The new Centrify Suite 2008 is an integrated family of Active Directory-based auditing, access control and identity management solutions for cross-platform environments. The applications also help address regulatory compliance, says its maker Centrify, by adhering to requirements from SOX, PCI, HIPAA, GLBA and FISMA. The Standard Edition contains two applications: DirectControl, which secures non-Microsoft platforms using the same authentication and Group Policy services found in a Windows environment, and DirectAuthorize, which provides centralized role-based entitlement management for fine-grained user access and privilege rights on UNIX and Linux systems. The Enterprise Edition adds DirectAudit, which offers auditing, logging and real-time monitoring of user activity on non-Microsoft systems. The Application Edition, meanwhile, is for organizations using Web/Java applications, databases or enterprise applications, such as SAP or PeopleSoft.
It appears that our constant pestering for Linux support on various devices is paying off. The latest manufacturer to announce Linux support is Primera Technology, maker of a range of disc publishers, which announced support for its Bravo II, BravoPro, Bravo XR and Bravo XRP CD/DVD/BD devices. Primera says that its full-featured Linux printer drivers can be integrated with open-source or commercially available disc-burning engines easily. The drivers can be downloaded from the firm's Web site.
StarOffice, the enterprise-oriented sibling of OpenOffice.org, has been upgraded to Version 9. This open-source office productivity suite contains the Writer word processor, Calc spreadsheet, Impress presentation, Base database and Draw drawing/graphics applications. StarOffice Version 9 adds features, such as Mozilla Thunderbird for e-mail and Lightning for calendaring, an enterprise migration tool and various extensions for blogging, communicating, wiki publishing and PDF editing. Further, like OpenOffice.org 3.0, StarOffice 9 can read and write Microsoft Office .docx files. A range of support models are available; indemnification against intellectual property lawsuits is included in each. StarOffice comes in Linux, Solaris and Windows flavors.
The new Varnish 2.0 from Linpro is an open-source reverse-Web accelerator for high-content Web sites that was designed from the ground up for incoming traffic and not as a client-side proxy or origin server. Varnish temporarily stores the most frequently requested pages in cache memory and offers tools for identifying which pages should and should not be cached, and if they are cached, when to delete them and present fresh content. The result, says Linpro, is a 90% reduction in server requirements. Varnish 2.0 offers new features like improved compression, expanded support for filtering Web content for caching, ESI language support, tighter integration with CMS solutions, load-balancing support, better scaling and improved accelerator tuning. Varnish runs on Linux, Solaris and FreeBSD.
The new Hot Copy from R1Soft is a Linux command-line utility that takes on-line snapshots of disks or volumes on a Linux server. Because Hot Copy does not use LVM, it can work on any Linux system and with any block device. Some sample applications are turning legacy backups into on-line ones, creating a copy before running or testing dangerous scripts and commands (for example, rm -Rf), running fsck safely while the filesystem is mounted and viewing changes on systems. Features include instant, non-interrupting point-in-time snapshots of any block device, point-in-time snapshots with the system in a totally consistent state, copy-on-write snapshots, writeable snapshots and no need for dedicated snapshot devices or storage.
TotalView Technologies recently upgraded to Version 8.6 its TotalView tool for source code analysis and memory error detection. Most notably, this latest release adds TVScript, a new troubleshooting utility offering a streamlined mechanism for automated and unattended debugging. In addition, the new SSH-based Remote Display Client allows users to set up and operate securely an interactive graphical debugging session on remote systems located anywhere. The Remote Display Client is available for 32- and 64-bit Linux and Windows.
This new book from Walter Goralski and Morgan-Kaufmann, The Illustrated Network: How TCP/IP Works in a Modern Network, updates the classic TCP/IP Illustrated from W. Richard Stevens to apply to 2008 equipment, OSes and routers. The book contains 330 illustrations, such as screenshots and topology diagrams, which portray examples from a real, working network configuration including servers, routers and workstations. The publisher says the illustrated approach “allows the reader to follow the discussion with unprecedented clarity and precision”. The Illustrated Network is device- and platform-agnostic.
If you're setting off on an open-source enterprise-automation project, first download Apache's OFBiz, and then grab the new book Apache OFBiz Development: The Beginner's Tutorial. The book is authored by the team of Rupert Howell and Jonathan Wong and published by Packt. Apache OFBiz contains ERP, CRM, POS, e-business and e-commerce, SCM, MRP, CMMS/EAM and other applications. The book's design is to give newcomers a hands-on introduction to OFBiz, covering the main modules and employing illustrated examples that show how to build applications rapidly. In addition to the Model-View-Controller framework, readers will gain working knowledge of Widgets, Entities and the Service Engine. Finally, readers will learn how to tweak OFBiz as well as get tips on performance enhancement and development.