|
|
|
|
|
GlassFish v3 includes all the benefits from its Java EE 6 compliance and its modular, services and OSGi-based design, but it is also the opportunity to address a number of long-standing RFEs and issues that were to hard to address on the old v2 architecture. Byron recently reported on two of these RFEs. The first is Platform Services Support: it is now possible interact with Solaris/OpenSolaris SMF and Windows Services. Check Byron's writeup and give us feedback so we can try to incorporate it in our final September release. The second feature is on the ability to do Remote Server Restart via the CLI or an HTTP-based request (I need to check with Byron if the feature made it into the admin console). |
Check these out, and please give us feedback so GlassFish v3 is as useful to you as possible.
Here are some recent news that will have an impact on many of our GlassFish users:
|
|
From Ruby-land, news that Merb will merge into Rails 3. This seems a case where combining the two efforts should improve the result. We are also noticing a significant increase in the mindshare around JRuby in all these projects as the quality of JRuby continues to increase. Added - also see the Story at SDTimes. Crossbow is the Solaris' Network Virtualization architecture and has just been released into OpenSolaris. Crossbow provides "virtualized lanes" that will scale at high performance over many cores; see Sunnay's Introduction and Ben's two posts: Announcement and Experiments. Crossbow is useful for Network Resource Allocation and will have deep implications for our Virtualization offerings - see Michaels' note from 2008 on the topic. From the cloud computing area, Sun acquires Q-Layer; see the Press Release. Vijay has two relevant posts: an Introduction with several good links and a Terminology Overview; Om (@GigaOm) also writes about the Acquisition. Q-Layer should be a great addition to the xVM family. We planned it a while ago, announced it in July, and it finally happened! The core of the Sun Web Server (used in places like MLB.com and Sun's own BSC and Sun Forums) is now Open Source - see the announcements from CVR and Jyri. The ancestry of the code goes back to the Netscape Server but it has changed quite a bit; see Jyri's details. Sun Web Server 7.0 U4 is included in OpenSolaris but it is also available separately as part of the Sun Web Stack 1.4 and contains many features that complement the GlassFish Server. Finally, from Solaris-land, a note that Sun is now doing Stricter Enforcement of the existing Patch Policy. No changes or impact on the situation for Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server patches - see our Sun's GF Enterprise Support. |
A compilation of today's news of interest:
|
|
Jason provides early indications of Improved Memory Consumption in GlassFish v3. Since GFv3 Prelude is early in the cycle of GFv3, expect further improvements over the life of the release family. Charles has a detailed description of how to write a Rails App on GlassFish using the latest run-time/packagings. And Jacob describes improvements he is working on for dynamically managing the pool of JRuby instances in GlassFish. From the OpenMQ Team, more Details on OpenMQ 4.3, which will be part of GlassFish v2.1. Proposed new functionality includes a REST Messaging API, AIX support, more platforms, STOMP Support, and more. As always, provide feedback to the team at Users at OpenMQ.dev.java.net. And from OnTheRecord... the Original Announcement was last year and now we have the product: Solaris on Dell is finally here: Solaris@Dell.COM, Online Configurator. |
A compilation of today's news of interest:
|
|
From Barton, confirmation that OpenJDK is in Debian (in Lenny). That makes Fedora, Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and Debian; OpenJDK is also available for RedHat and CentOS. Not bad! New Sun bloggers: Jacob has started writing about Ruby and Rails as a new engineer in the GLassFish Scripting team, and Michael will provide his Experiences in OpenESB from interactions with its customers. Welcome to both! Wotif.COM is now a Formal GlassFish Reference, including its use of OpenMQ. From the WonderBlog an announcement of the Release of Wonderland 0.4. Joerg has two new multi-part series on Solaris, one covers CacheFS, the other the JumpStart Enterprise Toolkit. |
|
Dick Davis (Number 9) is a GlassFish Server fan and also a user of Roller (on GFv2 and on GFv3). He is now adding caching on a 2-node GlassFish cluster and his latest note shows how to set Memcached on Solaris to accomplish this.
Check out more posts by Dick on
Solaris Added - Also check out Dick's latest Roller Summary. |
|
Getting the best possible GlassFish integration with operating systems (install, performance, flexibility) is a high priority for us. The work done for Ubuntu and Debian are good illustrations. Of course, as you can imagine, Solaris is no exception. |
Jagadesh and Shaline have just posted an entry on using GlassFish in the context of Solaris Trusted Extensions, a seriously ruggedized Solaris install (the entry does a good job explaining what it is).
You can also elect to use GlassFish on the recently released OpenSolaris distro and its online repository (first steps here). Finally, if you're into using Zones (aka containers), this earlier article goes into how to best take advantage of global, sparse, or whole-root Zones.
|
Catching up with news from before JavaOne: Pentaho Announced support for GlassFish v2 for Pentaho BI Platform. Note that Pentaho is one of the more than 40 initial companies listed in the new Sun Partner Program for GlassFish. |
|
Memcached is the popular distributed cache system (often used with MySQL) that was developed for LiveJournal (Article, Wikipedia, Website). One of many sites using memcached is BSC and Dave has two recent writeups on the topic: The Roller Caching API, and Using Memcached with Roller. And, on this topic, there has been good progress in the Webstack optimizing memcached for Solaris. Check Trond's articles on Configuration, the Latest Release and more. Also don't miss Patrick's Latest release of the Memcached Functions for MySQL. |
|
Solaris Express Developer Edition (SXDE), the Sun OpenSolaris-based distribution for Solaris, Java, and Web 2.0 developers has a new release out: 1/08. Ludo has a post about the integrated web stack as well as a 10-minute screencast. After giving SMF privileges for Apache/mySQL servers, Ludo shows how the user can use a very simple graphical tool to start/stop and configure services. He also walks you through a small PHP/jMaki/Ajax pre-packaged demo with a mySQL backend. He finally uses NetBeans' PHP support and auto-registering of the AMP-stack to author and debug a simple PHP application. Pretty slick! |
SXDE also comes with the NetBeans 6/GlassFish v2 pre-configured bundle and if you're using the VMWare image, I would recommend upgrading the amount of memory from 512 to 2Gb. And in case you're wondering, the VMWare image password for root is SXDE (see also the FAQ).
Check out also Ludo's previous interview on GlassFish tooling.
|
While GlassFish is written in Java and shipping on Windows, Solaris, Linux, MacOS, and more recently AIX, choosing the right operating system is often orthogonal to the choice of your application server. This article on GlassFish and Solaris Containers by Sonny Hastomo shows how to combine the zone virtualization technology with GlassFish. It uses a non-global zone for glassfish and documents how to partition the CPU resource. |
|
• Adoption News:
It just works |
|
Yesterday's big announcement was that Dell was going to distribute Solaris on some PowerEdge servers. check out Jonathan's blog and Barton's History line. As JimG points out, this is a good validation of the benefits of widespread adoption of a technology. For additional info, check Sun's Press Release and this eWeek article. |
Now, what I want is to see more hardware and software companies OEMing the GlassFish AppServer! We already have Ubuntu, drop me an email if you are interested :-)
|
When it comes to clustering in an application server, defining the vocabulary is the first thing that needs to be done. This new article does this and much more. It defines key concepts for GlassFish such as Domain Administration Server (DAS), Node Agents, server instances, discusses deployment topologies, and explains how the Shoal and JXTA technologies are used to set up the cluster and replicate data in-memory. It also provides instructions on how to get the GlassFish "Cluster" profile running. |
The second article explains how the application server can take advantage of the Zones technology built in Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris. It has a quick intro on what are Solaris zones and how they provide isolated environments for application instances. Propagation among zones can complicate installations and updates, so the article going into the details of installing and using the GlassFish application server in a global or a sparse zone. It also covers upgrading from previous versions of the software that may have come bundled with Solaris.
|
Virtualization is really hot now. We recently mentioned about Using LDOMs to partition a T2-based system. This week's annoncement of Solaris 10 8/07 includes New Zones Features including BrandZ Zones. The first BrandZ (lX) allows Running Linux Apps on Solaris (see earlier news). A new announcement is Project Etude which enables Solaris 8 Apps running as guests on a Solaris 10 host; see Marc's Business Overview and Dan's Technical Overview. Also see these reviews at Dr. Dobb's, The Register and EnterpriseLinux. |
Added: Also see the announcement about Windows and Solaris virtualization.
I am planning to start highlighting some of our regular contributors from around the world.
|
Number 9 (Dick Davies) regularly covers GlassFish and Solaris from the UK. I like his posts, they are useful, very detailed and tie things nicely together. |
Some of Number 9's blogs on GlassFish include:
• Adding SSL Keypairs to Java Keystores
• Sharing JVMs Across Zones
• Roller on GlassFish
• SMF GlassFish on Port 80
• DTracing Zoned JVMs
• GlassFish in a Zone
Check out Number 9, specially if you are using (or are considering using) GlassFish on Solaris!
PS - I am not sure why the blog is called number 9; my best guess would be because of Hello, Operator from The White Stripes, but I'm sure Dick will correct me :-)... While searching I also found this very Nice Set of Photos) posted by a Number 9!
