Avastu Blog: Sustainable Global Clouds

WALTHAM, Mass., June 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Novell(R) announced today it is collaborating with VMware to improve Linux performance in VMware environments by incorporating support for the VMware Virtual Machine Interface ( VMI ) into the SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise kernel. Demonstrating their commitment to provide open interoperability and optimization for virtualized environments, the companies have worked together to optimize SUSE Linux Enterprise for the VMware platform. "Customers are looking to interchangeably deploy their server operating systems and their related workloads on both physical and virtual servers," said Al Gillen, research vice president, System Software at IDC. "The goal of any hypervisor is to deliver the flexibility of virtualization accompanied by the performance delivered by a physical deployment. This joint effort directly addresses those requirements for SUSE Linux Enterprise customers." Announced at VMworld in September 2007, the ...

De Montfort University has chosen Novell Open Enterprise Server 2 as the foundation for its IT infrastructure for students and staff. The Novell system, built on the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server SP1 operating system, is designed to reduce storage costs, and using Novell's Xen virtualisation technology, improve resilience and flexibility. The university is one of the largest in the UK, with more than 20,000 students and 3,000 staff across two campuses in Leicester. It offers 400 undergraduate and postgraduate courses. Because the IT infrastructure at De Montfort had been managed by individual departments, a number of different systems had developed independently of each other, with poor integration. A lack of centralisation for data and services and fragmentation of the infrastructure made it hard for students and staff to work and share information effectively. Link

Novell's Linux revenue is strong, growing 65 per cent between the first quarter of 2006 and the first quarter of 2007, Hovespian says. SUSE Linux 11 will include Unix-to-Linux migration tools as well as more virtualisation, interoperability and desktop features. Objectives include increased optimisation with Windows, easier Unix migrations and reducing power consumption and the broadening of Novell's ecosystem through strengthened interoperability with SAP. Novell currently has some 400,000 installations of OpenSUSE. The Novell/SAP partnership, which began about a year ago, includes SAP using SUSE Linux Enterprise (64-bit version) as one of the platforms for its SAP NetWeaver Business Intelligence Accelerator (SAP NetWeaver BI Accelerator) software, an appliance jointly developed with Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Intel that improves the performance of business intelligence queries and reduces administration tasks. The two will also integrate ZENworks Orchestrator, Novell's cros...

Edited Press Release PARIS -(Dow Jones)- Novell Inc. (NOVL) and Atos Origin SA (5173.FR) said Monday they are partnering to deliver new joint compliance and governance solutions. Leveraging Novell's identity and security management technologies and Atos Origin's consulting, systems integration and managed operations services, the companies will deliver end-to-end solutions to allow customers to meet stringent security, governance and compliance requirements. As a result, customers can reduce both risk and cost through automating their user provisioning, access and security monitoring processes, the companies said. The partnership will initially focus on identity and security management and will be rolled out in major European countries, they added. In the area of identity management and provisioning, the partnerships will offer services to automate and integrate employee provisioning and de-provisioning to reduce costs and meeting compliance requirements and mapping to existing...

Salt Lake City, Utah, March 17, 2008 – Compellent Technologies, Inc. (NYSE Arca: CML) today announced at the Novell BrainShare event that its storage area network (SAN) has been certified with both Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 and NetWare 6.5 operating systems, helping make it seamless for Novell administrators to leverage the Compellent SAN to lower storage costs and energy consumption. The Novell Yes Certified designation applies to both Fibre Channel and iSCSI server connections to the Compellent SAN. As sustainability initiatives become a growing trend, many storage administrators are looking for greener data center solutions, but not at the sacrifice of performance, administration time or higher cost. When paired with Novell technology, Compellent's advanced storage virtualization, automated tiered storage and thin provisioning can help administrators see significant savings on hardware, energy expenses and CO2 emissions. The Hesperia Unified School District, with 22...

Robert offers some really insightful points here, as an ex-Novell employee, he knows what went wrong back then. Quoting Robert: So how is history repeating itself, you may ask? So in late 2004, Microsoft acquired the virtualization assets of Connectix and launched Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. By comparison to VMware, it doesn't scale and performance is so poor its not really useful to the broad market. Hmmm - Sounds like LAN Manager doesn't it? So Microsoft has restarted from scratch and is launching Hyper-V, its new virtualization solution. At this point, it's a promise, and from Beta reports appears to be akin to Windows NT first releases: better than before, and good enough for a broader market, but still not as rich and mature as VMware's ESX server. So what will the clincher be? Microsoft is already showing that it is integrating its virtualization solution with its whole course meal; integrations with its broad menu of products. On January 21st, Microsof...

It is going is take place on December 12th 2007. Computerworld Canada Technology Insights is coming to Toronto! Join Dan McLean, Editor-in-Chief, IT World Canada and his guest John Humphreys, Program Director, Enterprise Platform Group, IDC at this half-day event on Interoperability for Virtualization: Reducing the Complexity , sponsored by Microsoft and Novell. You and your peers will learn about the latest options for taking advantage of Windows and Linux interoperability: Is there a smooth path for reducing complexity in typical heterogeneous data centres? In a world of complex interoperability how can the introduction of virtualization impact your environment? Is Windows and Linux interoperability a reality today and can these operating systems reduce data centre complexity? Link

Word on the street is that Novell will be laying off 50-60% of its Workgroup division this month, likely toward the middle. This is not surprising given that division's lackluster results, but the rumor mill suggests that Workgroup isn't the only business unit that will be affected. I'm no fan of Novell, but I hate layoffs. I'm sincerely sorry to see this happening. The good news, however, is that there are much better companies to work for out there. Like all of them. :-) Just ask Greg Collier. He left Novell a year or two ago to join Mozy/Berkley Data Systems, which was bought by EMC recently. Or Chris Stone, now CEO of Streamserve. Remember: Kondratiev effect, many will be flung on to the downward slide and others will be surfing. Who's side do YOU wanna be? Your call... Link

The penguin gets some VMware lovin'. Novell today announced significant enhancements in the performance of SUSE(R) Linux Enterprise Server when the Linux* operating system is running as a virtual machine guest in a VMware* environment. To deliver this improved performance, Novell modified the SUSE Linux Enterprise kernel to support the VMware Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), a communication mechanism between the guest operating system and hypervisor that simplifies the task of virtualization and makes Linux a more efficient guest operating system when running in VMware environments. The VMI modifications, along with the paravirt-ops interface, have been accepted by the upstream Linux development community and will be included in upcoming releases of the standard Linux kernel, as well as future versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell(R). "As the first enterprise Linux vendor to provide these enhancements for the VMware VMI, Novell continues to demonstrate our commi...

Well at least that's what this article happens to suggest. Novell has been building up a massive hate camp in the Linux community. FSF banned Novell when it went ahead to tie a knot with Microsoft. And there is apparently also lack of communication out there... “I think that there has been a strong amount of external communication by Microsoft and Novell on this topic,” he said. “We certainly expect that there will be those cases where customers will consume those coupons. We’re certainly encouraging one or two customers to consume all of them, let’s get this over with.” Says this report. I got to read the article at Boycott Novell .

Answer: The one who's controlling the Virtual Machine Management console. Anyway, Microsoft and Novell say the virtualization side of their agreement will see SUSE as a guest on the upcoming service pack 1 for Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 R2 and on its Vista server, Long Horn, whenever that gets here. Long Horn, which has virtualization built in, will also be a guest of SUSE running on Xen, the open source virtualization widgetry that Novell supports. Hmmm... I'm still perplexed. Go figure it out yourself.