The team at CoreOS recently announced three big, concurrent news items. First, CoreOS rolled out its two flagship products: CoreOS Managed Linux, which bills as “the world's first OS as a Service”, and CoreUpdate, which provides a dashboard for full control of rolling updates. Second, CoreOS announced the receipt of $8 million in funding from the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield and Byer, meaning you are sure to hear more about CoreOS in the future. Capital is following this development because companies like Google, Facebook, Twitter and others must run their services at scale with high resilience. The solution is CoreOS, a new Linux OS that has been re-architected to provide the foundation of warehouse-scale computing. CoreOS customers receive a continuous stream of updates and patches (via CoreUpdate), as well as a high level of commercial support, eliminating the need for major OS migrations every few years. The goal is to make the migration to CoreOS's products the last migration they ever need. Included platforms are Bare Metal, Amazon, Google and Rackspace, among others.
The latest release of the Open-E JupiterDSS—or Defined Data Storage Software—is a result of three years of development, testing, working closely with partners and integrating customer feedback, reported maker Open-E. The firm added that Open-E JupiterDSS provides enterprise users the highest level of performance with unlimited capacity and volume size. Delivered through Open-E certified partners as a software-defined storage system, Open-E JupiterDSS comes complete with advanced features, including thin provisioning, compression and de-duplication. This milestone release of the company's flagship application comes in response to customers demanding ever larger storage environments while maintaining high benchmarks for quality, reliability, performance and price. Open-E JupiterDSS features a ZFS- and Linux-based storage operating system.
Though there now exists a seemingly limitless list of great Linux books, those like Brian Ward's How Linux Works: What Every Superuser Should Know are the kind of books that should go into the “Linux Beginner's Canon”. Ward's book contains the essentials that new enthusiasts should know as they embark on their journey of Linux discovery. To truly master Linux and avoid obstacles, one needs to understand Linux internals like how the system boots, how networking works and what the kernel actually does. In this completely revised second edition, author Ward makes the concepts behind Linux internals accessible to anyone who wants to understand them. Inside these information-packed pages, readers will find the kind of knowledge that normally comes from years of experience doing things the hard way, including essential topics like Linux booting; how the kernel manages devices, device drivers and processes; how networking, interfaces, firewalls and servers work; and how development tools, shared libraries and shell scripts work. Publisher No Starch Press notes that the book's combination of background, theory, real-world examples and patient explanations will teach readers to understand and customize their systems, solve pesky problems and take control of their OS.
As part of its mission to be the most comprehensive supplier of network infrastructure across IBM's entire server portfolio, QLogic recently released the NetXtreme II 10Gb Ethernet adapter line, which the firm claims is the first for IBM Power Systems. Available in 10GBASE-T or SFP+ versions, QLogic 10GbE adapters are critical for achieving desired levels of performance and consolidation for cloud computing, convergence and data-intensive application environments, such as video and social-media content. Migration to the new adapters is seamless, says QLogic, because of the full backward-compatibility with an installed base of millions of 1GbE twisted-pair switch ports. For applications requiring leading-edge networking performance, QLogic NetXtreme II SFP+ low-profile adapters combine advanced, multiprotocol offload technologies with standard Ethernet functionality.
Although the Icinga 2 monitoring solution is backward-compatible to Nagios and Icinga 1, the Icinga Project considers its latest masterpiece “a league apart from its predecessors”. Icinga 2 is a next-generation open-source monitoring solution designed to meet modern IT infrastructure needs. Built from scratch and based on C++, Icinga 2 boasts multi-threaded architecture for high-performance monitoring, a new dynamic configuration format and distributed monitoring out of the box. Version 2 also features multiple back ends for easy integration of popular add-ons. In contrast to its predecessors, core features and their related libraries are shipped with the application and can be activated as needed via “icinga2-enable-feature” soft link commands, easing installation and extension, enabling multi-functionality and improving performance. Additional new advancements include cluster stacks, a new object-based template-driven configuration format and extensive documentation, as well as configuration validation and syntax highlighting to support troubleshooting.
What's special about the upgraded Zentyal Server 3.5 is that it integrates both the complex Samba and OpenChange technologies, making it easy to integrate Zentyal into an existing Windows environment and carry out phased, transparent migration to Linux. In other words, the Zentyal Linux Small Business Server offers a native drop-in replacement for Windows Small Business Server and Microsoft Exchange Server that can be set up in less than 30 minutes and is both easy to use and affordable. Because Zentyal Server's 3.5 release focuses on providing a stable server edition with simplified architecture, it comes with a single LDAP implementation based on Samba4, helping solve a number of synchronization issues caused by having two LDAP implementations in the earlier editions. In addition, a number of modules have been removed in order to advance the core goal of offering the aforementioned drop-in Windows server replacement capabilities.
The conditions are riper than ever to learn about 3-D printing, especially thanks to a new video training program called Mastering 3D Printing LiveLessons from Addison-Wesley Professional. What's special for our readers is that the instructor, Dave Seff, is a modern-day Goethe-esque geek, a Linux/UNIX engineer who also has mastered topics as varied as computer and mechanical design, machining, electronics and computer programming. Seff has even built several of his own 3-D printers and other CNC machines. In the videos, Seff not only teaches the fundamentals of 3-D printing but also does so utilizing the open-source modeling software, Blender. Seff explores how to create a 3-D model (beginner and advanced lessons), how to slice (prepare for printing) and then how to print a 3-D model. Seff also covers troubleshooting problems when they arise.
In response to its number-one request, Nevercenter, has ported version 2.3 of its Silo 3D Modeler application to Linux, complementing the existing Mac OS and Windows editions. Silo, popular with designers of video games, movies and 3-D architectural applications, can be used as either a standalone tool or as a versatile element of a multi-application 3-D graphics workflow. Nevercenter is finding ever more studios and individuals in this space moving to Linux. Silo's internals also have received significant updates, including an updated windowing system and bug fixes across all platforms, as well as added support for .stl import.
