Cloud computing has been one of the most discussed topic over the year, and the discussion is not over because what is really being discussed is the way we will access computing an storage resources in the future. Even famous French intellectuals are giving their opinion and making predictions. Future will decide on predictions's accuracy.

What is usually less discussed is the technology behind cloud-computing, though this is no secret that virtualization is playing a key role. Cloud data-centers will be loaded with virtual machines each of these machines potentially requiring in disk-space what a complete operating system (OS) requires, which can go up to many gigabytes. How much disk-space does a virtual machine image (vdi) really consum? The only good answer is: too much. Too much because the OS is part of the infrastructure as …

Chrooted environments are known to greatly improve system and application security by providing them with a higher degree of isolation. The objective is to separate as much as possible from other executables and resources the runtime environment of an application so that if a hacker get access to it,the rest of the system is not compromised. This technic is commonly used with MySQL.

Traditionally, the chrooting applies at the file system level, by creating a separated and minimal operating system disk-image.  The operation consists in creating a set of directories (such a /chroot/etc, /chroot/tmp, /chroot/var/tmp, /chroot/usr/local/mysql etc.) and duplicate a minimal number of binary and configuration files into this new directory tree. After setting the right permissions on the new directories, the chrootuid utility is used to execute the application in the restricted environment. …

Chrooted environments are known to greatly improve system and application security by providing them with a higher degree of isolation. The objective is to separate as much as possible from other executables and resources the runtime environment of an application so that if a hacker get access to it,the rest of the system is not compromised. This technic is commonly used with MySQL.

Traditionally, the chrooting applies at the file system level, by creating a separated and minimal operating system disk-image.  The operation consists in creating a set of directories (such a /chroot/etc, /chroot/tmp, /chroot/var/tmp, /chroot/usr/local/mysql etc.) and duplicate a minimal number of binary and configuration files into this new directory tree. After setting the right permissions on the new directories, the chrootuid utility is used to execute the application in the restricted environment. …

Chrooted environments are known to greatly improve system and application security by providing them with a higher degree of isolation. The objective is to separate as much as possible from other executables and resources the runtime environment of an application so that if a hacker get access to it,the rest of the system is not compromised. This technic is commonly used with MySQL.

Traditionally, the chrooting applies at the file system level, by creating a separated and minimal operating system disk-image.  The operation consists in creating a set of directories (such a /chroot/etc, /chroot/tmp, /chroot/var/tmp, /chroot/usr/local/mysql etc.) and duplicate a minimal number of binary and configuration files into this new directory tree. After setting the right permissions on the new directories, the chrootuid utility is used to execute the application in the restricted environment. …

For many years now, Sun provides ISVs with on-line access to Solaris, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Java, Netbeans, compilers, and much more.  This service is named EZQual and is used to evaluate Sun software,  and port and test applications on the Sun platform. To satisfy the demand we must be able to host many ISVs on a single system so we decided from scratch that the service would be implemented using virtualization, just like a cloud. Also, to provide a better user experience we decided to offer a remote desktop feature that, in conjunction with the virtualiztion, really offers what is known as a virtual desktop.

So far virtualization has been based on Solaris containers. Amongst other advantages, containers are easily provisioned by cloning a first template container. This feature is useful when - like us - you provision a …

For many years now, Sun provides ISVs with on-line access to Solaris, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Java, Netbeans, compilers, and much more.  This service is named EZQual and is used to evaluate Sun software,  and port and test applications on the Sun platform. To satisfy the demand we must be able to host many ISVs on a single system so we decided from scratch that the service would be implemented using virtualization, just like a cloud. Also, to provide a better user experience we decided to offer a remote desktop feature that, in conjunction with the virtualiztion, really offers what is known as a virtual desktop.

So far virtualization has been based on Solaris containers. Amongst other advantages, containers are easily provisioned by cloning a first template container. This feature is useful when - like us - you provision a …

For many years now, Sun provides ISVs with on-line access to Solaris, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Java, Netbeans, compilers, and much more.  This service is named EZQual and is used to evaluate Sun software,  and port and test applications on the Sun platform. To satisfy the demand we must be able to host many ISVs on a single system so we decided from scratch that the service would be implemented using virtualization, just like a cloud. Also, to provide a better user experience we decided to offer a remote desktop feature that, in conjunction with the virtualiztion, really offers what is known as a virtual desktop.

So far virtualization has been based on Solaris containers. Amongst other advantages, containers are easily provisioned by cloning a first template container. This feature is useful when - like us - you provision a …

Ok, so this site (and some other stuff) is now running on OpenSolaris. The previous previous article was mostly a test entry for me to see whether the DNS update was through but as some people wonder why I'm using this system that "fails while trying to copy Linux" I decided to discuss some of the reasons in more detail.

Some people already know that my main system meanwhile runs OpenSolaris. The reason there is DTrace - a great way to see what the system, from the kernel, over userspaces programs, into a VM like the JVM or PHP's Zend VM, ... is doing which is a big help while debugging and developing applications. Even though DTrace is meant to do such analysis on live machines this wasn't the main …

by @botchagalupe
on Virtualization, Open Source tools and DNS Problems

Technorati Tags: dnsproblem drupal ha heartbeat linux-ha mysql pacemaker puppet virtualization xen …

Cloud computing is disrupting many aspects of computing. One need only witness the manner in which online applications like Google Docs and Salesforce.com are disrupting entrenched competitors. Soon, cloud computing will significantly disrupt the database market, for the reasons explained below.

One of the most powerful arguments in technology is the price/performance ratio. Significant declines in price or significant increases in performance can result in disruption. When you get both price declines and performance increases, you get significant disruption. This is exactly what is coming to the database market.

The Past
Moore’s Law enabled the CPU to process data faster than the hard disk drive could get the data to the CPU. Because getting data to the CPU was the bottleneck, the database that solved that bottleneck would have a performance advantage.

The shared-disk database had two glaring …