Microsoft's Hey say Hey ! Grid here we come

Microsoft is Not going to be left behind like it did with the internet few years(decades) ago. It is working on the grid initiative. But it is also going where the money is, rather than computing grids (which is the flavor of the time), it is focusing on Data Grids.

Microsoft is creating a "Cluster Compute" version of Windows and intends to work more closely with grid industry standards bodies, Tony Hey, the company's corporate vice president of technical computing, said in an interview with CNET News.com on Tuesday.

News release: Moab Access Portal® Source Code Available

To improve Moab's ease-of-use and expand administrator control, Cluster Resources released Moab Access Portal source code to its customers and partners. This new benefit lets organizations configure the Access Portal to accommodate unique site-specific needs. For example, organizations using Moab can now create automated batch submission on the Access Portal so end users don't have to learn batch codes, which decreases training requirements for administrators.

With available source code, organizations can also integrate Moab Access Portal with their existing Web portals. End users can use the Web portal they are already familiar with and organizations can consolidate programs to simplify management.

Moab Access Portal source code is a value add of Moab Cluster Suite®, Moab Grid Suite® or a Cluster Resources' support contract. Please contact Cluster Resources at (801) 873-3400 to learn more about downloading Access Portal source code.

Cisco announces new datacenter architecture for grid computing

With an eye toward providing an open utility architecture, Cisco Systems (Profile, Products, Articles) last week unveiled its new compute networking and virtualization architecture, VFrame. The architecture combines a set of InfiniBand-based SFSes (server fabric switches) with the VFrame virtualization software suite. Although much of this release finds its roots in Cisco’s acquisition of TopSpin, the company has gone to significant lengths to rebrand and extend the technology in time for this announcement.
Even so, VFrame constitutes a significant step forward in terms of utility application deployment. By offering the VFrame library of APIs, Cisco makes it easier for developers of existing apps to port their software into an effective utility/grid model.

And by using VFrame as the “glue” between utility deployments and their hardware layers, Cisco offers one of the first intervendor utility and virtualization management suites in the industry. It is not strictly heterogeneous, as managed devices still need to be VFrame-compliant, but within its boundaries, it has one of the widest vendor libraries, including Altiris, EMC, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft , Oracle , SAP , Tivoli.

Clusters, Grids And Virtual Organizations

In effect, grids are distributed collections of servers that can be assigned to work on different parts of the same task. Unlike the servers in clusters, which are typically dedicated to a particular application or set of applications, the servers in a grid may be allocated to perform different applications, or parts of applications, at different times of the day. Not surprisingly, there are many more clusters in use today than there are grids.

In grid terminology, the group of processors, memory, and storage that forms a grid is also called a virtual organization (VO). Each VO has policies describing how resources are discovered, scheduled, secured and paid for. Grid resource managers implement and enforce these policies. Applications and resources that have the software and interfaces to participate in the VO are called grid-aware or grid-enabled.

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The operational trade-off with a grid is taking on another layer of management in order to make better use of your computing Latest News about computing resources. There is no rule of thumb for grid cost savings yet, but the Enterprise Grid Alliance (EGA) and other grid proponents are working on ROI studies to demonstrate that grids can increase server utilization and reduce the total number of servers.

Different vendors and consortia have different names for grid resource managers, but their functionality is similar: The servers and other resources tell the resource manager how much processing, memory or storage they have available and the workload characteristics that they can handle. Then the resource manager allocates resources to applications that request them. The grid standards-setting body, the Global Grid Forum (GGF), has done much research in this area, and a set ofopen source Latest News about open source tools is available from the grid community Globus Alliance.

Truly the technology is tricky, but a dedicated I.T. organization that sees the grid deployment as strategic should succeed. As with all I.T. initiatives, the keys are simple, but not easy -- a clear strategic vision, policy and process.

Big vendors like EMC Latest News about EMC, HP, IBM Latest News about IBM, Microsoft Latest News about Microsoft, Oracle Latest News about Oracle and Sun are in the forefront of promoting grid technology, but early adopters also are using software from companies such as United Devices and Platform for simpler grid applications: to steal unused processing power from desktop PCs to process batch jobs.

Think about how much time you spend in meetings or on the phone, when your PC could be doing other jobs. The simple grid concept is appealing, but there are some drawbacks, not the least of which are security Latest News about Security and stability concerns. And, as always, standards and interoperability represent a double-edged sword: Industry leaders must work for standards, but they also want to maintain proprietary product differentiators.

New Oracle Miracle Oracle Application Server 10G R3

Oracle Press Release

Contact(s):

Rebecca Hahn
Oracle
+1.714.445.4611
rebecca.hahn@oracle.com

Nicole Maloney
Zeno Group for Oracle
+1.415.369.8103
nicole.maloney@zenogroup.com
Oracle Unveils Oracle(R) Application Server 10g Release 3
Enhanced Oracle Fusion Middleware To Deliver Expanded SOA Capabilities for Increased Business Agility; Hot-Pluggable Architecture for Web Services Interoperability and Open Source Support
ORACLE OPENWORLD, SAN FRANCISCO 19-SEP-2005 Oracle today announced Oracle( Application Server 10g Release 3, a major update to its comprehensive and integrated enterprise Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) middleware platform. A key component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 will help organizations develop and deploy Service-Oriented Applications on a grid computing architecture; integrate services into enterprise business processes; and secure and manage services, applications and data in a heterogeneous environment.

Organizations worldwide are recognizing Oracle Fusion Middleware's leadership in providing a complete and integrated SOA middleware platform and are leveraging its SOA capabilities to solve a variety of IT and business challenges. Many of the world's leading companies use Oracle Fusion Middleware as their SOA platform of choice. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 will also serve as the technology foundation for the Oracle Fusion Architecture, the platform for Oracle's Project Fusion initiative - the driving force behind its next-generation business applications.

"All components of an existing software infrastructure platform contribute to a service-oriented environment," said Gartner's Vice President and Gartner Distinguished Analyst, Yefim Natis. "But there are some middleware components that are particularly useful in an SOA, including integration support for heterogeneous environments, Web services, client-server and event-driven architectures along with metadata management."

Comprehensive SOA Platform
Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 will include enhancements to Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Application Developer Framework (ADF), such as new usability features; comprehensive, more powerful and easy to use code re-factoring; support for Java 5.0 and J2EE 1.4; and a visual, declarative JavaServer Faces (JSF) and Struts-based development environment with an extensive library of graphical user interface components. These development tools also support the Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3.0 specification.

The release will introduce a number of new features in Oracle Containers for J2EE including J2EE 1.4 compliance; the industry's most comprehensive EJB 3.0 implementation; Web Services facilities including WS-I compliance and support for a number of Web Services standards; enhanced and easier to manage JMS features; and new JAAS, Java2 and WS-SEC based security facilities.

With the business rules engine, customers will be able to modify or add business rules without requiring application re-writes, speeding time to market while reducing development costs. The enhanced enterprise service bus, along with the other middleware components, delivers a loosely coupled application framework that provides increased flexibility, reusability and overall responsiveness in a distributed and heterogeneous environment.

Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 will include several new features to support very high performance, scalability and high availability in a grid computing architecture. Dynamic workload management; enhanced clustering; automated back up and recovery; automated disaster recovery; and a new JMX-based management console are some of the new features designed to make it one of the industry's only grid-ready middleware solutions.

Hot-Pluggable Architecture - Mix and Match Current and New Technologies

Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3's hot-pluggable architecture will enable organizations to mix and match Oracle's best-in-class middleware components with their existing infrastructures and use components of Oracle Fusion Middleware together with open source development tools and runtimes. This unique architecture is designed to allow users to connect and extend their existing heterogeneous systems and maximize current and future investments in IT. Specifically, the upcoming release will be certified with open source software including Spring, Apache Struts, Apache Axis, Apache MyFaces, Hibernate, Tapestry, JUnit, CVS, SubVersion, Ant, Eclipse and Log4J. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 features support for a host of standards required to build next-generation SOAs, including WS-Reliable Messaging, WS-Security, WS-Federation, Web Services Metadata, Web Services Invocation Framework (WSIF) and REST Web Services. This release will also include a UDDI v3- compliant enterprise business services registry. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 is scheduled to interoperate with more than 128 products including middleware products such as Microsoft .NET; IBM WebSphere; IBM MQ-Series; Cisco Local Director; F5 Big IP; Checkpoint firewalls; content management; and systems management.

Security Advancements
Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 boasts a number of security enhancements, including support for industry leading standards such as SAML 1.0 and 2.0, advanced single sign-on (SSO) capabilities and additional tools for securely managing Web Services and SOAs. Oracle's federation product, Oracle COREid Federation, introduces several new features, including seamless SSO and identity sharing across business partners using a multi-protocol gateway that supports industry standards such as Liberty, WS-Federation and SAML 2.0. Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 also features a new enterprise identity and resource provisioning solution to allow enterprise users' access control privileges to be provisioned in a variety of enterprise applications and information systems.

Oracle Web Services Manager provides tools to secure and manage Web services with operations policies that can be layered over new or existing applications and Web Services written in Java or .NET. The release will deliver additional policies,increased monitoring and improved analytics capabilities and is expected to complete a FIPS-140 certification - a third-party analysis validating the product's security capabilities. Oracle COREid Provisioning, will be integrated with Oracle Web Services Manager and Oracle BPEL Process Manager to deliver a secure SOA-based provisioning architecture. This will provide customers with improved overall user security, easier centralized administration and the ability to establish secure integration with partners.

"The advancements in this release will deliver to customers a comprehensive SOA platform enabling them to increase business agility and get the most from existing and future IT investments," said Oracle's Senior Vice President of Fusion Middleware Development, Thomas Kurian. "Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 mirrors the actual needs of real companies. The hot-pluggable architecture will allow companies to get exactly what they need by easily mixing and matching existing and new systems. Since the product is backward compatible, Oracle customers will be able to quickly and easily upgrade from Oracle Application Server 10g Release 1 and 2 to Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3."

Availability
Oracle Application Server 10g Release 3 is scheduled to be generally available by the end of fiscal year 2006.

About Oracle Fusion Middleware
Oracle Fusion Middleware software is a comprehensive middleware product family comprised of the company's industry-leading SOA and middleware products including: Oracle Application Server 10g; related Oracle Application Server products and options such as Oracle Identity Management, Oracle Business Intelligence, Oracle BPEL Process Manager, Oracle Web Services Manager, Oracle Business Activity Monitoring, Oracle COREid Products, Oracle Portal and Oracle Integration; Oracle Data Hubs; and Oracle Content Services 10g, Oracle Real Time Collaboration 10g and Oracle Unified Messaging. This family of proven middleware products helps organizations achieve greater agility, make better-informed business decisions and more easily integrate data and processes across disparate IT systems - including technologies from Oracle and other vendors. Oracle Fusion Middleware software also provides customers with comprehensive lifecycle support for service-oriented applications and delivers unparalleled interoperability with enterprises' existing IT infrastructure due to its unique hot-pluggable architecture. Additional information can be found at www.oracle.com/middleware.

About Oracle
Oracle (NASDAQ: ORCL) is the world's largest enterprise software company. For more information about Oracle, please visit our Web site at www.oracle.com

# # #

Trademarks
Oracle, JD Edwards, and PeopleSoft are registered trademarks of Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

The above is intended to outline our general product direction. It is intended for information purposes only, and may not be incorporated into any contract. It is not a commitment to deliver any material, code, or functionality, and should not be relied upon in making purchasing decisions. The development, release, and timing of any features or functionality described for Oracle's products remains at the sole discretion of Oracle.

Michael Jordan on Linux howto!

Since most of the Grid technology (well 90%) is centered around Linux, here is a link to learn about Linux. If you want to know about the author, click on the Author's notes page.
It is well worth checking out.(the lesson!!)

Linux Itanium will be promoted at Brazil Meeting by GELATO

CHAMPAIGN, Ill., USA (September 13, 2005)—The Gelato Federation (http://www.gelato.org) has set its sights on Latin America and beyond for its October 2-5 meeting in Brazil to advance Linux® on the Intel® Itanium® platform. This semiannual event, which has evolved into the world's largest gathering of Linux-Itanium users, will be hosted by the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio Grande do Sul (PUCRS) and sponsored by HP and Intel.

The October Gelato meeting, titled "The Itanium ERA: Education, Research, Application," will give attendees a chance to learn more about Linux on Itanium, share knowledge and experiences, form collaborative relationships, and discuss ways to expand the platform. Additionally, there will be special sessions to discuss work on Itanium processor-specific improvements to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). All interested parties are welcome to attend. Details at http://www.gelato.org/meeting.

Give your Grid a Name,address and a number

The Handle System is a comprehensive system for assigning, managing, and resolving persistent identifiers, known as "handles," for digital objects and other resources on the Internet. Handles can be used as Uniform Resource Names (URNs).

The Handle System, Handle Icon written in JavaTM and available for download at no cost for research or experimental use, includes an open set of protocols, a namespace, and an implementation of the protocols. The protocols enable a distributed computer system to store handles of digital resources and resolve those handles into the information necessary to locate and access the resources. This associated information can be changed as needed to reflect the current state of the identified resource without changing the handle, allowing the name of the item to persist over changes of location and other state information. Each handle may have it own administrator(s), and administration can be done in a distributed environment. The name-to-value bindings may also be secured, allowing handles to be used in trust management applications.

103,112 now, and it keeps going

It just passed 100,000 points. The rank is 8,000s among 89400 members and 143,600 devices. The top ranked people and groups are such like IBM corporation, Slashdot group etc. Slasdot leads the pack.
The points generated list provides the first 1000 with higher ranks and I am still not there.
In the mean time please wisit the site to see my scores and to join the project. It is for a good cause, right now the project is working on Human Proteome Folding Project
World Community Grid is focusing on a project key to advancing our knowledge of human disease. By identifying the proteins that make up the Human Proteome, scientists can build the understanding needed for novel and effective treatments for diseases like cancer, HIV/AIDS, SARS, and malaria.

Online coverage of Hurricane Katrina

Online coverage of Hurricane Katrina

This is a site featuring news and links to activities in Austin, Texas, that are meant to help the survivors of Hurricane Katrina.

Here is an up to date list of current open homes on our website in alphabetic order by state. This list will stay updated as warranted.

This is a housing services hub for Katrina victims. You can offer up housing space for victims, or hurricane survivors can search for available rooms/houses/apts/etc. This site is working in cooperation with support organizations.

This site is designed to help friends and family communicate with loved ones lost or missing from Hurricane Katrina by posting messages for one another during the aftermath of this terrible tragedy. Messages are sorted by the last and first name of the person impacted by Hurricane Katrina.