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Dell and VMware Looking For Sustainable Growth in South Asia

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South Asia is a booming market, and with the US seemingly tumbling into a deep, long-term recession, it’s no surprise to see a lot of companies aiming for growth in both market share & revenue in the Far East.

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VMware is investing $ 100 million by 2010 to expand its Bangalore, India-based research and development (R&D) operations, as announced today by VMware president and CEO Diane Greene at a news conference in Bangalore. VMware already has a strong presence across India with offices in Bangalore, Pune, Chennai, Delhi, and Mumbai.

VMware plans a brand new, state-of-the-art 82,000 square foot development center in Bangalore (including a 4,000 square foot computer lab) and aims to double its India-based engineering organization to more than 1,000 people in the next two years.

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Meanwhile, Dell is also readying itself for a decline in sales from the US, historically its most prolific revenue base. Since its Chinese consumer sales last year were up 54 %, three times the industry average, Dell plants to cultivate this new audience and feed the retail stores. Dell India plans to launch low-cost desktop and notebook computers that are customized for India in the second week of April.

“Today we are a $700 million business in India,” Dell India Vice President and General Manager Rajan Anandan said at a news conference. He added the company will soon announce plans to establish retail operations in the country. In India, Dell follows its traditional model of selling computers over the Internet or by telephone. “At present, we are not into retail operations in India, but that’s going to change,” Mr. Anandan said.

Dell has two factories in China and a design center in Shanghai and it’s planning on increasing the amount of components it buys in China by 27 % this year to $ 23 billion. The company is also reportedly planning on increasing the number of laptop models it produces by 50 %.

Enomalism 2.0 Available For Download, Beta Testers Wanted

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Enomaly just announced the Alpha release of the Enomalism Elastic Computing Platform. The Enomalism v2.0 Alpha is said to have been completely redeveloped from the ground up and builds on the concept of ” Elastic / Cloud Computing”.

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The company hopes to move to a stable beta within a couple weeks. The current release is considered “Alpha” and should be used at your own risk.

New Enomalism Features include:

  • Web Services API – RESTful
  • Automated VM Deployment with Elastic Valet
  • Multi-Server Support
  • Virtual Cluster Engine
  • Extensible system monitoring integration
  • Flexible business process management with SOA (jBPM)
  • Integrated appliance / module repository
  • Extended User / Group Management
  • Elastic Dashboard / Portal Framework
  • System Metering (Utility / Chargeback)
  • Increased Virtual Machine / Hypervisor Support
  • Xen, KVM, Qemu, OpenVZ, Amazon EC2 * (Ec2 Module)
  • Support for installation in Linux & Windows
  • New Open Source License (AGPL)

For installation Documentation and core distribution download, you can go to http://trac.enomalism.com/enomalism/

Enomaly is looking for early testers to assist them with the following tasks:

  • Interface Debugging CSS, JS (IE7,Firefox)
  • Platform Testing (Linux,Windows,BSD,OSX)
  • Cluster Testing
  • Amazon EC2 Testing
  • Repository / Appliance Testing
  • Module Testing
  • User Management Testing
  • REST API Testing
  • Anything else that needs fixing

If you are interested in lending a hand, please visit the Enomalism forums at
http://www.enomalism.com/resources/community-center/

[Source: Open Management Consortium blog]

Ubuntu Releases “Hardy Heron”, OS Version 8.04 In Beta

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After four Alpha releases, Ubuntu has now released version 8.04 of the popular Operating System, code-named “Hardy Heron”, in beta. Apart from the boat load of new features, libvirt and virt-manager have been integrated in Ubuntu. They allow for easy guest creation and basic management of virtual machines out of the box. Virt-manager can be used to administer guests on a remote server.

The kernel also includes virtio, greatly improving I/O performance in guests.

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The beta version of Ubuntu 8.04 also comes with the following new features:

Xorg 7.3

The latest Xorg, Xorg 7.3, is available in Hardy, with an emphasis on better autoconfiguration with a minimal configuration file. This Beta brings a new Screen Resolution utility that allows users to dynamically configure the resolution, refresh rate, and rotation of a second monitor. This will be particularly handy for laptop users that connect to a projector or external monitor.

Linux kernel 2.6.24

This Beta includes the 2.6.24-12.13 kernel based on 2.6.24.3. This brings in significant enhancements and fixes that have been merged in the last few months into the mainline kernel.

GNOME 2.22

Hardy Heron Beta brings you the latest and greatest GNOME 2.22 with lots of new features and improvements, such as a new Nautilus that uses GVFS as its backend. GVFS makes it possible to fix shortcomings of Nautilus such as the inability to restore files from trash, pause and undo file operations, and will make it possible to escalate user privileges for certain operations using PolicyKit for authentication. It also brings a significant performance boost to many operations.

PolicyKit

PolicyKit is now integrated in the administrative user interfaces. PolicyKit allows fine-grained control over user permissions and enhances usability and security, by allowing administrative applications to be run as a normal user and gaining extra privileges dynamically only for privileged operations instead of requiring the whole application to run as root.

PulseAudio

PulseAudio is now enabled by default. Some non-GNOME applications still need to be changed to output to pulse/esd by default and the volume control tools are not yet integrated.

Firefox 3 Beta 4

Firefox 3 Beta 4 replaces Firefox 2 as the default browser, bringing much better system integration including GTK2 form buttons and common dialogs. and icon theming that matches the system.

Transmission

The GTK version of the popular Transmission BitTorrent client comes preinstalled in Ubuntu, replacing the Gnome BitTorrent downloader.

Vinagre

The new Vinagre VNC client is installed by default in Beta, replacing xvnc4viewer. Vinagre allows the user to view multiple machines simultaneously, can discover VNC servers on the network via Avahi, and can keep track of recently used and favorite connections.

Brasero

The Brasero CD/DVD burning application, which will complement the CD/DVD burning functions of Nautilus and replace the Serpentine audio CD burning utility, is installed by default in Beta.

World Clock Applet

Integrating the features of the intlclock applet, the GNOME panel clock in Beta can display the time and weather in multiple locations.

Inkscape

Inkscape 0.46 introduces native PDF support, providing an easy, open source solution to editing text and graphics in PDF documents. Users will appreciate being able to draw up flyers, posters, and other docmuents, save them as PDF in inkscape, and send them to a print shop for printing without ever leaving Ubuntu or loading a proprietary tool.

ActiveDirectory integration

Likewise Open, available from the universe repository, enables seamless integration of Ubuntu within an Active Directory network. Users can use their AD credentials to log onto Ubuntu machines and access any kerberized services provided by an Ubuntu Server.

iSCSI support

iSCSI Initiator has been fully integrated in the kernel, allowing Ubuntu to mount iSCSI targets as a block device. iSCSI is available in the Ubuntu Server installer if iscsi=true is passed on the kernel command line at the beginning of the install process.

Firewall

Ubuntu 8.04 Beta includes ufw (Uncomplicated Firewall), a new host-based firewall application configurable from the command line which is designed to make administering a firewall easier for end users while not getting in the way of network administrators.

Memory Protection

Additional access checks have been added so that /dev/mem and /dev/kmem can only be used to access device memory. These changes will help defend against rootkits and other malicious code.

The lower 64K of system memory is no longer addressable by default. This will help defend against malicious code that attempts to leverage kernel bugs into security vulnerabilities.

Applications compiled as Position Independent Executables (PIE) are now placed into memory in unpredictable locations, making it harder for security vulnerabilities to be exploited.

Wubi

There is a new installation option for Windows users. Wubi allows users to install and uninstall Ubuntu like any other Windows application. It does not require a dedicated partition, nor does it affect the existing bootloader, yet users can experience a dual-boot setup almost identical to a full installation. Wubi works with a physical CD or in stand-alone mode, by downloading an appropriate ISO to install from. It can be found on the root of the CD as Wubi.exe. A full installation within a dedicated partition is still recommended, but Wubi is a great way to try Ubuntu for a few days and weeks before committing dedicated disk resources.

umenu

WinFOSS and the Windows open source software have been replaced by umenu, a simple launcher that lets the user install Ubuntu from Windows using Wubi, install Ubuntu to a partition without having to make their CD-ROM the first boot device.

To download the Ubuntu 8.04 Beta check out this page. The full and final OS is expected to be released next month.

[Source: TechConnect Magazine]

McAfee Wants To Secure Virtualization

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McAfee, one of the world’s leading security companies, today unveiled what it refers to as the industry’s first service designed to help organizations securely deploy virtualization technologies.

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As part of its strategy to provide the most complete solution for secure virtualization, McAfee Foundstone Professional Services also outlined a set of security guidelines covering people, processes and technology to educate enterprises adopting virtualization technologies.

“With the popularity of virtualization and the rush to reap its benefits, companies may not always follow the best security best practices,” said Patrick Hayati, Regional Director McAfee, Middle East. “Many of the security practices that work in physical computing environments also work in the virtual world, yet there are some unique requirements. Our new service will help customers meet the security requirements of these new virtual environments.”

McAfee offers additional insight into securing virtual environments in “Virtualization and Risk – Key Security Considerations for your Enterprise Architecture,” a new paper available at http://www.mcafee.com/virtualization. For more information about the Foundstone Virtual Infrastructure Security Assessment service visit www.foundstone.com/virtualization.

[Source: Al Bawaba]

HP Wants To Power ‘Next Generation’ Data Center Transformation

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HP today announced ‘a set of products and services designed to help customers transform their data centers from a standalone collection of physical assets into a virtual and adaptive infrastructure designed to rapidly meet changing business needs’, which it dubs the next generation data center (NGDC).

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From the press release:

HP is providing businesses with the technology tools and strategies needed to address top data center initiatives: energy efficiency, automation, virtualization, consolidation and business continuity.

Coupled with HP’s current systems, storage, software and services, the new products and services make up the HP Data Center Transformation portfolio, which helps enterprises to manage and transform their data centers.

“Today customers are facing multiple challenges – the explosion of data, a growing mobile workforce and the need for access to real-time information,” said Ann Livermore, executive vice president, Technology Solutions Group, HP. “HP is uniquely qualified to help CIOs dramatically change the way they create, manage and operate their data centers.”

HP infrastructure additions include new services, plus a powerful HP ProLiant server:

  • HP Critical Facilities services – As a result of its February acquisition of EYP Mission Critical Facilities, HP is expanding its Data Center Services offering with three new critical facilities services focused on consulting, design and assurance. The services help customers create scalable facilities that reduce the cost of data center operations through energy-efficient power and cooling technologies contained in space-efficient facilities.(2)
  • HP Data Center Consolidation services – These include design, transition and support services to help customers reduce the number of their facilities. As a result, customers reduce energy and operating costs while maintaining the ability to support business growth with a robust, flexible infrastructure.
  • HP Data Center Virtualization services – The HP virtualization portfolio has been enhanced with new design, support and education services that help customers create a virtual infrastructure from their physical technology assets. This includes virtualization across servers, storage, networks and applications.
  • HP ProLiant DL785 G5 server – The HP ProLiant DL785 G5 is a powerful and scalable eight-socket x86 server based on Quad-Core AMD® Opteron™ processor technology. The server is an ideal platform for virtualization due to its processing power, large memory footprint, storage capacity and expandable input/output. The DL785 improves server utilization by consolidating multiple servers and reduces the management, energy and space issues associated with server sprawl.

New software provides single view of physical and virtual world, enhanced automation:

  • HP Insight Dynamics – VSE – This is the industry’s first software to analyze and optimize physical and virtual resources in the same way. The software helps customers extend the life of their data centers with advanced energy-aware capacity planning. HP Insight Dynamics – VSE will support multi-vendor hypervisor technologies and can reduce costs of common data center tasks by as much as 40 percent. Previewed today and expected to be available in the second calendar quarter of 2008, HP Insight Dynamics – VSE seamlessly plugs into HP Systems Insight Manager, the world’s most popular platform management tool.
  • HP Operations Orchestration enhancements – New integrations extend comprehensive automation across all physical and virtual infrastructures. By automating manual and error-prone processes across clients, applications, servers, networks, and storage, these integrations help customers better manage and automate business services. Additionally, these enhancements help customers reduce labor costs, increase service availability and meet compliance requirements by providing auditable, standardized processes.

[Source: ZDnet Blogs]