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Oracle's Unified Storage Simulator makes it possible to install and manage a virtual storage system on any laptop or desktop and experience the power of Open Storage. Get a feel for breakthrough storage features, including:

• A graphical interface that lets you choose which replication profile makes the most sense for the storage that will be managed by your appliance.
• Oracle's Solaris DTrace analytics, a dynamic tracing framework that gives you insight into storage performance data
• Support for various data protocols, including CIFS, NFS, iSCSI – and more!

"The Sun Unified Storage Simulator is great!! It has allowed me to simulate and learn all about the Sun Storage 7000 series box in a variety of virtual scenarios. Again, thank you for this free simulator!"– Robert F Tayne, computer systems analyst

Download this free virtual simulator.

Unified Storage Systems Increase Throughput By Up To 50 Percent, Accelerate Business Performance and Lower Costs

Facts

Extending its innovation leadership in the unified storage industry, Oracle today introduced its next-generation Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line.

This line of powerful storage appliances sets a new benchmark in Unified Storage, with 50 percent more performance, two times more storage capacity, nearly three times more processing power, and storage analytics utility with DTrace Analytics.

The ZFS Storage Appliance product line includes best-in-class management software and an innovative hybrid storage pool architecture that has been integrated with Oracle Applications, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle Database, Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux and Oracle VM, to provide optimal business system performance. The products deliver the leading throughput, flexibility and ease of use demanded by organizations using storage for cloud computing, virtualization, storage consolidation and data protection.

The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line provides three new tightly integrated data protection solutions for Oracle Applications: Oracle RMAN backup optimizes backup with Sun ZFS Storage Appliances, Oracle Database Cloning increases database performance by integrating Sun ZFS Storage Appliances with Oracle Data Guard, and Oracle Fusion Middleware simplifies disaster recovery with ZFS Storage Appliances. These offerings extend Oracle’s list of over 70 qualified software solutions with the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line.

The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line combines an innovative Flash Hybrid Storage Pool architecture for file and block workloads with powerful and intuitive DTrace Analytics for storage and web-based management, enabling organizations to deploy new applications faster and lower administrative costs by up to 50 percent.

The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line delivers leadership data protection, storage efficiency costs and higher performance and scalability. For example, the Sun ZFS Storage 7720 Storage Appliance provides 1.6 times better storage density than other unified storage solutions.

The new Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line ranges from entry-level configurations starting at 12 TB to high-end systems that support more than 1 PB of storage capacity. All systems feature high-density disks and flash acceleration.

Higher Performance, Leading Data Protection and Simplified Management

Complete Unified Storage:

Ideal for consolidating Oracle Applications, the Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line is the only unified storage appliances that can simultaneously run all major block and file protocols (Infiniband, Fibre Channel, iSCSI, NFS and CIFS), includes a complete suite of data services (triple-parity RAID, deduplication and compression), and can scale to 50 percent more server connections then the competition.

Best-in-Class Management: The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line has been integrated with Oracle’s business software. Studies have shown that it reduces management complexity by 30 percent and improves storage administrator productivity by 35 percent when compared to NetApp solutions.

Maximum Storage Efficiency: The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line is the only unified storage solution that combines in-line deduplication and compression built into the unified storage controller to increase storage efficiency for primary storage by up to 90 percent.

Leading Data Protection: The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line is the only unified storage solution with end-to-end data and metadata checksums, self-healing data technology and triple-parity RAID, making ZFS Storage Appliances ideal for Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle’s Siebel CRM, and the Oracle E-Business Suite environments. In addition, the ZFS Storage Appliance product line includes unlimited snapshots and clones, making it ideal for high performance backup, data protection and disaster recovery deployments for Oracle Applications and Oracle Software.

Reduced Costs: The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line lowers CAPEX and OPEX by one-third with Oracle’s unique flash hybrid storage pool technology, industry leading storage density, reduced power utilization and improved storage administrator productivity compared to competitive offerings. Every data protocol and data service, including file and block protocols, deduplication, compression, replication and clustering is included for the single price of the system.

Greater Performance and Scale: The Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line is the ideal platform for storage consolidation and refresh, with a 50 percent increase in throughput and support for multiple concurrent data services. The industry’s fastest storage controllers with industry-leading amounts of DRAM and flash cache enable Sun ZFS Storage Appliances to support a mix of file and block level access for Windows and UNIX data, allowing customers to achieve 3:1 or greater reduction in the number of storage systems while increasing performance and lowering costs.

Cloud-Ready Storage: The ZFS Storage Appliance product line is the latest addition to Oracle’s complete portfolio of cloud-ready software and hardware products, designed to enable customers to start small and grow into next-generation cloud computing infrastructure. In cloud environments, they enable customers to deploy applications faster and at a lower cost.

Supporting Quotes
“Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances have gained strong industry recognition with an innovative architecture that enables customers to cut their enterprise storage costs in half and speed application deployment,” said John Fowler, Oracle executive vice president, Server and Storage Systems. “The next-generation Sun ZFS Storage Appliance product line delivers more than 2x the scale of the previous generation and increase integration with Oracle’s business-critical applications.”

“When the 7000 Series first hit the market, its massively impressive capabilities - including auto-tiering, compression and deduplication, and advanced analytics - might have seemed a little incredible in an easy-to-use and economical unified storage platform,” said Mark Peters, senior analyst, the Enterprise Strategy Group. “But now that it is time-and-market-proven, and has added scale and performance with these latest upgrades, any excuses for not taking a look are getting pretty hard to come by.”

Supporting Resources
Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance Series Family Data Sheet
Oracle’s Sun Unified Storage

Industry’s First Servers Based on 16-Core Processor Deliver 2x Performance Increase Over Previous Generation SPARC T-Series Systems

News Facts

Demonstrating Oracle’s leadership in mission-critical computing and its commitment to the SPARC platform, Oracle today announced the industry’s first 16-core server processor and new SPARC T3 systems.

The systems range from a single socket 16-core blade to a 4-socket, 64-core server with 512 threads in a compact five-rack unit, providing extreme scalability and performance with built-in security and virtualization capabilities. Many SPARC T3 server models are expected to begin shipping in the next 30 days.

The SPARC T3 systems running Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM for SPARC, and tightly integrated with Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, deliver highly optimized system performance, efficiency and scalability for customers running mission-critical applications.

Highlighting the unrivaled performance and benefits of tightly engineered Oracle software and Oracle hardware, the SPARC T3 systems have achieved nine world-record results, including a SPECj Enterprise2010 result, announced today.(1)

The new SPARC T3 systems are integral to Oracle’s strategy to offer the most complete, open and integrated application-to-disk solutions.

Integrated Systems Deliver Extreme Scalability, Built-in Security and Virtualization

The SPARC T3 systems deliver unparalleled performance and scalability to meet explosive data growth and new datacenter requirements from Web and application-tiers to the database tier.
The new systems provide customers with a 2x increase in performance over the previous generation of SPARC T-Series systems.
Showcasing extreme scalability, the SPARC T-Series systems have achieved nine world-record results on multiple industry standard benchmarks and prominent application workloads.

These systems deliver industry’s first advanced chip-level encryption capabilities and built-in virtualization to improve security and performance at lower costs, making them ideal for cloud computing infrastructures.
The SPARC T3 systems feature integrated on-chip cryptographic accelerators that deliver wire speed encryption capabilities, providing customers with critical data and services protection.
Using the newly announced Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.0, the SPARC T3 systems offer advanced virtualization and have multiple virtual machines ranging from one per core to 128 virtual machines on a single server, delivering greater efficiencies and lower costs through consolidation.

Application-to-disk integration provides comprehensive systems management capabilities to improve efficiency and lower costs.
The SPARC T3 servers are tightly engineered with Oracle Database, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Oracle Applications, including Oracle’s Siebel CRM and Oracle WebCenter Suite, to deliver complete, optimized solutions that are more reliable, deliver better performance and are easier to deploy and manage.
Oracle Enterprise Manager: provides integrated application-to-disk management and integrated server lifecycle management through Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center, helping reduce IT management costs.
Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager features an integrated service processor with power management and power capping capabilities to help reduce energy costs.

The SPARC T3 systems are the latest addition to Oracle’s complete portfolio of cloud-ready software and hardware products designed to enable customers to start small and grow into next-generation cloud computing infrastructure.

Supporting Quote“Oracle’s SPARC product line is the cornerstone of our strategy to deliver customers a complete, open and integrated apps-to-disk solution,” said John Fowler, executive vice president, Server and Storage Systems, Oracle. “These new SPARC T3 systems deliver on our commitment to provide customers with a 2x increase in performance every two years and deliver massive scalability for high compute environments like cloud computing.”

“Fujitsu has enjoyed selling the SPARC Enterprise T-Series products since 2007. With the doubling of the throughput in the new T3 products, we are very excited about the huge benefits these products will provide to our customers,” said Noriyuki Toyoki, corporate senior vice president, Fujitsu Limited.

“Running Oracle Siebel CRM on Sun servers has delivered superior application performance and systems utilization,” said Randy Nitowski, Infrastructure Manager, Subaru. “We are excited about the new SPARC T3 servers’ ability to provide tighter software and hardware integration and expanded virtualization capabilities, with even better performance and scalability. The new servers will enable Subaru to further improve customer relationships while lowering costs.”

WHY ORACLE SOLARIS?

Oracle Solaris is the #1 Enterprise OS and the best platform to run your mission-critical applications.

Oracle Solaris provides industry-leading performance and scalability

The proven reliability of Oracle Solaris gives customers built-in fault tolerance through features such as ZFS, DTrace and Predictive Self Healing

Highest levels of enterprise-class security with Common Criteria Certification

Oracle Solaris is supported by more than 11,000 third-party applications and over a thousand systems—more than any other enterprise operating system

See Oracle Solaris News and Announcements

More

Latest Update of the #1 Enterprise Operating System Provides Mission-Critical Security, Reliability and Performance on SPARC and x86 Systems
News Facts

Building on its leadership in the enterprise operating system market, Oracle today announced Oracle Solaris 10 9/10, Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 and Oracle Solaris Studio12.2.

10 of the top 10 Telecommunications Companies, Utilities and Banks use Oracle Solaris.

Oracle Solaris is now developed, tested and supported as an integrated component of Oracle's "applications-to-disk" technology stack, which includes continuous major platform testing, in addition to the Oracle Certification Environment, representing over 50,000 test use cases for every Oracle Solaris patch and platform released.

Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 provides networking and performance enhancements, virtualization capabilities, updates to Oracle Solaris ZFS and advancements to leverage systems based on the latest SPARC and x86 processors.

The Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 update includes new features, fixes and hardware support in an easy-to-install manner, preserving full compatibility with over 11,000 third-party products and customer applications.

Oracle Solaris is designed to take advantage of large memory and multi-core/processor/thread systems and enable industry-leading performance, security and scalability for both existing and new systems.

Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 builds on Oracle Solaris to offer the most extensive, enterprise high availability and disaster recovery solutions.
Enables virtual application clusters via Oracle Solaris Containers in Oracle Solaris Cluster Geographic Edition and integrates with Oracle WebLogic Server, Oracle’s Siebel CRM, MySQL Cluster and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition 11g for consolidation in virtualized environments.
Provides the highest level of security with Oracle Solaris Trusted Extensions for mission-critical applications and services.
Supports InfiniBand on public networks and as storage connectivity and is tightly integrated and thoroughly tested with Oracle’s Sun Server and Storage Systems.

Oracle Solaris Studio 12.2 provides an advanced suite of tools designed to work together for the development of single, multithreaded, and distributed applications. With its integrated development environment (IDE), including a code-aware editor, workflow, and project functionality, Oracle Solaris Studio helps increase developer productivity.

Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 features include:

Networking and database optimizations for Oracle Real Application Clusters (Oracle RAC).

Oracle Solaris Containers now provide enhanced “P2V” (Physical to Virtual) capabilities to allow customers to seamlessly move from existing Oracle Solaris 10 physical systems to virtual containers quickly and easily.

Increased reliability for virtualized Solaris instances when deployed using Oracle VM for SPARC, also known as Logical Domains.

Oracle Solaris ZFS online device management, which allows customers to make changes to filesystem configurations, without taking data offline.

New Oracle Solaris ZFS tools to aid in recovering from problems related to unplanned system downtime.

Operating system, database and other Oracle Solaris patches are now verified and coordinated to provide the highest levels of quality, confidence and administrative streamlining.

Resources
Oracle Solaris
Oracle’s Sun Server & Storage Systems
Oracle Solaris Podcasts
OTN - Oracle Technology Network

The 'Secret Sauce' for Exadata is its ability to offload processing to the storage tier. Offloading means that the storage servers can apply predicate filters at the storage layer, instead of shipping every possible block back to the database server(s).

Read more

Free training from Avnet Technology Solutions, Dublin: Sun Ray Thin Client Desktop Open Day, July 14th & 15th

Join us in July for a FREE "hands-on, how-to" session with this technology. This half-day session will introduce you to the features of the Sun Ray platform and the possibilities that desktop virtualisation can offer your organisation.

Oracle's Sun Ray Thin Clients are simple, low-cost devices that are ideal for displaying server-hosted virtual desktops. With no moving parts and no local operating system to manage, Sun Ray Clients provide a cost-effective, highly functional thin client alternative to desktop and laptop computers and reduce many of the problems associated with traditional desktop deployments.

Held at our state-of-the-art training centre, this hands-on session will allow you to embrace the technology by 'practicing' rather than just listening.

Full details here: http://www.ts.avnet.com/ie/events/events_more/4097/sun_ray_thin_client_desktop_open_day_july_14th_15th.html

More info on Sun Ray technology: http://www.oracle.com/us/technologies/virtualization/061984.html

Join the live, interactive TechCast about Oracle Solaris Virtualization later today. Guest Joost Pronk Van Hoogeveen, CTO at Oracle, will be discussing Solaris Virtualization offerings, benefits and much more!

TechCast Live - Oracle Solaris Virtualization: 25th May @ 5pm GMT (10am PDT):
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/techcastlive/index.html

(If you miss this event, the webcast will be available on demand later this week)

Very interesting video about how Oracle Solaris 10 helps manage file systems effectively with ZFS. It's presented by Brian Leonard at Oracle. After a short introduction to ZFS, Brian shows you how to use snapshots and clones.

OpenGrok 0.9 has just been released!

I fyou're wondering about OpenGrok... Well, it's a fast and easy-to-use source code search and cross reference engine. It helps you search, cross-reference and navigate your source tree. It can understand various program file formats and version control histories like Mercurial, Git, SCCS, RCS, CVS, Subversion, Teamware, ClearCase, Perforce, Monotone and Bazaar.

In other words it lets you grok (profoundly understand) the open source, hence the name OpenGrok. It is written in Java.




















To find out more about OpenGrok, go to:
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+opengrok/

Source and binary distributions for v0.9 can be found here:
http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Project+opengrok/files

We're all familiar with the traditional interactive installation methods, but there are other installation techniques for OpenSolaris, such as Caiman and AI (Automated Installer).

Volker A. Brandt, an IT consultant specialising in Solaris system and infrastructure development based in Germany, goes through the pros and cons of both techniques, their key benefits and differences in his presentation on oracle.com.

In a nutshell, Caiman is an interactive, simple-to-use, streamlined graphical installer for OpenSolaris on x86 systems. The installer is actually a Gnome/GTK application running from a live CD-ROM. One of the good things about Caiman is that it integrates a live CD experience, i.e you can run the desktop off the CD and get the rest from an IPS repository. It's a nice "try before you install" capability.

Automated Installer, or AI, essentially performs “hands-free” network installations of OpenSolaris. AI lets you install OpenSolaris onto x86 systems or SPARC systems in a network. The installations can differ in architecture, packages installed, disk capacity and other parameters. The minimal configuration necessary to use the automated installer is to have one system as the install server and one client on which to install.

If you're interested to learn more about Caiman and AI for OpenSolaris, watch Volker A. Brandt's excellent presentation on oracle.com:

http://blogs.sun.com/video/entry/alligator_meets_terminator_caiman_and

There's still time to register for next week's Oracle + Intel Road Show in Dublin. The event has been a big success across Europe so far - the recent London date was sold out with 150 attendees.

The Dublin event though, as it's hosted at Intel, will be ending with a tour of their chip manufacturing plant, unless you prefer to chill out with a drink and do some networking instead.

One last thing if you're in planning to attend, don't forget you can still submit discussion topics to the existing agenda.

Here are the details of the show again:

From Virtualisation To Cloud Computing: Beyond The Buzzwords

Time: 12noon - 6pm
Date: Thursday 13th May, 2010
Venue: Intel Ireland, Collinstown Industrial Park, Leixlip, Co. Kildare

Description:

Virtualisation and Cloud Computing are the hottest topics in IT for a good reason: they can deliver increased business potential and large cost savings. Although the promise of success is huge, so is the chance of failure. The main reason: with so many variables it is very hard to find the optimal model for your specific business situation.

Oracle and Intel invite you to see how you can eliminate the risk and guesswork and remove the challenges of getting it all to work properly for your organisation.

12.00 − 13.00 Arrival & Lunch

13.00 − 13.15 Welcome
Sun/Oracle Strategy and Vision

13.15 − 13.45 Oracle Virtualization
Virtualization as the enabler for Cloud Computing. How your virtualization choices determine your future Cloud Strategy.

13.45 − 14.15 Cloud Computing Strategy
Virtualization impact on PaaS (Platform as a Service).

14.15 − 15.15 Intel Cloud Computing vision
Xeon Design advantages for virtualization. Enabling next generation performance, scaling, security for Virtualization projects

15.15 − 15.45 Break

15.45 − 16.05 Integrated Management environment
Reduce cost & complexity by managing from one unified interface

16.05 − 16.25 Operating System Virtualization
Take maximum advantage of Oracle Solaris built-in virtualization technologies.

16.25 − 17.00 Best-Of-Breed Virtualization Components
x86 Servers, Intel Xeon Architecture, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Open Storage

17.00 − 18.00 Optional: Intel Fab Tour
Take the tour and see the chip manufacturng plant
OR
17.00 − 18.00 Drinks & Networking

(This event is free)

TO REGISTER, VISIT: http://www.beyond-the-buzzwords.com/dublin.html

For more European dates, check out http://www.beyond-the-buzzwords.com

See you there perhaps?

Just stumbled across Peter Karich's blog entry about motion effects in JavaFX. The result is very impressive and you can have a look at the code to replicate and adapt it to your needs:

"Shadow Motion" effect in JavaFX by Peter Karich:
http://bit.ly/bYm5hi



But Peter's description was actually a reply to Lam Nguyen's own blog entry about creating motion effects with simply 5 lines of JQuery. Again, the code is explained and available for you to play with.

"Shadow Motion" effect in JQuery by Lam Nguyen:
http://bit.ly/bv2lHe

Have a look - my guess is that both blog entries will get your creative juices flowing! :-)

Did you know you could perform some basic monitoring of OpenSolaris from your iPod Touch? Pretty cool...



Check out Karim Berrah's blog entry for the full details:
http://blogs.sun.com/karim/entry/monitoring_opensolaris_from_an_itouch

Last month, Oracle unveiled the roadmap for GlassFish to the community. From community changes to upcoming releases such as support for clustering and more in GlassFish 3.1 in 2010, find out more with the recently-released slidecast with synchronized audio, available in English, French and Spanish.

English:
http://www.slideshare.net/pelegri/community-update-25-mar2010-english

French:
http://www.slideshare.net/alexismp/feuille-de-route-roadmap-glassfish

Spanish:
http://www.slideshare.net/pelegri/glassfish-community-update-25-mar2010

For an overview of the GlassFish Roadmap, go to:
https://glassfish.dev.java.net/roadmap

The Oracle Open Learning Center is offering free Solaris 10 training ranging from beginner to intermediate. The lessons are well-presented and interactive (Flash animations), and there's a short quizz at the end of each lesson to check out your newly-acquired skills.

Overall, it's a good complement to any training you might attend in parallel and it's also a good refresher course if you're considering Sun certification.

Topics for the intermediate training include:

• Booting SPARC and x86 Based Systems
• Controlling System Processes
• Create and Manage Users
• Installing Solaris 10
• Manage Local Devices
• Manage UFS File Systems
• Managing Software Packages Using Package Commands
• Managing Solaris Patches Using Patch Commands
• Managing User Access
• Performing File System Backups
• Performing Mounts and Unmounts
• Printer Services
• Safely Shutting Down a Solaris System
• System Restores
• Working with UFS and ZFS Snapshots

Visit the Solaris Online Learning Center: https://learning.sun.com/olc/smartstart

When you're trying to add a second emulator in Netbeans, you usually get an error saying “Midlet suite already running”. In his blog, Kyle Goslin shows you how you can bypass this problem and add a second mobile phone emulator to the NetBeans IDE.

Check out Kyle Goslin's blog to find out more : http://bit.ly/b9BO3g

If you'd like to find out how you can build a Twitter client using Java and the NetBeans IDE, check out the excellent tutorial series from Alfonso Romero at Packt Publishing. It's a comprehensive, step-by-step, three-part tutorial (with loads of screenshots to guide you through it) that will teach you to create a custom Twitter client, from which you will be able to log into Twitter and see the last tweet posted by you.

A must-have for all Twitter technology afficionados!

Part 1: http://bit.ly/5dxiUo
Part 2: http://bit.ly/bGiAe9
Part 3: http://bit.ly/d7lV3b

The Oracle + Intel virtualisation show is coming to Dublin on 13th May...

To view the agenda and to register, go to: http://www.beyond-the-buzzwords.com/dublin.html

If there are any vitualisation/cloud computing topics you'd like to see covered on the day, simply email us at askdrroot@avnet.com or use the comment box below.

We'll do the rest and liaise with the team at Oracle UK.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Quick post to let you know we're running two new training courses in Dublin, Ireland:

ES-260: Sun StorEdge Enterprise Backup 7.x Administration
This course replaces "ES-210: Storage Management with Backup". If you're a sysadmin in charge of Sun StorEdge EBS, you will find the content of this course useful.

Topics covered over this 4-day course:

• Sun StorEdge EBS Overview
  
• Installing Sun StorEdge EBS
• Understanding Sun StorEdge EBS Resources and Administrative Interfaces
• Performing Backups
• Customising Backups
• Configuring and Managing Standalone Devices
• Configuring and Managing Autochangers
• Managing Sun StorEdge EBS Databases, Save Sets, and Volumes
• Administering the Sun StorEdge EBS Server
• Recovering Client Data
• Recovering a Sun StorEdge EBS Server

Find out more at www.ts.avnet.com/ie/training_centre/enterprise/es260.html

ES-345: Sun Cluster 3.2 Administration
This course is actually an update to "ES-338: Sun Cluster 3.1 Administration". You will gain the skills needed to install and administer Sun Cluster 3.2 hardware and software systems. You will be introduced to Sun Cluster hardware and software product features, hardware configuration and software installation along with cluster configuration, data service configuration and system operation.

Topics covered over this 5-day course:

• Introducing Sun Cluster Hardware and Software
• Exploring Node Console Connectivity and the Cluster Console Software
• Preparing for Installation and Understanding Quorum Devices
• Installing and Configuring the Sun Cluster Software Framework
• Performing Basic Cluster Administration
• Using VERITAS Volume Manager for Volume Management
• Managing Volumes With Solaris Volume Manager (Solstice DiskSuite Software)
• Using ZFS with Sun Cluster software
• Managing the Public Network With IPMP
• Introducing Data Services, Resource Groups, and HA-NFS
• Configuring Scalable Services and Advanced Resource Group Relationships
• Performing Supplemental Exercises for Sun Cluster 3.2 Software

Find out more at www.ts.avnet.com/ie/training_centre/enterprise/es345.html

For more information on Avnet Education Services, go to www.ts.avnet.com/ie

If you're new to ZFS and if you're looking for a step-by-step guide to better understand how snapshots can be integrated into system administration procedures, there's one available on the Oracle website.

It describes the steps necessary to set up a ZFS filesystem and the use of snapshots including how to create them, use them for backup and restore purposes, and how to migrate them between systems.

You can download it from http://bit.ly/5hui37

Avnet will be running another series of ZFS how-to sessions in the coming months. Watch this space.

NetBeans Platform developers will soon be able to integrate JavaFX components into their applications. There is currently no official way of accessing JavaFX from Swing, but the NetBeans team is busy working to provide open-sourced API equivalents of JavaFX components.

For the full article and for a sneak preview of the Open API JavaFX library, go to DZone:
http://bit.ly/9Jg40x

Oracle + Intel are currently running a virtualisation roadshow across Europe. They're vitisting 30 European cities and they'll be in Dublin on 13th May.

This half-day seminar will tell you everything you need to know about the benefits of virtualisation. You will learn to recognise the key differences between leading virtualisation solutions and discover how today's decisions on virtualisation may affect long term cloud computing strategies.

Oracle + Intel will be showing and explaining practical, real-life examples and will demonstrate the difference and impact virtualisation can make. From your desktop, all the way to your server, network and storage environment...

You can expect to learn more about:

• Oracle VM
• Management Tools
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
• ZFS Open Storage Virtualisation
• Deployment & Security

This event is free.

To see if it's coming to a city near you, check out:
http://www.beyond-the-buzzwords.com

And to find out more about the Dublin event (and to secure your seat), go to:
http://www.beyond-the-buzzwords.com/dublin.html

Looking forward to seeing some of you there!

Victor Feng has posted an article on BigAdmin, which should help you if you need to deal with package and patch-level issues when moving a local zone from one host to another on the Oracle Solaris 10 OS.

Find out more: http://bit.ly/9mg6qY


Follow Ask Dr Root on Twitter and Facebook!

Thanks, Shanker. I'm glad you found some of our previous tips helpful! :-)

About resetting the root password for a ZFS filesystem...

There's actually a comprehensive step-by-step guide on BigAdmin that should help you out. I haven't had the chance to test it myself yet. But the second example should do the trick in your situation, since you have another Solaris 10 installed on a second disk with a ZFS root file system. Drop me a line if you have any problems with this.

Step-by-step guide to resetting the root password for a ZFS filesystem:
http://bit.ly/8mgG32


Follow Ask Dr Root on Twitter and Facebook!

Comic books are ever so popular and many of them are being digitized for access via desktop computers and mobile devices. I've a good a number of them on my iPod Touch - my favorite being "Death Dealer - Shadows of Mirahan". Issue 1 is free on iTunes. Inspired by Fank Frazetta's Death Dealer, this graphic novel is simply beautiful and a great tribute to the iconic artist whose work has inspired generations of fantasy and sci-fi artists. I'm a fan.

Back to Java through...

Jeff Friesen, a regular on java.net, has written an article on how to create a simple comic book reader in Java. In a digitized comic book, image files are most commonly packaged into CBR (RAR archive format) and CBZ (ZIP archive format) files.

Jeff's source code is divided into three classes: CBReader, CBZ and FSWindow. CBReader defines the application, CBZ processes CBZ files, and FSWindow enables a fullscreen window that can display and scroll images.

The source code for Jeff's comic book reader can be downloaded and easily amended to include additional features.

To view Jeff's article and download the source code for his comic book reader, go to:
http://bit.ly/daVhlb


Follow Ask Dr Root on Twitter and Facebook!

The latest Sun Certification FAQ was posted earlier this week on the Oracle Certification blog site at http://bit.ly/caqRc1


Follow Ask Dr Root on Twitter and Facebook!

If you're looking for ref cards / cheat sheets about Java EE, NetBeans, GlassFish or even Virtualization and Cloud Computing, check out the DZone website. They've published over 85 of them and they include tips and source code examples. The ref cards can be downloaded or viewed online. Very handy!

DZone Refcardz:
http://refcardz.dzone.com/home?oid=ban00020-0

Follow Ask Dr Root on Twitter and Facebook!

Avnet Open Day: Solaris 8 Containers "Hands-On How-To"
Free Session: Tuesday 2nd March (9.30am - 1pm)

Solaris 8 Containers provide the framework on the Solaris 10 operating system to run separate and protected non-native operating environments. Join us for a free half-day technical session on 2nd March. We will show you how to migrate SPARC systems running the Solaris 8 operating environments through the virtualisation of Solaris 8 Containers.

The session will be held at our training centre and we will introduce you to Solaris 8 Containers and the possibilities that they bring to the management of your datacentre.

This half-day hands-on session is aimed at technology professionals and systems administrators who may be new to Solaris 8 Containers or those who wish to find out more about the implementation of Solaris 8 Containers. Each attendee will have the use of a dedicated workstation to follow technical exercises under the guidance of our instructor.

THIS EVENT IS COMPLETELY FREE OF CHARGE

On the Agenda:

• Introduction to Solaris 8 Containers
• Benefits of Migration
• Solaris 9 Containers
• Solaris 8 Containers and the ZFS file system
• Hands-on:
  - Archive creation
  - Zone Creation
  - Installation of Solaris 8 Containers
  - File systems and Solaris 8 Containers

To secure your seat, register now at: www.ts.avnet.com/ie/events/openday

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

Save the date! Thursday 18th February @ 10am (PST) / 6pm (GMT)

Getting Started with Groovy, Grails, and MySQL
(live webcast with Scott Davis, two-time JavaOne RockStar award winner)

http://ow.ly/15Gyk

Groovy is an agile dynamic language that dramatically speeds up Java development. Grails is a Java- and Groovy-based web framework that brings modern practices like scaffolding and convention over configuration to the Java platform.

If you want to "skin" your exiting MySQL database with a web front-end, Grails is the perfect solution. Or, you can let GORM (Grails Object/Relational Mapping API) manage the database for you in your greenfield development. You can define one-to-one, one-to-many, and many-to-many relationships in your Grails domain classes. Grails 1.2 offers new support for named queries, JPA annotations, and finer-grained control of both your data source and cache.

There will be live coding demos of the following:

• Creating a new Grails application
• Mapping a Grails application to an existing database schema
• Creating relationships between domain classes
• Working with GORM methods

To register for this event, go to http://ow.ly/15Gyk

Thierry Manfe at Sun explains in his blog how you can squeeze out a 10%-20% performance gain from your C, C++ and Fortran code by using the Sun Studio compilers (works best on Solaris and SPARC). The commands and options are clearly explained. If you're compiling for performance, check out: http://tinyurl.com/ybezdsk

Oracle has published an FAQ for the Sun developer community on their website - check out:
http://www.oracle.com/technology/community/sun-oracle-community-continuity.html

Equally interesting is the webcast about the Oracle + Sun Java developer tool available at:
http://tinyurl.com/yfppulc

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, along with other executives from Oracle and Sun, will be participating in a live webcast tomorrow at 9am (PST) or 5pm (GMT). It will be interesting to find out more about the strategy for the two companies post close and they may also talk about product roadmaps for SPARC technology, Solaris and the Java platform. Definitely worth watching, if you get the chance.

For all the details, go to: http://tinyurl.com/yessgmh

First post of the year... Happy New Year, everyone, and best wishes for all of 2010!

If you're in Dublin, Ireland, we're organising a number of half-day ZFS "hands-on how-to" technical sessions this month. If you're a sysadmin who's new to ZFS or if you wish to find out more about the features and capabilities of ZFS, these sessions are for you. The agenda also includes "ZFS vs Other Filesystems and Volume Managers" to help you better understand your options.

As it's all about learning ZFS by actually putting it into practice, each attendee will have use of a dedicated Sun Solaris x86 workstation to follow the technical exercises we've prepared. We'll be covering Zpools, Filesystems, Snapshots and Clones.

The sessions will be held at our 'state-of-the-art' training centre, so you need to register in order to attend.

Available sessions:

• Thursday 28th January (9.30am - 1pm)
• Thursday 28th January (2pm - 5.30pm)
• Friday 29th January (9.30am - 1pm)

To find out more about these technical sessions and to register, go to:
www.ts.avnet.com/ie/events/zfs