Author Archive

Does your storage solution measure up? More than two thirds of our readers said no in a recent Linux Magazine survey.

Red Hat and AMD are providing solutions to customers through a collaborative development effort. This collaboration delivers choice and value for the right price.

You’ve long been aware of the failover capability of clustering for physical servers, but when you started to add virtual machines, no one thought about failover. It’s never been possible to even do that. Right? Well, with the RHEL Advanced Platform, now you can.

Increasing IT complexity and server capacity, coupled with application proliferation, requires new automation capabilities to allow CIOs to handle rapidly changing business needs. Red Hat’s new Linux Automation enables organizations to automate and simplify their Linux infrastructure to allow any application to run on any server, at any time.

Red Hat’s vice president of government sales operations, introduces RHEL5, describes what’s new and exciting for public sector customers, and talks about the state of open source within federal and state and local agencies.

Chris Runge, Red Hat government’s technical director, and Ed Hammersla, chief operating officer at Trusted Computer Solutions, discuss Cross-Domain Solutions, Common Criteria testing and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Live carries with it certain inevitabilities. Death. Taxes. System failures requiring a full restore. However, proper backup processes can help ensure that your eventual demise will not be the direct result of losing the last 5 years of your CTO’s email. Learn how how to accelerate your backups with network-based serverless solutions.

Integrated security technologies, including secure connectivity, threat defense, and trust and identity management systems, are capable of creating a self-defending network. Learn how to create a secure virtual zone across your consolidated IP, storage, and datacenter networking infrastructure.

Looming in the background like the monster from a B-movie, data-driven apps delivered via the datacenter, rather than desktop, are capable of putting a stranglehold on your business. Save the day! Learn how network-driven application optimization can free you from the clutches of the rising bandwidth tide.

Insecure shell scripts, closed toolsets, few, if any centralized resources: the reality of systems management for datacenters based on Linux and Open Source is less than ideal, it’s a downright mess. Learn how to take the first steps in developing a robust administration strategy.

You may be wondering if there is anything to this “Data Center 3.0″ thing beyond some clever marketing folks earning their paychecks. Well, clever marketing folks aside, the name was very explicitly chosen, so lets deconstruct it a bit.

Simple changes to the structure of your data center network can vastly improve the utilization of your energy resources. Attend this webcast to learn how networking technologies, like SAN fabric virtualization and integrated firewall and application services, can help.

What individual in your organization is responsible for datacenter strategy; covering switching, storage, and security? It should be the Chief Network Officer. Making the case for a new executive-level position.

It’s about more than just plumbing. It’s about your datacenter network being recognized as a strategic enabler of IT initiatives. Address short-term challenges and prepare for future service needs in a non-disruptive, step-by-step manner.

Server virtualization is an excellent cost-saving initiative for enterprise datacenters. If you know how to get the most bang for your buck. Learn how to configure your network for automated provisioning and intelligent load-balancing.

Odds are, nothing is more important to your business than your data — so what are you doing to ensure that your data is safe, and that you can recover from any system failure with a minimum of downtime? In this article, we’ll walk you through determining your organization’s recovery point objective (RPO) and recovery time objective (RTO) based on how much data you could afford to lose, and how long your organization can be offline, respectively. We’ll also look at hardware solutions, like Dell and EMC’s CX3 storage series, that will help you be prepared in the face of disaster.

The Samba Team has announced the first alpha of the next version of the Samba Suite. Samba 4.0 is being developed in parallel to Samba 3, and should not be used in production environments. The main new feature in this port is support for Active Directory logon protocols used by Windows 2000 and higher.

PostgreSQL.Org is having a one day technical conference in Portland,
Oregon on October 20th 2007. The conference will be held at Portland
State University. All donations for registration to this conference will be going directly to PostgreSQL.Org via Software in the Public Interest, a
501(c)3 non-profit corporation.

Red Hat announced today that the first beta of the JBoss Application Server (AS) is ready for testing. This release will contain JBoss Messaging 1.2, WebServices 2.0, Seam 1.1, and Hibernate 3.2. Seam is a new application framework for use in building next generation Web 2.0 applications for SOA deployments.

Analyst firm IDC is predicting that Linux’s share of the server market will get a big boost in 2008. According to the firm, Linux will continue to grow in market share and revenue for the next five years, with major Linux vendors like Dell benefiting the most from the increase. The company also recommends that SMBs evaluate Linux for any new deployment or project.

Multicore CPUs from AMD provide a huge boost in performance over single-core CPUs, but unoptimized programs don’t provide the same kind of benefit as programs written with multicore CPUs in mind. Using AMD’s Extensions for Software Parallelism, ISVs can address the multicore issue head-on and wring the last tiny drop of performance out of the multicore monsters that are finding their way into your data center.

Now more than ever, organizations have to worry about space, power consumption, server consolidation, and ease of system management. That’s why the Linux, Blades, and Virtualization combo is unbeatable for any organization looking to build the most cost-effective IT infrastructure possible.

Using virtualization to consolidate servers won’t just save you money on hardware — it’s also a great way to cut down on power costs. Server consolidation, and the use of blade servers with reduced power requirements, can drastically reduce power consumption. We’ve talked to a number of CTOs who have cultivated a green thumb in their data center and shared their secrets to saving money using blades and virtualization.

Productivity freaks have a lot to love in the Linux desktop. There’s a wealth of tools to help you get organized and stay on track using an Ubuntu desktop. Step inside, and you’ll learn how to Get Things Done like a pro on Linux.

You’ve made the decision to integrate Linux into your SOHO network, now what? We’ve talked to ten small business users who have successfully brought Linux into their SOHO environment, and have found what works (and what doesn’t) when using Linux in the office.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year or so, you’ve probably been hearing about Ubuntu, the new, hot South African import that’s been making waves and earning raves all over the Linux end-user community for it’s ease of installation, user friendliness, huge software library, and the fact that 10 Million clams has been pledged to the newly formed Ubuntu Foundation by Mark Shuttleworth and his company, Canonical. Shuttleworth is a South African billionaire and, uh, astronaut.

If you’re like me, you have about 300 hours of footage of weddings, children’s birthday parties, anniversaries, and other assorted home videos collecting dust. That expensive camera is so easy to use, but you’ve never found time to actually edit all that video. Using Linux, a FireWire cable, and Kino, you can take the raw footage and turn it into something your family will be able to enjoy for years to come.

Adobe has announced an update to its LiveCycle workflow automation product that brings together the Flex development environment and PDF technology to the enterprise.

MapQuest announced the beta launch of a new API for Adobe ActionScript. The latest API option within MapQuest’s Advantage API, allows developers to use a robust toolset with the added benefits of ActionScript 3.0.

AnyChart and Adobe announced a partnership to deliver a Flash charting solution for web application developers worldwide.

Responding to an outpouring of requests, the upcoming Apollo Beta will include SQLite, allowing Apollo applications to persist data in the embedded database.

ruby script/generate model BestOfBothWorlds
What could be better than taking the raw power of RoR and marrying it with rich GUI of Flex? Very little, in fact. Ruby and Flex: The Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup of Web 2.0.

If you’ve got a ton of PHP driving your back-end server for data — and who doesn’t these days? — consider building a high-availability, replicated AMFPHP cluster, so your application never goes dark.

Building UIs shouldn’t be the slog that it is, but frameworks like Swing and AWT make it more difficult that it needs to be. Learn how to write Java servlets or JSPs that a Flex UI can connect to and slash your development time and improve your browser support. And keep the Java where it belongs: in a cup. Umm… we mean, on the server.

Bugs happen. FlexUnit is a unit testing framework for Flex and ActionScript 3.0 applications and libraries. For the Java programmers among us, it mimics the functionality of JUnit, comes with a graphical test runner, and can benefit anyone writing more than a few lines of MXML. We show you how to integrate it into your development environment.

On July 16, 1969, the Apollo 11 spacecraft left Earth bound for the Moon. Today, Apollo is again exploring the vast reaches of the unknown, this time with desktop applications. Apollo apps can access local file systems, offer significant advantages over Swing-based UIs, and can interact more fully with the a user’s OS. Learn what’s possible and how to bundle your app for distribution.

Hey, there code cowboy, think you’re going to write the next hot web app in Javascript and some Ajax libraries? Unlikely. You need to pick a real language and a more robust framework. But which one? Flex, JavaFX, Silverlight; they all offer something to the RIA developer. We take you deep inside each platform so you can pick the one that’s right for you.

IBM has announced a single, simplified IBM WebSphere Portal offering with enhanced Web 2.0 tooling and a set of tailored business-ready packages - or “accelerators” that support a quicker return on investments and shortened implementation cycles for specific business problems.

IBM today introduced a new, low-cost yearly support option for users of the no-cost DB2 Express-C data server, featuring support for high-availability and disaster recovery clustering.

Two new Express configurations of the System i5 — the 515 and 525 servers — are now available through the Express Advantage program. These servers, like the solutions featured in the Express Advantage program — are specifically targeted at mid-sized installs.

Leveraging Open Source developer tools can allow you collaborate better with your development team and build rock-solid apps faster. We show you how to set up a development environment with the de facto open standards IDE, Eclipse, and CVS.

IBM defines the mid-market as companies between 50 and 2,000 employees. In CEO Sam Palmisano’s keynote address — his first at a PartnerWorld in four years — the IBM chief stressed that the company believes the mid-market will be the fastest growing segment of their business within 2-3 years.

Open interfaces give developers the ability to access legacy applications that have traditionally been rigid silos. Learn how you can leverage middleware and web services to extend the reach of your critical business apps.

Let’s be honest with each other. We’re not predicting another Y2K bug anytime soon and it’s been quite awhile since since anyone has able to say “COBOL programmer” with a straight face. It’s time dust off those developer chops and upgrade to a modern Open Source language like PHP. We show you how.

Open source solutions carry strategic advantages over proprietary software for businesses of any size. In order to stay competitive, today’s mid-sized businesses need to ask themselves, “What should be our Open Source strategy?”

Your business needs a nimble infrastructure that can quickly respond to growing demand and new applications but you’ve got a datacenter full of sluggish rack servers? Learn what makes blades better than boxes and how they can lay the foundation for business agility that reach to the edges of your enterprise.

It seems these days just about everything is getting the virtual treatment, from operating systems to networks. But beneath these buzzwords is a greater dependence now on industry standard hardware then there ever has been. We peek under the hood at the systems that are best suited for physical server consolidation and running your virtualized applications.

We all want a simpler IT infrastructure, but does the ROI of consolidation offset new system acquisition costs? Get a better understanding of how consolidation on blade servers reduces costs across your enterprise, including power and cooling, system administration, and eliminated downtime.

Looking into hypervisors and feeling confused? It’s no wonder — with solutions from Xen, VMware, Microsoft Virtual Server and now with KVM integrated directly into the Linux Kernel, your choices aren’t getting easier. We show you how to choose the virtualization solution that’s a best fit for your business.

Licensing, I/O bottlenecks, and sizing errors are easy to avoid if you know what to look for. Learn how to efficiently plan your virtualization deployment so you can fire, forget, and reap the benefits of server consolidation.