Linux ready for real-time computing in financial services

Is Linux capable of handling the mission-critical, high-volume demands of the world’s biggest financial institutions? Speakers at the recent sixth annual Linux on Wall Street conference offered solid evidence in the affirmative, despite unresolved issues concerning real-time Linux and hypervisor interoperability.

Vinod Kutty, the distributed computing R&D head at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), now the CME Group, and a conference speaker, believes that Linux has become more mature as a platform and is ready for mission-critical, financial services workloads.

“I’m starting to see Linux companies focusing on enterprise customer needs” and beefing up their staff of talented Unix developers, Kutty said after the conference. “These are signs that they are ready to play in the enterprise market.”

Speakers like Kutty presented plenty of evidence that Linux is running mission-critical applications, including high-performance, real-time systems. In terms of financial systems, real time generally refers to a transaction time measured in microseconds or milliseconds. The faster the transaction time, the more traders can execute orders and the faster the orders can be filled. Kutty explained how the Chicago-based CME converted its systems from Solaris Sparc servers to Red Hat Enterprise Linux and achieved better performance in speed and reliability at lower cost, all while handling a large increase in electronic trade volume.Completed in late 2004, the 18-month migration provided CME with the backbone to increase from 250 million trades of commodity contracts in 2003 to 1.2 billion contracts in 2007. In addition, the transaction speed was sharply reduced from 200 milliseconds to 10 to 15 milliseconds, the closest to real time that is achievable today, he said.

IBM brings real-time Linux to U.S. Navy
Keith Bright, the program director of IBM’s Linux Technology Center, discussed another successful real-time Linux project: the creation of a centralized ship-board computing infrastructure for U.S. Navy destroyers under contract with Raytheon. IBM’s Total Ship Computing Environment will run all Zumwalt-class destroyer applications from weapons, command-and-control, radar and navigation. The centralized computing system will run on IBM BladeCenter and IBM x86 servers on real-time Linux and real-time Java.For the Navy’s project, IBM assembled a Linux team that first had to improve the quality of the kernel — fixing patches, debugging code, testing — and then integrate it with the Red Hat stack. In turn this improved kernel became the foundation for IBM’s Java Real Time, now called WebSphere Real Time, all on the open source model, he said.

“In 2005 [when IBM was working on the Navy’s real-time project], nobody wanted to play this game,” he added, referring to the distros’ reluctance to add real-time features to the Linux kernel and environment. “But open source has come a long way. It’s exciting to see Linux move into the mainstream.” The first version of the computing platform was delivered in mid-2006 on time and on budget, Bright said. The greatest project challenge was its tight schedule, he said. No ships have yet been launched under the program, which is ongoing. “Real time is pretty exciting in open source,” Bright said. “We had guaranteed real time and better throughput. It’s often one or the other. But real-time goals were achieved with minimum impact to performance as planned.” Real time is not about high performance but about determinism (the ability to prioritize tasks) and guaranteed execution, he noted. Head Bubba, the vice president of IT research and development at Credit Suisse, said he has validated a 40% performance improvement with the real-time Linux kernel. “This is an extreme case, but if you architect it correctly, you can see a performance boost,” he said. “But there is a tradeoff, because the real-time kernel could affect throughput. [The real-time kernel] is very stable, but it’s up to you to decide. Eventually, this will go mainstream.”

Microsoft, Novell hypervisor interoperability
In a separate workshop, Microsoft and Novell representatives gave an update on their ongoing efforts to make their systems interoperable following the joint Novell/Microsoft 2006 agreement. These areas include virtualization, directory and identity interoperability, and document formats.

Of particular interest was the ongoing effort between the two companies to make their respective virtualization hypervisors work interchangeably on each other’s operating systems. (Novell’s SUSE Enterprise Linux uses the open source Xen hypervisor, and Microsoft uses its own Hyper-V hypervisor.) Interoperability will be achieved with special adapters for each system.

As a young data center player, Linux still has plenty of catch-up challenges ahead, including interoperability, better vendor support and additional management tools. And the pace at which computing itself is changing — with added capabilities such as virtualization and cloud computing – that challenge involves some shifting ground. But conference speakers agreed that Linux has definitely arrived as a platform and is generating more than its share of innovation. The bottom line: Proprietary vendors had better take Linux seriously.

By Pam Derringer, News Writer
14 Apr 2008 | SearchEnterpriseLinux.com

Zimbra Starter Edition

The Zimbra Team is releasing a new licensing package targeted towards users who want some of the features of the Network Edition, but fewer users (limit of 15).

The package is US $399.00 and includes backup/restore and Connectors (iSync/Outlook).

ZCS Network Starter Edition is an annual subscription for software and updates only; it doesn’t include Zimbra Support and cannot be upgraded with more licenses mailboxes, Zimbra Mobile or Zimbra Archiving and Discovery.*

The package can be purchased through our website here: http://www.zimbra.com/quote/starterpkg.php

Enjoy!

*You can ofcourse upgrade to the Zimbra Network Professional Edition – 25 user license which includes support in case you would like to license Zimbra Mobile or Zimbra Archiving & Discovery.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 is released

The OpenOffice.org Community is pleased to announce the release of OpenOffice.org 2.4, the latest version of the leading open source office productivity suite. OpenOffice.org 2.4 includes new features, enhancements, and bug fixes to all its core components. OpenOffice.org 2.4 is available for immediate download from http://download.openoffice.org.

New features:

Users will appreciate changes such as usability improvements in printing, and further enhancements to PDF handling (OpenOffice.org creates PDF files ‘out of the box’ to ISO standard). The default font is now DejaVu, which supports more languages/localisations than the previous BitStream Vera -part of a raft of localisation improvements covering languages from Hiligaynon to Quechua. Mac OS X users will appreciate the use of the native Quicktime player and spell-checker.

Writer, OpenOffice.org‘s word processor, now has easier selection of the language for spellchecking; users can set options for printing hidden and place holder text and for following hyperlinks; text selection and ‘find and replace’ have been improved; and ‘power users’ will
appreciate new extra keyboard shortcuts for paragraph styles.

Regular users of Calc, OpenOffice.org‘s spreadsheet, will appreciate the streamlining of data and formulae entry. Other new features include a ‘smart move and copy’ for blocks of cells; the ability to transform data into columns; and improvements to printing, data filtering, and the Data Pilot.

Usability improvements have been made to Draw, the drawing and diagramming module, and Impress, OpenOffice.org‘s application for creating presentations. Both applications have enhanced PDF export capabilities. In addition, Impress now has a new range of thrilling 3D transition effects supported through an extension.

The Chart module, used throughout OpenOffice.org, continues to evolve rapidly. Novice users benefit from more intelligent default choices from the graphics engine; advanced users have more options allowing them to fine tune a chart exactly the way they want it.

OpenOffice.org‘s database application, Base, now supports MS-Access 2007 (accdb files on MS-Windows), and has enhanced capabilities for MySQL, Oracle/jdbc, and native (HSQL) databases. The Query Designer is also improved.

OpenOffice.org 2.4 is the eleventh release in the 2.x series (launched in October 2005) and demonstrates the Community’s commitment to continuous and regular improvement of its software. The next major release – 3.0 – is planned for the autumn/fall this year. If you would like to help us, please visit http://contributing.openoffice.org.

The OpenOffice.org Community

Award-winning Zend Framework releases version 1.5!

Zend Framework was awarded a “Jolt Productivity Award” at the 18th annual Dr. Dobb’s Jolt Awards, the “Oscars of the software industry.” With over 4.5 million downloads, Zend Framework has become the fastest growing PHP framework on the market. Now the award-winning open source framework has released version 1.5 which supports new services and enhancements to many existing features. Highlights include:

  • Support for OpenID and Microsoft’s InfoCard – two emerging technologies behind “Identity 2.0,” a movement to simplify and fortify identity management online
  • Forms – New support for forms, including Ajax usage patterns that makes building and using web-based forms much easier
  • Layout and view – New layout support and view enhancements for consistent look and feel throughout PHP applications
  • LDAP authentication – Now with enterprise-ready authentication using LDAP technology
  • Lucene search engine – New advanced queries using wildcards, date ranges, fuzzy searches as well as Lucene index format version 2.1
  • Extended Ajax support – Server-side support for Ajax with action helpers to automate Ajax detection and responses makes programming using JavaScript & PHP much easier
  • UTF-8 character sets in Adobe PDF creation – PDF support enhanced to enable non-Latin character sets such as Kanji, Cyrillic, etc.
  • Google GData web services – Significant enhancements to Google Data services makes it easier to build web applications that leverage the Google application network. New support for upload and write capabilities to Google YouTube

Download Zend Framework using Zend’s high speed content delivery network »
View recent Zend Framework Webinars »

Using smtp_generic_maps to rewrite domain/address for outgoing mails in Postfix/Zimbra

Greetings to everyone.

Sometimes, you think it’s so easy to use generic table in Postfix like this http://www.postfix.org/generic.5.html to rewrite mail address/domain for outgoing mails.

It must be really easy, of course, with only Postfix. However, if you do that with the Postfix running inside a Zimbra server, you should do more work if you would not like to get undeliverable reports when sending/receiving mails from/to mapped email addresses. This is so simple but it waste me hours to find out. Hope this will help to save your time.

All you need to do is add “smtp_generic_maps=” to the amavis service options in master.cf:

smtp-amavis unix - - n - 10 smtp
-o smtp_data_done_timeout=1200
-o smtp_send_xforward_command=yes
-o disable_dns_lookups=yes
-o max_use=20
-o smtp_generic_maps=

This stops the outgoing generic map from being applied when the mail gets reinjected into Postfix. Thats’ all.

Google thành ‘gã khổng lồ’ nhờ ăn ngon

Cách đây 10 năm, công ty này chưa thành danh nhưng đã áp dụng triết lý của Napoleon “Một quân đội mạnh cần phải diễu binh với cái dạ dày no đủ” để cung cấp đồ ăn, rượu ngon miễn phí cho nhân viên.

Đầu bếp Charlie Ayers làm việc tại Google từ năm 1998 tiết lộ nhiệm vụ của anh là tìm mọi cách để lôi cuốn các kỹ sư muốn đến văn phòng từ sáng sớm và ở lại đến tận chiều muộn. Vì vậy, căng tin của công ty đã trở thành nơi cung cấp miễn phí bia, rượu, thịt nướng, các món đặc sản như sushi, bánh mỳ nướng kiểu Pháp với dừa, rượu rum…

“Tôi đã dùng nhiều nguyên liệu có lợi cho sức khỏe”, Ayers cho biết. “Ví dụ mỡ trong cá giúp cho màng tế bào quanh não đàn hồi hơn, giúp hấp thu các chất bổ dễ dàng”.

Sau đó, khu bếp của hãng phải tuyển tới 5 đầu bếp, 150 phụ bếp, dùng 75 máy rửa bát, cung cấp 7.000 suất mỗi ngày cho 5.000 nhân viên ở trụ sở tại Mountain View (bang California, Mỹ). Riêng một ngày “ăn tươi”, họ đã tiêu thụ hết 200 kg tôm hùm sống.

“Sự chăm lo đặc biệt cho những người lao động ở đây là một phần chiến lược giúp Google vượt qua nhiều khó khăn, ví dụ như cuộc khủng hoảng dotcom năm 2001”, Ayers bày tỏ. “Họ muốn dẫn đầu thế giới từ những việc nhỏ nhất”.

“Googleplex”, tên gọi thân mật nơi làm việc của hãng, là thế giới thực sự dễ chịu với bể bơi, bàn bi-a, những chiếc giường nệm êm ái… Người ta có thể nuôi thú cưng, giải trí thoải mái như ở nhà.

Việt Toàn (theo Telegraph)

Sendmail’s Greet_Pause

Slamming is a popular spammer tactic in which the spammer quickly fires off SMTP messages without waiting for responses from the receiving server. A poorly behaved MTA will then accept traffic from the spammer, instead of rejecting it as it should. But even well-behaved MTAs are affected because of the sheer volume of traffic with which they are forced to deal. The venerable sendmail, as of version 8.13, has a nifty feature called “greet_pause” that not only rejects incorrect SMTP transactions, but also discourages re-sends.

In a normal SMTP transaction, the client first connects and the server is supposed to send back a “220” greeting, something like:

$ telnet mail.foo.org 25
Trying 12.34.56.78...
Connected to foo.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-host6.foo.org ESMTP Sendmail 8.13.6/8.13.6; Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:04:49 -0600
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
220 and/or bulk e-mail.

Then, the client says “ehlo” or “helo,” and the transaction continues. When the client is an impatient spammer and sends more commands without listening, the greet_pause feature detects this, marks the connection bad, and responds to anything else that tries to come over that connection with a 554 (transaction failed) message. It works by pausing briefly before sending out its 220 messages.

The pause interval is configurable, so you can tune it as needed.

Interestingly, you’ll probably find that your total spam attempts drop significantly after implementing greet_pause, possibly because the spammer’s software thinks it’s hitting a bad server or bad addresses, or otherwise getting stuck somehow. It’s an ingenious and simple method with a low-overhead that discourages significant amounts of spam.

As always, be sure to whitelist all of your important addresses. Visit sendmail.org/doc/ to learn more.

Is Drupal the best CMS or is it Joomla?

When I read forums, sometimes I see people asking for advice on which CMS would be adapted for their particular project, and often there are replies of what looks like Joomla fanatics who answer without any argument that Joomla is the best CMS.

I can’t stand it because I know it’s wrong, but then I’m not paid to promote any particular CMS nor am I paid by the original poster to convince him to choose the best solution for his project. Because let’s be real here, for most common uses, from people who have no experience of CMS, Joomla will do the job as well as a number of other CMS solutions!

Drupal LogoI say that Drupal is the best CMS and I can back it up, but anyone who had first hand experience with both CMS can state the same as me: Joomla (and previously Mambo) is not as good a work of art as Drupal, it is less efficient and is less flexible. The positive thing about Joomla is that the graphic design part of their user community is clearly more developped than Drupal’s and probably even the total user community is larger than Drupal’s because when you look at both projects from an untrained eye Joomla look far better out of the box. Joomla also have tons of modules/add-ons to add features and so has Drupal. In fact there are some “contests” organized on the web and sometimes Drupal wins, sometimes Joomla wins. But honestly if a contest has public vote, then what? You have the biggest user community who can go to a website and vote and then you win? OK, this is lame. The next one in line is the Packtpub Award with voting closing on october 26th and if you vote you could win a….. yes a stupid iPod, of course what do you think? It’s not christmas! The award has a total fund of $20 000 in prizes you get to win a stupid iPod, life’s cruel sometimes… And if Joomla wins, then life can be really cruel sometimes! Because, come on! Drupal is clearly better, even a canadian recognizes Drupal is the best! Although finally he says that he would recommend Joomla over Drupal for an “organization looking for a CMS to merely manage the pages and content on your website”. In fact to merely manage the pages and content on your website, clearly any CMS would do the job, hopefully. But Drupal can do it too -)

So the user community is more vibrant on Joomla, but the code of the CMS isn’t as clean and efficient as Drupal. In Drupal the administration panel is part of the website, it’s based on user’s rights to see or not to see the administration menus. On Joomla it’s more classic, you access the admin panel and manage things from here. The admin panel looks nicer on Joomla too, so you understand why many people believe it is the best CMS, it attracts the eye.

There’s is something that will change things a little, it’s that Joomla will very soon have a major update with the 1.5 version, and Drupal will continue to improve with Drupal 6 before the end of the year. The major update of Joomla is worth installing and try out. But for sure Drupal 6 is the CMS to install to base your future projects on.

It’s simple, several years ago I had one Drupal and one Mambo (before being called Joomla) sites, and after that most of my projects have been done with Drupal, it’s so versatile, so flexible, so clear and works like a charm, I never had anything to complain about, it can do so much more than what I have time to implement!

OK, Joomla fanatics can say exactly the same thing as I said, but for me Drupal is the best CMS, if you’re new to CMS and want to start a website, you cannot make a mistake by choosing Drupal and start to learn it. Anyway it doesn’t hurt to install both CMS and start 2 websites instead of one, but if you have that kind of motivation and time in your hands, then you can learn deeper and deeper about Drupal, you’ll love it!

To rest my case I’ll send to you to more reading dealing with Drupal vs Joomla:

Source: http://blog-money-wiki.com/blog/2007/10/is-drupal-the-best-cms-or-is-it-joomla.php