Tuesday, October 06, 2009
BrainShare returns for 2010?
Novell just posted the Call For Participation, essentially soliciting session proposals, for BrainShare 2010. So it sounds like they're at least planning on going for it for 2010. Obviously, what with this little project I'm working on I won't be going. But it is nice to see it up and running.
Posting will be light. I was out sick last week, and I have family arriving later this week and in to next week.
Posting will be light. I was out sick last week, and I have family arriving later this week and in to next week.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Novell wants your BrainShare input
Just posted on the Cool Solutions community page:
Novell BrainShare 2010 Advisory Board
Since BrainShare took 2009 off, they're planning on bringing it back in 2010. And they're looking for end user input into what it should look like. Should it stay in Salt Lake City? Should events be dropped? Should events be added? This looks to be an online colaboration rather than physical presence, so proximity to Provo, UT shouldn't be a problem. Though, proximity to the US Mountain Timezone may be a good idea.
If you get selected for the board, a perk is a pass for BrainShare 2010.
Novell BrainShare 2010 Advisory Board
Since BrainShare took 2009 off, they're planning on bringing it back in 2010. And they're looking for end user input into what it should look like. Should it stay in Salt Lake City? Should events be dropped? Should events be added? This looks to be an online colaboration rather than physical presence, so proximity to Provo, UT shouldn't be a problem. Though, proximity to the US Mountain Timezone may be a good idea.
If you get selected for the board, a perk is a pass for BrainShare 2010.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Monday, February 09, 2009
Novell marketing
Looks like they're continuing to follow their grassroots marketing strategy. Novell recently created a Novell channel on YouTube. They always made many videos for BrainShare, and I see some vids from BrainShares past up there already. So if you were wandering the internet looking for the Novell PC/Mac spoofs, now you have an official channel to find them.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Thursday, December 18, 2008
BrainShare, what next
As promised, some additional information.
The BrainShare Forum announcement of the cancellation. I've met Mr. Groneman. He works with the BrainShare crew, as does a lot of Novell, as he has to get the Support and SysOp areas set up. He's also the guy who is (I believe) in charge of the whole forums.novell.com thing. He states clearly that this is not the end of BrainShare for good, this year's step was taken due to the apparently marked decrease in registrations they've received to date.
Brainstorming some replacement ideas for the short term. One item mentioned a lot in the above thread was to have an ATT Live event during the same week as BrainShare is now, presumably to allow the people with nonrefundable air tickets to get SOMETHING out of the travel.
GWAVACon is offering discounts to BrainShare attendees, now that their travel budgets suddenly have more room. They claim they have more than just GWAVA and GroupWise there.
There are some hard economic factors that figure in here, I'm sure. Until this year, I understand that BrainShare attendance had been growing. From personal experience, the groups that had seen the most growth were the IDM and Linux portions of the conference. More than once I've heard BrainShare attendees say it feels more like a Linux conference than anything else, any more. Still, they were seeing regular growth. To see a sharp decline? That's clearly overall economics at work.
I know that the Sponsors for BrainShare expect to reach a certain number of attendees, and if Novell can't deliver the head-count, it could go poorly. Also, the $1695 reg-fee is heavily subsidized by both Novell and sponsors. While direct per-person costs such as food-service are rather low, the sunk costs of the Salt Palace and other such items are a fixed cost, so having fewer people around means the apportioned fixed-cost-per-head is much higher when attendance is down a lot. A lot of those contracts were probably signed months ago and have no back-out clause, or those that do have punative penalties associated, so Novell isn't saving a lot of money by doing this.
Also, Novell is not the only group cancelling a big trade show. MacWorld will be Jobs-free this next time around, and there are others. I guess travel-bans are one of the first things that employers are putting in place in light of reduced income, and that's really taking a bite out of the convention-business.
I wonder how the big Las Vegas hotels will make out?
The BrainShare Forum announcement of the cancellation. I've met Mr. Groneman. He works with the BrainShare crew, as does a lot of Novell, as he has to get the Support and SysOp areas set up. He's also the guy who is (I believe) in charge of the whole forums.novell.com thing. He states clearly that this is not the end of BrainShare for good, this year's step was taken due to the apparently marked decrease in registrations they've received to date.
Brainstorming some replacement ideas for the short term. One item mentioned a lot in the above thread was to have an ATT Live event during the same week as BrainShare is now, presumably to allow the people with nonrefundable air tickets to get SOMETHING out of the travel.
GWAVACon is offering discounts to BrainShare attendees, now that their travel budgets suddenly have more room. They claim they have more than just GWAVA and GroupWise there.
There are some hard economic factors that figure in here, I'm sure. Until this year, I understand that BrainShare attendance had been growing. From personal experience, the groups that had seen the most growth were the IDM and Linux portions of the conference. More than once I've heard BrainShare attendees say it feels more like a Linux conference than anything else, any more. Still, they were seeing regular growth. To see a sharp decline? That's clearly overall economics at work.
I know that the Sponsors for BrainShare expect to reach a certain number of attendees, and if Novell can't deliver the head-count, it could go poorly. Also, the $1695 reg-fee is heavily subsidized by both Novell and sponsors. While direct per-person costs such as food-service are rather low, the sunk costs of the Salt Palace and other such items are a fixed cost, so having fewer people around means the apportioned fixed-cost-per-head is much higher when attendance is down a lot. A lot of those contracts were probably signed months ago and have no back-out clause, or those that do have punative penalties associated, so Novell isn't saving a lot of money by doing this.
Also, Novell is not the only group cancelling a big trade show. MacWorld will be Jobs-free this next time around, and there are others. I guess travel-bans are one of the first things that employers are putting in place in light of reduced income, and that's really taking a bite out of the convention-business.
I wonder how the big Las Vegas hotels will make out?
Labels: brainshare, novell
Novell has canceled BrainShare 2009
Duuuuuuude.
I didn't find out about it until this morning, as I was snowed in yesterday and wasn't paying as much attention as I should. But still. I'm one of those people who cited travel-budget shortages for not coming. This is major news!
This begs the question, "is BrainShare dead, or just this year?"
It could be either, but from what I'm hearing in the Novell Forums it sounds like there are still plans to put on a BrainShare 2010, should conditions improve. I can't go to BrainShare 2010, those aforementioned economic concerns ($5.6Bn budget shortfall in the state budget for fiscal 09-11), so it's kind of moot for me. But still.
There is a lot of stuff going on over in the forums. As they're web-based these days, and the interface doesn't suck, I might be able to link to interesting bits. In another post.
Still. duuuuuuuuuuuude.
I didn't find out about it until this morning, as I was snowed in yesterday and wasn't paying as much attention as I should. But still. I'm one of those people who cited travel-budget shortages for not coming. This is major news!
This begs the question, "is BrainShare dead, or just this year?"
It could be either, but from what I'm hearing in the Novell Forums it sounds like there are still plans to put on a BrainShare 2010, should conditions improve. I can't go to BrainShare 2010, those aforementioned economic concerns ($5.6Bn budget shortfall in the state budget for fiscal 09-11), so it's kind of moot for me. But still.
There is a lot of stuff going on over in the forums. As they're web-based these days, and the interface doesn't suck, I might be able to link to interesting bits. In another post.
Still. duuuuuuuuuuuude.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Tuesday, December 02, 2008
The NetWare 7 that never was
My last post generated some comments lamenting where NetWare has gone. I hear ya.
I have friends and have spoken with people at BrainShare who were closer to things than I was regarding how the next version of NetWare evolved. And to be truthful, it sounded a lot like how Microsoft moved from XP to Vista. If you'll recall, "the version of Windows after XP," was something of a moving target for many years. I recall media reports of Microsoft scrapping the whole project and starting afresh at least once.
My very first BrainShare was 2001, and that was the release party for NetWare 6. It was in 2003 when Novell bought Ximian, and bought SuSE, so it is clear when Novell probably decided to bet the house on this whole Linux thing. Yet at BS01 there was talk about NW7, or if there would be a NW6.1 version out. The rumors I remember from back then had NW7 being a progression towards a more application-friendly environment. I also remember hearing the L word around once or twice.
What we actually got was NetWare 6.5, which solidified NetWare 6 and made the core services better and more mature. What it wasn't was any more application friendly than NetWare 6 was (or even NetWare 5.1 for that matter). NetWare 6.5 released in August of 2003, the same month as the Ximian purchase. This is what tells me that Novell had decided on a path for NetWare 7, and it was green, not red. Open Enterprise Server arrived in 2005, which gives OES a solid year and a half dev-time between when SuSE was bought and when we started seeing public betas of OES. The NetWare version of OES was NetWare 6.5 SP3.
What happened to NetWare 7? It got lost on the roadmap. When NW6 came out, Novell probably had 6.5 on the roadmap as the next rev, with NW7 next down. The rumors we were hearing were very provisional, as the spot on the map held by NW7 was at least 3 years away. Sometime between BrainShare 2001 and when Novell started buying its way into the Linux world NW7 was dropped and the decision was made to port to a completely different Kernel. That decision was probably made in the summer of 2003, as the NetWare 6.5 development was entering final beta, and the task of allocating developer resources for the next full rev needed to be made.
Which brings us to today. OES2 SP1 is going to drop any day now, probably in time for Novell's quarterly earnings report. SP1 finally brings the Linux-kernel 'NetWare Services' to feature-comparable with the NetWare kernel. There are still a few things missing, like an eDirectory integrated SLP server, but now all the major points are covered. If you count it up, this has taken Novell a bit over 5 years to get to this point.
In my opinion, that's about right for an organization the size of Novell. Porting over the proprietary NetWare services to completely new kernel requires a LOT of developer attention, and Novell is a lot smaller than Microsoft. Also of note, it took Microsoft 5 years to give us Vista after XP, including the presumed nuke-and-rewrite they did. Novell got a boost in that they had already ported eDirectory to Linux, so that helped out the NCP side. But that didn't help the NSS folks, who had to figure out a way to do a NetWare-style rich metadata file-system on a kernel and driver model that expects POSIX-spartan file-systems. The problems Novell had with this were amply displayed in the performance problems reported with OES1-FCS. Samba doesn't scale to the same levels as CIFS-on-NetWare did, so that meant Novell had to create their own CIFS stack from scratch. The AFP stack on Linux is a joke, and the resurgence of Apple since 2003 meant they had to do something about that as well; by making a proprietary AFP stack. All of this represents nuke-and-rebuild-from-spec, which takes time.
Novell probably should have started the migration in 2000 instead of 2003. They already knew that Exchange 5.5 upgrades were driving a LOT of customers into Active Directory, which was triggering migrations away from NetWare. But, there are business concerns here. Novell managed to survive the fall of NetWare by diversifying their product portfolio enough that GroupWise, Zen, and Identity Management could support the company. It took until this year to return to the black, but they did it. Had they shot the NetWare cash cow two years earlier, it is entirely possible that Novell couldn't have survived the lean years.
I have friends and have spoken with people at BrainShare who were closer to things than I was regarding how the next version of NetWare evolved. And to be truthful, it sounded a lot like how Microsoft moved from XP to Vista. If you'll recall, "the version of Windows after XP," was something of a moving target for many years. I recall media reports of Microsoft scrapping the whole project and starting afresh at least once.
My very first BrainShare was 2001, and that was the release party for NetWare 6. It was in 2003 when Novell bought Ximian, and bought SuSE, so it is clear when Novell probably decided to bet the house on this whole Linux thing. Yet at BS01 there was talk about NW7, or if there would be a NW6.1 version out. The rumors I remember from back then had NW7 being a progression towards a more application-friendly environment. I also remember hearing the L word around once or twice.
What we actually got was NetWare 6.5, which solidified NetWare 6 and made the core services better and more mature. What it wasn't was any more application friendly than NetWare 6 was (or even NetWare 5.1 for that matter). NetWare 6.5 released in August of 2003, the same month as the Ximian purchase. This is what tells me that Novell had decided on a path for NetWare 7, and it was green, not red. Open Enterprise Server arrived in 2005, which gives OES a solid year and a half dev-time between when SuSE was bought and when we started seeing public betas of OES. The NetWare version of OES was NetWare 6.5 SP3.
What happened to NetWare 7? It got lost on the roadmap. When NW6 came out, Novell probably had 6.5 on the roadmap as the next rev, with NW7 next down. The rumors we were hearing were very provisional, as the spot on the map held by NW7 was at least 3 years away. Sometime between BrainShare 2001 and when Novell started buying its way into the Linux world NW7 was dropped and the decision was made to port to a completely different Kernel. That decision was probably made in the summer of 2003, as the NetWare 6.5 development was entering final beta, and the task of allocating developer resources for the next full rev needed to be made.
Which brings us to today. OES2 SP1 is going to drop any day now, probably in time for Novell's quarterly earnings report. SP1 finally brings the Linux-kernel 'NetWare Services' to feature-comparable with the NetWare kernel. There are still a few things missing, like an eDirectory integrated SLP server, but now all the major points are covered. If you count it up, this has taken Novell a bit over 5 years to get to this point.
In my opinion, that's about right for an organization the size of Novell. Porting over the proprietary NetWare services to completely new kernel requires a LOT of developer attention, and Novell is a lot smaller than Microsoft. Also of note, it took Microsoft 5 years to give us Vista after XP, including the presumed nuke-and-rewrite they did. Novell got a boost in that they had already ported eDirectory to Linux, so that helped out the NCP side. But that didn't help the NSS folks, who had to figure out a way to do a NetWare-style rich metadata file-system on a kernel and driver model that expects POSIX-spartan file-systems. The problems Novell had with this were amply displayed in the performance problems reported with OES1-FCS. Samba doesn't scale to the same levels as CIFS-on-NetWare did, so that meant Novell had to create their own CIFS stack from scratch. The AFP stack on Linux is a joke, and the resurgence of Apple since 2003 meant they had to do something about that as well; by making a proprietary AFP stack. All of this represents nuke-and-rebuild-from-spec, which takes time.
Novell probably should have started the migration in 2000 instead of 2003. They already knew that Exchange 5.5 upgrades were driving a LOT of customers into Active Directory, which was triggering migrations away from NetWare. But, there are business concerns here. Novell managed to survive the fall of NetWare by diversifying their product portfolio enough that GroupWise, Zen, and Identity Management could support the company. It took until this year to return to the black, but they did it. Had they shot the NetWare cash cow two years earlier, it is entirely possible that Novell couldn't have survived the lean years.
Labels: brainshare, linux, netware, novell, OES
Monday, November 10, 2008
No BrainShare for me
Last week I asked my new boss if getting me to BrainShare was in the cards. I also threw out the alternative of the ATT Live sessions, which are fewer days and relatively cheaper than BrainShare. I also floated the possibility of me covering the plane expenses. As it happens Provo is about as expensive a city as Spokane, and Salt Lake City during BrainShare is equivalent to Bellevue. This is important since the travel ban is for 'out of state travel'. If I cover the plane tickets, that makes the cost the equivalent to having it in Spokane/Bellevue! Thus, I can go!
Unfortunately, not really. Quoth the new boss:
Unfortunately, not really. Quoth the new boss:
I highly doubt this'll work. Even Vice-Presidents are canceling travel plans.If the grand high muckitymucks are honoring the travel ban, then the chances of me getting permission is next to zero. And is fully zero if I don't get buy off from my boss. Drat. Considering that the budget outlook for 2010 is even more grim than it is for 2009, the next probable BrainShare I can get to is 2011. Double drat.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Thursday, August 07, 2008
Budget crunch update
The University President has just sent out an email describing what the university plans on doing in light of the Governor's memo. Unfortunately, there isn't a lot in there.
So, I may yet get to BrainShare 2009, but it may require my boss to talk a lot faster than normal. We just won't know until we get a feeling for how much pressure the Provosts and Vice-Provosts are under to contain costs.
On the plus side, the SAN upgrade is pretty clearly critical to the function of this university, so that'll get approved. Or there will be riots in the halls outside my office.
- There WILL be a hiring freeze.... and this will manifest by having newly vacant positions have to go before a Provost/Vice-Provost review before being filled.
- Salary increases will still be given per negotiated contracts.... for classified people, which I'm not. We don't know what us Professional types will get. And won't know until the State passes the next budget during the coming winter.
- Out of state Travel WILL be restricted.... and this will manifest by having travel requests go before a Provost/Vice-Provost review before being approved. Like they always do.
So, I may yet get to BrainShare 2009, but it may require my boss to talk a lot faster than normal. We just won't know until we get a feeling for how much pressure the Provosts and Vice-Provosts are under to contain costs.
On the plus side, the SAN upgrade is pretty clearly critical to the function of this university, so that'll get approved. Or there will be riots in the halls outside my office.
Labels: brainshare, budget, opinion
Tuesday, August 05, 2008
Hiring (and travel) freeze, part 2
A longer article on the freeze.
In short, since WWU is not directly under the Governor, our President will have to announce any freezes. Which hasn't happened yet. On the other hand, we have a new President starting real soon. So. This will be interesting. I may get to BrainShare-09 yet, but I'm not counting on it.
In short, since WWU is not directly under the Governor, our President will have to announce any freezes. Which hasn't happened yet. On the other hand, we have a new President starting real soon. So. This will be interesting. I may get to BrainShare-09 yet, but I'm not counting on it.
Labels: brainshare, budget
Monday, August 04, 2008
Drat!
I may not get to go to Brainshare next year. But, we'll see when October rolls around.
Labels: brainshare
Tuesday, April 01, 2008
Slow blogging
I found out at BrainShare that WWU has been accepted as a Novell Authorized Beta site for OES2 SP1. And that's what I've been doing for the better part of the past week. Due to the NDA required, I can't talk about it. So, not much bloggable stuff to bring forward.
We requested entry into the program in part because of what I learned at BrainShare 2007. Specifically, Novell doesn't test for our scales of users. Therefore, it is in our best interest to make sure that organizations like us are in the beta. We have the hardware to make a go of it right now (all those new ESX boxes are liberating some still-useful 3-5 year old servers), and I have the time. Unfortunately, the only 64-bit testing we'll be doing will be in VMWare, so the newest of the new code will have to be really tested by other people.
That's why I've been quiet.
We requested entry into the program in part because of what I learned at BrainShare 2007. Specifically, Novell doesn't test for our scales of users. Therefore, it is in our best interest to make sure that organizations like us are in the beta. We have the hardware to make a go of it right now (all those new ESX boxes are liberating some still-useful 3-5 year old servers), and I have the time. Unfortunately, the only 64-bit testing we'll be doing will be in VMWare, so the newest of the new code will have to be really tested by other people.
That's why I've been quiet.
Labels: brainshare, novell, OES
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
IPv6 vs IPX
In a session last week came the following comment from a presenter (paraphrased):
00008021:0002a540d0e1
Where 'node number' is the MAC address of the network card in question. It's up to the routers to figure out where network-numbers live, and advertised services issue full-network broadcasts to advertise said service, which is the primary reason that IPX just doesn't scale if WAN links are in the mix. But that's by the by.
IPv6 addresses work similarly:
2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334
The last 48 bits are the MAC address and the bits ahead of it constitute the network number. Except... the IPv6 designers knew about the failings of IPX and worked around them. The last 48 bits don't have to be the MAC address, though as I understand it that address has to exist for each physical interface. Unlike IPX, IPv6 has the ability to have 'secondary' addresses. The lack of this ability was the main reason that Novell Cluster Services only worked on IP networks, which caused its own wave of grief when clustering was introduced in the NetWare 5.1 era. Secondary IPv6 numbers don't have to follow the MAC format, which in my opinion is a good thing!
Yes, when I first read about IPv6 addressing I had that same, "wow, this is just like IPX," moment the BrainShare presenter had. Only, more scalable, and more flexible.
How may of you in the room have been at this long enough to do IPX? Ok, great. Now how many of you have done anything with IPv6? Doesn't that look JUST like IPX?And he's right, to a point. IPX addresses are of the form network-number:node-number, such as:
00008021:0002a540d0e1
Where 'node number' is the MAC address of the network card in question. It's up to the routers to figure out where network-numbers live, and advertised services issue full-network broadcasts to advertise said service, which is the primary reason that IPX just doesn't scale if WAN links are in the mix. But that's by the by.
IPv6 addresses work similarly:
2001:0db8:85a3:08d3:1319:8a2e:0370:7334
The last 48 bits are the MAC address and the bits ahead of it constitute the network number. Except... the IPv6 designers knew about the failings of IPX and worked around them. The last 48 bits don't have to be the MAC address, though as I understand it that address has to exist for each physical interface. Unlike IPX, IPv6 has the ability to have 'secondary' addresses. The lack of this ability was the main reason that Novell Cluster Services only worked on IP networks, which caused its own wave of grief when clustering was introduced in the NetWare 5.1 era. Secondary IPv6 numbers don't have to follow the MAC format, which in my opinion is a good thing!
Yes, when I first read about IPv6 addressing I had that same, "wow, this is just like IPX," moment the BrainShare presenter had. Only, more scalable, and more flexible.
Labels: brainshare, clustering, netware, novell, sysadmin
Thursday, March 20, 2008
BrainShare Thursday
Not a good day. My first course, "Advanced BASH," could more accurately be described as, "BASH scripting tips & tricks". I then proceeded to skip the other three sessions I had signed up for.
BASH tips and tricks. I got a lot out of it, but the developers around me were quietly derisive.
ZEN Overview and Features
Not so much with the futures, but it did explain Novell's overall ZEN strategy. It isn't a coincidence that most of Novell's recent purchases have been for ZEN products.
TUT303: OES2 Clusters, from beginning to extremes
This was great. They had a full demo rig, and they showed quite a bit in it. Including using Novell Cluster Services to migrate Xen VM's around. They STRONGLY recommended using AutoYast to set up your cluster nodes to ensure they are simply identical except for the bits you explicitly want different (hostname, IP). And also something else I've heard before, you want one LUN for each NSS Pool. Really. Plus, the presenters were rather funny. A nice cap for the day.
And tonight, Meet the Experts!
- Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 Interoperability with Windows and AD. All about Domain Services for Windows and Samba. Neither of which we'll ever use. No idea why I wanted to be in this session.
- Rapid Deployment of ZENworks Configuration Management. Other people around here have suggested that if we haven't moved yet, wait until at least SP3 before moving. If then. So, demotivated. Plus I was rather tired.
- Configuring Samba on OES2. CIFS will do what we need, I don't need Samba. Don't need this one. Skipped.
BASH tips and tricks. I got a lot out of it, but the developers around me were quietly derisive.
ZEN Overview and Features
Not so much with the futures, but it did explain Novell's overall ZEN strategy. It isn't a coincidence that most of Novell's recent purchases have been for ZEN products.
TUT303: OES2 Clusters, from beginning to extremes
This was great. They had a full demo rig, and they showed quite a bit in it. Including using Novell Cluster Services to migrate Xen VM's around. They STRONGLY recommended using AutoYast to set up your cluster nodes to ensure they are simply identical except for the bits you explicitly want different (hostname, IP). And also something else I've heard before, you want one LUN for each NSS Pool. Really. Plus, the presenters were rather funny. A nice cap for the day.
And tonight, Meet the Experts!
Labels: brainshare, clustering, linux, novell, NSS, OES, storage, zenworks
BrainShare Wednesday
The Wednesday keynote was, indeed, a bunch of demos. It was also mostly pointless as far as the technology I'm concerned with. Lots of GroupWise (don't care), lots and lots of PlateSpin (can't afford it), lots of Zen (not the bits I'd use).
That said, the new GroupWise WebAccess is gorgeous. I wish Exchange had their non-ActiveX pages look that good.
TUT175: RBAC: Avoiding the horror, getting past the hype
Mostly about IDM as it turned out. Only minimally interesting from an abstract viewpoint about roles in general.
TUT 277: Advanced eDirectory Configuration, new features, and tuning for performance
I learned a few things I didn't know, such as the fact that each object as an "AncestorList" attribute listing who their parent objects are. This apparently greatly speeds up searching. SP3, coming out this Summer, will have faster LDAP binds for a couple of reasons. Right now Novell is recommending 2 million objects as a reasonable maximum size for a partition for performance reasons.
And also they reiterated something I've heard before...
TUT221: iPrint on Linux, what Novell Support wants you to know
A nice session from a mainline support guy about the ways people don't do iPrint on linux correctly. We're not going there until pcounter can run in linux, so this is still somewhat abstract. But, nice to know.
That said, the new GroupWise WebAccess is gorgeous. I wish Exchange had their non-ActiveX pages look that good.
TUT175: RBAC: Avoiding the horror, getting past the hype
Mostly about IDM as it turned out. Only minimally interesting from an abstract viewpoint about roles in general.
TUT 277: Advanced eDirectory Configuration, new features, and tuning for performance
I learned a few things I didn't know, such as the fact that each object as an "AncestorList" attribute listing who their parent objects are. This apparently greatly speeds up searching. SP3, coming out this Summer, will have faster LDAP binds for a couple of reasons. Right now Novell is recommending 2 million objects as a reasonable maximum size for a partition for performance reasons.
And also they reiterated something I've heard before...
You know how back in the NetWare 4 days, we said to design your tree by geography at the first level, and then get to departments? Um, sorry about that. It was great back then, but for LDAP or IDM it really, really slows things down.Yep. I took my first class for my CNA when 'Green River' was just coming out, or was just out. So I remember that.
TUT221: iPrint on Linux, what Novell Support wants you to know
A nice session from a mainline support guy about the ways people don't do iPrint on linux correctly. We're not going there until pcounter can run in linux, so this is still somewhat abstract. But, nice to know.
- The reason that some print jobs render differently than direct-print jobs, is because of how Windows is designed. Direct-print jobs render with the 'local print provider', and iPrint jobs render with the 'network print provider'. This is a Microsoft thing, not an iPrint thing. You can duplicate it by setting up a microsoft IPP printer (assuming you're not mandating SSL like we are) and printing to the same printer with the same driver.
- The Manager on Linux doesn't use a Broker, it uses a 'driver store'.
- The Manager on NetWare doesn't always bind to the same broker. I didn't know that.
- It is recommended to have only one Broker, or one driver store per tree.
- Novell recommends using DNS rather than IP for your printer-agents, check your manager load scripts.
Labels: brainshare, edir, linux, microsoft, netware, novell, OES, pcounter, printing
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
BrainShare Tuesday
Today started off with a bit of panic, as I hadn't set my alarm. Me being a west-coaster, 7:20 (when I woke up) is an entirely reasonable time to get up as far as my body is concerned. Only, I needed to get dressed and breakfasted before my first session at 8:30. Aie! I had to eat quick, but I got there. Didn't get a chance to check work email, though.
ATT326: Advanced Linux Troubleshooting
An ATT, therefore hard to summarize. But I learned about a few new commands I didn't know about before. Like strace. And vimdiff.
TUT130: Challenges in Storage I/O in Virtualization
Another nice one, but an emergency at work (printing down in a dorm, during finals week) distracted me heavily during the first half of it. Which resulted in the following note in my notes:
TUT216: OES2 SP1 Architectural Overview
There is a LOT of new stuff in SP1.
TUT211: Enhanced Protocol Support in OES2 SP1
This is the session where they went into detail about the AFP and CIFS support. They said that netatalk, the existing AFP stack on Linux, gets really slow once you go over the 20 concurrent users. Whoa! I can soooo understand why Novell felt the need to make a new one.
Tonight was the night formerly known as 'Sponsor Night,' but has a new name now that everyone who gets a booth is no longer a 'sponsor'. Some are sponsors, some are exhibiters. I can't keep track. Anyway, today was their party. "World of Novellcraft!" Homage to vid-gaming.
Lots of Wii, lots of Rock Band, some Halo, lots of women dressed in Renaissance Festival gear getting their pictures taken by the 90%+ male audience. I've blogged before about my ambivalence about Sponsor Night. I lasted until about 7, when I came back to the hotel.
Tomorrow I have an actual LUNCH BREAK in my schedule! Ooo! AndSoul Asylum Soul Coughing Collective Soul plays the concert! I've been listening to two of their CD's for the past two months so I think I may even know a few songs by now.
ATT326: Advanced Linux Troubleshooting
An ATT, therefore hard to summarize. But I learned about a few new commands I didn't know about before. Like strace. And vimdiff.
TUT130: Challenges in Storage I/O in Virtualization
Another nice one, but an emergency at work (printing down in a dorm, during finals week) distracted me heavily during the first half of it. Which resulted in the following note in my notes:
NPIV looks really nifty. Look into it.NPIV being how you can use fibre-channel zoning to zone off VM's, rather than HBA's. Highly useful. I also learned about a neat new thing called Virtual Fabrics. Virtual Fabrics work kind of like VLANS for fabrics. You can segregate your fabrics into fabrics that share hardware but nothing else. Handy if your, say, Solaris admins don't want you mucking about with their zoning, while saving money through consolidated hardware.
TUT216: OES2 SP1 Architectural Overview
There is a LOT of new stuff in SP1.
- It will include eDir 8.8.4 (8.8.3 will ship this summer sometime)
- NCP and eDir will be fully 64-bit
- OES2 SP1 will be based on SLES SP2, which will be releasing about the same time
- AFP Support
- AFP 3.1
- Uses Diffie-Helman 1 for password exchange, meaning the 8-character password problem is solved.
- Fully SMP-safe
- Has cross-protocol locking with NCP. CIFS doesn't have cross-protocol locking yet, but IIRC, Samba does
- Does not need LUM enabled users
- CIFS Support
- NTLMv1, but v2 is a possibility if enough people ask, so file those enhancement requests!!
- CIFS is separate from Samba, therefore can not be used in conjunction with Domain Services for Windows
- As with AFP, fully SMP safe
- EDir 8.8.4
- LDAP auditing enhanced
- "newer auth protocols", but they didn't say what.
TUT211: Enhanced Protocol Support in OES2 SP1
This is the session where they went into detail about the AFP and CIFS support. They said that netatalk, the existing AFP stack on Linux, gets really slow once you go over the 20 concurrent users. Whoa! I can soooo understand why Novell felt the need to make a new one.
- The 8 character password limit has been fixed! They now support DH1 for passing passwords.
- The 'afptcp' daemon can use one password protocol at a time, so you can only use DH1, or one of the other three I can't remember.
- Support for OSX 10.1 and 10.2 is scanty, and 10.5 is limited but users may not notice anyway.
- Passwords will be case sensitive.
- Kerberos will be in a future release
- Performance is faster than NetWare, partly due to the ability to multi-thread
- Can register services by way of SLP
- Only supports NSS for the time being, the other Linux file-systems will be a future feature.
- Can support 500 concurrent users, and 1000+ in the future. This fits our current AFP loads.
- We can configure more about how it works than we could on NetWare, such as how many worker threads to spawn.
- Has meaninful debug logs!
- Has a new command, 'afpstat' that works like 'netstat' for giving a snapshot of afp connections.
Tonight was the night formerly known as 'Sponsor Night,' but has a new name now that everyone who gets a booth is no longer a 'sponsor'. Some are sponsors, some are exhibiters. I can't keep track. Anyway, today was their party. "World of Novellcraft!" Homage to vid-gaming.
Lots of Wii, lots of Rock Band, some Halo, lots of women dressed in Renaissance Festival gear getting their pictures taken by the 90%+ male audience. I've blogged before about my ambivalence about Sponsor Night. I lasted until about 7, when I came back to the hotel.
Tomorrow I have an actual LUNCH BREAK in my schedule! Ooo! And
Labels: brainshare, edir, linux, netware, novell, OES, sysadmin
Monday, March 17, 2008
Today at Brainshare
Monday. Opening day. I had trouble getting to sleep last night due to a poor choice of bed-time reading (don't read action, don't read action, don't read action). And had to get up at 6am body time in order to get breakfast before the morning keynote. There be zombies.
Breakfast was uninspired. As per usual, the hashbrowns had cooled to a gellid mass before I found everything and got a seat.
The Monday keynotes are always the CxO talks about strategy and where we're going. Today a mess of press releases from Novell give a good idea what the talks were about. Hovsepian was first, of course, and was actually funny. He gave some interesting tid-bits of knowledge.
Another thing he mentioned several times in association with Fossa and agility, is mergers and acquisitions. This is not something us Higher Ed types ever have to deal with, but it is an area in .COM land that requires a certain amount of IT agility to accommodate successfully. He mentioned this several times, which suggests that this strategy is aimed squarely at for-profit industry.
Also, SAP has apparently selected SLES as their primary platform for the SMB products.
Pat Hume from SAP also spoke. But as we're on Banner, and it'll take a sub-megaton nuclear strike to get us off of it, I didn't pay attention and used the time to send some emails.
Oh, and Honeywell? They're here because they have hardware that works with IDM. That way the same ID you use for your desktop login can be tied to the RFID card in your pocket that gets you into the datacenter. Spiffy.
ATT375 Advanced Tips & Tricks for Troubleshooting eDir 8.8
A nice session. Hard to summarize. That said, they needed more time as the Laptops with VMWare weren't fast enough for us to get through many of the exercises. They also showed us some nifty iMonitor tricks. And where the high-yield shoot-your-foot-off weapons are kept.
BUS202 Migrating a NetWare Cluster to OES2
Not a good session. The presenter had a short slide deck, and didn't really present anything new to me other than areas where other people have made major mistakes. And to PLAN on having one of the linux migrations go all lost-data on you. He recommended SAN snapshots. It shortly digressed into "Migrating a NetWare Cluster to Linux HA", which is a different session all together. So I left.
TUT215 Integrating Macintosh with Novell
A very good session. The CIO of Novell Canada was presenting it, and he is a skilled speaker. Apparently Novell has written a new AFP stack from scratch for OES2 Sp1, since NETATALK is comparatively dog slow. And, it seems, the AFP stack is currently out performing the NCP stack on OES2 SP1. Whoa! Also, the Banzai GroupWise client for Mac is apparently gorgeous. He also spent quite a long time (18 minutes) on the Kanaka client from Condrey Consulting. The guy who wrote that client was in the back of the room and answered some questions.
Breakfast was uninspired. As per usual, the hashbrowns had cooled to a gellid mass before I found everything and got a seat.
The Monday keynotes are always the CxO talks about strategy and where we're going. Today a mess of press releases from Novell give a good idea what the talks were about. Hovsepian was first, of course, and was actually funny. He gave some interesting tid-bits of knowledge.
- Novell's group of partners is growing, adding a couple hundred new ones since last year. This shows the Novell 'ecosystem' is strong.
- 8700 new customers last year
- Novell press mentions are now only 5% negative.
- High Capacity Computing
- Policy Engines
- Orchestration
- Convergence
- Mobility
Another thing he mentioned several times in association with Fossa and agility, is mergers and acquisitions. This is not something us Higher Ed types ever have to deal with, but it is an area in .COM land that requires a certain amount of IT agility to accommodate successfully. He mentioned this several times, which suggests that this strategy is aimed squarely at for-profit industry.
Also, SAP has apparently selected SLES as their primary platform for the SMB products.
Pat Hume from SAP also spoke. But as we're on Banner, and it'll take a sub-megaton nuclear strike to get us off of it, I didn't pay attention and used the time to send some emails.
Oh, and Honeywell? They're here because they have hardware that works with IDM. That way the same ID you use for your desktop login can be tied to the RFID card in your pocket that gets you into the datacenter. Spiffy.
ATT375 Advanced Tips & Tricks for Troubleshooting eDir 8.8
A nice session. Hard to summarize. That said, they needed more time as the Laptops with VMWare weren't fast enough for us to get through many of the exercises. They also showed us some nifty iMonitor tricks. And where the high-yield shoot-your-foot-off weapons are kept.
BUS202 Migrating a NetWare Cluster to OES2
Not a good session. The presenter had a short slide deck, and didn't really present anything new to me other than areas where other people have made major mistakes. And to PLAN on having one of the linux migrations go all lost-data on you. He recommended SAN snapshots. It shortly digressed into "Migrating a NetWare Cluster to Linux HA", which is a different session all together. So I left.
TUT215 Integrating Macintosh with Novell
A very good session. The CIO of Novell Canada was presenting it, and he is a skilled speaker. Apparently Novell has written a new AFP stack from scratch for OES2 Sp1, since NETATALK is comparatively dog slow. And, it seems, the AFP stack is currently out performing the NCP stack on OES2 SP1. Whoa! Also, the Banzai GroupWise client for Mac is apparently gorgeous. He also spent quite a long time (18 minutes) on the Kanaka client from Condrey Consulting. The guy who wrote that client was in the back of the room and answered some questions.
Labels: brainshare, clustering, netware, novell, OES, sysadmin, virtualization
Thursday, March 13, 2008
Brainshare Sponsors
In order to keep costs to us walking sales leads down, Novell solicits sponsors for BrainShare to help subsidize the whole event. There is nothing wrong with that, it means a lot of potential freebies for the people who are good at saying No politely ;).
So I'm offering this list of companies who have booths at BrainShare, what Novell product they're primarily interested in, and how it relates to me. The PDF I'm sucking this off of is this one of the Sponsor Hall.
There are exceedingly few (two, really) vendors there that can expect to see any of WWU's money any time soon. Nor is that at all likely to change. Our user head-count (21,000+) and FTE count (13,000+) combine to mean that anything that charges per-user is going to be out of our price-range pretty quickly, or will be subjected to a bidding process. We build our own solutions to problems a lot of the time because of this.
Which means that I'm a very poor sales lead.
It also means I feel a bit guilty trading my contact info for Shiny! during Vendor Night since those vendors are sooo going to strike out when they call me in April.
So I'm offering this list of companies who have booths at BrainShare, what Novell product they're primarily interested in, and how it relates to me. The PDF I'm sucking this off of is this one of the Sponsor Hall.
- SAP. The 'Cornerstone Sponsor'. I think everyone who reads my blog knows what they do. At a guess, their primary interest is in Identity Manager. SCT Banner is the ERP for the .EDU space, so we don't use 'em.
- IBM. From last year, it's clear this is their Hardware division. So their primary interest is in SLES. We're on a different hardware platform, but... it's hardware. I'll still drop by to look at the pretty.
- GWAVA. They make message filtering software for GroupWise. If you need anti-spam/virus for your GW installation, you're probably running GWAVA. We don't use GroupWise, so they have nothing I need.
- GroupLink HelpDesk. A Helpdesk product that appears to be cross-platform. Their product is probably Linux, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they still have a lot of NetWare hiding back there. We use Magic Helpdesk for that function.
- Microsoft. You know who they are. Officially their product is SLES but... who knows what they'll bring. We use a LOT of them around here, what with being an Exchange deployment and owning 96% of the desktops.
- Messaging Architects. They are a more general email security and archiving provider. Their product is GroupWise, but they also sell some appliances that I could theoretically use in front of our Exchange servers. We've settled on a product from a much bigger vendor for that function, but still.
- Novacoast IT. A consulting firm specializing in Novell. Their products are a wide gamut of Novell stuff, SLES, ZEN, IDM, and GroupWise. We're a poor .EDU, and can't afford consultants.
- Honeywell. Honeywell is kind of like GE and IBM, they do a little of everything. I don't know what their Novell tie-in is.
- Syncsort. They were one of the first backup products to fully support OES1. They are arguably the backup software that supports Novell stuff the best. Their products are SLES, OES, and NetWare. We looked at them when we were looking for a new backup vendor, but they didn't quite measure up for various reasons. I just might drop by.
- Omni. Another consulting firm that specializes in Novell products, but they also have some discrete products. Their web-site says they do SLES, OES, NetWare, GroupWise, and NetMail (now a Messaging Architects product). We're a poor .EDU, and can't afford consultants.
- HP. They do hardware. Their booth isn't as big as it was last year, so there will be less pretty to look at. Their product is SLES/OES. They're our hardware vendor, so I'll be talking real good with these folks.
- Condrey Corporation. Another consulting company specializing in Novell products. They do IDM, Novell Storage Manager, NetWare, and probably OES/SLES. Poor .edu, can't afford 'em. yadda yadda. Also, we built our own IDM stuff so don't need no steeenkin other stuff.
There are exceedingly few (two, really) vendors there that can expect to see any of WWU's money any time soon. Nor is that at all likely to change. Our user head-count (21,000+) and FTE count (13,000+) combine to mean that anything that charges per-user is going to be out of our price-range pretty quickly, or will be subjected to a bidding process. We build our own solutions to problems a lot of the time because of this.
Which means that I'm a very poor sales lead.
It also means I feel a bit guilty trading my contact info for Shiny! during Vendor Night since those vendors are sooo going to strike out when they call me in April.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Thursday, February 14, 2008
BrainShare scheduler is open
For those of you who check my blog over dinner (or breakfast if you're in the EU) the BrainShare scheduler opened early. Go forth and schedule.
Labels: brainshare
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
OpenID and eDirectory
A friend asked me a few months ago if eDir 8.8 supported openID.
The answer to that is, "not natively." At its very base, openID is a method of granting foreign security principals access to resources. There will have to be some form of middleware that translates 'joebob.vox.com' into 'ext-1612ba2.extref.org.tree' (or even "joebob.vox_com.extref.org.tree") in eDirectory, but once that translation is in place eDirectory will support openID just fine. Now that openID is getting serious traction this becomes more interesting. But natively? Not really.
That said, eDirectory is very well suited for being the identity store for an openID-enabled database. It scales freakishly far. This is exactly the sort of 'distributed identity' idea that Novell has pointed out at the last few BrainShares. Through this sort of distributed identity system is would be possible for two Universities to grant members in other organizations, with their own eDirectories, access to a web-server based collaboration system.
The answer to that is, "not natively." At its very base, openID is a method of granting foreign security principals access to resources. There will have to be some form of middleware that translates 'joebob.vox.com' into 'ext-1612ba2.extref.org.tree' (or even "joebob.vox_com.extref.org.tree") in eDirectory, but once that translation is in place eDirectory will support openID just fine. Now that openID is getting serious traction this becomes more interesting. But natively? Not really.
That said, eDirectory is very well suited for being the identity store for an openID-enabled database. It scales freakishly far. This is exactly the sort of 'distributed identity' idea that Novell has pointed out at the last few BrainShares. Through this sort of distributed identity system is would be possible for two Universities to grant members in other organizations, with their own eDirectories, access to a web-server based collaboration system.
Labels: brainshare, edir, opinion
Friday, January 25, 2008
BrainShare social networking
I am going to BrainShare this year!
It has been interesting to watch the social networking thingy related to BrainShare over the years.
Two years ago, and for many years before that, the primary social group for BrainShare was novell.community.brainshare. This was an NNTP (you remember Usenet?) group hosted on the same servers that host the Novell Support Forums. BrainShare 2006 saw an increase in a certain kind of anti-Novell traffic that was already fairly common in the lead up to BrainShare 2005. The denizens of the group tend to be old time Novell hands, and as you can imagine they were pretty upset about Novell's plans for NetWare. A few very vocal people managed to raise enough of a stink that there wasn't a lot going on in the group for 2006. Unsurprisingly, novell.community.brainshare was removed from the NNTP servers around May 2006 (though the google-groups version of it is still around, see the link).
Last year Novell came up with BrainShare Connect as the social networking thingy. It had forums, blogs, and various other things to try and get attendees hooked up with each other and interacting. It got a reasonable amount of traffic, but many folks who had been regulars of the NNTP group were not there. I checked in every few days to see if anything new was up. For 2006 and 2005 I had checked the NNTP group daily, since there really was that much going on.
This year BrainShare Connect is back, but... they didn't do it right. The same outsourced firm is handling it, but even though it has Web 2.0 stamped all over it the interface is markedly worse than last year. There are no blogs. There are no polls. The interest finders are... weak and obfuscated. The forums are implemented on PhpBB, but done wrong. As an example of the wrong, take a look at this screen shot of me Replying to a thread:
What am I replying to? I can't tell. That window can't be moved or resized. I better hope my memory is good. I don't know if this is a new PhpBB feature, a new version came out a while ago, or some customized mod from WingateWeb. Whatever it is, it isn't a good thing. The ability to see what you're replying to greatly eases the flow of conversation.
And the logout screen is particularly interesting, too.
What ever happened to "Cancel/OK"? Hasn't that been a de facto standard since, like, the Mac Classic came out 24 years ago? Proceed? I think that's the first time I've ever seen that particular word in that particular spot in an application developed by professionals.
The NNTP group had plenty going for it, but it was spoiled by a few vociferous critics. In the last few months Novell has released a brand new HTTP interface for the support forums that is worlds better than what was there before. Novell could bring this function back in-house if they really wanted to, and I'd support that decision. That said, I do understand why they need/want WingateWeb to handle that function. I just wish they did it better.
It has been interesting to watch the social networking thingy related to BrainShare over the years.
Two years ago, and for many years before that, the primary social group for BrainShare was novell.community.brainshare. This was an NNTP (you remember Usenet?) group hosted on the same servers that host the Novell Support Forums. BrainShare 2006 saw an increase in a certain kind of anti-Novell traffic that was already fairly common in the lead up to BrainShare 2005. The denizens of the group tend to be old time Novell hands, and as you can imagine they were pretty upset about Novell's plans for NetWare. A few very vocal people managed to raise enough of a stink that there wasn't a lot going on in the group for 2006. Unsurprisingly, novell.community.brainshare was removed from the NNTP servers around May 2006 (though the google-groups version of it is still around, see the link).
Last year Novell came up with BrainShare Connect as the social networking thingy. It had forums, blogs, and various other things to try and get attendees hooked up with each other and interacting. It got a reasonable amount of traffic, but many folks who had been regulars of the NNTP group were not there. I checked in every few days to see if anything new was up. For 2006 and 2005 I had checked the NNTP group daily, since there really was that much going on.
This year BrainShare Connect is back, but... they didn't do it right. The same outsourced firm is handling it, but even though it has Web 2.0 stamped all over it the interface is markedly worse than last year. There are no blogs. There are no polls. The interest finders are... weak and obfuscated. The forums are implemented on PhpBB, but done wrong. As an example of the wrong, take a look at this screen shot of me Replying to a thread:
What am I replying to? I can't tell. That window can't be moved or resized. I better hope my memory is good. I don't know if this is a new PhpBB feature, a new version came out a while ago, or some customized mod from WingateWeb. Whatever it is, it isn't a good thing. The ability to see what you're replying to greatly eases the flow of conversation.
And the logout screen is particularly interesting, too.
What ever happened to "Cancel/OK"? Hasn't that been a de facto standard since, like, the Mac Classic came out 24 years ago? Proceed? I think that's the first time I've ever seen that particular word in that particular spot in an application developed by professionals.
The NNTP group had plenty going for it, but it was spoiled by a few vociferous critics. In the last few months Novell has released a brand new HTTP interface for the support forums that is worlds better than what was there before. Novell could bring this function back in-house if they really wanted to, and I'd support that decision. That said, I do understand why they need/want WingateWeb to handle that function. I just wish they did it better.
Labels: brainshare, novell, opinion
Monday, September 24, 2007
Virtualization and Security
It's been a few days for it.
Two BrainShare's ago, when I first heard about AppArmor, the guy giving the demo was very, very clear that virtualization is not a security barrier. Especially AppArmor. This may seem a bit contradictory, considering what AppArmor is supposed to do. What he meant was that you should not rely on AppArmor to provide separation between two applications with very different security postures. Physical separation is best.
That extends to full virtualization products like VMWare or XenSource. On Saturday the Internet Storm Center had a nice diary entry on this very topic. To summarize, Malware already detects virtual machines and changes its behavior accordingly. Last Friday, VMWare released a patch for ESX server that fixes some very interesting security problems. The patch also links to CVE-2007-4496, which is well worth a read. In short, an administrative-user in a guest OS can corrupt memory or possibly execute code in the Host OS. These are the kind of vulnerabilities that I'm worried about.
Any time you run on shared hardware the possibility exists of 'leaking' across instances. Virtualization on x86 is still primitive enough that that the barriers between guest OS instances aren't nearly as high as they are on, say, IBM Mainframes which have been doing this sort of thing since the 1960's. I fully expect Intel (and AMD if they can keep up) to make the x86 CPU ever more virtualization friendly. But until we get to robust hardware enforcement of separation between guest OS instances, we'll have to do the heavy lifting in software.
Which means that a good best-practice is to restrict the guests that can run on a specific virtualization host or cluster to servers with similar security postures. Do not mix the general web-server with the credit-card processing server (PCI). Or mix the credit-card processing server (PCI) with the web interface to your Medical records (HIPPA). Or mix the bugzilla web-server for internal development (trade secrets) with the general support web-server.
Yes, this does reduce the 'pay-back' for using virtualization technology in the first place. However, it is a better posture. Considering the rate of adoption of VM technology in the industry, I'm pretty sure the black-hat crowd is actively working on ways to subvert VM hosts through the guests.
Two BrainShare's ago, when I first heard about AppArmor, the guy giving the demo was very, very clear that virtualization is not a security barrier. Especially AppArmor. This may seem a bit contradictory, considering what AppArmor is supposed to do. What he meant was that you should not rely on AppArmor to provide separation between two applications with very different security postures. Physical separation is best.
That extends to full virtualization products like VMWare or XenSource. On Saturday the Internet Storm Center had a nice diary entry on this very topic. To summarize, Malware already detects virtual machines and changes its behavior accordingly. Last Friday, VMWare released a patch for ESX server that fixes some very interesting security problems. The patch also links to CVE-2007-4496, which is well worth a read. In short, an administrative-user in a guest OS can corrupt memory or possibly execute code in the Host OS. These are the kind of vulnerabilities that I'm worried about.
Any time you run on shared hardware the possibility exists of 'leaking' across instances. Virtualization on x86 is still primitive enough that that the barriers between guest OS instances aren't nearly as high as they are on, say, IBM Mainframes which have been doing this sort of thing since the 1960's. I fully expect Intel (and AMD if they can keep up) to make the x86 CPU ever more virtualization friendly. But until we get to robust hardware enforcement of separation between guest OS instances, we'll have to do the heavy lifting in software.
Which means that a good best-practice is to restrict the guests that can run on a specific virtualization host or cluster to servers with similar security postures. Do not mix the general web-server with the credit-card processing server (PCI). Or mix the credit-card processing server (PCI) with the web interface to your Medical records (HIPPA). Or mix the bugzilla web-server for internal development (trade secrets) with the general support web-server.
Yes, this does reduce the 'pay-back' for using virtualization technology in the first place. However, it is a better posture. Considering the rate of adoption of VM technology in the industry, I'm pretty sure the black-hat crowd is actively working on ways to subvert VM hosts through the guests.
Labels: brainshare, virtualization
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Novell Client for Vista, in public beta
Announced in Cool Blogs.
On the Beta Page.
Downloads.
Documentation.
Still no word on when OES2 is coming out. This is somewhat disheartening, as I had heard at BrainShare that the OES2 release would be simultanious with the Novell Client for Vista release. At this point, it is looking like an August release for OES2, which soooo blows my schedule.
On the Beta Page.
Downloads.
Documentation.
Still no word on when OES2 is coming out. This is somewhat disheartening, as I had heard at BrainShare that the OES2 release would be simultanious with the Novell Client for Vista release. At this point, it is looking like an August release for OES2, which soooo blows my schedule.
Labels: brainshare, netware, novell, OES
Monday, March 26, 2007
BrainShare done
I'm back at work. BrainShare was a blast, as usual. Learned a lot. Spent most of the day dumping what I learned, and will be spending the rest of the week working on things I learned about last week. Like a new benchmark series with OES with the mid-December NCP patch. I want to see if that changed anything.
Also next week when class is back in I need to analyze our I/O patterns on WUF to better design a test for OES. I need to know FOR SURE if OES-Linux is up to the task of handling 5000 concurrent connections the way we do it. The last series suggested it, but I need more details.
Also next week when class is back in I need to analyze our I/O patterns on WUF to better design a test for OES. I need to know FOR SURE if OES-Linux is up to the task of handling 5000 concurrent connections the way we do it. The last series suggested it, but I need more details.
Labels: benchmarking, brainshare, novell
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Finding me
I'll be at Meet the Experts tonight. I'm likely to be found near the Support Forum SysOps, wherever they'll be.
Labels: brainshare
TUT 202: NetWare cluster migrations to LInux clusters
There is a book on this: "Novell Cluster Services for NetWare and Linux". This session was about OES, not OES2. Again, my notes:
- On linux, cluster nodes are added through YaST
- 120 bytes of meta-data per file on NSS
- iPrint volumes could go on non-NSS volumes
- ext3 on OES2 is indexed, not indexed on OES1. Problem for larger directories.
- Novell Server Consolidation and Migration Tool can migrate Netware to Linux
- While running in mixed mode, can not extend or create NSS pools. Reboots all around to make this take.
- In mixed mode, trustee modifications do NOT transfer to the other OS. Migrate your NetWare volumes to OES-Linux, and leave them there!
- In OES-Linux, trustees are kept in a file, not in the file-system.
- In mixed mode, cluster load/unload scripts are kept in /etc/opt/novell/ncs/
- When out of mixed mode, scripts are promoted into edir
- Cluster licenses are not checked in OES-linux, but still 'count' come audit time. So have them.
- The 'cluster convert' command ends mixed-mode operation
- Clustering inside VMWare ESX server: only 2-node Microsoft clusters are supported. All others are not.
Labels: brainshare, clustering, netware, novell, OES
OES 210: OES, architectural overview
This sounds basic, but it extends on IO102. Again, my notes:
- Probable beta in the next few weeks
- OES2 will not install on SLES10, only on SLES10 sp1
- This was done for Product Certification reasons, as was the fact that OES is an 'add on' to SLES
- Most of OES2 is still 32-bit code. Parts with kernel interaction will be 64-bit.
- Shipping on DVD media, though the OES add-on will be CD.
- It will use Novell Customer Center for updates
- http://www.novell.com/products/openenterpriseserver/partners for AV and Backup partners
- CASA is a new auth package, stores things. Also exists on the client
- NLDAP has been ported to openLDAP, in that the openLDAP community has accepted the patches submitted by Novell.
- The kernel in OES2 will be 2.6.16
- SMS allows backing up of Xen VMs
- eDir 8.8 comes with OES2, no word on eDir 8.7
- pureFTP is edir integrated
- iManager 2.7 comes with JRE1.5
- iManager WILL be ported to NetWare, which means OES2-NetWare will also come with JRE1.5
- Samba new 'passdb' option = NDS_ldapsam
- Allows use of Universal passwords as a Samba password. Nifty.
- Tomcat 5 now, separate OES instance from the default SLES10 instance.
- New migration framework, script based from the looks of it.
- LAS, light auditing framework, new audit API
- NSS is instrumented to use it.
Labels: brainshare, netware, novell, OES
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
TUT211: NetWare virtualization
- Xen 3.0.4+ is the codebase. They wanted 3.0.5, but Xensource didn't get the release out in time for that.
- Server.EXE contains the bulk of the paravirtualization code.
- New loader, XNLOADER.SYS replaces NWLOADER.SYS, if used in Xen.
- New console driver. The old method, writing directly to video memory, won't work in a paravirtualized VM.
- New PSM: XENMP.PSM. Permits SMP in Xen.
- So far, no "P2V" equivalent application, though they promise something by OES2-ship.
- Improved VM management screens.
Labels: brainshare, netware, novell, OES, virtualization
TUT205: Dynamic Storage Technology
I've gone over this in some length in the past. But as with the previous, here are my notes from the session.
- New fstype = shadowfs, provides a linux-level view of a shadow filesystem. By default, linux doesn't see the unified view. Useful for some backup apps, or things like web-servers.
- File-systems participating in DST need to be in the same file-system on the OES server. Could be NFS mounted, might possibly be NCP-mounted in the future. Not yet.
- Migration policy can be set by user.
- Migrations are batched, not done on-demand.
- Can be used to silently migrate a volume to new hardware
- Set new volume as Primary, and old as Shadow
- As users hit data, it gets migrated to Primary from Shadow during nightly migrations.
- Over time, most of a file-system can be migrated this way.
- Directory quotas do NOT replicate over shadow. The shadow quota may be different than Primary quota, and directory quotas are NOT shadow-aware. This is because directory quotas are a function of the file-system, and DST is a function of NCPserv and the client.
Labels: brainshare, novell, OES, shadowvolumes
TUT212: Novell Storage Services
I'm what you'd call good at NSS. But NSS on OES2 is another critter. This session took us through the updates. From my notes:
- Three times the NSS source tree has been accidentally deleted by developers. It has been restored from Salvage each time. Go Salvage.
- When mounting NSS on OES-Linux, mount it with the long namespace. Saves time. I did not catch the fstab option to make this work, though.
- You can create NSS pools that are not NetWare compatible
- NSS & LUM
- NSS = 128-bit, Unix = 32-bit. LUM handles the translations.
- Users need to be LUM-enabled for this to work
- NCP-Serv can fake it for non-LUM users, but it is slower access.
- OES1 = Rights and owners set all posix
- OES2 = Rights and owners set through extended attributes
- If Samba, then LUM.
- Trustees are enforced, GUID is ignored.
- Beasts = inodes!
- /proc/slabinfo -> lsa_inode_cache = @ of inodes/files in cache
- On NetWare, memory over the 4GB line is treated as a RAMdisk for files over 128K in size.
- 32-bit vs 64-bit linux & NSS
- 32-bit linux: 1GB max kernel memory, makes for tricky caching
- 64-bit linux: All memory can be kernel memory
- NSS patch in mid-December allowed meta-data caching in user-memory, greatly speeding up meta-data reads on 32-bit systems with large numbers of files.
- nss /HighMemoryCacheType= [private|linux|none]
- Sets the use of User memory in 32-bit OES
- None = Use the same algorithm as OES-FCS, which is to try and cache everything in Kernel-mode memory. Only option on 64-bit linux since it doesn't have to use USER memory at all.
- linux = integrate caching into the regular linux caches. This can be a problem on dual use file-server/app-server system, as memory hungry applications can cause the file-system cache to purge completely.
- private = set up a separate user-mode cache in memory outside of the linux cache. Best for dedicated file-servers.
Labels: brainshare, NSS, OES
What's new in OES2
A good many things are new in OES2. The high-points:
- 64-bit support (woo!)
- iFolder 3.6
- Dynamic Storage Technology (f.k.a. Shadow Volumes)
- eDir integrated DHCP/DNS & FTP
- Major Samba improvements
- DFS support, including linking to sub-directories
- Make a link to, for example, DATA3:/shared/, rather than making a new volume just for "shared"
- NetWare in a VM, with improved VM management
- Xen 3.0.4+ support
- They wanted 3.0.5, but Xensource didn't make the cut off date. So OES2 will have 3.0.4 heavily patched.
- Service packs for OES will be synchronized with SLES
- OES is going to be an add-on product on top of SLES, choose 'add on product' during install and use the OES CD's.
- The 'Volume Location Database' for DFS is clusterable now
- iManager 2.7 now has support for managing file-system trustees
- OES3 will only have support for NetWare inside of a VM. This is a move that was pushed by the hardware vendors, NOT Novell. The hardware vendors have notified Novell that they'll be discontinuing driver support for NetWare after OES2.
- It has 802.1 support
- New client for SLED10
- No DLU for vista, that will come from Zen
Labels: brainshare, netware, novell, OES
Monday, March 19, 2007
Morning keynote, annoying the slashdot crowd
There was a slide that is guaranteed to annoy the slashdot crowd.
Note the bottom line:
Another thing to note about Mr. Mundie's discussion was OSS. He referred to OSS as, "the university model of development," which further implies that it isn't good for industry. It was a subtle thing, but clearly more of the Microsoft line on this whole deal.
Note the bottom line:
- Reduced risk of deployment
Another thing to note about Mr. Mundie's discussion was OSS. He referred to OSS as, "the university model of development," which further implies that it isn't good for industry. It was a subtle thing, but clearly more of the Microsoft line on this whole deal.
Labels: brainshare, microsoft, novell
TUT212: Novell Storage Services
Not a new topic, but it contained the updates to NSS that'll be there in OES2.
By far the biggest thing is a 64-bit version of OES. Big big big. How big? Very big.
Remember those benchmarks I ran? The ones that compare the ability of OES to keep up with NetWare? And how I learned that on OES NCP operations are CPU bound w-a-y more than on NetWare? That may be going away on 64-bit platforms.
You see, 64-bit linux allows the Kernel to have all addressable memory as kernel memory. 32-bit linux was limited to the bottom 1GB of RAM. If NSS is allowed to store all of its cache in kernel memory, it'll behave exactly like 32-bit NetWare has done since NSS was introduced with NetWare 5.0. I have very high hopes that 64-bit OES will solve the performance problems I've had with OES.
By far the biggest thing is a 64-bit version of OES. Big big big. How big? Very big.
Remember those benchmarks I ran? The ones that compare the ability of OES to keep up with NetWare? And how I learned that on OES NCP operations are CPU bound w-a-y more than on NetWare? That may be going away on 64-bit platforms.
You see, 64-bit linux allows the Kernel to have all addressable memory as kernel memory. 32-bit linux was limited to the bottom 1GB of RAM. If NSS is allowed to store all of its cache in kernel memory, it'll behave exactly like 32-bit NetWare has done since NSS was introduced with NetWare 5.0. I have very high hopes that 64-bit OES will solve the performance problems I've had with OES.
Labels: benchmarking, brainshare, netware, novell, OES
Monday keynote
Ron Hovespian is a better speaker than Messman was, and was much better about hiding the fact that he was using a teleprompter. All in all the session wasn't terribly informative, but then the Monday session generally aimed at Press Releases rather than gee whiz. That comes Friday.
That said, there was some good stuff in this session:
Update: The picture.
That said, there was some good stuff in this session:
- OES2 public beta will be 'soon'. It will not be released at BrainShare
- AD / eDir federation will be in OES2
- SLES10 SP1 is out
- A new certification: Novell Certified Engineer (NCE), a migration of the old Certified Novell Engineer (CNE) to the new Linux regime. (I have to look in to that)
- Virtualization managers are coming soon. Possibly in Zen for Linux 7.2, releasing "after Q2".
- NetWare SP7 will be OES2
Update: The picture.
Labels: brainshare, netware, novell, OES
Sunday, March 18, 2007
Sungard @ BrainShare
TUT281 is a very interesting session.
'This session presents an integration solution to manage higher education student identity information using Banner and IDM 3.5. We discuss the objects and attributes that can be synchronized as well as showing how to implement custom business policies as part of the integration solution."Could it be that they have a driver for Banner SCT now? That would change some politics. Last time we looked we needed the 'CSV' driver to make IDM work with Banner, and that is ironically the most expensive driver to buy. Hmmmmmmmm.
Labels: brainshare
Saturday, March 17, 2007
On my way
I'm heading to Salt Lake City for BrainShare today. I'm in the Bellingham airport right now, on their wireless. FREE wireless, mind. Not this sprint/verizon/alcatel wireless you get in the big airports that costs $10/hour or whatnot. Civilization!
Anyway.
The thing that rocks HARD is that Delta has direct flight from BLI to SLC. This is even better because Novell contracts with Delta for deals for attendees, as SLC is a hub for Delta. So not only do I not have to do a cross-terminal transfer in SeaTac like last year, I get to fly for cheaper. Or, WWU gets it for cheaper. Also, I'll be coming home Friday night since I don't have to do a red-eye.
Anyway.
The thing that rocks HARD is that Delta has direct flight from BLI to SLC. This is even better because Novell contracts with Delta for deals for attendees, as SLC is a hub for Delta. So not only do I not have to do a cross-terminal transfer in SeaTac like last year, I get to fly for cheaper. Or, WWU gets it for cheaper. Also, I'll be coming home Friday night since I don't have to do a red-eye.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Thursday, March 15, 2007
ZEN Pulsar has a name
http://www.novell.com/coolblogs/?p=792
and
http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1306
It is, wait for it...
Novell ZENworks Configuration Management!
One nifty feature, long rumored:
We'll hear a lot more about it next week at BrainShare, I'm sure. One thing is clear, and that's this version of Zen is Windows-desktop only for the time being. Linux will come later, again we'll learn more next week. ZEN Asset Management is still a different product, as is Patch Management. No surprise there, as both products are repackaged third-party apps.
and
http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?id=1306
It is, wait for it...
Novell ZENworks Configuration Management!
One nifty feature, long rumored:
With native integration for both Microsoft* Active Directory* and Novell® eDirectoryTMI've heard that ZEN Pulsar would have its own internal database for things like application objects and images. I guessed this was due to eventual AD support, but, hey, there it is!
We'll hear a lot more about it next week at BrainShare, I'm sure. One thing is clear, and that's this version of Zen is Windows-desktop only for the time being. Linux will come later, again we'll learn more next week. ZEN Asset Management is still a different product, as is Patch Management. No surprise there, as both products are repackaged third-party apps.
Labels: brainshare, novell, zenworks
Monday, March 05, 2007
Brainshare, and the bad chairs
The Salt Palace had an expansion recently. I can't tell where the new space was added, but it has been under construction for some time now. I think the new space is why they're able to offer a LearningLab again this year. I hope they fixed one of my bigger pet-peeves about BrainShare, the bad chairs.
Specifically, any session outside of the Ballrooms have the bad chairs. These chairs are standard convention chairs. Stackable. You can deploy lots of them. They store easy. They have a square back-rest, and the top comes to about mid-back on me. You can find an example here.Unfortunately, as they age, the back-rest panel flexes in and the top bar presses into my spine. This makes long sessions an agony 7 times out of 10 thanks to the chairs.
The ones in the ballrooms are different. They're the elongated oval style. Another example.
Monday: 3 ballroom, 1 bad-chair
Tuesday: 2 ballroom, 3 bad-chair (ow)
Wednesday: 2 bad-chair, including both 2-hour sessions. OwOwOw.
Thursday: 2 ballroom, 3 bad-chair (ow)
Friday: 1 ballroom, 1 bad-chair
Maybe I should bring my own custom seat-back. That's a really good idea.
Specifically, any session outside of the Ballrooms have the bad chairs. These chairs are standard convention chairs. Stackable. You can deploy lots of them. They store easy. They have a square back-rest, and the top comes to about mid-back on me. You can find an example here.Unfortunately, as they age, the back-rest panel flexes in and the top bar presses into my spine. This makes long sessions an agony 7 times out of 10 thanks to the chairs.
The ones in the ballrooms are different. They're the elongated oval style. Another example.
Monday: 3 ballroom, 1 bad-chair
Tuesday: 2 ballroom, 3 bad-chair (ow)
Wednesday: 2 bad-chair, including both 2-hour sessions. OwOwOw.
Thursday: 2 ballroom, 3 bad-chair (ow)
Friday: 1 ballroom, 1 bad-chair
Maybe I should bring my own custom seat-back. That's a really good idea.
Labels: brainshare
Tuesday, February 20, 2007
Brainshare scheduler is up
The session scheduler is up. I didn't get into the ATT class I wanted because it conflicted with too many OTHER high priority sessions. Overall, it is looking quite interesting this year. Of course, it always does.
Of the sessions I'm seeing that have wait-lists, most of them are Zen related.
Of the sessions I'm seeing that have wait-lists, most of them are Zen related.
| TUT212 -- Novell Storage Services | NetWare hound that I am, this is an update on NSS |
| TUT205 -- Dynamic Storage Technology: Reducing the Cost of Storage | ShadowVolumes be here. |
| TUT211 -- NetWare Virtualization | The future of NetWare, of COURSE I'm going. |
| TUT117 -- Migrating File and Print Services to Linux the Novell Way | If I'm staying with OES, I'll need this stuff. |
| IO101 -- Open Enterprise Server 2 Introduction, Overview and Futures | Need my intro to OES2. I know some of it, this should fill in the edges. |
| TUT324 -- Everything You Wanted to Know About Virtualization | Virtualization Virtualization Virtualization! |
| BOF120 -- Discussion: All Things Samba | A Birds-of-a-feather discussion. I'll be interesting to see how others are using it. |
| BUS320 -- Business Continuity Clustering Deployments | This looks to be BCC in abstract, not Novell's BCC. Could be good. |
| TUT204 -- Configuring Samba on Open Enterprise Server | I'll need to know this. |
| TUT222 -- MYTHBUSTERS - OpenSource Media Centers: You Don't Need Windows Anymore! | Not exactly work-related. |
| TUT202 -- Migrating a NetWare Cluster to an Open Enterprise Server Linux Cluster | I'll be doing this sometime. |
| TUT104 -- Choosing the Right File System for Open Enterprise Server | I'll be doing this sometime. I hope. |
| TUT210 -- Open Enterprise Server: An Architectural Overview | I'm pretty up on this one, may skip it. |
| TUT341 -- ZENworks: “Pulsar†and the Vista Lifecycle | 1/2 the reason I'm here. |
| TUT215 -- Data Protection Solutions on Linux | Backup options. Need this stuff. |
| TUT246 -- ZENworks: Design and Best Practice | 1/2 the reason I'm here. |
| TUT106 -- Distributed File Services | DFS in OES-Lin? Tell me more... |
| TUT302 -- Dispelling NetWare Memory Management Myths | Look! A NetWare session! I have trouble with this. I'm SOOOO there. |
Labels: brainshare, novell
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
It's official...
...Microsoft is a Platinum sponsor of Brainshare.
Never thought I'd live to see the day, but here it is. Thing is? They're right in front, right next to the GWAVA booth.
I STILL wouldn't want to be a boothie assigned to that booth. No way, no how. Talk about a hostile audience. 10 years of hatred doesn't magically go away once the business partnership is set up.
Never thought I'd live to see the day, but here it is. Thing is? They're right in front, right next to the GWAVA booth.
I STILL wouldn't want to be a boothie assigned to that booth. No way, no how. Talk about a hostile audience. 10 years of hatred doesn't magically go away once the business partnership is set up.
Labels: brainshare
Monday, February 05, 2007
Updated interests
Session sign-up starts President's day, and may be open earlier like last year. This is a bit of a pain since we get President's day off, so I have to remember to do Brainshare signup when at home. But, Novell keeps posting more sessions in the Catalog, and I keep looking at them and prioritizing them. I now have 27 sessions I'm interested in, and 14 rated 'Medium' or 'High' priority. This means that I'll be getting into very few of my 'Low' priority sessions, all things considered. In rough order of priority.
Those links aren't live, unfortunately. I haven't found a way to make'em live.
Those links aren't live, unfortunately. I haven't found a way to make'em live.
| TUT202 | Migrating a NetWare Cluster to an Open Enterprise Server Linux Cluster |  | ||
| TUT211 | NetWare Virtualization | | ||
| TUT326 | Virtual Machines and Storage Foundation | | ||
| TUT212 | Novell Storage Services | | ||
| TUT205 | Dynamic Storage Technology: Reducing the Cost of Storage | | ||
| IO101 | Open Enterprise Server 2 Introduction, Overview and Futures | | ||
| TUT101 | Open Source Stack vs Open Enterprise Server (OES) | | ||
| TUT204 | Configuring Samba on Open Enterprise Server | | ||
| TUT210 | Open Enterprise Server: An Architectural Overview | | ||
| TUT222 | MYTHBUSTERS - OpenSource Media Centers: You Don't Need Windows Anymore! | | ||
| TUT302 | NetWare Memory Management | | ||
| TUT324 | Everything You Wanted to Know About Virtualization | | ||
| TUT341 | ZENworks: “Pulsar” and the Vista Lifecycle | | ||
| ATT321 | Configuring Virtual Machines with XEN | | ||
| TUT246 | ZENworks: Design and Best Practice | | ||
| TUT247 | ZENworks: Designing “Pulsar” to Scale to Your Environment | | ||
| TUT104 | Choosing the Right File System for Open Enterprise Server | | ||
| TUT129 | Troubleshooting a SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 System | | ||
| BOF120 | Discussion: All Things Samba | | ||
| BOF100 | Discussion: Interoperability with Microsoft Windows and Active Directory | | ||
| TUT215 | Data Protection Solutions on Linux | | ||
| TUT218 | Learning to Live With Microsoft Without Turning Blue | | ||
| TUT106 | Distributed File Services | | ||
| IO106 | Novell Teaming + Conferencing: Better Collaboration For All | | ||
| IO124 | Using and Understanding Novell Customer Center | | ||
| TUT117 | Migrating File and Print Services to Linux the Novell Way | | ||
| TUT140 | ZENworks: “Pulsar” Installation and Deployment | |
Labels: brainshare, novell
Brainshare crystal ball
I'm sure I'll make more posts like these as we get closer to the week, but here is my stab at the hot topics of Brainshare 2007.
Top tech topics:
What am I looking forward to? See the list of top topics, except for possibly 10sp1 all of those are ones I'm going to be looking into in some detail. Will I be taunting the Microsoft boothies? No, I have more respect for them than that. I do expect to be embarrassed by my fellow attendees at several points, but I'm still looking forward to a very informative Brainshare this year.
Top tech topics:
- Zen Pulsar
- OES2
- SLES10/SLED10 sp1
- Vista Compatibility
- Novell/Microsoft deal (I do not want to be the booth staff for the MS booth at Brainshare, they should get hazard pay. When mentioned during a Keynote, there will be booing).
- Where is the NetWare (a theme continued from previous years).
- Will it run on NetWare (lots of new stuff this year, and all of it runs on not-NetWare, see previous gripe).
- 64-bit everything.
- Virtualization
- 10sp1 introduces a newer Xen setup, but still no supported Windows VMs that I've heard.
- Groupwise 7
- Identity Management
- Even More Open Source
What am I looking forward to? See the list of top topics, except for possibly 10sp1 all of those are ones I'm going to be looking into in some detail. Will I be taunting the Microsoft boothies? No, I have more respect for them than that. I do expect to be embarrassed by my fellow attendees at several points, but I'm still looking forward to a very informative Brainshare this year.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Brainshare session catalog is up!
https://www.novellbrainshare.com/slc2007/catalog
Wohoo!
Wohoo!
My interests so far. And there are much more sessions to be posted. The Laura Chappel sessions aren't even up yet.
TUT202 Migrating a NetWare Cluster to an Open Enterprise Server Linux Cluster TUT211 NetWare Virtualization TUT326 Virtual Machines and Storage Foundation TUT212 Novell Storage Services TUT205 Dynamic Storage Technology: Reducing the Cost of Storage IO101 Open Enterprise Server 2 Introduction, Overview and Futures TUT101 Open Source Stack vs Open Enterprise Server (OES) TUT204 Configuring Samba on Open Enterprise Server TUT210 Open Enterprise Server: An Architectural Overview TUT246 ZENworks: Design and Best Practice TUT247 ZENworks: Designing “Pulsar” to Scale to Your Environment TUT104 Choosing the Right File System for Open Enterprise Server TUT129 Troubleshooting a SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 System BOF120 All Things Samba BOF100 Interoperability with Microsoft Windows and Active Directory TUT215 Data Protection Solutions on Linux TUT218 Learning to Live With Microsoft Without Turning Blue TUT106 Distributed File Services
Labels: brainshare, novell
Monday, January 08, 2007
Brainshare, oops
So. BrainShare is during Finals Week this year, not during Spring Break like most years. I had been telling everyone that I would be gone over Spring Break. Oopsie!
This is actually better. During finals week we don't to much besides work on test/dev system and firewatch on the production systems. Good week to not be here. Spring Break on the other hand is a prime time to roll out new production systems, and being in Salt Lake City during it makes that process harder. Spring Break is not a vacation for us in IT.
If we go to NetWare SP6, it'll be during Spring Break. I'll actually be here for that.
This is actually better. During finals week we don't to much besides work on test/dev system and firewatch on the production systems. Good week to not be here. Spring Break on the other hand is a prime time to roll out new production systems, and being in Salt Lake City during it makes that process harder. Spring Break is not a vacation for us in IT.
If we go to NetWare SP6, it'll be during Spring Break. I'll actually be here for that.
Labels: brainshare, novell
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
Brainshare time
Novell replaced the old NNTP-based brainshare forum with a web-based one supplied by Leverage Software. It's a social networking thingy designed to get Novell people talking to eachother, and undoubtably generating sales leads in the end. Since I'm deep into their pockets already (and have been saying NO to all kinds of things so I'm in practice), I created an account.
It seems that 'brainshare2007' is appended to each username, kind of annoying.
I note with amusement that BrainShare Connect is driven by ASPX. I know for a fact that BrainShare Connect isoutsourced contracted out, so Novell doesn't have as much say about what the application is written in. Perhaps the only LAMP-running competition for the bid were small time apps that couldn't stand up to the task. Whatever. I noticed that it seems rather .NETy, but I'm not holding it against Novell.
That said, if'n you're going (and I know some of you are), you now have a way of finding me! Maybe see you there.
It seems that 'brainshare2007' is appended to each username, kind of annoying.
I note with amusement that BrainShare Connect is driven by ASPX. I know for a fact that BrainShare Connect is
That said, if'n you're going (and I know some of you are), you now have a way of finding me! Maybe see you there.
Labels: brainshare
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Virtual Machines are not a security barrier
Several of the sessions I attended at BrainShare this year were on AppArmor. The project lead for that product presented several times, and several times he repeated this mantra. A Virtual Machine is not a security barrier. This is true for full-virtualization products such as VMWare, and paravirtualization such as Xen.
Yesterday's SANS diary had an entry about VM detection on the part of malware. As you can well imagine, spyware and adware researchers make great use of products like VMWare to analyze their prey. VMWare has handy snapshoting abilities, which makes reverting your VM to pre-infection state easy. Unfortunately for them, "3 out of 12 malware specimens recently captured in our honeypot refused to run in VMware." The bad-ware authors are also aware of this and program their stuff to not run.
What's more insidious is that there are cases where the malware doesn't use the VMware detection to not run, but to infect the HOST machine instead. While this may not affect something like ESX Server which is a custom OS, other products like Xen in full virtualization mode or VMWare Server running on Windows or Linux would be exposed this way. Figuring out that your malware process is running in a virtual machine is easy and scriptable, and breaking out of the VM is just as scriptable.
Virtual Machines are not a security barrier, nor do they make you significantly safer. They're just different.
Tags: malware, brainshare, virtualization
Yesterday's SANS diary had an entry about VM detection on the part of malware. As you can well imagine, spyware and adware researchers make great use of products like VMWare to analyze their prey. VMWare has handy snapshoting abilities, which makes reverting your VM to pre-infection state easy. Unfortunately for them, "3 out of 12 malware specimens recently captured in our honeypot refused to run in VMware." The bad-ware authors are also aware of this and program their stuff to not run.
What's more insidious is that there are cases where the malware doesn't use the VMware detection to not run, but to infect the HOST machine instead. While this may not affect something like ESX Server which is a custom OS, other products like Xen in full virtualization mode or VMWare Server running on Windows or Linux would be exposed this way. Figuring out that your malware process is running in a virtual machine is easy and scriptable, and breaking out of the VM is just as scriptable.
Virtual Machines are not a security barrier, nor do they make you significantly safer. They're just different.
Tags: malware, brainshare, virtualization
Labels: brainshare, malware, security, virtualization
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
More brainshare possibilities
The openSuse roadmap says that openSUSE will release in early December. That's enough time for SLES 10.2 to release on or around BrainShare.
So. Two big topics:
So. Two big topics:
- Zen: The Next Generation
- SLES 10.2 or possibly, SLES 10 sp1?
Labels: brainshare, novell
Thursday, September 28, 2006
Oops, BrainShare 07 big thing
Show's what I pay attention to.
http://www.novell.com/coolblogs/?p=394
So. The next Zen will be the big focus of BS-07, most likely.
Here is more:
http://www.novell.com/coolblogs/?p=542
Tags: novell, brainshare
http://www.novell.com/coolblogs/?p=394
So. The next Zen will be the big focus of BS-07, most likely.
Here is more:
http://www.novell.com/coolblogs/?p=542
Tags: novell, brainshare
Labels: brainshare, novell
Friday, September 01, 2006
ATT in December
A partial session list has been posted.
Find it: http://www.novell.com/training/attlive/sessions.html
To which I say, 'eh.'
Tags: novell, brainshare
Find it: http://www.novell.com/training/attlive/sessions.html
To which I say, 'eh.'
- We don't do GroupWise.
- We don't do Identity Manager.
- We don't to high performance Linux. We barely do web-serving with Linux at the moment.
- Which leaves ZEN, the one bright spot.
Tags: novell, brainshare
Labels: brainshare, novell
