With Sushil Kumar, Oracle VP of Product Strategy and Business Development
An Oracle Magazine Feature Cast discusses cloud computing with Sushil Kumar, vice president of Product Strategy and Business Development at Oracle. It is a two part podcast entitled “Clouds Bring Agility to the Enterprise.” Part one covers where cloud computing is today, what the drivers are, and what are some of the concerns. Part two discusses what the objectives are for Oracle is in this space and where the company is in providing these types of solutions.
Oracle’s Cloud Computing Forum will kick-off its North American leg of the tour on Feb. 23, in L.A., while simultaneously continuing its Europe, Middle East, and Africa tour and Asia Pacific tour on the topic with events in London, Munich, and Seoul on the same day. The event stands in contrast to CEO Larry Ellison’s well-publicized mocking of cloud computing, which he has deemed a rebranding and conflation of existing technologies.
Sun White Paper Offers a Methodology to Help Enterprises Assess Applications, Services
A Sun white paper discusses points to consider when deciding whether to move applications, services or components into the cloud. It defines a methodology to help enterprises determine whether an application can be ported to run in the cloud, or if it can be refactored or optimized to make the move, and if it is worth it. An example of using the methodology is presented in an assessment of a two-tier Web service, while another example involves enterprise database cluster.
A 25-page Sun white paper introduces the concept of transparent security and makes the case that the intelligent disclosure of security design, practices, and procedures can help improve customer confidence while protecting critical security features and data, thereby improving overall governance. Written for prospective cloud computing customers, the paper presents a model leveraging the ISO 27000 series standards as a commonly understood framework for disclosure.
New Capabilities Help Ease Transition from Traditional Grid Computing to Cloud Computing
Sun Grid Engine 6.2 Update 5 is a feature update release with significant additions including data-aware scheduling, improved public cloud adapter technology and new commands for invoking power-saving software. Additionally, Update 5 includes improvements to the Sun Grid Engine Service Domain Manager and Sun Grid Engine Inspect modules.
Leveraging the built-in security capabilities of the Solaris Operating System, including Solaris ZFS and Solaris Containers, Sun reports some of its open source security tools can help in securing data in transit, data at rest, and data in use in the cloud. Sun also has announced its support for the latest security guidance from the Cloud Security Alliance.
“Interoperable Clouds,” a white paper by the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), describes snapshot of the work being done in the DMTF Open Cloud Standards Incubator, including use cases and reference architecture as they relate to the interfaces between a cloud service provider and a cloud service consumer. The paper summarizes the core use cases, reference architecture, and service lifecycle. These building blocks are used to specify the cloud provider interfaces, data artifacts, and profiles to achieve interoperable management.
Microsoft Hyper-V, Remote Desktop Services, Sun Desktop Access Client, Adobe Flash Enhancements, USB Redirection to Windows
Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 3.1 is available both as a perpetual license and as a subscription. The Key New Features for this release are:
Microsoft Hyper-V is now supported as an additional virtualization platform.
Microsoft Remote Desktop Services (formerly Microsoft Terminal Services)
Sun Desktop Access Client
Adobe Flash Enhancements
USB Redirection to Windows
Support for additional virtual desktop operating systems
White paper introduces Sun Ops Center 2.5 and its new capabilities
A new white paper from Sun states that Sun Ops Center as “is designed as a single platform that can manage heterogeneity and complexity through a single pane of glass.” and “Sun Ops Center manages across the entire hardware/software stack and throughout the entire system lifecycle — from the moment that power is applied to servers to the point at which they are retired. Sun Ops Center derives from Sun’s unique experience as a server vendor and as a developer of virtualization solutions.”
Features ability to “teleport” a VM from one host to another
With 20 million total downloads and some 40,000 downloads per day, Sun VirtualBox has become a major, general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is now the only professional-quality virtualization solution that is also Open Source Software. A significant new release, VirtualBox 3.1, improves performance and adds significant new features, including ‘teleportation’ which is the live migration of a VM session from one host to another (e.g. from an Intel-based Mac Desktop to an AMD server then to an Intel-based laptop running Windows 7).
