fostered its adoption in financial services settings. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/HPC/19914 Matthew Baier, Group Manager, Solaris Marketing, talks with Chris Wood, Sun CTO of Storage Solutions Group, about Sun's HPC storage solutions in a short webcast hosted on the HPC Watercooler Website that highlights various software and hardware products. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/OpenSolaris/19919 The first official release of the OpenSolaris operating system is here, and it's not just for developers anymore. Although still ideal for developers working on applications for the next generation of Web 2.0 businesses, Sun's open-source version of the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) now appeals to startups and corporations with its two subscription support offerings from Sun Services: OpenSolaris Essentials Subscription Support and OpenSolaris Production Subscription Support. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/OpenSolaris/19927 Important new releases that have hit the open source community space recently include OpenSolaris 2008.05, NetBeans 6.1 and an Early Access for PHP, VirtualBox 1.6, GlassFish Version 3 Technology Preview 2 and Dirtracer v 6.0.6. Find out more about these latest editions and where you need to go to get them. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/Top10/19961 During the last quarter (Jan 08, Feb 08. Mar 08), the web site for this newsletter had 140k unique visitors who viewed 312k pages. (For the past 12 months: 416k visitors and 1.0 million page views.) 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 122 Issue 5, were: Comparison Chart of SPARC Processors Architecture, Physical Features [19743] Solaris 9 Containers Software Now Available for Download [19816] Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220 and T5140/T5240 Servers [19826] Third Quarter Fiscal 2008 Financial Results Miss Expectations [19735] Sun's Open Storage Platform Adds New Developer Tools, Expands Services [19885] Java and the iPhone - Will Ever the Twain Meet? [19878] Sun Operates with Sharp Market Focus [19827] Sun to Demonstrate Java FX at JavaOne 2008 [19853] Former Defense Intelligence Agency CTO Shares His Sun Ray Experience [19667] Fedora 9 and Ubuntu 8.04 Including OpenJDK-based Implementations [19886] http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/ja/19933 JavaFX took center stage during the JavaOne Conference with Sun putting forth this technology as one for the next generation of consumer-oriented, Web applications and as an option to technologies like Microsoft's Silverlight and Adobe's Flash platform. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/ja/19944 Sun announced it has renamed the GlassFish AppServer from "Sun Java System Application Server" to "Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server," which now has a milestone release available under Version 3 Technology Preview 2 and new pricing for enterprises. A new GlassFish Partner Initiative has been launched and a Sun GlassFish Communications Server based on Project SailFin is on the horizon. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/ja/19932 The year's most influential Java technology-based applications have been identified and rewarded with a Duke's Choice. The sixth annual awards program, which is a significant part of the JavaOne Conference, is headed by Vice President and Sun Fellow James Gosling, who, along with a panel of Java technology experts at Sun, select the winning companies and their applications. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/ja/19934 Music legend and pioneer Neil Young joined Sun executives on stage at the opening of the JavaOne Conference to announce his plans on delivering a multimedia interactive project chronicling his career in the music industry that has become a reality because of Java and Blu-ray Disc technologies. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/ja/19946 Coming this fall, On2 Technologies TrueMotion video codecs for JavaFX software products are expected to be available, which will add comprehensive video capabilities to the JavaFX product line. On2's TrueMotion video codecs are deployed on more than two billion desktops worldwide and more than 200+ million in mobile devices. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/news/19921 Sun's "disappointing" fiscal third quarter results, which reported it lost $34 million, or 4 cents per share, in the three months ending March 30, spurred Sun President and CEO Jonathan Schwartz to answer a few questions regarding the company's health and status. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/news/19920 Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) will now offer the OpenSolaris Operating System to its customers as well as give users access to MySQL premium technical support. Amazon EC2 is a Web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud, allowing customers to pay only for the infrastructure software services and capacity that they actually use. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/news/19917 Less is more or better, at least, in the eyes of RedMonk analyst James Governor. The "less" he blogs about is the .5 percent decline in Sun's revenue reported for the company's fiscal third quarter, which ended March 30th. On the other hand, he notes, Microsoft suffered a 24 percent decline in revenue for the quarter. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/news/19926 Over the past couple of months, Sun had been promoting the fact that its was nearing a milestone - certifying a half a million professionals - and wanted to honor the Sun Certified Professional who helped the company reach that mark with gifts. Well, the milestone has been met and the individual awarded. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/news/19948 System News posts items of interest for Sun users on a regular basis on the System News For Sun Users blog. A quick recap of posts for the last week includes: Developers Offered Free Hosting on OpenSocial Platform, New Releases Freely Available to Download, OpenSolaris dot Org and dot Com, Sun Third Party System Management Integrations, Does the Solaris OS Really Cost Less Than Linux and Neil Young to Help Open JavaOne Conference. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/pr-partner/19966 Fast -- Delivers extreme speed over existing data warehouse solutions as proven by joint Sun and ParAccel TPC-H benchmarks Eco-friendly -- Greatly reduces costs and requirements for space, power, cooling, maintenance, and complex hardware administration Manageable --Provides superior performance without the additional tuning usually associated with business intelligence Easy to administer -- Simplifies configuration and management with a GUI administrative console Flexible -- Accommodates all types of analytic schemas for quick implementation and future extensibility Scalable -- Supports configurations from 100 gigabytes to 100 terabytes with one database engine http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/pr-partner/19969 Utilize idle disaster recovery assets for daily workload Eliminate the need for costly, massively redundant hardware Scale IT resources up or down based on administrator defined policies — manually or automatically Meet unexpected user demands by rapidly repurposing non-production servers Simplify server consolidation and data center moves with a single deployment process Use any Sun server platform to analyze and deploy server assets http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/storage/19892 Taylor Allis of Sun's Market Strategy & Intelligence unit concedes that his initial skepticism about open storage was misplaced. The combination of open source software with industry-standard hardware for the purpose of creating enterprise-class storage systems is a good idea after all, he now says. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/storage/19537 Dianne McAdam of The Clipper Group jousts against the disk proponents who argue that tape is dead, dispelling nine myths on the subject in the course of her argument. Her conclusion? Tape is far from dead and remains a strong contender for space in the data center. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/storage/19552 Sun has made yet more code available to the open source community. This time it involves Honeycomb, the fixed-content object storage software of the StorageTek 5800, as reported by Leslie T. O'Neill. Developers can download the binary code from Sun.com and run a complete implementation on their own server or even a laptop. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/sw/19890 VirtualBox 1.6.0 now offers users Mac OS X and Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) host platform support, new high performance virtual devices, improved scalability and Web Services. This latest version of the free virtualization framework includes a Web Service API, a SATA hard-disk controller (AHCI) and guest system extensions for Solaris OS. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/sw/19834 The recent release of the Solaris 10 Operating System 5/08 (Solaris OS), with its enhancements to Kerberos, has prompted bloggers and others [19592] to write on the subject. This blog outlines the most significant new Kerberos features. In addition to these new features, listed below, the 05/08 release includes a number of bug fixes as well. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/sw/19879 Joerg Moellenkamp has created an excellent series of tutorials on the "Less Known Features of Solaris." His most recent set of tutorials covers Point-in-time copy with AVS, which he points out "are a rather unusual feature for small installations, but they are absolutely essential for many enterprise customers. And when you really think about it, there are many usecases even for small installations." http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/sw/19808 One of the first clarifications Fahmida Y. Rashid provides in the examination written for ChannelWeb of MySQL under the Sun umbrella is that there is nothing proprietary in Sun's acquisition of the database vendor. The decision to differentiate between MySQL Community and MySQL Enterprise, the author writes, came well before the acquisition. http://sun.systemnews.com/articles/123/1/sw/19592 Sun Blogger Wences Michel uses the Q&A format to provide information on Sun Kerberos, which he describes as a network authentication protocol that uses secret-key cryptography to provide strong authentication for client/server applications.