Posts tagged Support
Firefox Support Ending for Windows 2000, Windows XP Pre-SP2
Jan 28th
If you’re one of the few Firefox users still on Windows 2000 or still using Windows XP without Service Pack 2 or later, Firefox is going to have to say goodbye. Yesterday, Mozilla’s Asa Dotzler announced that Firefox team is moving to a newer version of the Visual Studio toolchain. Once Mozilla moves to Visual Studio 2010, they won’t be able to build for Windows 2000, XP RTM or SP1.
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Dotzler says that the team has held off "for a number of years" to preserve support for Windows 2000, Windows XP Release to Manufacturing (RTM), and Windows XP SP1. Unfortunately, that comes at a price. "Our developers have not been able to take advantage of new compiler features and have had to struggle to keep valuable optimizations from breaking – including having had to back out and ultimately delay some important new features like SPDY."
Finally, Mozilla is saying a fond farewell to the 0.4% of Windows users that are still on those really old releases. But there’s still time. Says Dotzler, "Next Tuesday or Wednesday, after Firefox 12 moves to Aurora, the Mozilla Release Engineering team will begin upgrading our Windows build systems to Visual Studio 2010.
It is, of course, worth noting that Mozilla has supported Windows 2000 and XP with new browser versions longer than Microsoft itself. Internet Explorer 8 requires XP with SP2 or higher, and does not support Windows 2000 at all. Internet Explorer 9 requires Windows Vista or later. Mozilla has supported a tiny fraction of its user base with legacy systems far, far longer than most projects or companies would have done.
If you’re on one of the old XP releases, you can still upgrade with Microsoft’s free service packs. For larger organizations, there’s the Extended Support Release, which will provide an extra six months or so before the older versions become unsupported.
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Microsoft SC 2012 to Support Multi-Hypervisor Private Cloud for a Flat Fee
Jan 17th
In a move to stay competitive in a cloud landscape that looked to be blowing it away, Microsoft this morning is making important strategic shifts that could advance its position in a two-front war against both VMware and Amazon. Today the company is making available a release candidate for its System Center 2012 administrative suite, which will utilize a new fabric controller (FC) for private cloud architectures.
This new FC will be hypervisor-agnostic. Up until today, Microsoft’s private cloud product was called “Hyper-V Cloud,” and was centered around the Hyper-V hypervisor. Today, as the company’s corporate vice president tells ReadWriteWeb, the new SC 2012 Datacenter edition will feature a completely renovated, simplified licensing model, now supporting unlimited virtual machines for the same, flat fee.
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Trying to smash VMware flat
“The biggest innovation we did in System Center 2012 is, we dramatically simplified the licensing and pricing,” Microsoft CVP Brad Anderson tells RWW. The existing edition had eight different SKUs, enough to compel customers to literally attend seminars about which versions to purchase. With the 2012 edition, there will be the Standard and Datacenter SKUs, the only difference between them being the number of OS instances their licenses will allow. Standard will be limited to 4; Datacenter will be unlimited.
“One thing that we see every year, when we look at the reports, is the VM density-per-server continues to get higher and higher. It’s very common right now for us to see a single server hosting up to 20 VMs,” says Anderson. “As customers increase their use of virtualization, with SC 2012, their costs do not increase. If they’re using VMware, their costs go up linearly.”
Last August, VMware adjusted its virtual machine licensing model to one based on the amount of virtual machine memory, or vRAM, each instance consumed. These increments are multiplied by the number of VMs consuming the vRAM, so the result is a per-VM licensing fee.
Microsoft’s case is essentially this: As your VMware private cloud scales up, so do your fees. As Microsoft’s alternative scales up, its fees stay flat. Though consultants today still recommend a VM-to-processor ratio of about 4:1, arguably that number does tend to go much higher anyway. Microsoft’s estimate of the licensing costs an enterprise would incur for VMware vSphere 5 and related tools, for 42 2-way 6-core servers running Windows Server and a respectable 6:1 VM consolidation ratio over a three-year period, is $3,242,000. Microsoft says its alternative package, which incorporates the same functionality over the same three-year period, would be $424,704.
“With System Center Standard, it’s one price and you have the ability to manage 4 OS instances,” reiterates Anderson. “With System Center Datacenter, it’s one price independent of the number of VMs you put on that server.”
A tighter-knit fabric
It was Windows Azure, the company’s PaaS platform, whose architecture pioneered the concept of the fabric controller – a kind of overseer for cloud resources across servers, and in some respects the opposite of the hypervisor. Now, it’s a common part of private cloud architecture, with Nova serving as the compute FC, and Swift and Glance serving as the storage FCs, for OpenStack. That open source architecture has made significant headway, presenting more of a threat than Microsoft to VMware’s dominance during 2011.
Now, Microsoft’s System Center 2012 will integrate a fabric controller that enables administrators to pool compute, storage, and network switching capacities, and delegate segments of those pools to organizational units in Active Directory. Here is where Microsoft made a difficult decision, knowing that the size of the available market for potential hybrid cloud deployments where only Hyper-V is the hypervisor, is probably next to nil.
“As a design point, we specifically called out that customers will be using multiple hypervisors,” Anderson tells RWW, “from Microsoft, from VMware, from Xen, and with public cloud resources. So we’ve architected the product to be aware of that, but also to give visibility to IT to bring the capacity that is running on multiple virtualization infrastructures, together into one cloud.”
As we saw last year with OpenNebula, about the only way a VMware competitor is going to gain ground is by supporting multiple hypervisors.
Hosting persistently
As we reported last week, we expect Microsoft to soon make generally available a feature that entered public beta in early 2011, called VM roles. This feature would essentially enable Windows Azure to host an application, such as SharePoint or Lync, perpetually even as compute resources are managed and relocated.
One big indicator that this release may be imminent, as Brad Anderson tells us, is System Center 2012′s direct support for hosting applications as services through private or hybrid clouds. Although Azure has historically been perceived as a PaaS service for companies deploying .NET applications in the cloud, Anderson says SC 2012 may be utilized for both PaaS and IaaS hybrid deployments involving Azure. It’s on the IaaS layer that enterprises may host applications as services.
“You can actually create a model that says, ‘Here’s this three-tier application with a Web tier, a middle tier, a data tier, there’s this many servers, and this much capacity for each one of those tiers.’ That model will actually be consistent and applicable into that VM role kind of model in Azure as we go forward,” he states. “So the same model that you build in System Center for your private cloud will be able to run those VM roles in Azure as we move forward.”
As Anderson explained, there are certain “commonalities” in Microsoft’s models of the private and public cloud – components which the company will ensure can be reused in the same way when transitioning between private, hybrid, and public cloud architectures: 1) identities in Active Directory; 2) VM consistency (for easier replication); 3) management tools compatibility; and 4) development tools support.
The Release Candidate of SC 2012 is expected to be deployed among 100,000 servers. Once validation is complete, final release is expected to be within the first half of 2012. “What I’ve been telling people,” remarks Anderson, “is, that doesn’t mean June 32nd.”
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SOPA Saga Continues: Tech Giants Consider Internet Blackout and Support OPEN Act
Jan 6th
When Congress reconvenes later this month, they will consider passing the highly controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). Currently, the Senate is scheduled to debate the matter on January 24th and vote shortly thereafter. Harry Reid, the Senate Majority Leader from Nevada, recently said: “This is a bipartisan piece of legislation which is extremely important. [...]
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IBM Promises to Keep Green Hat’s Platform Support Open, Broad-based
Jan 5th
For several years, a company called Green Hat (not associated with Red Hat) has been in the business of creating sophisticated software testing equipment for developers, particularly for service-oriented applications that use messaging queues. The problem with distributed application testing is that it’s getting more and more complicated, especially as a multitude of new and independently evolving frameworks introduce dependencies that can’t always be accurately simulated in a test environment.
So yesterday’s acquisition of Green Hat by IBM brought up an interesting question: Will a company whose test environments were developed to support Oracle, Java Message Service, SAP, Software AG, and TIBCO as well as WebSphere MQ continue to do so after being acquired by the maker of WebSphere MQ? Today, we have the answer.
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In a statement to ReadWriteWeb, the director of product management and strategy for IBM’s Rational division – whose umbrella will now cover Green Hat’s tools as well – said IBM plans to keep Green Hat’s support broadly-based.
“We have every intention of maintaining and extending the existing Green Hat support for multiple applications, protocols, formats, and the like,” Charles Chu tells RWW. “A primary value of Green Hat is its ability to help manage the challenge of application testing in a complex world. In this sense, expanding the support for ever [greater] levels of complexity is part of our core mission.”
The way organizations often build distributed applications is by delegating responsibility for the individual components to separate teams. While ideally it would be nice for all of those teams to cooperate on scheduling, in practice components end up with at varying stages of completion for any one point in time. For this reason, when one development team needs to test the viability of a component intended to communicate with other components that may not even exist yet, the team utilizes a testing environment that can create stubs – substitute components that can interact with the ones being tested in a realistic manner.
The crown jewel of Green Hat’s test automation suite has been GH Tester. Historically, it’s been used to rapidly generate stubs that can respond to Web services using messaging protocols like SOAP or JMS. Because Web services must behave in a more protocol-agnostic fashion, testing suites like GH Tester must be more open to multiple platforms – which is why the support question for Green Hat and platforms like .NET is so important.
More recently, though, Green Hat has been working toward weaning GH Tester from the use of stubs, and toward a more sophisticated system of virtualized applications it calls GH Virtual Integration Environment (VIE). Rather than a stub, VIE generates a component that truly is an application, responding more logically and believably to a component’s request using logic that’s adaptable to a variety of test scenarios.
As Green Hat explains, “GH VIE is part of the GH Tester suite, not another ‘product,’ so when GH Tester starts a test, it can automatically start the necessary virtualized applications to go with it, ensuring that unresolved system dependencies can be satisfied. The user is in control of which virtualized applications are used, allowing a wide variety of different situations to be modeled, depending on the testing scenario.”
IBM is now calling the VIE scenario “testing in the cloud.” At the moment, Green Hat may not technically be “as-a-service,” though it’s conceivable that as its portfolio is integrated into IBM Rational, VIE functionality could be offered at some point in the future through a cloud portal.
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Interview with Scott Cowley on SEO, Company Support and More – Search Engine Journal
Jan 5th
 Search Engine Journal |
Interview with Scott Cowley on SEO, Company Support and More
Search Engine Journal Scott Cowley is the in-house, SEO ninja at ZAGG. He is very smart, very funny and a real genuine person. I asked on Twitter what Internet marketing wishes people had for 2012 and his response was: “My wish for 2012 is for SEO world peace. … |
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Interview with Scott Cowley on SEO, Company Support and More
Jan 5th
Scott Cowley is the in-house, SEO ninja at ZAGG. He is very smart, very funny and a real genuine person. I asked on Twitter what Internet marketing wishes people had for 2012 and his response was: “My wish for 2012 is for SEO world peace. Stop publicly bashing other SEOs. Stop optimizing sites purely to [...]
Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal
View full post on Search Engine Journal
Follow The Money To Figure Out Why Lawmakers Support SOPA
Jan 2nd
It’s rare to find bipartisan support for anything in Washington these days, which is why, at first glance, the Congressional support for the Stop Online Piracy Act seems so perplexing.
If Congress was going to choose to agree on something, why would it choose a bill that everyone from big Internet companies like Google and Facebook to free speech advocates to the pharmaceutical industry say is a bad idea? Or, as New York Times media columnist David Carr notes in today’s editions, “You can see why big Internet guys are upset by SOPA. Maybe you and I should be, too.”
Carr points to a potential, all-too-obvious reason why some lawmakers may be supporting a bill that, outside of the Beltway, seems to primarily appeal to traditional media companies. Those companies, according to campaign finance tracking Web site MapLight, gave four times as much to the bill’s sponsors as corporate contributors based in Silicon Valley.
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SOPA would block access to sites accused of violating U.S. copyright laws. The measure has been called Draconian by opponents who say it would fundamentally change the free-flow of information across the Internet. Proponents, ranging from the NBA to Universal, say the measure is needed to block sites like The Pirate Bay, which flagrantly flaunt copyright laws and make content available for free without paying copyright owners.
If you need more reason to feel cyncial about politics on a post-holiday, Monday morning, check out last week’s report from TorrentFreak that found Congressional staffers were illegally downloading everything from movies to adult self-help books as many of their bosses tried to push SOPA through.
Debate on the bill will resume on Jan. 17 and the Senate could take up the measure as soon as Jan. 24. The bill currently has 31 bipartisan co-sponsors and, according to a press release issued last month, growing support. See an earlier RWW post for everything you need to know about SOPA, including links to lists of companies and lawmakers that support and oppose the bill.
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Perth Company Oracle Digital Announces New Customer Support Interface – PR-CANADA.net (press release)
Jan 1st
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Perth Company Oracle Digital Announces New Customer Support Interface
PR-CANADA.net (press release) SEO Perth – After several successful years of powerful results for their client base, Oracle Digital announced today that they have invested months of research into delivering a powerful customer support desk. Customer support has been somewhat of a … Perth Technology Company Oracle Digital Announces Eastern States Expansion |
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Boxee To Drop Support for Windows, Macs, and Linux
Dec 26th
The Boxee folks have posted an update today about the 1.5 beta release. After the details of the release’s UI enhancements, the Boxee team has also let slip that the 1.5 release will be the last one for Windows, Mac OS X or Linux.
According to the post, the team has been able to bring “Boxee for Computers to about 85% of the Boxee Box in terms of features and functionality.”
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Unfortunately, the DRM and certification requirements mean that a lot of premium apps aren’t available via the downloadable version of Boxee. This includes Netflix, Pandora, VUDU and a number of others.
The Revolution Will Not Be Shown on Your PC
The post thanks computer users of Boxee, but says that the future of TV “will be driven by devices such as the Boxee Box, Connected TVs/Blu-Rays and 2nd screen devices such as tablets and phones.” The number of people using computers connected to TVs “is likely to decline as users find better alternatives.”
For what it’s worth, I tend to agree with the assessment – but that doesn’t mean that users who still want to use Boxee for Computers are going to be eager to spring for a Boxee Box or another connected device.
Users will have the 1.5 release for as long as it’s usable, and most of the Boxee code is open source (based on the project).
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GoDaddy’s SOPA Support Sparks Calls for Boycotts and Domain Transfers
Dec 22nd
The list of companies that support the controversial piece of U.S. legislation called the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) is fairly predictable. It includes huge media conglomerates, music industry groups, pharmaceutical companies and the like. One name that stands out, however, is that of domain name registrar GoDaddy. Whereas many of the big Web technology companies have come out in opposition to SOPA, GoDaddy enthusiastically supports the proposed law.
Not unsurprisingly, this news does not sit well with many of the Internet’s most vocal SOPA opponents, especially on Reddit. A thread that popped up on the site today decries GoDaddy’s support for SOPA and encourages users to transfer their domains to another provider. The conversation, which has more than a few choice words for GoDaddy, has grown quite long.
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The thread was kicked off by a user called selfprodigy, a small business owner who promises to transfer all 51 of his company’s domains to another registrar, something that is seldom a simple, speedy process. Reddit users are proposing that December 29 be named “Move Your Domain Away From GoDaddy Day” in response to the company’s support of SOPA.
So Why Does GoDaddy Support SOPA Anyway?
“As much as some would like to paint a bleak picture, this debate is not about Hollywood vs. Silicon Valley,” reads a statement GoDaddy filed with the U.S. House of Representatives. ”This debate is about preserving, protecting, and creating American jobs, and protecting American consumers from the dangers that they face on-line.”
GoDaddy goes on to condemn the ease with which people can conduct illegal activity like selling fake drugs and sharing copyrighted material on the Internet today and dismisses concerns about the potential drawbacks of SOPA and the Protect IP Act. Critics claim that this legislation hands too much power over to corporations and authorities to police the Internet and could lead to wholesale censorship online. GoDaddy disagrees.
“This bill cannot reasonably be equated with censorship. This bill promotes action pursuant to preexisting criminal and civil laws,” the company said. ”Not only is there no First Amendment concern, but the notion that we should turn a blind eye to criminal conduct because other countries may take oppressive steps in response is an affront to the very fabric of this nation.”
Whatever the logic of GoDaddy’s position may be, SOPA critics are not buying it. The calls to boycott the company have begun to spread beyond Reddit and competing domain registrars are using the opportunity to promote their own services. Namecheap, a provider frequently cited in the Reddit thread (Namecheap’s social media manager is active in the discussion), has offered up discount codes like BYEBYEGD for users who wish to move away from GoDaddy.
Still, we’re talking about a company that has over 50 million domains registered and it’s not yet clear how widespread opposition to SOPA is beyond the tech community. Whether or not these efforts will have a sizable impact on GoDaddy’s business remains to be seen.
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