Keeping critical devices running in the harshest of environments—and thereby protecting the bottom line—is the role of the Moxa's new EDS-P510A-8PoE Series rugged switches. Targeted at industrial manufacturing and outdoor networks, these Gigabit managed PoE+ Ethernet switches are equipped with eight /100BaseT(X), 802.3af (PoE) and 802.3at (PoE+)-compliant Ethernet ports, and two combo Gigabit Ethernet ports for uplinks for transmitting data up to 120km with high EMI immunity. The devices also feature 3KV LAN surge protection and a wide temperature range (–40°C to +75°C) that ensures the highest reliability of PoE systems while delivering network speeds of up to 1,000Mbps to eliminate bottlenecks. PoE-compliant network devices receive a maximum 30 watts of power per PoE+ port in standard mode, and high power output of up to 36 watts for greater compatibility with power-hungry devices.
Today's mobile lifestyle requires power on the go. Purveying the tools to make that lifestyle possible is Mobile Edge, maker of the new UrgentPower DX 5200 mobile power solution for laptops, tablets and smartphones. The UrgentPower DX 5200—offering USB, micro USB, mini USB and an Apple 30-pin connector—is designed to deliver immediate backup power via a high-capacity 5200mAh battery. The battery can provide up to 20 hours of additional talk time for smartphones, up to five hours of additional power for most tablets and more than 500 hours of run time for MP3 players and e-readers. An LED battery-level indicator and LED flashlight also are featured. Built-in safety features include over-voltage/under-voltage protection along with over-current/over-temperature and short-circuit protection.
The latest expansion to Avago Technologies' portfolio of 100G optical transceiver module solutions are the Avago 100G QSFP28 SR4 and 100G CFP4 LR4. The two innovations, designed for modern data-center and enterprise networking applications, cover the full spectrum of link distance requirements for 100G interconnects, says Avago. The 100G QSFP28 SR4 solution, designed for 100GbE short-range data-center interconnects, is compliant with IEEE 802.3bm 100GBASE-SR4 and CAUI-4 specifications and enables seamless transition from 40G to 100G using the QSFP form factor. Meanwhile, the 100G CFP4 LR4, designed for 100GbE long-range data communications, is compliant with IEEE 802.3 Clause 88 for 100GBASE-LR4 media, Clause 83E for CAUI-4 electrical interface, OTN OTU4 and the CFP4 MSA for MDIO functionality. The solution leverages best-in-class CyOptics single-mode laser technology.
Professional PostgreSQL specialist 2ndQuadrant is calling the updated Barman 1.3 PostgreSQL Backup and Recovery Manager “more robust” and “exciting”. Barman, an open-source administration tool, allows businesses of any size to perform continuous remote backups of multiple servers, providing significant time and cost savings in the event of a crash. A key feature is the network compression option, which allows for a reduction in the amount of traffic between the PostgreSQL server and the backup server. For instance, when two servers are in different data centers, variable costs from network traffic can be reduced. Barman 1.3 features a new code infrastructure in terms of output, sub-processes, remote commands, filesystem, events (“hooks”) and metadata management. In addition, administrators can now force a rebuild of the xlog.db file (WAL archive).
Although Krita is free, a graphic artist recently described the open-source digital painting studio as “a production beast”. Recently updated to version 2.8, Krita is an advanced digital painting application, used by illustrators, comic-book artists, concept artists, matte painters and in VFX and game studios worldwide. Although version 2.8 offers significant advancements on both Linux and Windows, the release marks a major milestone on the Windows side: the platform is henceforth fully supported. Of the many new features and improvements, highlights include a drastically improved drawing experience thanks to a complete rewrite of the graphics tablet support and an improved OpenGL canvas. The new High Quality Filtering option uses shaders instead of hardware to perform display zooming, giving clean, clear, crisp and accurate line art, also at lower zoom levels. Krita is developed by the Krita team and KO GmbH.
The problem that Terascala's Intelligent Storage Bridge (ISB) tackles is the vast amounts of unstructured “stranded data” found in today's HPC infrastructures. These infrastructures are typically not optimized for efficient and daily movement of data, which strictly limits valuable analysis opportunities. Terascala says that ISB is the first solution of its kind to solve this “stranded data” challenge by automating the transfer of large data sets between high-performance fast scratch storage and a cost-effective enterprise storage system. The latest version of the ISB now includes vendor-agnostic support of Lustre solutions, allowing organizations to bring together a wider range of HPC and enterprise storage solutions. Other new aspects of the ISB include programming interfaces that enable integration and management by third-party orchestration solutions or home-grown scripts and applications, as well as passive CIFS and NFS gateway capabilities, which allow users of workstation technologies lacking Lustre support to access and update fast scratch data through native filesystem technologies.
Open-E hews to the philosophy that you should be saving big money by leveraging commodity servers for centralized data storage in high availability, big data, cloud storage, virtualization and business continuity environments. This philosophy is alive and well in the updated Open-E Data Storage Software (DSS) V7, a Linux-based enterprise storage application used for building and managing centralized data storage servers—NAS and SAN. Open-E claims that the Open-E DSS V7 can significantly increase the performance of replicated environments, ensuring the safety of customers' businesses in case of any disaster, and brings superior performance, extensibility and reliability. The company adds that customers can achieve superior performance of up to 10X in random writes of mirrored volumes, allowing data to be copied in real time and every change immediately mirrored from the primary server to the secondary storage server. Storage system performance also will be evident in environments with multicore processors and can be optimized further with integrated and improved hardware performance-tuning parameters.
No Starch Press' tagline could not be more directly targeted at us: “the finest in geek entertainment”. What geek would not revel in one of the publisher's latest titles, Jordan Schwartz's The Art of LEGO Design, a book that seeks to inspire the inner-geek artist in each of us. In the book, former LEGO Group designer Jordan Schwartz explores LEGO as an artistic medium, revealing rarely known and creative ways to build impressive models with the system. From effective composition to intricate texture design, Schwartz shares a variety of creative insights into crafting both realistic and stylized models. Readers can learn tricks like how to turn rubber pieces into an octopus, use light bricks to build a roaring LEGO fire and create an owl face out of minifigure capes. Full color images of inspiring models stand alongside interviews with talented builders, empowering readers to build their own, custom LEGO masterpieces.
