Archive for the ‘interlinux’ Category

DIASER RoadMap, milestones and release cycle

Tuesday, August 17th, 2010

I though it worth explaining the DIASER release cycle very briefly. Software release cycle is open to interpretation. For example; some web applications are in a perpetual beta state.

I chose to use a fairly formal cycle through various stages, this is appropriate for disaster recovery software:

2005:2006 research/design/testing
2007 – prototype
2008 – alpha-development
2009 – alpha
2010 – beta-1
2010 – beta-2 <– currently
2010 Dec – beta-3
2011 Feb – Release candidate
2011 March – Production (Stable)
…
2011 April -> new versions

Currently DIASER is beta-2. beta-3 milestone is planned for December 2010. See here for more details http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_release_life_cycle

The Current ROADMAP – or burn-down in AGILE speak, projects a production release early 2011. http://diaser.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/diaser/ROADMAP_DEV

June – November 2010 (beta 3)
==============================
main application
—————-
node migrate adjustments for sudo
network availability checks and reports
option to change node role identity
XMPP(SNMP) interface
prune archives
optional delete volumes from source that have been replicated
sponsored addition to community Linux distributions
listing, upload to: http://perlisalive.com http://pause.perl.org
mixed non sudo and sudo node install, currently either/or
security audit and enhancements: restrict uid command execution
re-factoring – checks against Perl::Critic
more and consistent error handling
tool for filling and auto-replicating retrospective data slots

*diaser_webgui_1
————————
request location and name of conf file
configuration tool
–stats pie chart
–list formatted output
–logs
–retrieve
package as dist, rpm and deb

For later versions
=============
detailed backup software integration study, docs/code?
self healing functionality – if transfers failed or were missed
enhanced archive validation
S3/Google/RackSpace API descriptors for volumes (with price/storage limiter)
automatic node fail-over i.e. a->c if b is down (using node identity
change)

– Damian

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TransferSummit/UK 2010 – an impression

Friday, June 25th, 2010

Surrounded by stunning buildings lit up by the bright sunlight, Keble College in spotless Oxford was the perfect international setting for TransferSummet/UK 2010. “…a forum for business executives and members of the academic and research community to discuss requirements, challenges, and opportunities in the use, development, licensing, and future of Open Source technology”.

I recently decided to take the opportunity to work for my company, Interlinux Ltd, full time after a three year employment contract within academia. The summit presentations have been of a very high standard and relevant to the Interlinux Ltd business strategy; to primarily provide consultancy and services to UK Higher Education. This summit has been the ideal opportunity to undertake some business development, networking and product awareness; I look forward to seeing the results of my attendance over the coming weeks.

The combination of talking with other attendees and the presentations, has left me with an optimistic picture of the current state of the open source industry and a clearer view of its relationship with academia and open source development communities. I am left picturing a triangle; with academia, the open source business model and open source development communities at each of the corners with a strong relationship along the lines. The Red Hat speaker, Phil Andrews, spoke of the fine balance between generating commercial revenue and investing in the creative and innovative non-commercial communities that are so vital to the generation of open source code. Too much commercial focus then the community can become disenfranchised, too much investment in the community and shareholders become concerned. After talking with academics I can see that academia faces a similar challenge. This summit will assist with the adoption and general acceptance of open source as a viable tool to satisfy many of the immediate and long-term technology requirements within academia and serve as a reference for business. It is apparent, after experiencing the commercial talks and sponsorship, that many of the jagged edges around commercial open source are naturally smoothing out as time progresses.

It is clear to me now, that the open source business, academic and community triangle, mentioned above, has overlapped in history but it is not quite apparent on the surface. Apache httpd server has academic grass roots, commercial application and a strong community with governance provided by the Apache Software Foundation. The president of ASF, Justin Erenkrantz delivered an enthusiastic talk about the foundation. A member of an open source development community could also be delivering commercial open source services and be an academic! Certainly I talked to a number of attendees who resided at two corners of the triangle. The future of continued and more widespread adoption of open source technologies partly depends on finding and building upon common ground between open source service providers and academia. I have experienced plenty of evidence there is common ground the past two days.

– Damian

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Version 1.0.2b2 of DIASER now available

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Version 1.0.2b2 Release notes:

26/05/10 – This release features updated documentation; including man page, manual and quick-start guide. SELinux warnings have been removed after further installation and operation tests. A sudo –lock option functionality has now been implemented. Template files for a web GUI tool, which will be released separately, have been added to SVN.

OS files available:

diaser-1.0.2.tar.gz
diaser-1.0.2-1.noarch.rpm
diaser_1.0.2_i386.deb
diaser-dist-1.0.2.tar.gz
diaser-1.0.2-1.src.rpm

http://sourceforge.net/projects/diaser/files/

http://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=258272&id=286943

Latest flash configure demo for v1.0.2b2:

http://diaser.org.uk/about.html#configure

– Damian

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Version 1.0.1b2pre of DIASER now available

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

New features;

stop, pause, resume operations, log parser to condense-display selectable amount of logs from each node. Better stats reporting; disk usage, average diff size, archive storage and list of volumes archived. Time-extend operation adding extra storage structure. Bandwidth calcs can retrieve and build a utility to assisting storage calculations. Makefile, spec and Debian packaging structure; rpm, deb or dist-tarball. Significant documentation updates including a man page and flash configure demo. More bugs have been resolved; time-zone compensation and other minor fixes.

OS files available:
diaser-1.0.1-1.noarch.rpm
diaser_1.0.1_i386.deb
diaser-1.0.1.tar.gz
diaser-1.0.1-1.src.rpm
http://sourceforge.net/projects/diaser/files/
http://sourceforge.net/news/?group_id=258272&id=286943

New flash configure demo:
http://diaser.org.uk/about.html#configure

--Damian


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Interlinux Ltd – the next step…

Thursday, May 13th, 2010

I have some coding time which I’m using to bring DIASER to version 1 beta2, the pace of development has remained steady, the only way to work this one as errors take time to become apparent. This is a major milestone and hope to make the release available in rpm and deb package format. Interlinux Ltd have taken on a JISC development project for a synthesis programme, the work is designed to help support Open Source development in Higher Education. I have been sent a chunk of reading material from a small business advisor too; my task list is growing but not to the point of fear. Fortunately, before I left the University of Southampton on the 4th May 2010, preparations had been made for running a small business.

My wife and I are taking a holiday soon then I will attend the Open Source Watch Transfer Summit. This will be the perfect opportunity to share information, ideas and experience as well as an excellent networking opportunity, attending in my capacity as a freelance cloud engineer and developer. Other networking events July onwards include BCS Hampshire and of course the next Hampshire Linux Users Group meeting to be held at IBM Hursley. We, Interlinux Ltd partners, are now considering the options to step up the marketing of an ebook Interlinux Ltd self-published earlier this year in January; Walking With the Elephants – a short ebook designed give the reader deeper insight into a small scale, technical Open Source software development and collaboration. The ebook is not technical, pitched at the lay man as well as more experienced open source readers.

Talking of clouds, I recently signed up the Rack Space cloud service and am very impressed with the speed at which a pay-as-you-go virtual server could be created; from initial contact to setting up apache on CentOS happened in under an hour. Super. Cloud Files API Rack Space use for storage in context of DIASER is significant, this will be as well as the Amazon S3 API. These interfaces are planned for beta3. DSI Space Invaders is moving forward quickly, now at version 1 beta2 and available as an rpm or deb package and windows MSI installer. D.Jensen from the US has been providing some great patches; next in the pipeline is an options page, I’m working on the game action; bonus scores, another baddie as well as extra lives for reaching higher levels. Still have not beaten my high score of 9,980! DSI was blogged by Lee Schlesinger of SourceForge in April. Now back to the main priority of DIASER version 1 beta2 then some weekend time-out.

– Damian

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Moving on from ECS…

Sunday, April 11th, 2010

After nearly three years working for ECS, School of Electronics and Computer Science, I decided last week to peruse and expand business consultancy and development activities with Interlinux Ltd and partnerships. I resigned from the University of Southampton on Friday and agreed to work a period of notice during this time focussing on existing business opportunities. I have had many exciting, challenging and rewarding moments working for the University of Southampton within ECS. I realise that financially it is a difficult time, but small business is the bread and butter of the British economy, so I won’t be shying away from facing new challenges and finding support where needed. I want to build on existing intellectual property mainly owned and developed by Interlinux Ltd and will commercially exploit them. The ‘clouds’ beckon…

Damian LinkedIn profile.

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