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Novell to Develop Cross-Platform Data Center Tools
Anonymous Coward writes to tell us eWeek is reporting that Novell is currently working on a new suite of tools that will assist in the management of data centers across Windows, Unix, and Linux environments. From the article: "The tools also help users maximize server utilization by setting up a series of workload policies based on the business application resources required. The project, currently titled "The policy-driven adaptive data center," will leverage virtualization, identity management and resource management to deliver a flexible and adaptive data center."
Hey! I also develop a cross platform tool... Its the thing to do - everyone else does it this week!
Seriously, why would I do that? We have all those management tools that exist already and none of them work... Not even monitoring works. The tools we have (fortune 15 company) cost us millions, and none do what we need. We can't even monitor servers running vmware! VMWare servers have been out now for what? 3 years? And the only one that even claims they can do it is HP - and their stuff is still far from painless.
Grid, Utility Computing, server solsolidation efforts and whatever you want to call them - it has never worked... and now we have yet another try... *shrugs* Sorry if I'm not excited...
Peter.
Once upon a time there was a traveller. He travelled all around the known world on foot, by boat, by train, and by car. One day, he bumped into Tim Berners Lee. Tim asked him, "Why do you travel so far to all these places when you could just look at pictures of them on the Internet?" The traveller responded, "Shut the Fuck Up dickwipe. I travel because I like the hardship of having to go different places. I wouldn't get the same excitement and invigoration just doing it all from one spot. There's a world of difference between browsing underage Thai ladyboys and actually going over there and fucking them firsthand."
The moral of the story is that some people just like to forego the benefits of cross platform browsers and use platform-based tools to do their network management.
Or in layman's terms baud barf. This has already been done by several companies and exists as open source. OpenQRM is a good example of (almost) the exact thing Novell is going to do.
IMHO, they're squatting on what's already done and regurgitating it as cutting edge emerging technology. But because they're huge, its news. I use this stuff daily and cross platform management is not rocket science.
Wow, setup "roles" and "scenarios" and write scripts to change gears based on demand? Sorry but that's not anying 'novel', Novell. Ever heard of ssh key pairing? (sigh). Ever heard of low level portable C? (double sigh). The practice of centralizing control over many servers is as old as Slashdot itself.
Perhaps they'll make things a little more intuitive. I'm not saying its a bad project, I'm saying market things for what they are and stop squatting on open source.
If Novells means it serious they have to look into wyoGuide (http://wyoguide.sf.net/) for developing cross-platform binary applications and into Dojo toolkit (http://dojotoolkit.org/) for developing web applications. I'm quite sure these are the best way how to do cross-platform development. Besides this might lead to a new future where choosing any platform might not depend anymore on the availability of applications (see http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html.
. html).
For Linux fans read this LXer article (http://lxer.com/module/newswire/view/54009/index
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
If I hear the word "virtualization" one more time today, my head will explode.