February 26, 2014
by sjvn01
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My apologies for Practical-Tech going dark for so long. I’ve been busy with other projects. I’ll be updating the site shortly with my newest stories and back-filling my older, missing tales.
Thanks for your patience.
Steven
February 25, 2014
by sjvn01
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One Operating System to rule them all;
One Operating System to find them;
One Operating System to bring them all and in Android bind them.*
Or, some people would add, “in Google bind them.” But that’s not true: Android is much too open for Google to lock vendors in. Amazon proved that with its Kindle line, and now Microsoft’s smartphone company, Nokia, wants to show that Android will work well with Microsoft services too.
Yes, Microsoft is supporting Linux by way of Android. Do you really think — with the clock running down on Microsoft’s final acquisition of Nokia — that the Finnish phone company would make such a move without Microsoft’s full backing? I don’t.
I think Microsoft and Nokia have made a smart move. I’m not the only one.
February 24, 2014
by sjvn01
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More and more for Windows users, there’s no OS like an old OS
XP fans might finally have to get over it. Their favorite Windows operating system is on its deathbed. Oh, die-hards can keep running XP, but that’s just asking for trouble. If you can’t bring yourself to give up on Windows — and you can’t stand Windows 8.x — I’ve suggested that you stick with Windows 7. So guess what. Microsoft is going to let you keep buying new business PCs with Windows 7 Professional installed until at least February 2015, and it may be longer — a lot longer.
Consumer PCs are another matter. New PCs with Windows 7 Home Basic, Home Premium or Ultimate will no longer be available after Oct. 31, 2014. Or, will they?
Hewlett-Packard recently made headlines with an online promotion that discounts Windows 7 consumer PCs by $150, saying the four-year-old operating system was “back by popular demand.”
More than a month later, in late February, HP is selling new consumer PCs with Windows 7 at from $70 to $200 off. One model has sold out, suggesting that HP isn’t just talking a good game. Windows 7 is still popular.
February 24, 2014
by sjvn01
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IBM believes it’s making a safe bet by opening its middleware stack to its SoftLayer Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) cloud. They’d better be. Big Blue’s putting a billion dollars on the table.
This combination, called BlueMix, also makes use of Cloud Foundry, an open-source PaaS. BlueMix’s goal is to “enable developers to rapidly build, deploy, and manage their cloud applications, while tapping a growing ecosystem of available services and runtime frameworks.”
February 19, 2014
by sjvn01
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If you follow networking vendors, you know they get along with one another about as well as a dog whose tail has just been pulled and a cat who’s had a bucket of water dumped on him. That’s why it was more than a little surprising when the Linux Foundation managed to get Brocade, Cisco, Juniper, and many other network powers on the same page when it came to software-defined networking (SDN). More surprising still, it got them to work on SDN together in an open source project: OpenDaylight.
To understand why such long time corporate enemies, as well as such unlikely allies as Red Hat and Microsoft, all joined forces to back SDN in OpenDaylight, you first need to know a little about SDN.
In the simplest terms, SDN brings software programmability to networks. This can be done with the OpenFlow protocol, but other protocols can be used. With these protocols, you use SDN to centrally set up, manage, and monitor your network’s routers and switches. This enables network administrators to create efficient virtual networks that are independent from physical networks.
The result is less-rigid datacenter networks. With the rise of the cloud, datacenters need their networks to be as flexible as their virtual machines. When customers bring up and down thousands of server instances in a day, not being able to connect one bank of servers to another efficiently because switches aren’t connected properly is unacceptable.
The companies behind OpenDaylight can read the IT prophecy tea leaves better than most. They realized that trying to come up with an SDN standard would takes years. Time is precious in a world where efficient cloud applications are becoming ever more important.
The erstwhile competitors also figured out that trying that the tried-and-true method of locking customers into a single vendor’s technology was unlikely to work. Cost-conscious companies are wary of vendor lock-in “deals.”
Even Microsoft, yes Microsoft, is getting it. When I spoke recently with Rajeev Nagar, who oversees Microsoft’s Windows Datacenter Networking & Platforms, he told me that Microsoft sees OpenDaylight as an example of “everyone working together in a virtuous cycle in which both vendors and end-users will benefit.”
So it was that major rivals decided to try creating a set of open source programs, Project Daylight, to deliver SDN to customers. Good news: It’s working.
Today, OpenDaylight is an open source platform for network programmability to enable SDN and create a solid foundation for Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) for networks at any size and scale. OpenDaylight software is a combination of components including a fully pluggable controller, interfaces, protocol plug-ins, and applications. The Northbound (programmatic) and Southbound (implementation) interfaces are meant to be clearly defined and documented APIs for network applications.
At the first OpenDaylight Summit, OpenDaylight’s founders said you should judge their results not by their words but by their code. Their code is impressive.
When OpenDaylight started in April 2013, it only had two open source projects. Now, it has sixteen. By Ohloh‘s count, the Black Duck Software site that tracks open source development, OpenDaylight now has more than a million lines of code. Of those, 461,000 lines of code are in Java, with C++ in second place with 292,000 lines.
OpenDaylight also has 154 developers. “This is one of the largest open source teams in the world, and is in the top 2% of all project teams on Ohloh,” said the Ohloh representative at the conference.
This compares well to far older, popular projects, said Anees Shaikh, formerly the leader of an IBM research group devoted to SDN and now a Google network architect, in a speech during the conference. For comparison, OpenStack has 1.67 million lines of code and 1,974 contributors; Apache CloudStack has 1.5 million lines of code and 250 contributors; and Eclipse has 2.67 million lines of code and 404 developers.
OpenDaylight’s already much larger than some other open source SDN projects such as Apache and Big Switch’s Floodlight OpenFlow controller, which has 97 thousand lines of code and 32 contributors. It’s comparable to Juniper’s Contrail Virtual Router and Contrail Controller with its combined 280 thousand lines of code and 69 developers. In short, OpenDaylight looks like it’s the leading open source SDN program.
OpenDaylight delivered its first developer release, Hydrogen, on February 5th, 2014. Hydrogen comes in three editions with the following features:
Base Edition:
Virtualization Edition (includes Base Edition):
Service Provider Edition (includes Base Edition):
If you want to try it out for yourself, you can download prebuilt versions for RPM-based Linux distributions and ready-to-run Hydrogen OpenDaylight virtual machines for Fedora and Ubuntu. You can also work with OpenDaylight via the Ericsson-sponsored OpenDaylight testing lab in San Jose, CA.
Sound interesting to you? The project and its many vendors are looking for a few good programmers. Individual developers and technical writers can join the project via the developers page, while companies and organizations can join up from the Join page.
This is a project that I think has many aspects to it and great potential. If you’re serious about Java or C++ and ground-breaking network programming, I’d give it a try. I think you’ll be glad you did.
February 18, 2014
by sjvn01
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Computerworld – On April 8, Microsoft will pull the plug on Windows XP SP3 when it issues the final security patch for the 11-year-old operating system. So it’s high time to switch to Windows 7, right?
Probably. But it’s still going to be possible to hang on to XP for another year or so, and given the number of users still clinging to it, I’d guess a significant chunk will do so. But is that wise? Not really. Security risks are just going to keep mounting.
About those numbers: Net Applications states that in December, XP was still running on 29% of all desktop and laptop PCs. By some counts, XP still accounts for 32% of all Windows systems. That’s a heck of a lot of users.
You can keep using XP for another year, but do you really want to? More>