Overcoming Cloud Computing Obstacles – Cloud Computing adoption challenges

overcoming-cloud-computing-obstacles

Overcoming Cloud Computing Obstacles

How to Make the Case to Switch to the Cloud

Companies choosing the cloud computing route often have to make the case for the switch to new technology to a board or investors. The most common obstacles raised towards adoption of cloud technology are concerns around the availability of service, security and auditability of company data and performance issues around data transfer or loading speeds.

Availability of Service

The utility computing economy is currently such that competition is growing among providers. There are a few large, corporate providers of cloud services, such as Amazon and Google, as well as a large handful of small and medium players in the market. The number of companies jumping on the cloud provision bandwagon is growing very rapidly, and because of this, there is great focus on providing a reliable and stable service. Many providers will offer their clients a Service Level Agreement (SLA), stating the acceptable levels of unplanned service downtime, as well as what amount of compensation is available should the SLA be breached. Companies signing up with a cloud provider should look for an SLA offering at least 99.9% availability, but preferably 99.99%. The best way to ensure full systems available for a company’s cloud services is to engage more than one cloud provider for the provision of the same service. This way, if something should happen to the first provider, the second one will be able to pick up the slack.

Security and Auditability of Company Data

Many cloud computing providers offer data encryption as part of their service. Small and medium sized businesses, that are not accountable to regulatory bodies can probably use the standard encryption technologies provided by most utility computing services. Companies, such as small investment firms or hedge funds, will need to invest in higher security measures for storing data in the cloud. By nature, most of the cloud computing infrastructures currently available by mainstream providers are what is known as public clouds. (Armbrust, et al) This means that computer systems are purposed for general use among all customers, and no distinction is made as to which company is using what hardware. This is generally fine for the standard SME, but those requiring data audit capabilities will need what is known as a private cloud. The private cloud is a collection of computing systems that has been walled off, both physically (in a caged area of a data center) and logically, using combinations of Virtual Private Networks (VPN), firewalls and, often, private leased line data connections which are installed to directly connect a company to its cloud service provider.

Performance Issues

There is often concern around the performance of data transfer within cloud applications. However, it has been shown that, generally, once data has been transferred to the cloud, the speeds of transfer between cloud servers is then much faster than it was on local drives. This is because most current cloud computing infrastructure is far more powerful than what is normally seen in SMEs. The obstacle here is the initial transfer of data onto the cloud service. This can be overcome by loading all data on portable hard drives and shipping it to the cloud service provider for the initial load. Generally, once the initial load is complete, subsequent file transfers will be much smaller in size. Exceptions to this are the data-intensive users of elastic cloud services. For these users, hard drive transfer would currently still be the most economically viable option, but there is evidence that the cost of a private leased line may decrease in future as the cost of high-end routers decreases. (Armbrust, et al)

With a careful analysis of company IT infrastructure requirements, and an appropriate plan to minimize the risks associated with the top obstacles to adoption of cloud computing, business now have the opportunity to adopt a technology which has matured over the past decade into a feasible manner in which to provide reliable and efficient corporate computing at the fraction of the cost of a full IT hardware refresh.

http://business-technology.suite101.com/article.cfm/overcoming-cloud-computing-obstacles
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Upgrading Continuum – Continuum Upgradation Guide

continuum-upgrade

This document will help you upgrade Continuum from 1.2.x to 1.3.3 and above.

When upgrading Continuum, it could have some database model changes. Usually these changes will be migrated for you, but in some cases you may need to use a backup from the previous version and restore that data into the new version. The Data Management tool exports data from the old database model and imports the data into the new database model.

If you had used the APP_BASE environment variable in Continuum 1.2 to differentiate your configuration from the installation, you should rename it to CONTINUUM_BASE in Continuum 1.3.

Note: The Jetty version in Continuum 1.3.4 and above has been upgraded to 6.1.19. When upgrading to Continuum 1.3.4 or higher, there is a need to update the library contents listed in $CONTINUUM_BASE/conf/wrapper.conf with the ones included in the new distribution especially if the $CONTINUUM_BASE directory is separate from the installation.

Using Backup and Restore to upgrade

There are 2 databases that need to be considered: one for the builds and one for the users.

There were no changes in the users database from 1.2.x to 1.3.2, so you can simply point Continuum 1.3.2 at your existing user database.

The builds database has had model changes, and will need to be exported and imported.

First, download the Data Management tools you will need. The tool is a standalone JAR that you can download from the central repo.

You will need to download two versions of the tool, one for the export out of the old version and one for the import into the new version:

Note: The 1.2, 1.2.2 and 1.2.3 released versions of this tool have a bug. To export databases from 1.2.2 or 1.2.3, you will need to use version 1.2.3.1 of the tool. To export databases from 1.2, you may use the 1.1 version of the tool.

Next, follow these steps to export data from the old version

  • Stop the old version of Continuum
  • Execute this command to create the builds.xml export file
java -Xmx512m -jar data-management-cli-1.2.x-app.jar -buildsJdbcUrl jdbc:derby:${old.continuum.home}/data/databases/continuum -mode EXPORT -directory backups

Then, follow these steps to import the data to the new version

  • Start the new version of Continuum to create the new data model, but do not configure it.
  • Stop Continuum
  • Execute this command to import the builds data from the xml file you created earlier:
java -Xmx512m -jar data-management-cli-1.3.2-app.jar -buildsJdbcUrl jdbc:derby:${new.continuum.home}/data/databases/continuum -mode IMPORT -directory backups -strict

Note: Remove -strict when importing data from 1.3.1 to 1.3.x to ignore unrecognized tags due to model changes.

Finally, be aware that sometimes the NEXT_VAL values in the SEQUENCE_TABLE need to be adjusted.

  • Before starting Continuum for the first time after the import, connect to the db with a client like Squirrel SQL and check the values in the NEXT_VAL column of the SEQUENCE_TABLE.
  • Values must be greater than the max id value in each table.
  • For example, the next value of “org.apache.maven.continuum.model.Project” must be greater than the greatest id in Project table.
  • Here are some example SQL statements. You may need to add or remove lines depending on the contents of your database.
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(systemconfiguration_id)+1 from SYSTEMCONFIGURATION) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.maven.continuum.model.system.SystemConfiguration';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(id)+1 from BUILDQUEUE) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.maven.continuum.model.project.BuildQueue';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(id)+1 from SCHEDULE) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.maven.continuum.model.project.Schedule';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(id)+1 from BUILDDEFINITION) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.maven.continuum.model.project.BuildDefinition';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(id)+1 from LOCALREPOSITORY) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.continuum.model.repository.LocalRepository';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(id)+1 from PROJECTGROUP) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.maven.continuum.model.project.ProjectGroup';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(scmresult_id)+1 from SCMRESULT) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.maven.continuum.model.scm.ScmResult';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(projectdependency_id)+1 from PROJECTDEPENDENCY) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.maven.continuum.model.project.ProjectDependency';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(id)+1 from BUILDDEFINITIONTEMPLATE) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.maven.continuum.model.project.BuildDefinitionTemplate';
UPDATE SEQUENCE_TABLE set NEXT_VAL = (select max(id)+1 from ABSTRACTPURGECONFIGURATION) WHERE SEQUENCE_NAME='org.apache.continuum.model.repository.AbstractPurgeConfiguration';

Now you can start your new version of Continuum.

Reference: http://continuum.apache.org/docs/1.3.6/installation/upgrade.html

 

 

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Apache Continuum Version 1.3.6 Beta 1 – What’s new in Apache Continuum ?

apache-continuum-version-136-beta-1

The Apache Continuum team have released a beta of Apache Continuum 1.3.6.

Apache Continuum is a continuous integration server, which offers automated builds, role-based security, release management and integration with build tools and source control management systems. The project aims to improve quality and maintain a consistent build environment.

This beta introduces updates to the error handling if deleting a project fails, and has fixed the invalid links when generating pdf of continuum-docs. Untested platforms have been removed from the installation docs, and the LDAP configuration documentation has been updated.

A PDF version of the Continuum docs is planned for some point in the future. See the Release Notes for more information.

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Read About Windows 7 Deployment Best Practices

windows-7-deployment-best-practices

Windows 7 Deployment Best Practices

This week, I and my colleagues are at the IT Business Edge Midmarket CIO Summit, where we are focusing on the needs and concerns of CIOs in mid-sized businesses and government organizations. I’m doing the talk on Windows 7 deployment best practices and to prepare for that talk, I’ve interviewed around 10 companies that have either deployed Windows 7 or are in trials with it. In Don Tennant’s CIO panel last night, he asked how their trials were going and the CIOs who responded gave answers that are consistent with what I have found. The trials are going vastly better than expected and a high percentage of CIOs appear to be major fans of the offering. Given that I couldn’t find a single CIO that liked Windows Vista, this is certainly a dramatic change.

Let’s talk about what is going right and I’ll make recommendations at the end.

The Advantage of a Maintenance Release

Windows 7 is a Maintenance Release — and Maintenance Releases historically — are more reliable and vastly better liked by IT and users than the initial release of a new product. Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows 7 were all maintenance releases and generally were better received than Windows 95, Windows NT and Windows Vista. Windows 2000 and Windows ME were exceptions. Windows 2000 was a primary release but because of the massive testing for Y2K it actually went in reasonably well, and Windows ME should have been a second Maintenance Release but they made too many changes and didn’t do enough testing and it was horrid. As a result, Windows 2000 behaved more like a Maintenance Release and Windows ME a primary, almost a 1.0, release. The first was widely deployed; the second was avoided like the plague.

A Maintenance Release seems to work better because it focuses on tuning and user-interface simplification. The core aspects of the product remain largely unchanged from the prior service patched product. As a result, the Maintenance release is a vastly more mature product out of the gate. Windows 7, based on testing results, is behaving consistently well, like a Maintenance Release should.

Key Benefits

The review and deployment sites indicated they were seeing a number of strong benefits with Windows 7 over Windows XP. These benefits include much stronger IT control, which has resulted in better reliability for the product because there are fewer employee-driven problems. IT can better block unapproved activities and IT is better able to remotely correct mistakes that do get through.

CIOs appear to be using Windows 7 to significantly extend their PC use cycles for at least another three years and for up to 10 years total. They are seeing performance improvements and getting good installation results on hardware that is up to seven years old.

Security improvements, particularly for government sites, are one of the big reasons for moving to the product and Bitlocker is being used widely in the trials and deployments to protect company data. In addition, the protections against malware are making it much harder for employees to install it, reducing breakage.

With the reduction or elimination of support for Windows XP, problems with that platform are now increasing and the quality of support for Windows 7 appears higher. This is consistent with Microsoft practice, as it tends to put its best support resources on the new platform and discontinue support for any platform that is two versions back. Sites are reporting almost no driver issues — they had been experiencing increasing driver problems with new hardware and Windows XP as core vendors stopped doing driver updates for XP some time ago.

One feature of Windows 7 that dovetailed very well with Windows Server 2008 is Branch Cache for companies that were using it successfully to improve remote office performance. Windows Server 2008, in most cases, was either being rolled out before or concurrently with Windows 7 in most of the sites I spoke with.

Best Practices

The most compelling justification, from a financial standpoint, to rolling out Windows 7 this year is extending the life of existing hardware up to four additional years. Against the avoided hardware cost, the cost of the OS and deployment services appears trivial. Be aware, however, that system memory needs to be assured on any system built before 2008 because both Windows Vista and Windows 7 use memory heavily. If the memory is faulty or mismatched, intermittent and hard-to-diagnose failures will result. After 2008, the vendors put in practices that better tested system memory before shipment.

Big Bang deployments continue to work better because everyone is put on the same software platforms and support is better able to deal with any problems consistently. However, Windows 7 interoperates well with Windows XP and phased deployments remain the most common way these CIOs plan to roll out the offering.

Extended trials are showcasing few problems but also showing that the benefits of putting a contained group on Windows 7 for an extended period before deployment is worth the effort. Most sites are deploying to their own IT organizations first and then six or so months later, after all problems are fully understood and most mitigated, rolling out to the rest of the company.

Tools

There are a number of Microsoft tools that companies are recommending based on their experiences. Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager is being used heavily to properly provision reimaged PCs in large numbers. This tool, which was developed with extensive feedback from IT, has proven to be a huge help in terms of matching the PC configurations to the organizations and employees they have been deployed to.

The Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit has formed the basis for early adapter installations and been one of the primary reasons so few applications have failed after deployment or stalled deployments. This tool goes to the core of why an impressive number of CIOs seem to like Windows 7.

The Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack has helped early adopting organizations to move up to two-thirds of their desktop applications to servers and off the desktop itself. hey are primarily using App-V.

Other Considerations

As companies begin to think about rolling out Windows 7, there are a number of other things that they are considering at the same time. Remote access is expensive and paying for multiple remote data plans excessively expensive. As a result, they are revising WAN access policies and starting to favor plans and phones that allow tethering.

Some of the firms that are significantly trying to extend aging hardware cycles are looking at employee purchase and access to some corporate resources by employee-owned machines so that individuals who feel they need something newer can purchase the solution themselves.

In much the same fashion, firms are looking at PC alternatives and thinking of starting trials with tablets, smartphones or smartbooks to supplement their PC products.

Bundled bids are being considered, given that Windows Server 2008 is often deployed in the same window to both eliminate vendor complexity and get the strongest volume discounts for both the servers and desktops.

Recommended Considerations

Based on my experience, I suggest you consider some additional items. First, if you are eliminating a vendor, make sure there are no dependencies you don’t know about. One of the worst problems I ever ran into was when the CIO of a firm I was working for eliminated a vendor who also turned out to be our largest corporate customer. That was nearly a career-ending decision.

Look at monitors and interfaces if you are rolling out new hardware. DisplayPort is an increasing option but your existing monitors may not support it, and it isn’t yet universally used.

In looking back at my conversations with these early deployment and trial sites, a number of things occurred to me. One is that if ROI is used consistently for purchases like this, the competency in doing ROI analysis improves and the success rate with the CFO improves as well. This deployment is a huge opportunity to rethink what actually goes on the desktop and you can use it to reduce your desktop complexity and desktop operating costs significantly.

Vendors should be held to the results they share with you for ROI calculations and if the sold benefits don’t result, this should be taken into consideration for future business. So many deployments like this are managed tactically and often the results suffer.

Spend some time talking to similar firms who have already deployed Windows 7 or who are also in trials. Events like this CIO forum are a great place to meet folks like this.

Generally deployments like this work vastly better with new hardware and given the relatively low cost of that hardware, you may be better off with it rather than extending the life of the existing stuff. As vendors focused on cost containment several years ago, they designed for three-year life cycles. The chance of catastrophic hardware failure goes up sharply after thee years as a result.

Particularly in the first half of the year, Microsoft is looking for early deployment sites and will make available resources for free that can substantially reduce your cost of deployment. In addition, because you will then be visible, it will tend to go to greater lengths to keep you happy. Firms have found that invaluable in the past.

Make sure you have enough system memory,. Systems with less than 2 GB of memory are very slow and users will likely complain about the result. With a focus on putting applications and data on servers, consider low-capacity SSD drives over high-capacity magnetic drives. They are more reliable, dramatically faster, and help force the employee to put information on servers where it belongs.

 

Wrapping Up

It amazes me that I found no CIO who didn’t like Windows 7 and an impressive number that seemed to actually love it. Don’t be surprised that, after your testing and deployment, you actually think better of the platform and Microsoft as a result. That seems to be the outcome so far.

Article Source:

http://www.itbusinessedge.com/cm/blogs/enderle/windows-7-deployment-best-practices/?cs=40045&page=1

 

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Syncro Soft Announces New Release of Syncro SVN Client

syncro-svn-client

Syncro Soft Announces New Release of Syncro SVN Client

Syncro Soft Ltd, the producer of Syncro SVN Client, has announced the immediate availability of version 5.1 of its Subversion (SVN) client.

PR Log (Press Release)Mar 15, 2010 – Release date: March 15, 2010

Version 5.1 of Syncro SVN Client improves working copy load time, automatically refreshes the working copy on external file changes, makes repository browsing more responsive, adds support for repository imports at file level, adds support for replacing resources, improves handling of obstructed resources, improves history support, allows creating branches/tags directly from the repository and offers options to print or save as image a revision graph.

For the complete list of features please visit http://www.syncrosvnclient.com

New in version 5.1:

A working copy is cached, so when it is loaded next time in the Working Copy view, the operation will be much faster than in the previous versions of Syncro SVN Client.

The working copy is automatically refreshed if changes are detected in the file system. This is done in order to update the state of the resources modified by external applications.

You can configure the repository connections timeout and stop non-responsive repository browsing operations.

Added support for importing files into a repository.

Working copy resources can be replaced with their HEAD or BASE revision.

Operations correctly take into account obstructed resources.

The history for a resource deleted from the repository but which is still present in the working copy is now displayed by properly detecting the revision at which the resource was deleted.

The Branch/Tag action can be performed directly on the repository, without having a working copy previously checked out.

Generated revision graphs can be printed or saved as images.

Pricing and Availability
Syncro SVN Client with One Year Maintenance Pack costs $59
Syncro SVN Client Site License with One Year Maintenance Pack costs $2970
Volume discount rates are available starting with 5 licenses.

Syncro SVN Client can be run on Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, Solaris.

To purchase please visit the Syncro SVN Client store at
http://www.syncrosvnclient.com/buy.html
Syncro SVN Client 5 can be freely evaluated for 30 days from
http://www.syncrosvnclient.com/download.html

About Syncro Soft LTD

Syncro Soft is a privately held software company founded in 1998 with a large area of expertise in XML technologies: XML Schema, Relax NG, Schematron, XSLT, XPath and XQuery. The main product oXygen XML Editor provides the best coverage of the today XML technologies; it complies with the established standards released by W3C and other organizations and enhances developer productivity through an intuitive and innovative XML IDE. Syncro Soft is a member of W3C.

oXygen is a registered trademark of Syncro Soft in the U.S and other countries. Subversion is a trademark of CollabNet. Any other trademarks or service marks contained herein are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE: Syncro Soft Ltd.
support@syncrosvnclient.com
http://www.syncrosvnclient.com/

# # #

Syncro Soft provides consulting services that are focused on creating Java based XML solutions. Other aspect is the integration of the XML Editor within your content management system.

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