12.12.09
Novell News Summary – Part II: Intelligent Workload Management, Ballnux, and Bada
Summary: Novell news about Intelligent Workload Management and SLE*, Samsung’s Bada is officially re-announced
SUSE (SLES/SLED)
THERE have arguably been more developments around SLES this week than in previous weeks, especially if one includes the announcement about Intelligent Workload Management (IWM). But we start with SUSE Studio, which can be considered part of OpenSUSE, even though Novell promotes it as a SUSE product. Here is a new post from the OpenSUSE Web site:
KIWI, invented by Marcus Schäfer, is a magnificent tool to build your own SUSE Linux distribution. It is also the backend of SUSE Studio.
A new distribution called StressLinux is based on SUSE Studio:
Built with SUSE Studio, this distribution isn’t for the feint of heart and if you aren’t familiar with the console or have never used applications like stress or hddtemp before, you may find it a bit confusing.
Last week we wrote about the GroundWork announcement and TMCNet is rewriting the press release, as usual. Roberto Galoppini spoke to David Dennis, who is senior director of product marketing at Groundwork. Their choice of SLES 11 was an unusual one (with the exception of Microsoft allies like SAP) and VB100 is now putting this distribution to the test.
The latest round of VB100 testing has been announced, with a comparative to be run on Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 in January. Products supporting the platform will be measured against the usual strict criteria to find if they are worthy of a coveted VB100 award.
A couple of people have written about ATI card in SUSE, one of whom gives guidance on SLED 11:
Anyway, I never wrote how to enable 3D Dekstop Effects with ATI graphics card as my personal Thinkpad uses nVidia. However, I had the opportunity to help Henry, our India Partner Executive, setup his Thinkpad T60p (with ATI Mobility FireGL V5250) with 3D Effects. As usual, the 3D Effects are already installed on his SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11. Its the graphics driver that is not 3D capable as Novell does not ship proprietary drivers with the base SLED 11.
SLED 11 has found its way into the Lenovo ThinkStation, which is not particularly surprising given the strong relationship between Microsoft and Lenovo [1, 2, 3, 4]. Lenovo favours ‘Microsoft-approved’ (and taxed) distributions.
Inside the S20, the features are also designed for professionals. The Quadro NVS graphics card, which SUSE 11 recognised easily, is a dual-DVI workhorse.
Looking again at the server side, SLES is to be put on more IBM mainframes (not unusual):
These Enterprise Linux Server mainframe bundles do not include licenses to Red Hat Enterprise Linux or Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, by the way. You have to buy those separately. Novell has aggressive pricing that let’s you get Linux for $10,200 per engine (instead of the $15,000 list price), and if you want to prepay for five years of support, you can get the mainframe version of SLES support for $7,499 per engine.
More on Novell servers:
i. Hybrid Clouds: The Best Of Both Worlds?
Currently, the Egnyte software works with the NETGEAR ReadyNAS series and systems based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise Server.
ii. Unified Communications Market to Hit $4.2B by 2014
“In the telecom area, for example, people might be looking at Cicso, Avaya, Nortel solutions, while on the data side they may be a Microsoft shop or a Novell shop, or they may have plans to do Linux or a little bit of Apple,” Jim Koniecki, an IP vendor, told this publication.
Intelligent Workload Management
This was Novell’s biggest announcement this week. Here is the press release (also in [1, 2]), Novell’s marketing people yapping about it along with marketing man John Dragoon, who later expanded, and also plenty of coverage that includes:
IDG: Novell grabs for big role in virtualization security (also here and here)
Novell this week will lay out an ambitious plan to secure applications across heterogeneous virtualization platforms at customer sites and off-premises, an effort designed to play off Novell’s strengths in network and identity management.
More IDG: Novell vows first identity management for cloud, virtualized apps (also here and here)
More IDG: Novell grabs for big role in virtualization security
Novell’s Intelligent Workload Management initiative will be designed for the creation of application workloads, described by the company as portable, self-contained units of work built through the integration of the operating system, middleware and application, to run on server virtualization products from VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, among others. Under the plan, workloads will maintain security and compliance policies, along with real-time reporting and monitoring capabilities, wherever they go.
It is worth emphasising that Novell pays IDG a lot of money through advertising and IDC contracts.
Jupitermedia: Novell Delivers Workload Automation Strategy, Tools (more here)
Timothy Prickett Morgan: Novell to mashup management tools
This will start with its SUSE Appliance online software packaging tool, which went beta in February and into production in July. Then it will stir in a whole bunch of code from its ZENworks system management tools, the PlateSpin virtual server management tools and the ManagedObjects business service management tools. Finally, add in Identity Manager for access control and security, before mashing the whole thing up in a pot and selling it as an integrated toolset for managing infrastructure and the applications that ride on top of it.
Var Guy: Novell IWM: All Wood Behind One Arrow
IT Pro Portal: Novell Plans Big Cloud Computing, Virtualisation Push
InformationWeek: Novell Maps Workload Management For Cloud
CTO Edge: Novell Looks to Define Intelligent Workload Management
CRN India: Novell To Unveil Strategy For Cloud Computing, Virtualization
“It is our intention to lead this market,” said John Dragoon, Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, Novell, in an interview. But he acknowledged that the shift would take some work by Novell given that most don’t think of the company as a “cloud computing” vendor. “We’re an infrastructure software company,” he said.
CRN Australia: Hurdles to cloud adoption start to tumble
Novell was the latest to announce plans to join systems management software vendors such as BMC, CA and IBM in developing tools to manage intelligent workloads.
Computing: Novell moves to allay cloud and virtualisation fears
There is other such coverage, but some of the above goes a little beyond IWM. It is still hard to see how more proprietary software from Novell is going to eventually save it.
Samsung
Turbolinux is hardly visible but the Korean giant Samsung, which also signed a Novell-like deal with Microsoft, has just released Bada, which we emphasise is a form of Ballnux (taxed by Microsoft). Announcements include:
Originally unveiled a few weeks ago, “bada” was officially launched by Samsung today, with some details provided about the hardware, interface, development environment and partners, although the first phones won’t be available until the middle of next year.
• Bada smartphone to debut H1 2010
But we can speculate how the phone will operate, thanks to Samsung’s brief outline of the Bada OS’ key features, at the heart of which is a supposedly “simple and efficient” UI.
• Samsung Bada: Koreans set to adopt open source system
• Samsung Officially Launches Bada Mobile Platform
• Samsung’s mobile OS SDK ships, runs on Linux
• Samsung Unveils Open Source bada Mobile OS
• 10 things to know about Samsung’s Bada platform
• Samsung to launch new mobile phone OS
• Samsung Unveils Bada, Sort of
Bada is nothing to be excited about as it enables Microsoft to make money from Linux, due to Samsung’s lack of integrity. █
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