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News in General

Red Hat and Redmond to Extend Virtualization Interoperability

Red Hat announced in February that in response to strong customer demand, it has signed reciprocal agreements with Microsoft Corporation to enable increased interoperability for the companies' virtualization platforms. Each company will join the other's virtualization validation/certification program and will provide coordinated technical support for their mutual server virtualization customers. Other than for testing and certification, no funds will be exchanged.

With the efforts being undertaken today through this announcement, Red Hat and Microsoft customers will have the ability to run Microsoft Windows Server and Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual servers on either host environment with configurations that will be tested and supported by both virtualization and operating system leaders.

The key components of the reciprocal agreements are:

• Red Hat will validate Windows Server guests to be supported on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies.
• Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux server guests to be supported on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.
• Once each company completes testing, customers with valid support agreements will receive coordinated technical support for running Windows Server operating system virtualized on Red Hat Enterprise, and for running Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualized on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server.

The agreements establish coordinated technical support for Microsoft and Red Hat's mutual customers using server virtualization, and the activities included in these agreements do not require the sharing of IP. Therefore, the agreements do not include any patent or open source licensing rights, and additionally contain no financial clauses, other than industry-standard certification/validation testing fees.

The original Red Hat webcast should be available for replay at http://www.redhat.com/promo/webcast/216.

For additional information, please visit http://www.redhat.com/promo/svvp.

Moonlight Now on the Linux Desktop

Novell released in February the first open source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight media framework: Moonlight 1.0.

The first and only open source project that provides Linux users access to Microsoft Silverlight content, Moonlight demonstrates Novell's commitment to making Linux a first-class platform for multimedia and Rich Internet Applications. Moonlight provides the platform Linux users need to use Silverlight and Windows Media content. In combination with Banshee, a Novell-sponsored project to produce an open source media player, Moonlight is part of a complete multimedia solution on Linux.

Available for all major Linux distributions, including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat, and Ubuntu, Moonlight is in part a result of the existing technical collaboration between Microsoft and Novell that extends interoperability between Windows and Linux. Windows Media Video (.wmv), Windows Media Audio (.wma), and MP3 files are supported through the Microsoft Media Pack, a Microsoft-delivered set of media codecs that brings optimized and licensed decoders to every Linux user using Moonlight. Additionally, it allows developers to write Rich Internet Applications for multiple platforms.

Moonlight has already proven useful to tens of thousands of Linux users. A pre-release of Moonlight was delivered on January 19, 2009 to allow Linux users to stream Barack Obama's Inauguration. More than 20,000 Linux users downloaded Moonlight to watch the Silverlight broadcast.

"Moonlight brings the benefits of Silverlight's popular multimedia content to Linux viewers,"said Miguel de Icaza, Mono project founder and Developer Platform vice president at Novell. "This first release delivers on the goal of breaking down barriers to multimedia content and creating parity in the user's viewing experience regardless of whether the user is on Windows or Linux."

For more information on Moonlight, visit http://go-mono.com/moonlight.

Sun Establishes Open Source Storage Encryption Standard

This past February, Sun Microsystems released the first generic communication protocol between a key manager and an encrypting device into the open source community. This allows better management of encrypted keys and can avoid licensing fees for proprietary encryption schemes. The protocol is implemented as a complete toolkit and is downloadable from the OpenSolaris website: http://opensolaris.org/os/project/kmsagenttoolkit/.

By releasing the Sun protocol as Open Source, Sun is taking steps towards unifying the technology. Sun continues to work with partners and with appropriate standards bodies such as IEEE 1619.3 Working Group and OASIS to further develop and formalize the interface as an industry standard. RSA is currently developing a solution using this protocol to work with their RKM key manager. IBM's drive division is working on supporting this protocol for their IBM LTO4 drive shipped in Sun Libraries. Additionally, Sun has shared this protocol with numerous other industry partners including computer OEMs, back up application providers, disk array and switch manufacturers.

Governments, finance, healthcare, retail, and other vertical markets need to comply with current regulatory laws that create mandates to protect sensitive stored data. To support these requirements, this protocol is available to customers using the Sun StorageTek KMS 2.0 Key Manager and Sun StorageTek Enterprise Drives and Sun StorageTek LTO4 drives shipped in Sun libraries. A number of additional partners are developing products based on this protocol, including EMC, whose RSA security division has talked about releasing it as an option on their RKM Key Manager.

"Open Storage solutions allows customers to break free from the chains of proprietary hardware and software and this new protocol extends this lifeline into the expensive and highly fragmented encryption market," said Jason Schaffer, senior director, storage product management, Sun Microsystems, Inc. "Open source equals customer value for encryption solutions and Sun now offers the only solution on the market that works across multiple vendors and suppliers."

IBM Petaflop Supercomputer Europe's Most Powerful

The German research center Forschungszentrum Juelich has selected IBM (NYSE: IBM) to develop the first supercomputer in Europe capable of one Petaflop, or one thousand trillion operations per second. IBM will partner with Juelich-based Gauss Centre for Supercomputing to install the new IBM Blue Gene/P System in the first half of this year.

This new system - financed by the German Government - will help assure Forschungszentrum Juelich remains one of Europe's most renowned research centers and continues to play an important role in the global high performance computing research community.

This new Blue Gene System is the first to include new water cooling technology, created by IBM Research, that uses room temperature water to cool the servers. As air moves through the server racks, heat is removed as it passes through the water-based cooling system before it enters the next rack of servers. This result is a 91 percent reduction in air conditioning units that would have been required to cool Forschungszentrum Juelich's data center with an air-cooled Blue Gene.

"With speeds over a Petaflop, this new Juelich-based supercomputer offers the processing ability of more than 200,000 laptop computers," explains Professor Thomas Lippert, lead scientist of the Juelich supercomputing center. "In addition to raw power, this new system will be among the most energy efficient in the world."

The new Blue Gene/P System will include nearly 295,000 POWER processors in 72 racks and also include over 144 terabytes of memory. It will significantly add to Forschungszentrum Juelich's existing supercomputing capability at the Center, which includes an additional six petabytes of hard disk drive space, the amount equivalent of more than one million DVDs.

Inauguration and naming of the new systems will take place at an opening ceremony in mid-2009. The new supercomputer will be the first for the German Gauss Center for Supercomputing (GCS).

Cuba Shows Linux-based National OS at I.T. Convention

[based on on materials from Reuters and http://www.escambray.cu, the digital newspaper of Sancti Spiritus province, Cuba.]

A local Linux variant developed by Havana computer science students, will become the national distro of Cuba.

NOVA, a Linux-based operating system apparently based on Gentoo, supports standard office work applications, playing music and video archives and surfing the Web. The initiative is aimed at saving dollars in terms of paying for software program licenses and achieving technological independence from US companies.

[ Wait, wait... this is like a repeat nightmare. Isn't there a standard story about how the Chevrolet Nova didn't sell well in Mexico because 'no va' in Spanish means 'no go'??? Only this time, it's not clueless American GM executives deciding on the name... -- Ben ]

The Cuban News Agency reported that the NOVA operating system and other free technologies are aimed at inexpert users or at those who are currently migrating to this Linux-based software programs from Windows. According to reports from Reuters, Cuban ministries are also concerned about security for the Windows-based computers they already have and believe US intelligence agencies have backdoor access to many of the Windows applications.

The NOVA OS, developed by the University of Information Technologies (UCI) in Havana, was one of the 23 Cuban products on display at the 13th I.T. Convention and Fair. The NOVA team is based at the University and offers technical support, security patches and software updates.

There are over 1 million computer users in Cuba and currently about 20% use Linux. With the adoption of NOVA, the government there hopes exceed 50% Linux usage in 5 years.

This year's I.T. Convention was divided into two parts. The first consisted of a scientific event with 80 lectures, mainly by delegates and representatives from international organizations and institutions. The second was an exhibition with the participation of more than 140 Cuban and foreign entities.

A YouTube posting shows the OS in operation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTXIzaxfox4.

Intrahealth Open Initiative to Fund Open Source Training for Health Workers in Africa

IntraHealth OPEN is a global initiative that engages African technology, health leaders and students to develop and sustain software applications tailored to meet urgent health care needs. The project will strengthen African health professionals' ability to identify and implement appropriate technology solutions that make health services more cost-effective and accessible.

IntraHealth International has a global leadership role in developing and implementing open systems to support accessible, high-quality health care in Africa and on introducing systems to better plan and manage the healthcare workforce in Africa. IntraHealth currently has open source initiatives under way in nine countries in Africa.

IntraHealth International is partnering with Grammy Award-winning artist Youssou N'Dour on a charity album titled "OPEN Remix" benefiting a new initiative created to address critical health issues in Africa by putting the latest open source software technologies directly in the hands of health workers.

Nas, Duncan Sheik and Peter Buck of R.E.M. are among the headliners donating remixes of N'Dour's song "Wake Up" to raise funds and visibility for the IntraHealth OPEN Initiative.

Starting February 11th and rolling through Spring, free downloads of the songs will be available with a suggested donation through distribution partners including Rhapsody, iLike, Amazon MP3, and through IntraHealth's website at http://www.intrahealth.org/open.

With growing connectivity and mobile phone use increasing at twice the global rate, Africa can take advantage of cutting edge eHealth technologies. Open source technology is ideally suited for application in low-resource environments since it is inexpensive, flexible, and collaborative.

IntraHealth has been collaborating with African governments and private institutions to design and apply open source solutions to strengthen their ability to use health information for strategic health policy and planning. Using web-based interfaces, mobile phones and PDAs, open source software systems can provide far-reaching and innovative tools to support increased efficiency, productivity, and performance of health services and information to meet the needs of families and communities across the continent.

To help shepherd its growing initiative, IntraHealth has assembled an OPEN Council made up of supporters and leaders in the fields of entertainment, technology, and public health. The OPEN Council members include recording artists and representatives from VH1, MTV Europe Foundation, ONE, Wikia, AEG Live, Rhapsody. iLike, Bowery Presents, Indaba Music, Tech Soup Global, Red Hat, inSTEDD, The Linux Foundation, GNOME Foundation, Creative Commons, Open Source Software Institute, OSU Open Source Lab, O'Reilly Media, Motorola, Novell, Brightkite, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, D-Tree International, Ushahidi, the Center for Children and Technology and Reseau Africain de L'Education Pour La Sante. The group is seeking funding and partners to help expand the program.

For more information on the program and the music created to support the initiative http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/Intrahealth-948359.html.

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Conferences and Events

eComm 2009

March 3-5, SF Airport Hyatt, San Mateo, CA
http://ecommconf.com/

DrupalCons 2009

March 4-7, Washington, DC
http://dc2009.drupalcon.org/

TheServerSide Java Symposium

March 8-20, Caesars Palace, Las Vegas, NV
http://javasymposium.techtarget.com

SD West 2009

March 9-13, Santa Clara, CA
http://www.sdexpo.com/

O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference

March 9-12, Fairmont Hotel, San Jose, CA
http://conferences.oreilly.com/etech?CMP=EMC-conf_et09_int&ATT=EM5-NL

ManageFusion 09

March 10-12, MGM Grand Hotel, Las Vegas, NV
http://www.managefusion.com/agenda.aspx

VEE 2009 Conference on Virtual Execution Environments

March 11-13, Crowne Plaza, Washington, DC
http://www.cs.purdue.edu/VEE09/Home.html

Orlando Scrum Gathering 2009

March 16-18, Gaylord Resort, Orlando, FL
http://www.scrumgathering.org

CommunityOne East 2009 plus Training Day

March 18-19, Marriott Marquis Hotel, New York, NY
http://developers.sun.com/events/communityone/2009/east/sessions.jsp

Forrester's IT Infrastructure & Operations Forum

March 18-19, San Diego, CA
http://www.forrester.com/events/eventdetail?eventID=2372

ApacheCon Europe 2009

March 23-27, Amsterdam, Netherlands
http://eu.apachecon.com/c/aceu2009

EclipseCon 2009

March 23-26, Santa Clara, CA
http://www.eclipsecon.org/2009/home

Open Source Business Conference (OSBC)

March 24-25, San Francisco, CA
http://www.infoworld.com/event/osbc/

MDM Spring Summit 2009

March 29-31, San Francisco, CA
http://www.mdm-summit.com/

TechTarget Advanced Virtualization roadshow

March-December 2009, Various Cities
http://go.techtarget.com/r/5861576/5098473

International Virtualization and Cloud Computing Conferences

March 30-April 1, Roosevelt Hotel, New York City, NY
http://www.virtualizationconference.com/
http://cloudcomputingexpo.com/

USENIX HotPar '09 Workshop on Hot Topics in Parallelism

March 30-31, Claremont Resort, Berkeley, CA
http://usenix.org/events/hotpar09/

ESC Silicon Valley 2009 / Embedded Systems

March 30-Apr 3, San Jose, CA
http://esc-sv09.techinsightsevents.com/

Web 2.0 Expo San Francisco

Co-presented by O'Reilly Media and TechWeb
March 31-April 3, San Francisco, CA
http://www.web2expo.com/sanfrancisco

Software Test & Performance Conference (STPCon Spring)

March 31-April 2, San Mateo, CA
http://www.stpcon.com/

Linux Collaboration Summit 2009

April 8-10, San Francisco, CA
http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration-summit

Black Hat Europe 2009

April 14-17, Moevenpick City Center, Amsterdam, Netherlands
http://www.blackhat.com/html/bh-europe-09/bh-eu-09-main.html

MySQL Conference & Expo

April 20-23, Santa Clara, CA
http://www.mysqlconf.com/

RSAConference 2009

April 20-24, San Francisco, CA
http://www.rsaconference.com/2009/US/Home.aspx

USENIX/ACM LEET '09 & NSDI '09

6th Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation Co-located w/ 2nd Workshop on Large-Scale Exploits and Emergent Threats
April 21-24, Park Plaza Hotel, Boston, MA
http://usenix.org/events/nsdi09/

SOA Summit 2009

May 4-5, Scottsdale, AZ
http://www.soasummit2009.com/

a href="http://www.railsconf.com/">http://www.railsconf.com/

STAREAST - Software Testing, Analysis & Review

May 4-8, Rosen Hotel, Orlando, FL
http://www.sqe.com/go?SE09home

EMC World 2009

May 18, Orlando, FL
http://www.emcworld.com/

Interop Las Vegas 2009

May 19-21, Las Vegas, NV
http://www.interop.com/lasvegas/

Preliminary Agenda Announced for LF's 2009 Collaboration Summit

The Linux Foundation has released a preliminary agenda for its 3rd Annual Collaboration Summit which will take place April 8-10, 2009 in San Francisco. Confirmed Keynotes and Roundtable Panels include:

• Edward Screven, from Oracle;
• The Future of Mobile Linux and Moblin 2.0 Demo presented by Imad Sousou, Intel;
• Why Can't We All Just Get Along: Linux, Microsoft and Sun: A roundtable panel with Jim Zemlin of The Linux Foundation, Sam Ramji of Microsoft and Ian Murdock of Sun Microsystems;
• Linux Participation Panel - Measuring Community Contributions: A panel with Jono Bacon - Community Manager at Ubuntu, James Bottomley - kernel developer, Joe Brockmeier - Community Manager, OpenSuse and Dan Frye - VP of Open Systems Development at IBM;
• The Linux Kernel: What's Next: A roundtable panel with Jon Corbet, Greg Kroah-Hartmann, Andrew Morton, Keith Packard and Ted T'so.

In addition, confirmed sessions, mini-summits and workgroup meetings include:

• Two Day Moblin Conference Track;
• OpenPrinting, CGL, FOSS Bazaar, Driver Backport and Gnome Mobile meetings;
• Linux ISV Summit;
• Linux Standard Base Face to Face Meeting;
• Linux Driver Project Updates;
• Sessions on Power Management, Tracing/Systems Management, LinuxWeather Forecast, High Performance Computing, Legal for Non Lawyers, Joint Collaboration, Filesystems, the Rebuilt Linux Graphics Driver and Kernel Quality.

The Collaboration Summit is an exclusive, invitation-only gathering of the brightest minds in Linux, including core kernel developers, distribution maintainers, ISVs, end users, system vendors and other community organizations. Use this link to request an invitation to attend this special event: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/component/registrationpro/?func=details&did=2

The 3rd Annual Collaboration Summit will be co-located with the CELF embedded Linux Conference and the Linux Storage and Filesystem Workshop.

For more information on the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit, please visit: http://events.linuxfoundation.org/events/collaboration-summit.

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Distro News

Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring Beta Out

The beta version for Mandriva Linux 2009 Spring (2009.1) is now available. This beta version provides some updates on major desktop components of the distribution, including KDE 4.2.0, GNOME 2.25.90, Xfce 4.6 RC1, X.Org server 1.5, OpenOffice.org 3.0.1, and Qt 4.5.0 RC1. It also has an early version of SpeedBoot to reduce startup time.

See more at: http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/2009.1_Beta

Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 Released

The Debian Project has released Debian GNU/Linux version 5.0 (codenamed "Lenny") after 22 months of development work. Debian GNU/Linux is based on the 2.6.26 Linux kernel and supports a total of twelve processor architectures including Intel and AMD (both 32bit and 64bit), PowerPC, HP PA-RISC, MIPS, ARM and IBM S/390 platforms.

Live CD, USB images, CD, DVD and newly added Blu-ray disc images are available to download, via FTP, HTTP or BitTorrent.

Debian 5.0 includes the KDE, GNOME, Xfce, and LXDE desktop environments. It also features compatibility with the FHS v2.3 and software developed for version 3.2 of the LSB.

Debian 5.0 "Lenny" adds support for Marvell's Orion platform which is used in many storage devices. Additionally, "Lenny" now supports several Netbooks, in particular the Eee PC by Asus. "Lenny" also contains the build tools for Emdebian which allow Debian source packages to be cross-built and shrunk to suit embedded ARM systems. Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 "Lenny" includes the new ARM EABI port, "armel".

This release includes numerous updated software packages, such as the K Desktop Environment 3.5.10 (KDE), an updated version of the GNOME desktop environment 2.22.2, the Xfce 4.4.2 desktop environment, LXDE 0.3.2.1, the GNUstep desktop 7.3, X.Org 7.3, OpenOffice.org 2.4.1, GIMP 2.4.7, Iceweasel 3.0.6 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Firefox), Icedove 2.0.0.19 (an unbranded version of Mozilla Thunderbird), PostgreSQL 8.3.6, MySQL 5.0.51a, GNU Compiler Collection 4.3.2, Linux kernel version 2.6.26, Apache 2.2.9, Samba 3.2.5, Python 2.5.2 and 2.4.6, Perl 5.10.0, PHP 5.2.6, Asterisk 1.4.21.2, Emacs 22, Inkscape 0.46, Nagios 3.06, Xen Hypervisor 3.2.1 (dom0 as well as domU support), OpenJDK 6b11, and more than 23,000 other ready-to-use software packages (built from over 12,000 source packages).

With the integration of X.Org 7.3, the X server autoconfigures itself with most hardware. Newly introduced packages allow the full support of NTFS filesystems and the use of most multimedia keys out of the box. Support for Adobe Flash format files is available via the swfdec or Gnash plugins. Overall improvements for notebooks have been introduced such as out of the box support of CPU frequency scaling.

Further improvements in system security include the installation of available security updates before the first reboot by the Debian Installer, the reduction of setuid root binaries and open ports in the standard installation, and the use of GCC hardening features in the builds of several security-critical packages.

Lightweight AntiX 8.0 is Released

The antiX-team has released AntiX MEPIS 8 'Intifada' - a fast and lightweight desktop OS and liveCD based on SimplyMEPIS - is now available at Mepis mirrors in the released/antix directories in full and base editions.

This release defaults to a fully customized icewm desktop (fluxbox is also installed). In addition to the SimplyMEPIS 8.0 foundation with its 2.6.27-15 kernel and Assistants, antiX has an improved antiX Control Centre, new scripts for screenshots, and phonebook. There are improved and extended themes and artwork for icewm and fluxbox.

Localization is improved in this version and there are updated applications such as pidgin(2.4), iceweasel(3.0.6), abiword(2.6.4), gnumeric(1.8-3), rox-filer, and claws-mail(3.5), an updated ceni and wicd for wired/wireless connections, UMTSmon [a simple connect program for users using 3g usb modems], firehol firewall, and Dillo 2. New apps include: zim (wiki), Gjots (notes), Grsync, parted and luckyBackup.

AntiX is designed to work on computers with as little as 64 MB RAM and Pentium II or equivalent AMD processors, but not K5/K6 processors. However, 128 MB RAM is the recommended minimum.

Ubuntu 8.04.02 Maintenance, 9.04 Alpha 3 releases out

Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS, the second maintenance update to Ubuntu's 8.04 LTS release, is now available. This release includes updated server, desktop, and alternate installation CDs for the i386 and amd64 architectures.

In all, over 200 updates have been integrated, and updated installation media has been provided so that fewer updates will need to be downloaded after installation. These include security updates and corrections for other high-impact bugs, with a focus on maintaining compatibility with Ubuntu 8.04 LTS.

This is the second maintenance release of Ubuntu 8.04 LTS, which will be supported with maintenance updates and security fixes until April 2011 on desktops and April 2013 on servers.

To get Ubuntu 8.04.2 LTS, visit: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/download.

The release notes, which document caveats and workarounds for known issues, are available at: http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/804.

See http://www.ubuntu.com/usn for a full list of Ubuntu security updates. As of 2009-01-20, all updates affecting packages on the CD have been applied.

Also, a complete list of post-release updates can also be found at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardyReleaseNotes/ChangeSummary/8.04.2.

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Software and Product News

Sun Gives GlassFish Portfolio Integrated LAMP Stack

Sun announced in February its Sun GlassFish Portfolio, an open source, high-performance Web platform, based on its GlassFish application server.

Built on leading open source projects - including Apache Tomcat, Ruby, PHP, Liferay Portal and GlassFish - the Sun GlassFish Portfolio packages these components into a complete, pre-integrated and fully-tested open source platform. This includes a packaged version of what was the WebSynergy project - Sun's portal software combined with LifeRay's portal. It is now available as Web Space portal, a partnered product. Web Space portal allows uses to create their own spaces for collaboration and social networking and is viewed as a FOSSw alternative to products like Sharepoint. The FOSSw version of Web Space is available at https://portal.dev.java.net.

"Companies are under huge pressure to do more with less, and more and more frequently they are turning to scalable, supported open source technologies," said Mark Herring, vice president, Software Infrastructure, Sun Microsystems. "With GlassFish Portfolio, Sun is providing customers with the highest-scaling, highest performance and lowest cost, open source platform. Companies developing Web applications with the Sun GlassFish Portfolio can expect to deploy quickly, see a seven-fold improvement in application price/performance at only 10 percent of the cost - over proprietary offerings."

The Sun GlassFish Portfolio offers a range of support and services options for customers, from basic patch services to 24x7 mission critical support. The Sun GlassFish Portfolio is available immediately via a flexible subscription-based pricing model starting at $999 per server (USD), making it a cost-effective solution. Also included is unlimited server pricing which can save 80-90% of costs compared to competitiors with fixed, per-server licensing.

To purchase the Sun GlassFish Portfolio, visit: http://www.sun.com/glassfish.

According to Sun, this combines the most downloaded open source application server, GlassFish, with the world's most popular open source database, MySQL, and allows customers to develop a unified open source strategy with simplicity-of-use for developers and administrators. GlassFish Portfolio and MySQL Enterprise are both available from Sun with consistent pricing and subscription support model that mirrors support at silver/gold/platnum levels.

JBoss RESTEasy 1.0 Framework Goes GA

The GA (General Availability) release of JBoss RESTEasy occurred in late January. JBoss RESTEasy is a framework that allows writing RESTFul Web Services in Java. It offers a fully portable implementation of the JAX-RS specification for RESTful Web Services over HTTP.

RESTEasy can run in any servlet container, but tight integration with the JBoss Application Server is also available. While JAX-RS is only a server-side specification, RESTEasy brings JAX-RS to the client through the RESTEasy JAX-RS Client Framework. This client-side framework maps outgoing HTTP requests to remote servers using JAX-RS annotations and interface proxies.

Features include:

Fully certified JAX-RS implementation;

Portable to any app-server/Tomcat that runs on JDK 5 or higher;

Embeddedable server implementation for junit testing;

Rich set of providers for: XML, JSON, YAML, Fastinfoset, Atom, etc;

JAXB marshalling into XML, JSON, Fastinfoset, and Atom as well as wrappers for arrays, lists, and sets of JAXB Objects;

Asynchronous HTTP (Comet) abstractions for JBoss Web, Tomcat 6, and Servlet 3.0;

EJB, Spring, and Spring MVC integration;

Client framework that leverages JAX-RS annotations so that you can write HTTP clients easily (JAX-RS only defines server bindings).

All documentation and download links are available at RESTEasy's JBoss.org project page.

LeftHand Networks Delivers Entry-level SAN for Virtualized Environments

LeftHand Networks, an HP company, now has an entry-level storage area network (SAN) solution that improves performance and reduces storage costs within virtualized server environments for midsize businesses.

The LeftHand SAS Starter SAN helps customers efficiently deploy their first virtualization projects by simplifying the process of creating, accessing and managing shared storage resources.

The SAS Starter SAN includes management tools that provide replication, thin provisioning and snapshot capabilities. These capabilities help ensure data availability even as the environment becomes more complex. In addition, customers can purchase only the capacity they need, easily increasing both the capacity and performance of their system without experiencing any disruption. The SAS Starter SAN can scale to more than 80 network ports and 320 disk drives to accommodate business growth.

LeftHand also introduced a higher capacity SATA Starter SAN that offers a 25 percent reduction in the cost per gigabyte (GB) of disk drive capacity than the previous generation. The solution's storage capacity has increased 33 percent to 12 terabytes (TB) while maintaining its current list price. The SATA Starter SAN is ideal for customers who want to consolidate storage for Microsoft Windows or Linux servers.

Pricing starts at $35,000 for the 4.8 TB SAS Starter SAN and $30,000 for the 12 TB SATA Starter SAN. More information on LeftHand Networks SAN solutions is available at: http://www.lefthandnetworks.com.

Bit Defender Updates Its Free AV Scanner for Unices and Linux

BitDefender launched a new version of Antivirus Scanner for Unices, an on-demand antivirus and antispyware scanner for Linux and FreeBSD. BitDefender Antivirus Scanner for Unices is free for personal use.

The new and improved features of BitDefender Antivirus Scanner for Unices increase user protection. The main features of the BD sacnner include:

• On-demand antivirus and antispyware protection;
• Script and extension-based integration with various applications and services;
• Classic command line scanner complete with a graphical user interface for better integration with desktop environments;
• Automatic addition of the scanner's GUI to the system menu;
• Open source plugins for three popular file managers: Konqueror (KDE), Nautilus (GNOME) and Thunar (Xfce);
• Action setting based on scan result type.

syslog-ng, Open Source Edition, Version 3.0 Released

Following the release of the commercial version of syslog-ng last fall, its Open Source 3.0 Edition is now available. The syslog-ng application is a mature system logger that is the default logging solution of the SUSE distributions and is estimated to run on hundreds of thousands of Linux and Unix computers.

Version 3.0 contains several new features that strengthen the range of syslog-ng's functionalities including support for the new syslog standard protocol and message format developed by the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). The application allows for filtering and segmenting incoming log messages based on their parameters and content. The new version can even separate the content of the messages to name-value pairs, making it easy to process structured messages. It is also can rewrite and modify the messages when needed.

The syslog-ng application can directly send the log messages to SQL databases and log analyzing applications. Currently the MySQL, Microsoft SQL (MSSQL), Oracle, PostgreSQL, and SQLite databases are supported.

The syslog-ng application is optimized for performance and can process up to 75,000 messages per second real-time, that is, over 24 GB raw logs per hour on entry-level server hardware.

The application natively supports the reliable TCP and the encrypted TLS protocols.

The commercial syslog-ng Premium Edition features buffering the messages on hard disk, storing messages in encrypted log files, reading messages from arbitrary files, and also support for Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Further information: http://www.balabit.com/network-security/syslog-ng/.
Download: http://www.balabit.com/network-security/syslog-ng/opensource-logging-system/upgrades/

Copyright © 2009, Deividson Luiz Okopnik and Howard Dyckoff. Released under the Open Publication License unless otherwise noted in the body of the article. Linux Gazette is not produced, sponsored, or endorsed by its prior host, SSC, Inc.

Published in Issue 160 of Linux Gazette, March 2009

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