BButlerNWW writes "VMware is in OpenStack now, but not everyone thinks that's such a good idea. One member of the newly created OpenStack Board of Directors says allowing VMware into the open source cloud project was a 'huge mistake' that could damage the project's market perception. Boris Renski is co-founder of OpenStack integration consultancy Mirantis and he says every enterprise he's worked with so far has been interested in OpenStack because they view it as an alternative to VMware. The board's vote earlier this month has now muddled the differences, he says. 'If OpenStack isn't an alternative to VMware, then what the hell is it?' Renski says."

Barence writes "Microsoft has released Windows Server 2012, letting businesses test it for 90 days on the Azure cloud platform for free. There are two versions of the main edition of Windows Server 2012: one with virtualization support and one without. The former, the Data Center version, costs $4,809, while the Standard edition will cost $882. There's also an Essentials version, which replaces Small Business Server, for $501 per server, and Windows Server 2012 Foundation, which will only be available pre-installed on hardware." Ars has a detailed look at the new edition.

Orome1 writes "Joanna Rutkowska, CEO of Invisible Things Lab, today released version 1.0 of Qubes, a stable and reasonably secure desktop OS. It is the most secure option among the existing desktop operating systems — even more secure than Apple's iOS, which puts each application into its own sandbox and does not count on the user to make security decisions. Qubes will offer users the option of using disposable virtual machines for executing tasks they believe could harm their computer. These VMs will be lightweight, easily and extremely speedily created and booted, and would be just as easy to discard." First covered back in 2010. See some screenshots of the X11 part in action (and they say displaying clients from multiple "hosts" isn't useful...)

Last year VMware introduced a complex pricing scheme based on the size of the memory associated with each virtual machine instance. New CEO Pat Gelsinger announced this week that this system (which he described as "a four letter word") has been deprecated, and VMware is back to more straightforwardly charging per physical processor. Adds reader hypnosec: "Pricing hasn't been announced yet but a file [PDF] present on VMware's site does give an indication about the new pricing."
Update: 08/28 17:18 GMT by S : Updated the headline and summary to reflect that the price is per processor, not per core.

hypnosec writes "OpenStack Foundation, backed by virtualization players like Rackspace, Red Hat and IBM, is going to get a unexpected new member – VMware. According to a post on the OpenStack Foundation Wiki, the agenda of the Board of Directors meeting on August 28 includes the Gold membership of VMware as one of the topics. VMware is not the only one applying for Gold membership as Intel and NEC are also standing in line for their memberships as well."

As data centers become more common and more advanced, there's been a movement to automate and consolidate control of data center components, and an industry is starting to grow around it. "While VMware pushes a programmable data model based on its technologies, vendors such as Puppet Labs are making the case for a more platform-neutral approach. Puppet Labs has developed a declarative language for configuring systems that can be extended across the data center: the organization recently announced the creation of an open source project in conjunction with EMC, called Razor, to accomplish that goal. There’s already open source project known as Chef, created by Opscode, with a similar set of goals. In a similar vein, Reflex Systems, a provider of virtualization management tools, is trying to drum interest in VQL, a query language that the company specifically developed for IT pros."

Quince alPillan writes "Netflix revealed today that they've released Chaos Monkey, an open source Amazon Web Service testing tool that will randomly turn off instances in Auto Scaling Groups. 'We have found that the best defense against major unexpected failures is to fail often. By frequently causing failures, we force our services to be built in a way that is more resilient. We are excited to make a long-awaited announcement today that will help others who embrace this approach. ...source code for the founding member of the Simian Army, Chaos Monkey, is available to the community.'"

netbuzz writes "Microsoft has apologized and promised to rectify the fact that one of its developers slipped a sexist phrase into Linux kernel code supporting Microsoft's HyperV virtualization environment. In that code, the magic constant passed through to the hypervisor reads '0xB16B00B5,' or a slightly camouflaged 'BIG BOOBS.' After Linux developer/blogger Matthew Garrett criticized Microsoft for the stunt, the predictable debate over sexism in the technology world ensued. Microsoft issued a statement to Network World apologizing and added, 'We have submitted a patch to fix this issue and the change will be published in a future release of the kernel.'"

Michael Ross writes "All the leading content management systems (CMSs), including Drupal, use a combination of source code, in files, and user/configuration data, in a database. There may be some mixing of the two types of components — such as configuration settings stored in small files, or JavaScript code stored in the database — but most CMS-based websites generally employ this separation. One significant benefit is that updates to the non-custom code (the CMS's "core") can be easily made without overwriting user data or custom configuration settings. However, each website has its own copy of the core code, even if the websites reside on the same server — which wastes disk space and wastes developer time when all of those instances of core need to be updated. Thus there is growing interest in running multiple websites on a single core instance, despite the dearth of documentation for how to do so. For those in the Drupal world, one resource is a new book by Matt Butcher, Drupal 7 Multi Sites Configuration." Read below for the rest of Michael's review.

An anonymous reader writes "I'm part of a team of six people developing applications for mobile devices (Android & iOS). In our company, which consists of many teams responsible for 'classic' software development, business intelligence, virtualization, hardware, etc., we are kind of a small startup because we were the first to use agile methods like Scrum and we are open to new technologies and methods. Also, our team is pretty young — I'm the oldest at 30 years of age. We would like to further raise productivity and motivation, so we're currently collecting ideas about what makes a good developer/hacker culture, and how it can be improved in our team/company. These can be things we do ourselves, or suggestions we pass on to management. I would like to know: what, in your opinion, defines good, modern developer culture? What does developer culture consists of? For example, is it: clearly defined career opportunities? A geeky office? Benefits like trips to extraordinary conferences? Please let me know what you think."

Fnord666 writes "The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) has disclosed a flaw in Intel chips that could allow hackers to gain control of Windows and other operating systems, security experts say. The flaw was disclosed the vulnerability in a security advisory released this week. Hackers could exploit the flaw to execute malicious code with kernel privileges, said a report in the Bitdefender blog. 'Some 64-bit operating systems and virtualization software running on Intel CPU hardware are vulnerable to a local privilege escalation attack,' the US-CERT advisory says. 'The vulnerability may be exploited for local privilege escalation or a guest-to-host virtual machine escape.'" According to the article, exposed OSes include "Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 R2, 64-bit versions of FreeBSD and NetBSD, as well as systems that include the Xen hypervisor."

Nerval's Lobster writes "VMware's Serengeti is a new open-source project for deploying Apache Hadoop in virtual and cloud environments. Serengeti 0.5 is available as a free download under the Apache 2.0 license. It has been designed as distro-neutral, with support for Apache 1.0, CDH3, Hortonworks 1.0 and Greenplum HD 1.0. Of course, VMware isn't the only company seeking to leverage the increased interest in Hadoop. In June alone, midsize IT vendors such as Datameer, Karmasphere, and Hortonworks have all announced platforms that utilize the framework in some way. Research firm IDC recently predicted that worldwide revenues from Hadoop and MapReduce will hit $812.8 million in 2016, up from $77 million in 2011."

An anonymous reader writes "With IT and Data Center consolidation seemingly happening everywhere our small shop is about to receive a corporate mandate to follow suit and preferably accomplish this via virtualization. I've had success with virtualizing low load web servers and other assets but the larger project does intimidate me a little. So I'm wondering: Are there server types, applications and/or assets that I should be hesitant virtualizing today? Are there drawbacks that get glossed over in the rush to consolidate all assets?"

First time accepted submitter Kelerei writes "Windows 8 has been confirmed as the official name for the next x86/x64 version of Windows, which will be released in two editions: a home edition (simply named 'Windows 8') featuring an updated Windows Explorer, Task Manager, improved multi-monitor support and 'the ability to switch languages on the fly,' while a professional edition ('Windows 8 Pro') adds features for businesses and technical professionals such as encryption, virtualization and domain connectivity. Windows Media Center will not be included in the Pro edition and will be available separately as part of a 'media pack' add-on. A third edition, branded as 'Windows RT,' will be available for ARM-based systems."

diegocg writes "Linux 3.3 has been released. The changes include the merge of kernel code from the Android project. There is also support for a new architecture (TI C6X), much improved balancing and the ability to restripe between different RAID profiles in Btrfs, and several network improvements: a virtual switch implementation (Open vSwitch) designed for virtualization scenarios, a faster and more scalable alternative to the 'bonding' driver, a configurable limit to the transmission queue of the network devices to fight bufferbloat, a network priority control group and per-cgroup TCP buffer limits. There are also many small features and new drivers and fixes. Here's the full changelog."

itwbennett writes "A pair of NASA videos released today show the moon as you've never seen it before. In one video, you get an up-close tour of the moon's craters, thanks to video and images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. In the other, you can watch an animation of the moon's creation and evolution."

ReeceTarbert writes "VirtualBSD 9.0 is a desktop-ready FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE built around the XFCE Desktop Environment for good aesthetics and usability, and is distributed as a VMware appliance (that can also be made to work with VirtualBox) so even non techies can be up and running in minutes. The most common applications, plugins and multimedia codecs are ready since the first boot and chances are that you'll find VirtualBSD very functional right out of the box. However, it should be noted that VirtualBSD is more a technology demonstrator than a fully fledged distribution, therefore is squarely aimed at people that heard about FreeBSD but have never tried it, didn't have enough time to build the system from scratch, or have since moved to a different OS but still need their FreeBSD fix from time to time."

1sockchuck writes "The U.S. government now expects to shutter at least 1,200 data centers by the end of 2015 in its data center consolidation project. That's about 40 percent of the IT facilities identified in the latest update from federal CIO Steven VanRoekel. The number of government data centers has grown steadily — jumping from 1,100 to 2,094 and now to 3,133 — as the Obama administration has identified more facilities than expected, and expanded the initiative to target telecom closets. The CIO's office says it is on track to close 525 facilities by the end of this year, and has published a list of data centers targeted for closure."

gManZboy writes "Automatic teller machine maker Diebold has taken a novel approach to protecting bank customer data: virtualization. Virtualized ATMs store all customer data on central servers, rather than the ATM itself, making it difficult for criminals to steal data from the machines. In places including Brazil, customer data has been at risk when thieves pulled or dynamited ATMs out of their settings and drove off with them. With threats increasing worldwide at many retail points of sale, such as supermarket checkout counters and service station gas pumps, Diebold needed to guarantee the security of customer data entered at the 50,000 ATMs that it manages. Diebold last year partnered with VMware to produce a zero-client ATM. No customer data is captured and stored on the ATM itself." Perhaps Diebold should take the same approach to vote-tabulating machines.

With his first accepted submission, billakay writes "A recently open-sourced experimental Linux infrastructure created by Bell Labs researchers allows 3D rendering to be performed on a GPU and displayed on other devices, including DisplayLink dongles. The system accomplishes this by essentially creating 'Virtual CRTCs', or virtual display output controllers, and allowing arbitrary devices to appear as extra ports on a graphics card." The code and instructions are at GitHub. This may also be the beginning of good news for people with MUX-less dual-GPU laptops that are currently unsupported.