gpoul's Out Of Memory Blog

Amazon this week announced a new cheaper storage option that has reduced guarantees for the durability of stored objects. Amazon calls this Reduced Redundancy Storage.

It’s 99.99% durable instead of 99.999999999% durable per storage object.

Interesting that they not only measure availability, but also durability of data. I’ve never seen that before. Not that I think the numbers are based on reality at all, but it kind of makes me nervous about how durable the storage of my bank’s data-center is ;-)

Today my Notes mail db was migrated to a pair of zLinux mainframes in Portsmouth as part of Project Big Green.

Migrating my Notes mail db was pretty painless given that most of the work was probably done by my colleagues who maintain the servers last night, but I’m still surprised how well it worked out considering the size of the effort. After all, the old Domino server I was on served a large part of eastern europe.

A few recent WebSphere announcements we presented last week at Impact 2010:

• WebSphere DataPower XC10 caching appliance – also known as the eXtreme Scale with SSD in a purple box
• WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance 2.0 – now featuring WebSphere Process Server support, multi-image pattern support, dynamic system management to add/remove capacity, intelligence for the runtime / WebSphere Virtual Enterprise features packaged as WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition Intelligent Management Pack for use with CloudBurst and Hypervisor Edition, and last but not least we now also support Red Hat Enterprise Linux in addition to SuSE Linux Enterprise Server
• CICS Transaction Server and WebSphere Application Server Feature Packs for Dynamic Scripting – Running WebSphere sMash with WebSphere Application Server V6.1/V7.0 or CICS Transaction Server for zOS V4.1.

Of course by reading it on this blog you’re at least a week late and you missed all the labs and presentations in Las Vegas, but there’s still enough time to prepare for Impact 2011 :-)

Yesterday I had the opportunity to play with a new T410s with the following specs:

i5-520M(2.4GHz), 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 14.1in 1440×900 LCD, Intel 5700MHD, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11agn wireless, WWAN option, Bluetooth, 1Gb Ether, UltraNav, Sec Chip, FPR, Camera, 6c Li-Ion, Win7 Pro 64

+ ThinkPad GOBI 2000 Broadband Option (part 78Y1399 / Qualcomm Datasheet)

You really have to see this thing to believe it. I think it’s currently the ThinkPad I’d buy if my MacBook died. At 21.1mm thick and 1.77kg/3.91lbs (with optical drive) it’s thinner and lighter than any MacBook Pro currently available. The SSD makes this TP extremely responsive and nice to use.

I was using the default Lenovo build with all the Lenovo ThinkVantage tools. While you really notice these tools being loaded on startup on my T61p they’re not even noticeable on the T410s. This is very nice given that these tools are really useful and now they just feel like a part of the OS.

In the time I played with it I didn’t really get used to the keyboard. It’s somehow different from my T61p and I sometimes seemed to type characters in an incorrect order. The TP also now has lights directly on the keyboard for mute and caps-lock, which is nice.

Unfortunately it only has one light for the wireless receivers; my T61p has separate indicators for when WWAN, WLAN, or bluetooth is activated. There is a software tool available (same as on the T61p) that will show the state of the wireless receivers separately and allows you to active/deactivate them.

Configuring the WWAN card with a T-Mobile Austria SIM through Access Connections worked instantly. I’m still confused by how easy it was.

I really like it; too bad it’s not mine ;-)

PM12112: CHANGE HOW PLUG-IN FINDS ANOTHER SERVER IF THE AFFINITY SERVER WAS ALREADY MARKED DOWN WHEN THE REQUEST ARRIVES:

When an affinity server is offline, the pending connections will be directed to the next server in the primaryserver list instead of distributed among the available servers. This can cause an overloading of the “next server” which can lead to a cascading failure situation.

I already blogged about open source versioning some time ago and what happens when you introduce multiple dependencies into your projects. More recently Bob Sutor discussed the issue of what happens when you use highly customized open source code. But how do you get your patches back into the upstream project so you don’t need to port all your customizations forward into new versions as they’re released, which can cause huge costs each time you have to integrate?

The decision seems to be easy. You needed a legal review to use open source in your commercial project anyway, so you get another approval to contribute your changes back. But what happens when the patch is not accepted or acceptance is dragged out for months? Open source projects usually don’t line up with your project schedule.

You’ll have to perform change integration anyways until the patch has been accepted upstream, but what will you do when the change is not accepted and you need to rework your patch for it to be accepted? Who’s going to pay for the costs associated with these changes? Who’s going to make sure that these changes are integrated into the software you developed based on the open source project and regression tested to make sure it performs as well as the old code?

I have a few ideas to address this type of situation, but their applicability varies depending on the project and what kind of open source project you might be using:

• The faithful approach: Don’t change the open source code and report issues to the bug tracker of the project and hope they’ll be fixed in a few days, months, or years.
• The painful approach: Plan for these continuous integrations and code rework and make them part of your schedule. It’s not easy to know how much cost will be associated with this and it’s probably not trivial to argue about them with a PM who wants to keep costs predictable, but that’s what “usually” happens when you change code that is owned and maintained by someone else.
• The commercial approach: Purchase a support contract for the open source code from someone who has project members with commit access on staff and have them fix the problem and integrate it upstream.
• The strategic approach: Have someone on staff who is a project member with commit access.

Did I miss any good ideas? Please feel free to share how you solve this problem in your organization!

Have you already migrated to V7.0 and want something new to play with? Want to port your application to something new and exciting?

Whatever your motivation, you can now participate in the WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Alpha program. If you choose to participate, please take the time to provide your feedback to help us improve the product! [via WebSphere Community Blog]

Update 7/5: The WebSphere Application Server V8.0 Beta is now available.

Jon Schwartz got a new blog and recently wrote a quite entertaining post about intellectual property and his experiences with BillG, SteveB, and SteveJ. If you’re interested in a few interesting stories, you should check this out. :-)

Due to the enthusiastic attendance of our IBM Software Experience last year we also planned some great workshops for you in 2010!

We start in Q1 with a workshop about Rational Application Framework for WebSphere and WebSphere CloudBurst Appliance and a separate workshop a week later about WebSphere MQ File Transfer Edition.

We hope you’ll enjoy them as much as the ones we had last year! – If you have suggestions for workshops in 2H10, please let us know!

At the IBM site this announcement was hard to miss. I can’t wait to see it in action.