Linux In Novell’s East Region

Yes, it’s time for another installment of my very popular “Ross gets this question a lot lately, time for a blog post!” type of posting.

Who’s Asking?

Let’s put this into perspective, why would current Novell and prospective customers be asking us all of a sudden in large numbers what applications/services run on SLES? I’ve asked and the majority are not current SLES customers, they are a mix of traditional Novell (Red) customers (about 40%) and new to SUSE prospective customers (about 50%) and the rest (10%) won’t come out with why, they’re just looking around, thank you very much…

I’ve sent out the links to and shown the following site and it’s children a lot lately, so I wanted to get everyone used to how to find what applications/partners/services etc. are available for SLE 10.  The vast majority of what I am talking about are application services like Oracle and Websphere, not OpenOffice.org.  I just love having someone ask me a complex question and to know we’ve already documented it and I can show them quickly by using the blog posting!

The Goods

The Novell Product Partner Guide is the main landing page for all these solutions, it has options for you to browse the available apps by:

• product
• hardware
• software
• industry
• architecture

There’s also an alphabetical list of Partners you can quickly look through, such as if you want to know what Oracle apps or IBM hardware and apps are certified and with what version/patch level of SLES.

The Market Start program is a way to get small to medium businesses quickly into an application service that solves specific needs. There are a number of these, including Alfresco, BlackDuck and Pentaho.

Another very popular section of the site is the Yes Bulletin Search page, either by the bulletin number (which I never know, so it’s not useful to me) and the Yes Bulletin Advanced Search, which lets you search by any keyword you can remember, even if you haven’t had enough coffee this morning…

Yes, it’s even possible to request a Linux Application to be certified, or to let the program managers know of something that you think we should be looking at or someone to be partnering with, we get a number of these, and they are very helpful. Submit away!

Summary

All in all, that ought to keep everyone busy for a while, if you have questions or suggestions, please put them in a comment and we’ll get right on it!

Enjoy,

RossB

According to ITPro – UK-based online retailer I Want One of Those (IWOOT) has been implementing a open-source strategy and has chosen SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Desktop for its “ERP system, desktop productivity apps [including Novell GroupWise] and website servers” to take advantage of the Novell/Microsoft interoperability agreement signed last year.

The implementation of SUSE Linux Enterprise is helping IWOOT by giving them a single platform on which to run these apps – which used to be on various OS’s (including Windows).

Read more in this ITPro article

As Skip mentioned in his recent post, AMD has decided to “get it’s act together” when it comes to a Linux video driver.  In fact, AMD is partnering with Novell SUSE Linux engineers to get this project moving.  More info on this here and here.

Well, the first fruits of that labor have hit the street.  Granted, this is only alpha-quality code, but hey – it’s progress and a positive indication of the collaboration to come.  Check it out here.

If you’re in the Albany NY area this week, stop by the Goverment Technology Conference at the government plaza (under the “Egg”) on Thursday the 27th of September and you’ll learn all about how to take advantage of Open Source in Government.

Here’s the agenda and though pre-registration is closed, you can get in at the event the morning of.

See you there!

RossB

• October 4, 2007 @ Memphis Marriott
• This seminar will provide a comprehensive overview of Novell’s latest Linux advances in desktop, server, deployment, virtualization and security. The session will provide you and your fellow business decision makers with a strategy update pertaining to key pain points within organizations. In addition to learning about time, energy and cost saving changes you can make within your organization, you’ll also have the opportunity to network with your peers.
• Register Now

Click for more events and training in the East…

• 
• September 27, 2007 @ Philadelphia Marriott Downtown
• This seminar will provide a comprehensive overview of Novell’s latest Linux advances in desktop, server, deployment, virtualization and security. The session will provide you and your fellow business decision makers with a strategy update pertaining to key pain points within organizations. In addition to learning about time, energy and cost saving changes you can make within your organization, you’ll also have the opportunity to network with your peers.
• Register Now

Click for more events and training in the East…

Every year, the heavyweights from the OpenOffice.org community come together to share ideas and hear about what others are doing to make OpenOffice.org the best office suite available.

If you’d like to poke your head in and see what kinds of things were discussed, here are several links which may interest you… they even were able to post some video recordings of some of the sessions.  Of course you’ll also find some of the presentations online — in ODF format of course!

OpenOffice.org Conference 2007 Barcelona Home page

Novell Open PR Blog entry (as a major contributor to OOo, we were a Premium sponsor)

Official OOo Conference 2007 Blog

In another of the “How do you do _____ with Linux?” series of questions, I have been doing presentations and having lots of discussions about how can you manage more than a few (10-25) Linux machines, (typically servers) ahem, intelligently.

Styles of Managing Systems

It’s all about styles and methods. First think of the two main management “styles” that people typically use:

• Command Line – Oh Sweet Mystery of…., er, ahem. Cough. Yes, it’s no secret that I use and love the command line a great deal, but it’s just so darned useful! When you do something every day the same way, repeatedly over and over, it’s supposed to be turned into a script, the Universe demands that you know how to write a script.

• Graphical User Interface – Yes, there are times when the GUI is the best thing, new users, something you haven’t done for 3 weeks and don’t expect to do again for another considerable stretch, that’s when a GUI wizard-thing is very handy.

These styles are just that, a style of managing Linux machines, you can use whichever makes the most sense for you, but remember that but almost more important are the “methods” of managing Linux machines.

Methods Of Managing Systems

SUSE Linux Enterprise offers built-in 3 methods for managing systems remotely

• 1 to 1 – This is you at a console session using ssh or VNC to remotely connect to a machine and run tools that are resident on that machine. This can work for up to about 25 or so production machines, but doing something repeatedly on box after box gets tiresome, and errors will likely occur.
• 1 to many – This is you sitting in front of a console session where a management tool like Zenworks Linux Management (ZLM) or a competing product’s management interface with the capability to have an agent on the managed machines (physical and virtual) that lets you do remote console/GUI, software management, imaging, patching/fixing/upgrading all from that single seat.
• Orchestration – The ability to apply an overall management grid application that can provision, deploy, migrate and manage tasks to sets of virtual and physical machines that have an agent installed. The grid is fully and atomically configurable, ie: you can manage an individual machine’s tasks, or manage thousands of machines automatically.

I would recommend you take a look at the Zenworks Linux Management product, it’s a must-have for anyone who has SUSE Linux Enterprise and Red Hat systems, it can manage both easily.

RossB

I would like to take this as an opportunity to remind everyone that DVD playback on SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop using libdvdcss is illegal in the United States of America.

Despite the fact that it is unsupported and technically “illegal” there are many websites out there that show you how to do it… like this one

http://www.softwareinreview.com/cms/content/view/46/

I don’t know how people like this author sleep at night…  (I’m Kidding!)

It’s an age-old issue, what text editor do you use on a Unix/Linux system? You might cry “EMACS” while I shout “VI”, and the games begin. No matter which one you use, a knowledge of the other is a good idea, so take a look at this well-done article about VIM (VI iMproved), and harness the beast that is VIM the text editor.

Update: How could I be so neglectful as to not promote my very own VIM chapter in my book? I can’t, so here is the link to it, it’s free for viewing. (Thanks to TC for reminding me about this, it’s been a long week!

Oh, and just to start the flames a-burning, EMACS reportedly stands for “Even a Master of Arts Comes Simpler”…  What’s you favorite one?

RossB

Someone I have linked to before, (Serdar Yegulalp) has another very useful posting for those who are thinking of mass-migration of documents over to OpenOffice.org.  Highly recommended.

Question though, if you already have a large installation of MS Office formats, why not just leave the default document format for everyone as the latest version of the MS format?  You can choose the default format in OO.o very easily, it’ll make saving documents in that chosen format a piece of cake, no worries and costs for mass-migrations needed.

Read the article, think it over.

Enjoy,

RossB

In a move that was expected, Sun Microsystems has announced it has a Xen Hypervisor offshoot called xVM (stands for X86 Virtual Machine) that has appeared in OpenSolaris, but hasn’t yet been included in the standard version of Solaris.

Don’t expect to see this happen any time soon, and the first inclusion into Solaris will likely be in the form of a VMWare appliance, running on a hardware appliance.  Yes, thats right, Sun wants to provide a hardware appliance that would be the best place to host their virtual appliance.  Guess you have to get that hardware business into view at every opportunity, hmm?

Ian Murdock’s Project Indiana (an attempt to modernize and streamline the best of Linux-like advances into Solaris) will likely be the first place where we’ll see this integration occur.  Apparently there might be some performance enhancements that result from it’s running on OpenSolaris, or so this blog claims.

You can see some slides from a presentation about xVM and get more information.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. September 12, 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced a definitive agreement pursuant to which Sun will acquire the majority of Cluster File Systems, Inc.’s intellectual property and business assets, including the Lustre File System.

Full press release

From the wire:

WALTHAM, Mass., Sept. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Novell today announced significant enhancements in the performance of SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server when the Linux* operating system is running as a virtual machine guest in a VMware* environment. To deliver this improved performance, Novell modified the SUSE Linux Enterprise kernel to support the VMware Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), a communication mechanism between the guest operating system and hypervisor that simplifies the task of virtualization and makes Linux a more efficient guest operating system when running in VMware environments. The VMI modifications, along with the paravirt-ops interface, have been accepted by the upstream Linux development community and will be included in upcoming releases of the standard Linux kernel, as well as future versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell(R).

“As the first enterprise Linux vendor to provide these enhancements for the VMware VMI, Novell continues to demonstrate our commitment to providing enterprise Linux customers benefits through virtualization and other innovative technologies,” said Holger Dyroff, vice president of product management for SUSE Linux Enterprise at Novell. “Virtualization is proving its value in the data center, and our collaboration with VMware is part of our multi-pronged virtualization strategy to create additional opportunities for customers to reduce costs and increase efficiency with Linux virtualization.”

Dan Chu, VMware vice president of emerging products and markets, said, “We are pleased that Novell is delivering enhanced performance for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in VMware virtualized environments. The inclusion of VMware VMI patches into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is designed to provide customers with increased performance, improved behavior of timing-critical workloads and better interoperability by allowing the same VMI-enabled SUSE Linux Enterprise Server kernel to run on physical machines and on VMware Infrastructure. We look forward to working with Novell on future initiatives to make SUSE Linux Enterprise run even better on VMware Infrastructure.”

Read the press release.

While investigating spyware and virus blocking options for Open Source customers, I discovered the Untangle product, from untangle.com.  Untangle’s Open Source Network Gateway is a combination of OSS projects, custom Untangle scanning engines and lots of enhancements to the interfaces to the products.  While a commercial company, they have a OSS version that’s to download and evaluate, and if you want a throat to choke, there is the Professional option, which includes support, directory support, policy management etc.

Untangle is intended to be a lower or no-cost alternative to SonicWALL and/or Watchguard, and looking at the product and site, they have attracted quite a community of users and developers, so keep an eye on them, maybe they’ll get bought by someone with deep pockets and really take off.

Untangle includes the following products:

• Virus/Spyware Blockers – ClamAV and Global Hauri
• Web Filter -  Untangle scanning engine + URLBlacklist.com
• Protocol Control – Untangle scanning engine + Layer 7 Netfilters
• SPAM Blocker – Customized SpamAssassin with additional rules
• Phish Blocker – ClamAV + phish signature databases
• Intrusion Detection – Untangle scanning engine + Snort signatures
• Attack Blocker – Proprietary Untangle DDOS and DOS application
• Firewall – Proprietary Untangle rules-based firewall application
• Remote Access Portal – Local LDAP and tun/tap servers + rules and SSL
• OpenVPN – OpenVPN + tools to configure access
• Custom Reports – Various OSS and Untangle custom components
• Router – Uses OSS router code and Untangle enhancements

You can download a copy of the Untangle OSS version without any registration or delay, or you can visit the Untangle site, the Untangle Wiki or their Forums for more information.  Also check out their pre-configured VMWare appliance, modesty and being a XEN guy prohibits me from just linking to it, but it’s hard to miss it on the Wiki site.

I’m running it now in a VM to see how well it works for my purposes, let me know if you try this product, and your experiences.

Enjoy,

RossB

Sure, there are many ways to explain it.  There are lots of additional technical details to cover, too.  But 30-seconds isn’t very long.  Here’s what I came up with.  What do you think?  The intended audience is someone who has heard of Linux, but is not necessarily technical… maybe even senior IT management?  Leave me some comments and give me your suggestions.

High quality, Enterprise-ready reliability and high availability doesn’t have to cost a fortune… SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell delivers an outstanding value no matter what your workload, and includes features such as high-availability clustering and virtualization so that you can design a business continuity strategy with maximum flexibility and openness.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 includes the High Availability Storage Infrastructure (HASI) which provides high availability service and application clustering and the supporting components to make it all work. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 also includes Xen virtualization. Similar to VMware, Xen is an open source virtualization technology which allows you to host Linux, Windows, or even NetWare virtual machines. You can even combine the High Availability Storage Infrastructure and Xen technologies together to create a flexible and highly available virtual machine infrastructure allowing you to move avirtual machine from one physical machine to another without impact to the end user – something similar to VMware’s Live Motion.

The best part is that unlike the high cost of proprietary solutions, these enterprise-class solutions leverage open source technologies, plus integration and support from Novell to ensure organizations large and small can afford these business continuity technologies.

I was eating lunch with a partner the other day and he related to me that a colleague of his had reported that a friend of his sister’s fiance’s father’s lawyer’s second half-cousin (or something more confusing) had said that Microsoft would have a version of Microsoft Linux next year, no fooling.

I thought (didn’t say, thought) “Bull” and we discussed the problems and logistics of such a thing happening with the GPL and all the restrictions that occur with such an environment and the likelihood of Microsoft so changing it’s spots as to have this be likely.

It was only later that I suddenly thought about FreeBSD, which Microsoft has a much more close relationship with, historically running large pieces of Hotmail and MSN on that platform.  What would happen if Microsoft were to come clean about Vista, what a stinker it is and decided to base the next version of Windows on a core of FreeBSD?

Ok, so before you send email flaming me to an absolute crisp, just think of the possibilities.  Who else has been successful with such a pairing of extremely-open licensed underlying OS and a Pretty GUI front-end?  Right, Jobs-san and his happy bunch of coders have been wildly successful with such a setup.

Why not have a branded version of SLED?  See the previous discussion about the GPL, whereas the BSD licenses are basically “Give credit and don’t pretend you wrote what you didn’t” and they can use BSD code in any commercial product they want to.

Makes you think, hmm?

As someone who didn’t really, ahem, “bond” with my statistics classes and content, I really don’t pay as close attention to all the “30% of Windows Users think Linux is a brand of china” proclamations that stream out of the major technology media.  I rely on the number of people who ask my help in the various professional and personal areas of my life, either in picking a good system that’s Linux-ready, how to move their email inboxes to Linux or just how to get those diseased and virus-ridden beasts out of the house so they can get some work done.

I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, based on my own style of determining trends, the number of people who want to dump Windows and go Linux, (“any brand, just get me something that works day to day”, of course I recommend SUSE) is increasing by a noticeable percentage.

I found a great article to help with all of this, perhaps I should print it out and hand it without ceremony to anyone approaching me with a “I’ve just had my LAST BSOD” gleam in their eye, it might save a lot of time.

Enjoy Serdar’s article “Three Steps to a Full Windows to Linux Migration“.

RossB

Oh boy, Cisco has just put it’s hat into the virtualization and orchestration game with it’s VFrame technology, described as:

…. a data center automation tool that provides flexibility to industry-standard server environments and their associated I/O interfaces.

Effectively your server instances will become virtual servers that boot from the storage cloud and are easily reconfigurable to serve any purpose, either manually decided or automatically determined.

This solution requires Infiniband, Cisco Multi-fabric switches and of course the Cisco VFrame software. I think it’s safe to say that this will not be the low-cost leader for this type of solution.

More here.

RossB

Here are some upcoming Advanced Technical Trainings coming up in the East that you might be interested in — if you’re interested in becoming a SUSE Linux Enterprise expert that is…

ATT Training Events

• Migrating from UNIX to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 – Oct 2-5, 2007 @ Atlanta, GA
• Optimizing and Troubleshooting SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 – Oct 9-12, 2007 @ New York, NY
• Novell ZENworks 7.2 Linux Management – Oct 23-26, 2007 @ Tampa, FL
• Xen Virtualization and High Availability Clustering on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10
  - Nov 27-29, 2007 @ Philadelphia, PA

ATT Online Training

• Shell Scripting with BASH – Sept 20
• Linux High Availability Storage and Clustering – Sept 21

ATT Live 2007

• Three Intensive Days of Training – December 17-19, 2007 @ Provo, UT

For more details and registration links for any of these events, click here!!