New Products

James Gray

Issue #254, June 2015

StorageCraft ShadowProtect SPX

The same backup and disaster-recovery technologies that brought StorageCraft long-term success outside the Linux space are now available to Linux users everywhere. The recently revealed StorageCraft ShadowProtect SPX solution allows Linux users to back up, protect, migrate and recover virtual and physical Linux servers reliably. SPX features, announced StorageCraft, enable quick and efficient sector-level back up of a complete Linux system, including the OS, applications, settings, services and data. In the case of disaster, IT administrators can recover their systems and regain access to their systems and data within minutes. Supported Linux flavors include Ubuntu 12.04, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 and CentOS 6.

www.storagecraft.com

AnyPresence's JustAPIs

JustAPIs from AnyPresence is designed with a singular focus: to solve the API building challenge for the enterprise app developer in an elegant manner. The JustAPIs solution, which enables the building and deploying of contemporary RESTful APIs, is targeted at IT organizations and enterprise developers who need to define custom API workflows within the corporate firewall, complementing existing MBaaS, MEAP/MADP or app development frameworks. JustAPIs gives individuals a quick, easy way to define and deploy APIs with specific signatures, which either can be standalone services with JavaScript-based business logic or connect to existing legacy and SOAP-based Web services in the enterprise. AnyPresence says that JustAPIs rises above traditional API management solutions that historically focus on enterprise-wide API governance and often are too expensive and cumbersome for the app-specific needs on which this “revolutionary new solution” focuses.

www.anypresence.com

Ajay Kapur, Perry Cook, Spencer Salazar and Ge Wang's Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists (Manning)

The world of digital music offers endless opportunities for creativity. Channeling your inner Philip Glass—and doing so without sacrificing your Linux-enthusiast principles—is a snap with the new book Programming for Musicians and Digital Artists. Subtitled Creating music with ChucK, this book presents a complete introduction to programming in the ChucK open-source music language. Readers will learn the basics of digital sound creation and manipulation while mastering the ChucK language. ChucK provides precise control over time, audio computation and user interface elements like track pads and joysticks. While moving example by example through this easy-to-follow book, readers create meaningful and rewarding digital compositions and “instruments” that make sound and music in direct response to program logic, scores, gestures and other systems connected via MIDI or the network. Because this book utilizes the vocabulary of sound, ChucK is easy to learn even for artists with little or no exposure to computer programming.

www.manning.com/kapur

2ndQuadrant's Bi-Directional Replication

Bi-Directional Replication (BDR) is an open-source PostgreSQL replication solution developed by 2ndQuadrant, an independent sponsor and developer of PostgreSQL. The upgraded BDR 0.9.0 adds a range of significant new features and enhancements, such as dynamic SQL-level configuration of connections between nodes, dynamic configuration (no restarting any nodes during the node join or removal process), easy node removal, UDR (Uni-Directional Replication), replication sets to specify sets of tables that each node should receive changes on and expanded documentation.

www.2ndquadrant.com

Super Talent's mSATA SJ2 SSD

Industrial and embedded applications where expansion options for storage are limited is right where Super Talent's new mSATA SJ2 Solid State Drive (SSD) belongs. Available in capacities from 16GB to 128GB, the mSATA SJ2 SSD with SATA-III interface offers extremely fast speeds of up to 480MB/sec reads and 160MB/sec writes for mobile solutions. A small form factor and high reliability are other features that Super Talent notes about the mSATA SJ2. Target applications include aerospace, casino gaming, embedded systems and the medical industry.

www.supertalent.com

Black Duck Software's Black Duck Hub

A critical component of security management in today's enterprises involves identifying and tracking vulnerabilities in open-source code. To tackle this task, two natural partners—Black Duck Software and Risk Based Security—have joined forces to develop Black Duck Hub, a new solution that combines powerful open-source discovery with greater vulnerability intelligence to ensure higher levels of security in open-source software. Black Duck Hub helps customers identify security-related issues faster, prioritize remediation activity and implement proactive controls to avoid the use of vulnerable components. The power of the partnership between Black Duck and Risk Based Security is evident in the latter partner's VulnDB, a resource that extends the commonly used National Vulnerability Database by an additional 35,000 vulnerabilities, resulting in actionable intelligence for more than 119,000. The result, says Black Duck, is the ability for customers to take control of software and application security proactively.

www.blackducksoftware.com

Wolfram Research's SystemModeler

Reliability analysis is critical to product development, illuminating where to concentrate engineering efforts, where failure might happen and how warranties should be priced. These are just a few of the benefits of Wolfram Research's updated SystemModeler 4.1, an intuitive modeling and simulation environment for cyber-physical systems. New feature highlights include full capabilities for importing models, importing from tools based on the FMI standard, importing of subsystems from other tools, model exchange without exposing intellectual property, construction of hierarchical models containing reliability block diagrams and fault trees and greatly improved speeds in the GUI. A sampling of industries that might benefit from SystemModeler's reliability analysis tool are aerospace, automotive, pharmaceuticals, systems biology and electrical engineering.

www.wolfram.com

Symple PC

The founder of Symple LLC and inspiration behind his firm's new Symple PC, Jason Spisak, makes at least two fine points. First, there are millions of off-lease PCs gathering dust that are more than capable of running Linux, and we have a responsibility (as stewards of our finite planet) to re-use them and prevent e-waste. Second, thanks to a convergence of technological advancements, the present is an ideal time to speed the adoption of open-source into schools, nonprofits, call centers and Web-enabled businesses. Enter the Symple PC, a re-manufactured Ubuntu Linux Web workstation priced under $100. “This little marvel”, as the company calls it, is “lovingly made in the USA from recycled and re-manufactured materials”. The case—with 50% less mass than conventional ones—is made from recycled ABS plastic, the parts are recycled, and the carton has no new fiber content, among other planet-friendly pluses. Under the hood, users currently will find Ubuntu Linux orchestrating resources on at least 2GB of RAM, 2.8GHz of desktop-class processing power and at least a 80GB SATA hard drive. To encourage the closing of the product loop, a $10 Environmental Credit is offered for any Symple PC that is returned toward the purchase of a new unit.

symplepc.com