The Best of Windows, Mac OS X and Linux on One PC: Sun xVM VirtualBox | Speeding Computer
There are a number of different excellent commercial products such as VMware, BootCamp or VirtualPC. However Sun Microsystems has just updated their free and open source virtualization package, the Sun xVM Virtual Box 1.60.The new version is a major upgrade featuring over 2000 changes including full support for Mac OS X in addition to Windows and Linux distributions.
This is a pretty even-handed assessment of the situation.
Sun may shut off high-end MySQL features | Reg Developer
It’s emerged Sun may release extra data back-up features in the Enterprise Edition of the next version of MySQL, due in Q4, to paying enterprise subscribers only.
Sun buys Innotek for open source PC virtualization - Computer Business Review
Sun said Innotek’s VirtualBox open source virtualization software will extend its xVM platform onto the desktop and strengthen its position in the virtualization market. It said that as part of the xVM platform, VirtualBox will have the support of Sun’s global development community, field resources, and partners.
Sun aims for ‘09 with Rock boxes | The Register
The processor has 16 cores, can tap immense amounts of memory and employs a number of aggressive pre-fetching and out of order software/hardware techniques.
…
Had Sun shipped Rock on time, it would have matched up well against Intel, which plans to release a revamped version of Itanium at the end of this year. Now Sun looks to end up about a year behind Intel-based vendors with much improved silicon and a year ahead (or less) of IBM’s Power7 release.
Glassfish.
Why are we not using Java EE 5? | Java Zone
Today the application server race is completely different from few years ago.Websphere is the number one for big projects and, as usual, is late and is still not Java EE 5 compatible. On the other hand, just when companies had started to use open source with JBoss, JBoss has left the race and version 5 is still in beta.Weblogic, the very innovative company (you should look at Weblogic Virtual Edition) has been bought by Oracle. God knows what will happen. GlassFish is by far the best open source Java EE 5 app server. But people still don’t know it well. And if some do, they immediately remember the previous reference implementations made by Sun (the ones used to play with the Java Petstore) that were not usable for real life project. GlassFish is.
Read the typical Slashdot commentary; they reference an article with the following shot of the Wonder Twins.
This article also points to a press release over at MySQL and offers up some analysis.
Clearly this is going to be a shot in the arm to both Java and Niagra based enterprise web farms, which have been losing ground to LAMP and Ruby on Rails. This deal has a lot of potential. A surprising and creative move.
Here is the press release over at Sun…
SANTA CLARA, CA January 16, 2008 Sun Microsystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: JAVA) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL AB, an open source icon and developer of one of the world’s fastest growing open source databases for approximately $1 billion in total consideration. The acquisition accelerates Sun’s position in enterprise IT to now include the $15 billion database market. Today’s announcement reaffirms Sun’s position as the leading provider of platforms for the Web economy and its role as the largest commercial open source contributor.
Update: Here’s the post on Johnathan’s Blog
Jonathan Schwartz’s Blog: Helping Dolphins Fly
We’ve historically worked at arm’s length to optimize MySQL on Sun’s platforms. Just as we did for Oracle in their early days, our performance engineering teams will sit (virtually) with their counterparts in MySQL and in the community, leveraging technologies such as ZFS and DTrace (which we didn’t even have in the Oracle era) to ensure Sakila flies - along with the rest of the LAMP stack (from memcached and php, to the broader ISV community around MySQL). MySQL is already the performance leader on a variety of benchmarks - we’ll make performance leadership the default for every application we can find (and on every vendor’s hardware platforms, not just Sun’s - and on Linux, Solaris, Windows, all). For the technically oriented, Falcon will absolutely sing on Niagara… talk about a match made in heaven.
ZFS for Mac OS X: Binaries, Source Available
Noel Dellofano, who is part of the ZFS dev team at Apple, has a post on Mac OS Forge announcing a late Christmas gift: she is making available binaries and source code (plus instructions) of the ZFS filesystem for Mac OS X.
Sun introduces first Intel workstation in two decades | The Register
**In the ’80s Sun briefly marketed an Intel 80386-based machine, the Sun386i, designed to run SunOS and support DOS applications. But hey, we probably all did crazy stuff back then.
The new workstation is called the Sun Ultra 24. But 20 years ago the 386i also had a cool code name: The Roadrunner. Oh, that fast 386 processor, the promise of running IRAF side-by-side with Word, it was what every big-money scientist had to have. I was the sysadmin: 90% of my time went to supporting 10% of the workstations. Crazy indeed.
Ajaxian ยป Sun has rewritten the browser Java plugin
Sun is announcing that they have ground up rewritten the Java plugin in the browser. The features of the rewrite are:
- Improved scripting support (java/javascript integration is better)
- Improved reliability
- Supports more powerful applets (applets can ask for more memory)
- Better windows vista support (signed applets)
- Enterprise features (run one applet in a particular JRE version)
Sun releases T2, its multicore processor sequel
The initial product release will include a blade server, the T6320, which is priced from $9,995, and two rack systems T5120 and T5220, which start at $13,995.
