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Release: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5

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Red Hat today announced the availability of the fifth update to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform, adding features designed to operate across physical, virtual and cloud deployments, the update offers enhanced virtualization and interoperability capabilities combined with support for important new hardware platforms.

As with all Red Hat updates, application compatibility and certification with the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform is fully maintained, meaning the broad portfolio of certified applications for Red Hat Enterprise Linux applies to the new update. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 is available to subscribing customers via Red Hat Network today.

In addition to overall platform enhancements and bug fixes, this update provides support for new platforms being delivered by several Red Hat partners, including AMD, Dell, HP, IBM and Intel. Newly supported platforms include Intel Nehalem EX, AMD Opteron (TM) 6000 Series (formerly codenamed “Magny Cours”) and IBM Power 7. This allows Red Hat customers to take advantage of some of the industry’s most powerful new servers.

In the fourth update to the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform, delivered in September 2009, Red Hat introduced the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor alongside the Xen hypervisor. Today’s Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 update provides a number of virtualization enhancements. Support for the large memory systems of new servers allows a larger number of virtual machines to be deployed on each physical server. With greater guest density customers have an opportunity to achieve higher levels of consolidation and reduce costs.

Huge page support is now automatic and extended to virtual guests, improving the performance of memory-intensive applications. Support for Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) offers virtual guests an improved ability to share PCI hardware resources and more efficient access I/O devices. As a result, Red Hat Enterprise Linux is one of the first operating systems designed to be capable of hosting a virtual guest that can saturate a 10 Gigabit Ethernet. Further I/O optimizations, which enable easier device reassignment, can help improve flexibility when migrating virtual guests across physical systems. In combination, these enhancements aim to allow large-scale, I/O bound, enterprise applications to be readily virtualized.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5 also offers Microsoft Windows 7 interoperability enhancements and extends Active Directory integration, allowing improved user and group mapping, while simplifying filesystem management across platforms.

Verizon and IBM Team Up, Launch Private Cloud-Based Managed Data Protection Solution

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Verizon and IBM have expanded their relationship to deliver Managed  Data Vault – a new private cloud service that provides secure, quick and reliable daily backups, and fast recovery of enterprise information.

Available from both companies, the new solution is designed to automatically transfer data from a client location to a specially designed off-site data center via Verizon’s secure high-speed private network.  With Managed Data Vault, businesses can realize off-site data protection at on-site speeds while taking advantage of usage-based utility to meet data growth without limits.

Many companies today still transport their backup tapes by truck to an off-site location – a process that has proven to be a slow and unreliable approach to archiving – adding security concerns, time, complexity and cost to the data protection process.

According to industry experts, the global backup and restore market will grow by about 4 percent annually and is currently sized at nearly $3 billion.

Verizon and IBM will leverage each other’s complementary capabilities to deliver the new solution.  Verizon will provide its suite of leading global private data network solutions along with data center expertise, IT consulting services and application-aware capabilities, which give visibility into utilization and latency. IBM will supply backup infrastructure and management capabilities, supported by its extensive information protection expertise and more than 40 years experience in business continuity and resiliency.

Ideal for global enterprises with stringent security and performance requirements, Managed Data Vault is an excellent match for the financial, retail and health care services markets. The service is well-suited to a diverse mixture of applications, databases and operating system (OS) support services and comes complete with IT consulting services support to help organizations manage through this process.

This solution will initially be available to Verizon and IBM clients in the New York City metropolitan area.

Dell Launches, Touts Open Solutions for the Virtual Era

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Dell today announced open, standards-based solutions that let customers of all sizes integrate new technologies without sacrificing performance or their existing IT investments.

Dell’s new solutions and flexible services free customers to capitalize on the ‘Virtual Era’ of the technology industry and realize new levels of efficiency, with a goal of reducing data management costs by up to 50 percent and making room in budgets for the strategic investments they need to make now.

More than ever, customers are dealing with two fundamental pain points – storing and sorting the explosion of data, and managing and operating the infrastructure and applications needed to run the business. Dell today announced solutions targeted at these pain points through an innovative end-to-end approach that leverages new and existing technology assets, including the Perot Systems and KACE acquisitions, and Dell’s industry-leading partner ecosystem.

Dell will deliver these solutions to customers the way they want them – in business-ready configurations or via the cloud as a service.

The need for Dell’s new approach is great, given the explosion of data companies face today. According to IDC, at nearly 500 exabytes – or 500 billion gigabytes – the “Digital Universe,” if converted to pages of text and assembled into books, would stretch to Pluto and back 10 times. IDC estimates that the Digital Universe will double every 18 months.

Products & Solutions for the Virtual Era:

  • Dell today announced Intelligent Data Management solutions that utilize the company’s leadership in storage hardware, software and data management services to help customers facing unprecedented challenges storing and managing data transform that information into a strategic asset, including:
    • Next-Gen Object Storage – The new Dell DX Object Storage Platform will use a self-managing peer-scaling architecture that enables customers to access, store and distribute billions of files or other digital content, from archiving all the way to the cloud.
    • Deduplication – Dell’s new deduplication offerings include the Dell/EMC DD Series and the PowerVault DL2100. Dell offers deduplication consulting services that can help customers leverage these technologies.
    • Unified Storage – Today Dell introduced Dell|EMC NS Series, an efficient platform for consolidating a wide array of environments and applications.
    • Data Archiving Consulting – Dell services reduce the cost and complexity associated with inefficient data management and help effectively align storage assets with business requirements. Precipitated by an explosion of digital data in healthcare created by Electronic Medical Records (EMRs), Picture Archiving Communications Systems (PACS), digital pathology and genomics and regulatory requirements dictating its management and archiving, hospitals around the world are facing mounting data-storage challenges.
  • A Comprehensive Approach to IT Operations from the Datacenter to the Cloud – Dell’s Efficient Enterprise Architecture utilizes virtualization, application provisioning and automation to help reduce operational costs by delivering a flexible platform for the delivery of business services.
  • Dell’s Cloud Infrastructure Solutions utilize Dell’s leadership in cloud infrastructure and years of experience and customer collaboration as the infrastructure partner of the world’s largest cloud service providers and hyperscale environments. Dell is delivering new integrated solution stacks, services and hardware that simplify the deployment and management of computing environments:
    • New Solutions: tested and supported cloud solution stacks made up of hardware, software and services, put customers on the fast track to efficient, easy-to-deploy and manage cloud computing environments.
    • New Certified Partners: certified offerings, accompanied by blueprints, from leading cloud independent software vendors (ISVs) that help customers deploy infrastructure and data Clouds.
    • New Services: consulting, deployment and support services that help customers plan, implement and manage cloud computing solutions.
    • New Systems: the Dell Power Edge C-Series servers are hyperscale-inspired and purpose-built for cloud computing, HPC, Web 2.0 and gaming environments, with features designed to offer high density compute power with reduced energy consumption and low operational cost.
  • Last week Dell announced nine new PowerEdge blade, rack-mount and tower servers updated with Intel’s new Xeon 5600 “Westmere-EP” series of processors. With these systems customers can realize better overall system performance increases of up to 69 percent1 and energy efficiency improvements of up to 47 percent2 compared to Dell PowerEdge servers with Xeon 5500 processor technology. Dell will also be rolling out new high-performance, high-density PowerEdge solutions based on Intel “Nehalem EX” processors.
  • In addition, Dell today announced enhancements to its Intelligent Infrastructure and Management products and services to help customers build a solid foundation for theEfficient Datacenter.
    • Intelligent Infrastructure – Dell is driving intelligence into its server platforms with the inclusion of Lifecycle Controller, the industry’s only embedded systems management, which provides IT administrators with the means to deploy and remediate servers quickly. Independent tests show that with Dell embedded management that the Dell PowerEdge R710 delivered up to 58 percent faster pre-OS deployment than the HP ProLiant DL380 G63.
    • Simplified Infrastructure Management – The latest release of the Dell Management Console includes a new power monitoring feature that provides greater awareness of server power consumption which can lead to lower energy use and cost savings.
    • Remote Support Services – Dell Remote Support services with Proactive Systems Management enables customers to make actionable, proactive decisions about their IT environment. Automated Diagnostic Capabilities allow for faster resolution of hardware issues. This Software-as-a-Service offering comes at no additional cost to current Dell support customers.
    • Remote Management Services – Dell Remote infrastructure Monitoring allows IT departments to monitor critical remote systems for hardware and software faults, performance degradation, missing patches and security vulnerabilities, and remotely remediate problems.

Veeam unveils SureBackup

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Veeam today presented a technology preview of its SureBackup concept. SureBackup is part of what Veeam calls “Virtualization-Powered Protection”. After a couple of weeks of buzz creation (including a dedicated website featuring nothing but a big countdown clock), readers might be disappointed to learn that Veeam Backup and Replication version 5, which will included the feature set that makes up SureBackup, won’t ship until Q3. (That is, July at its earliest.)

With that caveat out of the way, let’s see what the fuzz is all about.
[Read more…] about Veeam unveils SureBackup

Marten Mickos, ex MySQL CEO, joins Eucalyptus as CEO

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Eucalyptus Systems, Inc., creators of the leading open source private cloud software Eucalyptus , let us know that Marten Mickos joined the company as chief executive officer.

Marten Mickos, born November 6, 1962 in Espoo, Finland) was chief executive officer (CEO) of MySQL AB. He served as chief executive officer from January 2001 to February 2008, when Sun bought MySQL AB. He served as senior vice president of the database group at Sun Microsystems until February 2009

An interresting fact is that Marten also serves on the board of RightScale , Former Eucalyptus CEO Woody Rollins will take up the role as Eucalyptus Systems’ chief financial officer.
Marten knows how to run an open source company and generate business for it. It’s no secret that while Eucalyptus has a good technical background they were suffering in getting stuff done on the business level. Marten might be the right person to guide Eucalyptus systems to the next level .

Core Security Unveils Vulnerability in Key Microsoft Virtualization Technology

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Core Security Technologies, provider of the CORE IMPACT family of comprehensive enterprise security testing solutions, has issued an advisory disclosing a vulnerability that could affect large numbers of organizations and consumers using Microsoft’s Virtual PC virtualization software and leave them open to potential attack.

A Core Security Exploit Writer working with CoreLabs, the research arm of Core Security Technologies, found that affected versions of Virtual PC hypervisor contain a vulnerability that may allow attackers to bypass several security mechanisms of the Windows operating system to compromise vulnerable virtualized systems.

The issue may also transform a certain type of common software bug into exploitable vulnerabilities.Microsoft’s Virtual PC hypervisor is an element of the company’s Windows Virtual PC package, which allows users to run multiple Windows environments on a single computer. The hypervisor is a key component of Windows 7 XP Mode, a feature in Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system aimed at easing the migration path into the new OS for users and enterprises that need to run legacy Windows XP applications on its native OS.

Affected versions of the product include: Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, Windows Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. On Windows 7 the XP Mode feature is affected by the vulnerability.

Microsoft Hyper-V technology is not affected by this problem.

The issue was reported to Microsoft in August of 2009. The vendor indicated that it plans to solve the problem in future updates to the vulnerable products.

Windows Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 are desktop systems virtualization applications from Microsoft that are used to run one or many virtual hosts on a single physical system. Windows Virtual PC is used to run Windows XP Mode applications directly from a Windows 7 desktop.

In Microsoft Virtual PC and Windows Virtual PC, the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) is responsible for mediating access to hardware resources and devices from operating systems running in a virtualized environment. A vulnerability found in the memory management of the Virtual Machine Monitor makes it such that memory pages mapped above the 2GB level can be accessed with read or read/write privileges by user-space programs running in a Guest operating system.

By leveraging this vulnerability it is possible to bypass several security hardening mechanisms of Windows operating systems, such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Safe Exception Handlers (SafeSEH) and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). As a result, some applications with bugs that are not exploitable when running in a not-virtualized operating system are rendered exploitable if running within a guest OS in Virtual PC.

In particular, a vulnerable application running in Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 may be exploitable in a virtual environment, while the same application running directly on a Windows XP SP3 operating system is not.

The vulnerability invalidates a basic assumption about the memory management operations of the Windows operating system on which several security hardening mechanisms rely for correct operation. As a result, those defense-in-depth mechanisms should no longer be considered effective enough to prevent exploitation of un-patched vulnerabilities in Windows applications running on systems virtualized using the Virtual PC hypervisor. Additionally, software bugs that may have been dismissed as not security-relevant due to being not exploitable and for which security patches may not be readily available could become exploitable vulnerabilities due to the Virtual PC hypervisor bug.

For more information on this vulnerability and the systems affected, please visit: http://www.coresecurity.com/content/virtual-pc-2007-hypervisor-memory-protection-bug