~sagar

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 enters Beta-1 today!. The next generation of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform.
If you are interested in trying the Beta, download available.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 blurs the lines between virtual, physical, and cloud computing to address shifts taking place in the modern IT environment.

The following are some of the many improvements and new features that are included in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 Beta:

Power management: tickless kernel and improvements through the application stack to reduce wakeups, power consumption measurement by Powertop, Power Management (ASPM, ALPM), and adaptive system tuning by Tuned, all enhance more efficient system power usage.

Next generation networking: comprehensive IPv6 support (NFS 4, CIFS, mobile support [RFC 3775], ISATAP support), FCoE, iSCSI, and a new and improved mac 802.11 wireless stack.

Reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS): system-level enhancements from industry collaborations make the most of hardware RAS capabilities and NUMA architectures.

Fine-grained control and management: improved scheduler and better resource management in the kernel via Completely Fair Scheduler (CFS) and Control Groups (CG).

Scalable filesystems: ext4 file system provides support for larger file sizes and significantly reduces repair times over ext3. XFS® is a high-performance file system that supports extremely large files and is optimized for large data transfers.

Virtualization: KVM includes performance improvements and new features, sVirt protects the guest and host from unauthorized access, SR-IOV and NPIV deliver high-performance virtual use of physical devices, and libvirt leverages kernel resource management functionality.

Enterprise security enhancement: SELinux includes improved ease of use, application sandboxing, and significantly increased coverage of system services, while SSSD provides unified access to identity and authentication services as well as caching for off-line use.

Development and runtime support: SystemTap improvements, ABRT is a new framework for simple collection and reporting of bug information, and improvements are made to GCC (version 4.4.3), glibc (version 2.11.1), and GDB (version 7.0.1).

View the full release notes in detail.

Next time when the system starts sneezing or coughing with the following symptoms:
The dialog work process may crash sporadically when you reprint from the graphic display of a spool request from transaction SP01. The same problem may also occur for the raw display of a spool request. When you forward or download a spool request, a dump ASSIGN_TYPE_ILLEGAL_CAST occurs in the function RSPO_SPOOLDATA_WRITE.

Check for the following Kernel Patch level for the respective release:

SAP KERNEL 7.00 32-BIT SP239
SAP KERNEL 7.10 32-BIT SP184
SAP KERNEL 7.00 64-BIT SP239
SAP KERNEL 7.00 64-BIT UNICODE SP239
SAP KERNEL 7.10 64-BIT UNICODE SP184
SAP KERNEL 7.10 64-BIT SP184
SAP KERNEL 7.01 64-BIT SP077
SAP KERNEL 7.01 64-BIT UNICODE SP077
SAP KERNEL 7.11 64-BIT SP071
SAP KERNEL 7.11 64-BIT UNICODE SP071

Please do not apply the following kernel patches which have been created between 23.12.2009 and 14.01.2010:
6.40 315
7.00 237, 238
7.01 75, 76
7.10 183
7.11 69, 70

The following fixed kernels are available:

6.40 Check OSS
7.00 239
7.01 77
7.10 183
7.11 71

Also check the following notes:
Note 1422843 - Wrong deletion date in spool request
Note 1425811 - Dialog work process crashes for spool display

I am going to look for and take as many as options…

If you believe the Internet should make life better. Join us the week of September 14-21, 2009, as we take action to make a difference in our communities, our world, our Web. Mozilla Service Week-Be The Difference!

The Web Can Make a Difference

We believe a group of committed, energized, service-minded people can accomplish almost anything. That’s why we’re harnessing the power of the Web and the passion of the Mozilla community to see how big a difference we can make in one week.

What We Can Do

Tell a friend about Mozilla Service Week. And then tell a stranger. (Or that guy at work who’s a whiz with computers.) Send an email to friends and acquaintances telling them about Mozilla Service Week.

The more people you tell about Mozilla Service Week, the more opportunities we have to find people who want to pledge their support – or ask for our help. Help us recruit more volunteers! Download site badges and flyers to spread the word about Mozilla Service Week.

Get the word out by posting news, video or pictures on your blog, Twitter or Identi.Ca, and video and photo sites. Tag your posts with “mozservice09″ so they’re easy to find.

Now you know what to do in a better way… go on people… be the difference!

To further support customers in reducing the total cost of ownership, SAP devised a synchronized release schedule for all core SAP Business Suite 7 applications—SAP ERP, CRM, SRM, SCM and PLM—designed to meet the specific business requirements of all industries.

Other key capabilities of the new SAP Business Suite include:

* Enhancement packages will help customers reduce cost and complexity by delivering future innovations in a minimally-disruptive fashion. Enhancement packages allow customers to select and deploy only the functionality they need without upgrading their solution—leaving long implementations, upgrades and disintegrated point solutions in the past.
* Value Scenarios focus on solving industry-specific business issues with end-to-end processes that span across lines of business and application boundaries. Value scenarios can be implemented in a step-wise fashion and deployed as customers need them. To further accelerate implementation, SAP Consulting offers implementation services to help speed the success of SAP Business Suite projects.
* Expanded industry-specific footprint addresses critical business requirements, across all industries, including enhanced supply chain and warehousing processes for trading, logistics and manufacturing industries; improved customer lifecycle management solutions for service and trading industries; investigative case management, tax and revenue management and other service processes for public sector organizations; and advanced metering infrastructure integration and deregulation compliance solutions for the utility industry.
* Harmonized user interfaces provide a more simplified and consistent user experience when implementing a process that spans across multiple applications
* Embedded analytics tools help customers take action on insights gained across demand, production, inventory, sales and supplier activities across their extended business networks
* Improved software lifecycle management through integration with the SAP NetWeaver® technology platform and the new SAP Business Suite can reduce landscape complexity by consolidating instances and transferring transactional data from retired systems to SAP Business Suite.
* 2,800 enterprise services enable the flexible, modular development of differentiating one’s own practices.
* Solution manager allows SAP administrators to implement content changes to SAP Business Suite applications, which reduces downtime, accelerates implementations and reduces the total cost of ownership of the IT landscape

“The general availability of the new SAP Business Suite marks the arrival of a clear path forward for companies that struggle with the high cost and complexity created by disparate applications and middleware solutions,” said Jim Hagemann Snabe, member of the SAP Executive Board. “With the new SAP Business Suite, we continue to deliver on our promise to provide customers with market-leading services and solutions that deliver extraordinary value in today’s business environment.”

DOWNLOAD SAP’S TOP 10 WEBCASTS
Explore the Top 10 SAP Webcasts Viewed by Decision Makers
SAP provides a comprehensive range of enterprise software applications and business solutions to empower every aspect of your business. Now you can explore the top 10 Webcasts from SAP.com in a single location.

Webcasts include:

Weathering The Economy
Although economic downturn is an inevitable part of the business cycle, its impact does not have to be the same for every business. While many companies struggle, the prepared ones can thrive in tough times. Better yet, smart companies see economic uncertainty as a rare opportunity to expand as competitors pull back. The “how”, however, lies within the collective wisdom of companies like yours.
The New Face of Business Intelligence
Discover how trends such as consolidation and rationalization are transforming the business intelligence landscape from both a functionality and a marketplace perspective
Find out more about the drivers behind SAP’s acquisition of Business Objects and how Business Objects software can add and extend value to SAP customers
Hear from a leading analyst and an SAP expert on recommendations and next steps for SAP customers embarking on or redesigning a business intelligence strategy
SAP Customer Relationship Management
Learn how the latest release of SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) can help you develop and execute customer-driven strategies by providing a simple and powerful foundation to support collaborative end-to-end processes. See a demonstration of the new functionality in SAP CRM, including the new user interface, next-generation trade promotion management, business communications management, and marketing development funds management.
Customer Enterprise SOA Deployment Strategies and Drivers
SAP has executed an extensive customer program in which more than 150 enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA) customer projects have been analyzed in terms of deployment strategies and impact to IT and business. Hear a compelling selection of true-life examples, from small projects to bigger strategic deployments of enterprise SOA, including Nortel Networks as a customer proof point.
Closing the Gap Between Strategy and Execution by John Schwarz
John Schwarz is CEO of Business Objects, an SAP company, and a member of the SAP Executive Board. He is responsible for all aspects of the Business Objects’ operations, including the go-to-market activities and development, as well as the integration of the SAP Business Objects unit into SAP.
Delivering Results with Business Intelligence
High-performance organizations recognize that business intelligence is a strategic imperative that requires no more justification than operational applications, e-mail, or a local area network. Learn how Business Objects, an SAP company, can meet all of your strategic requirements while ensuring delivery of the right information to the right users at the right time.
Business Process Management in Action: No Detours from Model to Execution
Learn about modeling, executing, and monitoring business processes and business rules without having to write a single line of code. Hear how to utilize tools based on the business process modeling notation (BPMN) to build composite processes that interact with users and integrate with back-end systems through enterprise services. Learn how customers use this technology to manage differentiating business scenarios.
Building an Enterprise SOA with SAP NetWeaver and Enterprise Services
While organizations want faster and continuous process innovation in order to gain a competitive edge, they must simultaneously maintain the stability of their core processes. Hear how SAP Business Suite applications and the SAP NetWeaver technology platform provide packaged enterprise services and the technology platform for business and IT agility and standardization.
Business Objects: The New Face of Business Intelligence
Learn how the new business intelligence (BI) platform delivers a complete suite of functionalities to all people across your organization. Hear customer stories of how Business Objects delivers a complete solution – from the world standard in reporting to best-of-breed information management – all on a single platform optimized for your SAP environment.
Delivering Superior Customer Value through End-to-End Business Processes
Learn how you can leverage the SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) application as well as other SAP Business Suite applications to support end-to-end processes in sales, marketing, and service. Hear SAP and BayerMaterial Science AG describe how you can use SAP solutions to bring unique value to customer-facing processes within your organization and launch successful initiatives.

GET YOUR HOT TOPIC WHITE PAPERS

Would you like to receive hot topic white papers for your business? Subscribe now and every month, SAP will e-mail you a new white paper based on topics specifically related to your enterprise. Choose from the following:
Company Growth & Efficiency
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I was at my Chennai office to conduct training and I called it as “SAP on Linux”
I started by Thursday for two days training, to meet some of my counterparts and friends out there.

The class was packed with around 20 new joiners, who have just started to venture into SAP Basis. I started my session by keeping in mind: On the long run; if they have to make a choice between Windows and Linux/UNIX on SAP, there wouldn’t be a second thought to have the fun with Linux.

I picked up RedHat Linux for the demo session; since I had deployed FIVE SAP systems at my Bangalore office and they are running well on RedHat AS-4 and CentOS-5 [The number FIVE really matters for me]

I would like to paste the contents of some of the important slides:

0.ENV_VARIABLE settings :

On Bash shell before you run ./sapinst as root


• JAVA_HOME=/opt/java1.4;
export JAVA_HOME
• SAPINST_JRE_HOME=/opt/java1.4/jre;
export SAPINST_JRE_HOME
• PATH=$PATH:/opt/java1.4/bin;
export PATH
• PATH=$PATH:/opt/java1.4/jre/bin;
export PATH


1. Aditional Package Information for RHEL-4

: rpm -ivh

• glibc-2.3.4-2.9.x86_64.rpm
• kernel-smp-2.6.9-42.EL.x86_64.rpm [The kernel patch is important]
• glibc-common-2.3.4-2.9.x86_64.rpm
• mkinitrd-4.2.1.6-1.x86_64.rpm
• IBMJava2-AMD64-142-SDK-1.4.2-7.0.x86_64.rpm [For Java]
• saplocales-2.3.4-3.x86_64.rpm
• libaio-0.3.103-3.x86_64.rpm‎ [To avoid Oracle: error while loading Libraries libio.so.1 ]

3. Important SAP Notes

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5: Installation and Upgrade (Note 1048303)
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 and 4: Installation and upgrade (Note 722273)

I packed up on Sunday night after the fun with the same ‘ol feelings; Chennai, it’s still not a classic rock


Tail:
Closely an year back at the same workplace: My first SAP installation [SAP-CRM4] on “ ONE ” server out of 30 other running SAP servers.
I proposed to do it on Linux, but it didn’t happened since the senior was comfortable with Windows-2003. I said to myself “My call is not too far but FAR and the count started from FIVE”

Current Music:- The temple of the king by Rainbow -

The party over and my virtual machine is ready for topping with SAP.

One point: I have done a kernel upgrade from 2.6.18-8 to 2.6.18-8.1.8 at the guest OS level; in fact the dom0 machine too.

Heck with, I wanna know what would happen if I use the normal kernel on my PV/guest_OS and I change the default kernel-2.6.18-8.1.8.el5xen to kernel-2.6.18-8.1.8.el5 :)

[fubar@blxvirtual ~]# xm reboot cenos5v

screwed! [Didn’t came up]

Later I have resolved the issue. All I have done

mount my image

[foobar@blxvirtual sagar]# lomount -diskimage /var/lib/xen/images/cenos5v.img -partition 1 /vipin

[foobar@blxvirtual sagar]# cd /vipin/grub/grub.conf

change default 1 to 0 :)

Happy Xenning around !!!

Its been another work-around and Xen is the opted card I chose to play.

Making a virtualized environment on CentOS-5 [final] linux distro and SAP on top of both.

Happy Xenning around!!!

I was interested to make some points which I mentioned below at work-place, and I was not satisfied with the way it went

and I named : Let There be Light and Freedom

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
-M K Gandhi

I am not here for any Anti-Microsoft-ism or a flame war, but the happenings and the hot keywords buzzing around, Linux, Open Source, Virtualization and Total Cost of Ownership [TCO].

Linux: The Choice of Freedom

Today Linux is being used everywhere. Linux has proved it’s suitability for every workload–even the largest, most business-mission critical applications. Its security, performance and economic benefits can be applied to every level in the IT infrastructure. On the other hand Open source is powerful and it’s un-stoppable. The major Linux vendors like Red Hat and Novell/SUSE Linux are built on the open standards.

Of course, Linux dominates. The quality of Open Source software is well established. The Figure 1 shows the ranking of most available servers on the Internet.

OpenSource Rules: Open Source is powerful. Open Source is unstoppable

According to “Wiki” the online encyclopedia, Open source is a set of principles and practices that promote access to the design and production of goods and knowledge. The term is most commonly applied to the source code of software that is available to the general public with relaxed or non-existent intellectual property restrictions. This allows users to create software content through incremental individual effort or through collaboration.

Another important point to note that Open Source software differs significantly from “freeware”. Freeware is software distributed without a fee, but without source code access but Open Source software allows anyone to inspect, identifies, and resolve flaws in the code.

The Open Source model doesn’t hide its code like Microsoft which claims that secret code is more secure. Although that seems reasonable at first glance, in reality it is patently false. When I heard this statement for the first time, I took a little while for a conclusion. Hundreds of thousands of Open Source developers, testers, bug-fixers and maintainers work as a community around the globe to make sure the flexibility, innovation, reliability, faster development of the project they working on. Sourceforge.net, a leading website for Open Source software, hosts over 130,000 projects and has 1.4 million registered users. This power exceeds that of even the mightiest proprietary software company. What would be your conclusion, by seeing the Figure 2 – Open Source movement.

Virtualization: Many to One

Virtualization is a technology with wide range of options to improve the usage of the hardware resources and greater potentials to reduce the Total Cost of Ownership [TCO]. All most all Linux distribution now bundled with virtualization capabilities and Microsoft may have it’s built in server virtualization technology with the upcoming Windows Server-2008. Now in the market with their Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2

Why do we require virtualization technique and how does it reduce the cost.
Think about a business model which requires to develop and test its business applications on different platforms, which in turn required different hardware, its administration, space requirement at datacenter or inside a server rack. How do you feel if all these platform and test environment in one hardware with same performance? I think this simplifies and accelerate the productivity with low power usage. That is what virtualization does.

The most common virtualization technologies are:
0. Operating System Virtualization
1. Server Virtualization
2. Desktop Virtualization
3. Application Virtualization
4. Storage Virtualization

The major players of virtual machines are XEN, KVM and VMware with their own pros and cons.

Redhat and SUSE Linux run their Para-virtualization technology on Xen, an open source virtual machine system.

The decision makers and the IT managers of an organization consider the fact and myth about TCO, when they venture into any kind of technology deployment. This is critical and important because it’s a long term deal with the technology. Hope you might have seen the Microsoft Ad campaign/survey over the internet named “Get the Fact” Microsoft Vs Linux over TCO.

If you have already seen or ever get a chance to read about Get the Fact whitepapers in future, would you consider the following “facts”

The study NOT talk about Client Access License [CAL], the key section of a product’s licensing cost. Linux doesn’t charge you a license fee for every user accessing the server like Microsoft does.

Redhat Linux says, their subscriptions are not tied to a machine. When the hardware requirements change, Redhat subscription can be transferred to a replacement or a new machine for no additional cost. For one annual subscription, the customer gets access to the technology, documentation, updates, upgrades and un-limited technical support.

According to Novell’s Suse Linux, the figures are based on a subscription fee of $50 for Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop [SLED], compared to $299 for a Windows Vista license, as well as additional maintenance fees of $86 for Vista Business. SLED costs $50 for one year and $125 for three years, compared to Vista’s $385 for one year and $557 for three years. Add in the fact that Novell’s SLED contains a version of the OpenOffice.org, an OpenSource office productivity suite while Microsoft Office costs an additional $400 to $500.

When the Robert Frances Group study, titled “TCO For Application Servers: Comparing Linux With Windows And Solaris” and commissioned by IBM, compared the cost of acquiring, implementing, and running an application server on Linux, Windows, and Sun Solaris, it found that Linux is 40% less expensive than a comparable x86-based Windows server and 54% less than a comparable Sparc-based Solaris server. The Linux server’s costs were $40,149, compared with $67,559 for Windows and $86,478 for Solaris.
Never follow the summary or wacky ads of a survey. Make sure you have got the information that how the authors collected and analyze the data on what basis. Does that really mean to your organization and technology. And finally who sponsored the survey, was it biased.

Conclusion:

Where do we see the world of OpenSource and Linux stand by today? If you still feel the darkness around you, all I have to say: Let there be light and freedom.

Reference:

0. Official Redhat linux website http://www.redhat.com/rhel/resource_center/
1. Novell Suse linux website http://www.novell.com/linux
2. Frances Group study, titled “TCO For Application Servers: Comparing Linux With Windows And Solaris” and commissioned by IBM.
3. Online encyclopedia, Wiki. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portal:Free_software
4. Succeeding with Open Source by Bernard Golden
5. The Practical Manager’s Guide to Open Source by Maria Winslow