The Vyatta project released VC6.1-2010.07.28 Beta a few days ago, besides a bunch of bug fixes it also contains a number of interesting new features.
New in this release
- Stateful failover for NAT and firewall
- LLDP support
- QoS input interface
- Port mirroring and redirection
- IPS enhancements
- BGP hop count security
- Layer 2 bridging
- Enhancements to image-based upgrade
- IPv6 BGP support
- DHCPv6
- SNMP for IPv6
And for those with a subscription you now get configuration syncronization.
Keep in mind, this is a beta release and it’s not recommended for production use at this stage, users are encouraged to download, test and report any bugs, issues or errors.
In later posts I’ll go through setting up Vyatta, configuring NAT, firewall and VRRP.
Posted in Networking, Vyatta
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Tagged vc6, vyatta
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Cross-posted from opensolaris.org
A number of the community leaders from the OpenSolaris community have been working quietly together on a new effort called Illumos, and we’re just about ready to fully disclose our work to, and invite the general participation of, the general public.
We believe that everyone who is interested in OpenSolaris should be interested in what we have to say, and so we invite the entire OpenSolaris community to join us for a presentation on at 1PM EDT on August 3, 2010.
You can find out the full details of how to listen in to our conference, or attend in person (we will be announcing from New York City) by visiting http://www.illumos.org/announce (The final details shall be posted there not later than 1PM EDT Aug 1, 2010.)
We look forward to seeing you there!
– Garrett D’Amore & the rest of the Illumos Cast
Although it is with some skepticism, I do applaud the guys behind this project, if it’s going to be a serious contender it will require an obscene amount of work, but if they’ve actually been able to get hold of the right people then it should be possible to deliver a good product. Seriously looking forward to the announcement and let’s hope they have some juicy details and a roadmap.
Again contrary to what has been said in the past, Oracle now supports Solaris on non-Oracle x86 systems as long as it’s listed as certified in the Solaris Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).
You can find more information on http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/non-sun-x86-081976.html, including links to all the relevant pages.
No real mention of OpenSolaris, but then again it’s in development and you really shouldn’t run it in production unless you’re capable of supporting it yourself.
Finally some good news from Oracle, and a speck of hope that OpenSolaris will continue on the same path as before. On July 29th Oracle announced in a press release that HP and Dell will certify and resell Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux and Oracle VM on their x86 based hardware (presumably also storage).
It will be interesting to see what happens with regards to IBM who have recently dumped supporting Solaris.
This master index of Solaris storage videos will be updated periodically as new videos are added and missing old ones (that are still worth a look) recovered.
http://blogs.sun.com/storage/entry/solaris_storage_in_video
Posted in Storage, Sun
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Tagged comstar, fc, filebench, hsp, iscsi, mpxio, s7000, ssd, video, zfs
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It’s now available from the Sun^H^H^HOracle website, I’ve previously had little luck with the older release and upgrading it didn’t work either. Oracle seems to have discontinued the VMware version so you’re stuck with VirtualBox.
You’ll need an Oracle account (it’s free, thankfully) to download it.
URL: Sun Unified Storage Simulator 2010.Q3 download link.
Posted in Sun
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Tagged iscsi, nas, Oracle, s7000, Storage, Sun
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<rant>
Why is IPS so slow? I’m trying to do image-update a fresh install of b131 to b134 which is about 784MB in 90054 files, I get between 20 and 100Kb/sec, so far it’s taken two hours to download 661MB and it’s not my bandwidth as I always get 500-800KB/sec from Sun related websites. Of course the Sun site could be overloaded, or the webserver is bogged down 24/7/365 (I’ve never had an update go even remotely fast), so it must be down to the fact that it downloads individual files and not chunks or packages. Once it’s finished it’ll of course have to install the files and do it’s “magic”, turning the whole update event into a half-day job. I’m sorry, but that’s pathetic!
I don’t see the advantage of download individual files unless it’s capable……
Please bring back SXCE until OpenSolaris is a bit more mature.
</rant>

Today, while debugging a new 10/10Mbit broadband connection my trusty old Cisco PIX 515E decided it’d had enough or rather the lithium battery did. Bit of Googling didn’t yield any results on replacing it but I remembered that last time I had it open the battery did look quite plain, so I took it apart and found what appeared to be a standard “button cell” battery codenamed BR2032 3V. After scrambling around a bit in a drawer I found a CR2025 which is a bit thinner, .5mm to be exact, but it should fit just fine, the specs are the exact same except for the height but that’s not an issue as .5mm really isn’t much and it’s a real squeeze to fit it in the socket.. Guess what, it works beautifully.
The good folks at Citrix have is working on a new release of XenServer codenamed “Midnight Ride”, and a public beta is supposed to surface in March 2010.
Some of the new features are, but not limited to:
- Granular Role-based access controls within XenCenter
- Dynamic Memory Control & Overcommit
- Enhanced snapshots, including full system state and one-click revert
- Administrative logging and audit reports
- Automation for Workload Balancing
- Host Power Management
- StorageLink Site Recovery for business continuity
- Enhanced CPU comptibility for XenMotion
- Streamlined XenCenter interface
- Support for “Supplementary Packs” for hardware vendor-specific features (i.e. Dell, HP)
I’m particularly excited about memory overcommit, can’t wait to see how this will perform on a real live system.
For more information and a Webinar signup link, have a look at http://www.citrix.com/English/ps2/products/subfeature.asp?contentID=1861678
Oracle has done it, without a paid support contract you cannot get ANY Sun patches, not even critical security patches. http://sunsolve.sun.com/search/document.do?assetkey=1-61-203648-1.
I don’t believe this is the correct way to do business, sure they stand to make a bit more money but in the grand scheme of things I can’t see it making much of a difference, only thing that will happen is that a lot of current customers will get pissed off with the new policy, and new potential customers will go a non-Sun/Oracle route ie. Linux or Windows (MS still supply free security patches).
Here is an OpenSolaris thread on the subject.