News
Perfect Consumer Backup With Seagate And Rebit
Seagate’s Replica is a portable hard drive with automatic backup, versioning, and disaster recovery features to make backup a no-brainer. The product works so well that it deserves our rare Best of Tom’s Award.
Seagate Technology - Hard disk drive - Hardware - Storage - Hard Drive
Seagate Technology - Hard disk drive - Hardware - Storage - Hard Drive
Categories: Hardware
Give the Gift of Linux Journal
With the holiday season upon us, consider that Linux Journal is a terrific gift to give, as well as receive.
- Give the gift of Linux Journal
They'll thank you with every monthly issue.
Free gift card with order.
http://www.linuxjournal.com/giftsub
Categories: Linux
Fujitsu Debuts 26-port 10-Gig Switch
Fujitsu Frontech North America today announced the XG2600 10Gb Ethernet switch. The 26-port XG2600 utilizes SFP+ optical modules and is designed for use with SFP+ twinax copper cables, a physical connection option that is finding greater acceptance as data center managers look for ways to balance reduced cost and easier physical installation. The XG2600 is also designed to reduce costs by lowering power consumption to less than five watts per port. Fujitsu is taking orders for the XG2600 now for fulfillment in December. List price for the XG2600 begins at $18,000.
The XG2600 enhances the Fujitsu XG product line by offering several new features. The use of SFP+ optical modules and support for SFP+ twinax copper cables enables customers to cost-effectively maximize the use of each available port and minimize the overall cost of energy and cabling. The XG2600 also offers field-reversible cooling fans which reduce the overall cost of cooling. All of this is packaged in a 1U high form factor.
Jim Preasmyer, director of sales and business development for Fujitsu, says that the XG2600 is a logical "next step" in the development of the company's XG switch series. "At a high level, we've been in the 10 gig switch business since late 2005. We started with a 12-port box, largely because our engineers developed an ASIC for 10 gig switching. It had 450 nanosecond latency. The next year we went with a 20 port switch built with the same low latency, this time down to 300 nanoseconds. We announced the 26-port ASIC and will release it this week."
Fujitsu's 10 Gb switches have been targeted at high-performance computing and storage where low latency is a critical need. One customer with such a need is the SETI Project at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dan Werthimer is director of the SETI program and director of the Center for Astronomy Signal Processing at the University of California. He says that the SETI Program has used Fujitsu 10 Gb switches since the first 12-port versions were released. He says that the telescopes employed by the university's astronomy department push the switches to operate at full data rate on a nearly constant basis, and that the Fujitsu switches have performed reliably under those conditions.
"We tested equipment from other vendors. All the vendors claim they can handle the full cross-bar bandwidth, but we found that isn't the case. We found that Fujitsu could. We're doing high-bandwidth supercomputing, and every port is talking to every other port," Werthimer says. He explains that the SETI project builds special-purpose supercomputers using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to provide back-end processing for the SETI at Home component of the project. Each telescope puts out hundreds of gigs per second of data, and the FPGA modules have "a bunch of 10 gig ports," so the project must deal in large quantities of data flowing between many different processors, servers and data storage units. Werthimer says that the performance of the Fujitsu switches has been good enough to convince the thirty universities that are part of the SETI project to use them for networking between radio telescopes and computer arrays.
The SETI Project, with its mountains of data moving between processing modules is a great example of the sort of application that has seen 10Gb networking moving forward with deployment. For many IT managers, the constraints of the recession have meant that high-bandwidth networks, once seen as inevitable, have been tabled in favor of data reduction and network optimization. As business grows and very high bandwidth applications move away from the traditional realms of scientific visualization and commercial animation rendering, more companies will be forced to take a fresh look at 10Gb networking and its amazing array of nearly a dozen connection types. When they do, products like the new Fujitsu, with an emphasis on low power consumption and reasonable physical form factor, will be an easier sale to executive management than the fiber-only behemoths that have until recently defined this networking segment.
The XG2600 enhances the Fujitsu XG product line by offering several new features. The use of SFP+ optical modules and support for SFP+ twinax copper cables enables customers to cost-effectively maximize the use of each available port and minimize the overall cost of energy and cabling. The XG2600 also offers field-reversible cooling fans which reduce the overall cost of cooling. All of this is packaged in a 1U high form factor.
Jim Preasmyer, director of sales and business development for Fujitsu, says that the XG2600 is a logical "next step" in the development of the company's XG switch series. "At a high level, we've been in the 10 gig switch business since late 2005. We started with a 12-port box, largely because our engineers developed an ASIC for 10 gig switching. It had 450 nanosecond latency. The next year we went with a 20 port switch built with the same low latency, this time down to 300 nanoseconds. We announced the 26-port ASIC and will release it this week."
Fujitsu's 10 Gb switches have been targeted at high-performance computing and storage where low latency is a critical need. One customer with such a need is the SETI Project at the University of California, Berkeley.
Dan Werthimer is director of the SETI program and director of the Center for Astronomy Signal Processing at the University of California. He says that the SETI Program has used Fujitsu 10 Gb switches since the first 12-port versions were released. He says that the telescopes employed by the university's astronomy department push the switches to operate at full data rate on a nearly constant basis, and that the Fujitsu switches have performed reliably under those conditions.
"We tested equipment from other vendors. All the vendors claim they can handle the full cross-bar bandwidth, but we found that isn't the case. We found that Fujitsu could. We're doing high-bandwidth supercomputing, and every port is talking to every other port," Werthimer says. He explains that the SETI project builds special-purpose supercomputers using Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) to provide back-end processing for the SETI at Home component of the project. Each telescope puts out hundreds of gigs per second of data, and the FPGA modules have "a bunch of 10 gig ports," so the project must deal in large quantities of data flowing between many different processors, servers and data storage units. Werthimer says that the performance of the Fujitsu switches has been good enough to convince the thirty universities that are part of the SETI project to use them for networking between radio telescopes and computer arrays.
The SETI Project, with its mountains of data moving between processing modules is a great example of the sort of application that has seen 10Gb networking moving forward with deployment. For many IT managers, the constraints of the recession have meant that high-bandwidth networks, once seen as inevitable, have been tabled in favor of data reduction and network optimization. As business grows and very high bandwidth applications move away from the traditional realms of scientific visualization and commercial animation rendering, more companies will be forced to take a fresh look at 10Gb networking and its amazing array of nearly a dozen connection types. When they do, products like the new Fujitsu, with an emphasis on low power consumption and reasonable physical form factor, will be an easier sale to executive management than the fiber-only behemoths that have until recently defined this networking segment.
Categories: General
Nicaragua Builds An Innovative Agricultural Information System Using Open Source Software
An experiment in Nicaragua shows just how powerful Open Source software can be in leveling the playing field. The second poorest country of the Americas now has one of the best software solutions for displaying agricultural data in the western hemisphere.
Categories: Linux
Value DDR3 For Intel's P55: Six 4GB Kits Rounded Up
The exceptional value of LGA 1156-based platforms demands memory modules equal in value. Testing Newegg’s six cheapest 4GB dual-channel kits revealed some surprisingly good parts. We're comparing them today, with a definitive winner you'll want to see.
Intel Corporation - DDR3 SDRAM - Land grid array - Dual-channel architecture - Hardware
Intel Corporation - DDR3 SDRAM - Land grid array - Dual-channel architecture - Hardware
Categories: Hardware
HP Shakes Up Market With 3Com Acquisition
Networking vendor HP has announced a definitive agreement to purchase 3com. The $2.7 billion purchase is expected to close in the first half of 2010. The deal will bring 3Com, TippingPoint and H3C into the HP stable, as well giving the company greater depth in the Chinese markets. The acquisition is transformative for HP and 3Com. Whether it is transformative for the networking market remains to be seen.
While Marius Haas, HP ProCurve Networking senior vice president and general manager, and Ron Sege, 3Com president and chief operating officer, both spoke about how this acquisition will bring big changes to the networking space, it is unlikely to do more than mix up the competitive landscape a bit. It will certainly be a big change for HP and 3Com/H3C, but the networking space is continuing unabated. The campus LAN is still locked up by Cisco and there is no sign of anything in the near term shaking up that market. In the data center, however, the market is much more fluid, and that is where Cisco does not dominate. Cisco has articulated a sweeping vision with Data Center 3.0, including servers and a unified fabric. A joined HP/3Com has all of the components to be a threat to that vision, including components Cisco lacks, such as SAN hardware and the advanced management software needed to orchestrate today's data centers.
Ultimately, the key to the success of this acquisition will ultimately be how quickly HP can integrate 3com's products -- as well as the personnel and teams that support those products -- into the fold. Enterprise customers seeking out the one-stop shopping that HP will be able to provide are looking for more than the same logo everywhere. They will expect every component that HP sells to integrate seamlessly.
While there is arguably a great deal of overlap between 3Com and HP/Procurve products, particularly in the SMB market, the acquisition of 3Com fills in a number of large holes in HP's product line. This is most notable in the data center, where HP has lacked a core router/switch. H3C, which began as a partnership with Huawei, and is now wholly owned by 3Com, bridges that gap in the network core. The S12500 and SR6600, which debuted in May, 2009, compete directly with Cisco's Nexus 7000, 5000 and Catalyst 6500 network core products.
H3C designed and built their core and data center switches from the ground up, which means they weren't shackled by existing hardware and designs. Steve Schuchart, Principal Analyst with Current Analysis notes "3Com/H3C refreshed its datacenter and core product line in May. All of H3C's products are new. 3Com's S12500, 3Com's core switch stacks up against the Catalyst 6500, Nexus 7000, which gives HP Service something other to sell than competing products." In addition, 3Com brings with it the TippingPoint intrusion prevention appliances and their corresponding vulnerability research teams, filling out security offerings.
The other big benefit for HP is access to China. H3C employs close to 2400 developers and engineers in China. According to Dell'Oro, H3C has close to 32 percent of the market share in China and according to 3Com, H3C products are in 300 of the top 500 enterprises there. Since China is one of the fastest growing tech markets, H3C gives HP a huge advantage over Cisco. While 3Com did well in China, Ron Sege, 3Com president and chief operating officer, acknowledged that they needed to grow their distribution here in the states. HP's sales and service organizations, as well as its channel partners, will certainly be a shot in the arm, bringing the H3C products greater attention in areas that 3com couldn't reach in the US and Europe. At the same time, HP removes a long term threat.
Of course, in today's market, mergers and acquisitions in the networking space leave behind a trail of dead partnerships and turns former allies into instant competitors. HP will not only have to deal with overlapping products within its own ranks, but also how to deal with the partners of each company, such as Shortel and Trapeze Networks. They also have to consider how to support the partner products its customers have already deployed.
Juniper, while much smaller, is making its own waves by taking a different route by working out OEM deals with IBM and Dell and entering into the chassis switch market by licensing Junos to Blade Network Technologies. Moreover, Juniper's Space, their integration and management program and Juniper's long-term vision may make Juniper the sleeper.
The remaining question is, what is Brocade going to do? They offer data center switching as well as storage networking, but with Cisco entering the server market, and a unified HP/3com able to deliver a complete endpoint to core solution to enterprises, Juniper and Brocade are both looking like a stand alone product vendors, rather than solution providers.
While Marius Haas, HP ProCurve Networking senior vice president and general manager, and Ron Sege, 3Com president and chief operating officer, both spoke about how this acquisition will bring big changes to the networking space, it is unlikely to do more than mix up the competitive landscape a bit. It will certainly be a big change for HP and 3Com/H3C, but the networking space is continuing unabated. The campus LAN is still locked up by Cisco and there is no sign of anything in the near term shaking up that market. In the data center, however, the market is much more fluid, and that is where Cisco does not dominate. Cisco has articulated a sweeping vision with Data Center 3.0, including servers and a unified fabric. A joined HP/3Com has all of the components to be a threat to that vision, including components Cisco lacks, such as SAN hardware and the advanced management software needed to orchestrate today's data centers.
Ultimately, the key to the success of this acquisition will ultimately be how quickly HP can integrate 3com's products -- as well as the personnel and teams that support those products -- into the fold. Enterprise customers seeking out the one-stop shopping that HP will be able to provide are looking for more than the same logo everywhere. They will expect every component that HP sells to integrate seamlessly.
While there is arguably a great deal of overlap between 3Com and HP/Procurve products, particularly in the SMB market, the acquisition of 3Com fills in a number of large holes in HP's product line. This is most notable in the data center, where HP has lacked a core router/switch. H3C, which began as a partnership with Huawei, and is now wholly owned by 3Com, bridges that gap in the network core. The S12500 and SR6600, which debuted in May, 2009, compete directly with Cisco's Nexus 7000, 5000 and Catalyst 6500 network core products.
H3C designed and built their core and data center switches from the ground up, which means they weren't shackled by existing hardware and designs. Steve Schuchart, Principal Analyst with Current Analysis notes "3Com/H3C refreshed its datacenter and core product line in May. All of H3C's products are new. 3Com's S12500, 3Com's core switch stacks up against the Catalyst 6500, Nexus 7000, which gives HP Service something other to sell than competing products." In addition, 3Com brings with it the TippingPoint intrusion prevention appliances and their corresponding vulnerability research teams, filling out security offerings.
The other big benefit for HP is access to China. H3C employs close to 2400 developers and engineers in China. According to Dell'Oro, H3C has close to 32 percent of the market share in China and according to 3Com, H3C products are in 300 of the top 500 enterprises there. Since China is one of the fastest growing tech markets, H3C gives HP a huge advantage over Cisco. While 3Com did well in China, Ron Sege, 3Com president and chief operating officer, acknowledged that they needed to grow their distribution here in the states. HP's sales and service organizations, as well as its channel partners, will certainly be a shot in the arm, bringing the H3C products greater attention in areas that 3com couldn't reach in the US and Europe. At the same time, HP removes a long term threat.
Of course, in today's market, mergers and acquisitions in the networking space leave behind a trail of dead partnerships and turns former allies into instant competitors. HP will not only have to deal with overlapping products within its own ranks, but also how to deal with the partners of each company, such as Shortel and Trapeze Networks. They also have to consider how to support the partner products its customers have already deployed.
Juniper, while much smaller, is making its own waves by taking a different route by working out OEM deals with IBM and Dell and entering into the chassis switch market by licensing Junos to Blade Network Technologies. Moreover, Juniper's Space, their integration and management program and Juniper's long-term vision may make Juniper the sleeper.
The remaining question is, what is Brocade going to do? They offer data center switching as well as storage networking, but with Cisco entering the server market, and a unified HP/3com able to deliver a complete endpoint to core solution to enterprises, Juniper and Brocade are both looking like a stand alone product vendors, rather than solution providers.
Categories: General
VMware Releases View 4
VMware is making a determined bid to get a grasp on the desktop virtualization market before competitors Microsoft and Citrix Systems can bring to bear their combined desktop expertise and entrenched advantages. The result is VMware View 4 announced Monday and generally available Nov. 19 for desktop virtualization.
View 4 invokes a new version of Canadian startup Teradici's PCoIP protocol for PC display over IP networks. From a central server, View 4 can detect the end users network connection, whether a local or wide area network, then deliver a rich, multi-media display to the virtualized desktop.
PcoIP helps VMware overcome the latency that's been inherent in running desktops from virtual machines on central servers. The connection path has to be optimized for user content through the PCoIP protocol in order to give the end user an experience comparable to running his own machine.
Partrick Harr, VP of enterprise desktop marketing, said View 4 reduces the initial capital expense of desktop virtualization, which has been a stumbling block to adoption in the past. It has cost twice as much in capital expense to set up central virtualized servers with desktops and feed displays to end users as it did to simply equip end users with their own machines, he conceded. VMware hasn't cited such a figure in the past. With View 4, the virtualized desktop capital expense has been reduced to a match for the cost of a personal computer, Harr said in an interview.
Much of the gain comes from the greater ability of modern servers to run virtual machines. The reduction in cost is based. in part, on an estimate that the modern virtualized server, such as ones based onIntel (NSDQ: INTC) Nehalem chips, will be able to run twice as many virtual desktop machines as before.
Each core in a Nehalem chip, also known as the Xeon 5500, not only has a faster clock speed but can run two processes at a time. The improvement is well adapted to the needs of running more virtual machines. Harr claimed instead of a typical eight virtual desktops running on each server core, there will be 16 in the future.
View 4 allows the flexible provisioning of thousands of desktops at a time. Desktops are cloned from a master image, or golden image, on a central server and personalized with settings retrieved for each individual. VMware is following the pattern of rebuilding each individual's desktop at the start of each day from a series of centrally managed parts.
An alternative is to store the entire VM on disk at the end of the end user's day, and reactivate it the next morning instead of rebuilding each day, but that move drives down the savings of desktop virtualization by increasing storage costs.
Under View 4, if the operating system used by thousands of employees needs to be patched, it's patched once on a central server, then distributed with the next creation of each individual's virtual machine. The same process would apply to end user applications, so technicians can upgrade software once at a central server, rather than traveling to each user's desktop and doing a one-at-a-time upgrade.
Savings materialize with desktop virtualization when it comes to annual end user maintenance. A virtualized desktop is half as expensive to maintain as a physical machine because it's being managed by the IT staff on a central server. Harr cited a frequently used estimate of $2,500 per PC as the annual cost of physical PC maintenance, with virtualization cutting the expense to $1,250.
Desktop virtualization has stumbled in the past over what to do when the end user disconnects from the network. In the typical setting, there is no virtual machine running on the end user's desktop device; it's on a central server. If he disconnects, then his ability to do work is disconnected also.
In View 4, VMware has included a Hosted Offline feature that lets the end user collect a streamed down version of the virtual desktop to carry with him on disk and run a client hypervisor after he disconnects. When he reconnects to the network, his application data is synchronized with the central server, said Raj Mallempati, group product marketing manager, in an interview.
Desktop virtualization lags behind server virtualization in the data center, due to the broad set of problems an offered product set must solve. End users don't want to see a deterioration in their desktop environment by moving away from the performance of their individual machines. They also want the flexibility to become mobile and take their work with them. Harr said View 4 is VMware's first attempt to answer all issues at once.
He said the need to migrate end users to Windows 7 from Vista or Windows XP offers another round of opportunity to convince enterprise IT staffs to virtualize desktops. With virtualized desktops, they'll be able to preserve some individually preferred XP applications in virtual machines as the enterprise as a whole upgrades.
VMware is working with EMC (NYSE: EMC) and NetApp to hold down the price of virtualized storage to serve virtual desktops. A NetApp approach keeps the price at $40 per end user, an upfront acquisition cost that can be amortized over 4-5 years, Mallempati said.
View 4 comes in two versions: Enterprise Edition is a one-time charge of $150 per concurrent user and includes vSphere 4 for provisioning and managing ESX hypervisor virtual servers; it can scale to manage 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines from a single console. vSphere includes Vmotion for moving server virtual machines from one physical server to another as well as the hypervisor. Also included in Enteprise Edition is View Manager 4 in View 4 provisions and manages end user desktop virtual machines.
View 4 also comes in a Premier Edition at $250 per concurrent user. It includes the components of Enterprise edition plus an updated VMware View Composer for building desktop virtual machine types and assigning them virtual storage, and ThinApp 4 for virtualizing end user applications on central servers.
VMware has worked with parent company EMC, Dell, NetApp and HP to produce reference architectures for desktop virtualization that include their products, simplifying choices that need to be made upfront, Harr said. Cisco is offering blade servers that can offload combined network and storage traffic from the distributed vSwitch of VMware's server virtualization, speeding I/O in the network fabric. HP has a similar offering.
InformationWeek Analytics has published a guide to the business realities of virtualization. Download the report here (registration required).
View 4 invokes a new version of Canadian startup Teradici's PCoIP protocol for PC display over IP networks. From a central server, View 4 can detect the end users network connection, whether a local or wide area network, then deliver a rich, multi-media display to the virtualized desktop.
PcoIP helps VMware overcome the latency that's been inherent in running desktops from virtual machines on central servers. The connection path has to be optimized for user content through the PCoIP protocol in order to give the end user an experience comparable to running his own machine.
Partrick Harr, VP of enterprise desktop marketing, said View 4 reduces the initial capital expense of desktop virtualization, which has been a stumbling block to adoption in the past. It has cost twice as much in capital expense to set up central virtualized servers with desktops and feed displays to end users as it did to simply equip end users with their own machines, he conceded. VMware hasn't cited such a figure in the past. With View 4, the virtualized desktop capital expense has been reduced to a match for the cost of a personal computer, Harr said in an interview.
Much of the gain comes from the greater ability of modern servers to run virtual machines. The reduction in cost is based. in part, on an estimate that the modern virtualized server, such as ones based onIntel (NSDQ: INTC) Nehalem chips, will be able to run twice as many virtual desktop machines as before.
Each core in a Nehalem chip, also known as the Xeon 5500, not only has a faster clock speed but can run two processes at a time. The improvement is well adapted to the needs of running more virtual machines. Harr claimed instead of a typical eight virtual desktops running on each server core, there will be 16 in the future.
View 4 allows the flexible provisioning of thousands of desktops at a time. Desktops are cloned from a master image, or golden image, on a central server and personalized with settings retrieved for each individual. VMware is following the pattern of rebuilding each individual's desktop at the start of each day from a series of centrally managed parts.
An alternative is to store the entire VM on disk at the end of the end user's day, and reactivate it the next morning instead of rebuilding each day, but that move drives down the savings of desktop virtualization by increasing storage costs.
Under View 4, if the operating system used by thousands of employees needs to be patched, it's patched once on a central server, then distributed with the next creation of each individual's virtual machine. The same process would apply to end user applications, so technicians can upgrade software once at a central server, rather than traveling to each user's desktop and doing a one-at-a-time upgrade.
Savings materialize with desktop virtualization when it comes to annual end user maintenance. A virtualized desktop is half as expensive to maintain as a physical machine because it's being managed by the IT staff on a central server. Harr cited a frequently used estimate of $2,500 per PC as the annual cost of physical PC maintenance, with virtualization cutting the expense to $1,250.
Desktop virtualization has stumbled in the past over what to do when the end user disconnects from the network. In the typical setting, there is no virtual machine running on the end user's desktop device; it's on a central server. If he disconnects, then his ability to do work is disconnected also.
In View 4, VMware has included a Hosted Offline feature that lets the end user collect a streamed down version of the virtual desktop to carry with him on disk and run a client hypervisor after he disconnects. When he reconnects to the network, his application data is synchronized with the central server, said Raj Mallempati, group product marketing manager, in an interview.
Desktop virtualization lags behind server virtualization in the data center, due to the broad set of problems an offered product set must solve. End users don't want to see a deterioration in their desktop environment by moving away from the performance of their individual machines. They also want the flexibility to become mobile and take their work with them. Harr said View 4 is VMware's first attempt to answer all issues at once.
He said the need to migrate end users to Windows 7 from Vista or Windows XP offers another round of opportunity to convince enterprise IT staffs to virtualize desktops. With virtualized desktops, they'll be able to preserve some individually preferred XP applications in virtual machines as the enterprise as a whole upgrades.
VMware is working with EMC (NYSE: EMC) and NetApp to hold down the price of virtualized storage to serve virtual desktops. A NetApp approach keeps the price at $40 per end user, an upfront acquisition cost that can be amortized over 4-5 years, Mallempati said.
View 4 comes in two versions: Enterprise Edition is a one-time charge of $150 per concurrent user and includes vSphere 4 for provisioning and managing ESX hypervisor virtual servers; it can scale to manage 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines from a single console. vSphere includes Vmotion for moving server virtual machines from one physical server to another as well as the hypervisor. Also included in Enteprise Edition is View Manager 4 in View 4 provisions and manages end user desktop virtual machines.
View 4 also comes in a Premier Edition at $250 per concurrent user. It includes the components of Enterprise edition plus an updated VMware View Composer for building desktop virtual machine types and assigning them virtual storage, and ThinApp 4 for virtualizing end user applications on central servers.
VMware has worked with parent company EMC, Dell, NetApp and HP to produce reference architectures for desktop virtualization that include their products, simplifying choices that need to be made upfront, Harr said. Cisco is offering blade servers that can offload combined network and storage traffic from the distributed vSwitch of VMware's server virtualization, speeding I/O in the network fabric. HP has a similar offering.
InformationWeek Analytics has published a guide to the business realities of virtualization. Download the report here (registration required).
Categories: General
Asus UL50AG-RBBBK05
The design and portability of the Asus UL50AG make it one of the slickest 15.6-inch DVD-drive-equipped laptops we've seen, but an ultralow-voltage processor compromises its computing power.
Categories: Hardware
Book Excerpt: Exploratory Software Testing
This chapter excerpt is from Exploratory Software Testing: Tips, Tricks, Tours, and Techniques to Guide Test Design by James Whittaker, published by Addison-Wesley Professional, Aug. 2009
Categories: Linux
Enthusiast P55: Eight LGA 1156 Boards Between $150 And $200
Upper-range P55 motherboards cost around $100 less than similarly-equipped X58 products, but are these still good enough for enthusiasts? We take a closer look at eight different models, dissect their features, benchmark them, and come away with a winner.
Motherboard - Land grid array - Hardware - Components - FAQs Help and Tutorials
Motherboard - Land grid array - Hardware - Components - FAQs Help and Tutorials
Categories: Hardware
Skytap Eases Virtual Testing And Training
Virtual Data Center vendor Skytap has unveiled a number of enhancements to its cloud-based testing and development lab. The newest features focus on collaboration and security, simplifying the use of its cloud infrastructure solution. The new features will not only appeal to the existing users of the virtual lab, but could move the solution beyond its application development roots and into new areas, such as virtualized training.
Skytap's latest update focuses on security and collaboration enhancements. Skytap Projects enable the sharing of virtual lab environments. Policy management has now been built into Skytap, allowing administrators to manage access and security through role-based permissions, rather than a strictly user-based access control. Account access, resource quotas and security requirements can now be defined for a role, then applied to users within that role.
Arguably, the most interesting new feature is Skytap Resource Links. Administrators can have unique URLs automatically created for particular environments, allowing one click access to specific projects or virtual labs. This link also defines what level of access and visibility to the virtual machines is granted to the user clicking on that link. With this feature, an enterprise maintains control over the environment, but they can quickly bring in consultants, testers and end-users without extensive user setup and policy management.
While its initial focus has been on application development and testing, Skytap's virtual data center has definite implications for enterprise training departments. With a single web link, trainers can connect end users with their own virtual workstation, hiding the rest of the virtual infrastructure from view. Trainers can preconfigure the environment, send URLs to the users, and instantly create a virtual training center. For enterprises, this is an opportunity to embrace the cloud with a direct bottom line savings in training costs. Much like the benefits Skytap touts for its virtualized lab environment, equipment and labor costs associated with setting up physical training centers could be negated by moving to a virtual one.
Skytap's latest update focuses on security and collaboration enhancements. Skytap Projects enable the sharing of virtual lab environments. Policy management has now been built into Skytap, allowing administrators to manage access and security through role-based permissions, rather than a strictly user-based access control. Account access, resource quotas and security requirements can now be defined for a role, then applied to users within that role.
Arguably, the most interesting new feature is Skytap Resource Links. Administrators can have unique URLs automatically created for particular environments, allowing one click access to specific projects or virtual labs. This link also defines what level of access and visibility to the virtual machines is granted to the user clicking on that link. With this feature, an enterprise maintains control over the environment, but they can quickly bring in consultants, testers and end-users without extensive user setup and policy management.
While its initial focus has been on application development and testing, Skytap's virtual data center has definite implications for enterprise training departments. With a single web link, trainers can connect end users with their own virtual workstation, hiding the rest of the virtual infrastructure from view. Trainers can preconfigure the environment, send URLs to the users, and instantly create a virtual training center. For enterprises, this is an opportunity to embrace the cloud with a direct bottom line savings in training costs. Much like the benefits Skytap touts for its virtualized lab environment, equipment and labor costs associated with setting up physical training centers could be negated by moving to a virtual one.
Categories: General
Take the Survey, Enter to Win a 2010 Linux Journal Wall Calendar
Thank you for your interest, however this survey is now closed. The winners of the 2010 Linux Journal wall calendars have been notified.
If you were not a winner there's still time to pick yours up -- 25% OFF CALENDARS when you buy two or more. Use coupon code 'giftcalendar' when checking out. Expires Nov 30, 2009.
Categories: Linux
Dell Studio XPS 8000
The Dell Studio XPS 8000 offers a strong combination of midrange performance parts that should satisfy anyone looking for a midtower desktop for general productivity, digital media editing, or gaming. It lacks a few performance-oriented extras, but it makes up for any deficiencies with its attractive looks.
Categories: Hardware
Learning with Gcompris
In my last article, Teaching with Tux, I wrote about teaching children with the Tux Educational programs. Today, I'm going to discuss the Gcompris education suite. Gcompris is meant for younger children from 2 to 10 years old, though it seems to focus on the younger part of this range.
Categories: Linux
