* Welcome to the afternoon edition of Network World Daily News.
Review
VIRTUAL-MACHINE MANAGEMENT TOOLS FROM MICROSOFT, VMWARE, XENSOURCE LEAVE ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT
It’s time to reign in the virtual machine revolution taking over your network. In the first part of a series of testing-based articles looking at the various virtual machine management tools available to IT professionals today, Network World Lab Alliance member Tom Henderson assesses the administrative tools built into virtual machine platforms from Microsoft, VMWare and XenSource and the optional management consoles the ride on top of them. His overall conclusion is that while these tools can get virtual machines up and running across the network, ongoing management tasks may still require third-party tools.
FROM THE BLOGS AND FORUMS
POST OF THE WEEK: Lineecho reports on a site visit to a company with an HTTP-proxy problem – that went unfixed at first even though everybody agreed on the solution: “Human nature meant that the people on the ground weren’t going to make the change that needed that fix. The company had many procedures and rules for change control that made any change difficult, if not impossible. (sigh… change control).” Read his solution; what would you have done?
Jeff Doyle considers how to improve the scalability of OSPFv3 in certain circumstances. Michael J. Morris shows how to use BGP to build a lab network. John Obeto explains why Skype is the new worm-delivery system. Wendell Odom looks at how to deal with the time pressure associated with certification exams. Paul McNamara doesn’t get why AT&T is changing its color to orange.
Chris Dalby writes that the new Sharepoint makes Microsoft the Facebook of the enterprise. James Gaskin ponders greener PCs. Susan Hanley is loving the news that an Indian IT consulting company is outsourcing jobs – to the U.S. Alpha Doggs wonder if end users will ever smarten up about phishing and security in general. Adam Gaffin marvels at the Hell’s IT guys.
Users debate whether the higher speeds of 802.11n wireless means the end of wired Ethernet. They also debate NTP’s latest patent lawsuit against networking companies, SCO’s bankruptcy filing and HP vs. Cisco. Users discuss all the Ciscos (and variants) that are not in networking.
Paul Harris is thankful for new high-capacity drives and high-throughput controllers. Kerry doesn’t buy Boston College’s excuse for a recent data breach. Justin Lofton writes a lot of WAN-accleration players seem to be trying to catch up with Riverbed.
HOW TO
Ron Nutter helps a user get UltraVNC working across the Internet.
IN DEPTH
USING SOA TO INTEGRATE THE CONTACT CENTER
Among the many benefits being delivered by service-oriented architectures, companies are finding SOA enables them to closely align their customer contact infrastructure with the data, workflows and processes used to manage customer interactions across the organization.
MORE NEWS
WILL USERS EVER SMARTEN UP ABOUT PHISHING?
Phishing researchers will congregate at Carnegie Mellon University Oct. 4-5 to debate whether end users will ever get a clue about the dangers of phishing, among other issues pertaining to online crime.
DEMO: WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
VMware, Palm, TiVO and Java aren’t the only DEMO presenters to make it big. Here’s a look at past DEMO companies and where they are today.
ONE LESS REASON TO ADOPT IPv6?
For a decade, IPv6 proponents have pushed this upgrade to the Internet’s main communications protocol because of its three primary benefits: a gargantuan address space, end-to-end security and easier network administration through automatic device configuration. Now it turns out that one of these IPv6 benefits – autoconfiguration – may not be such a boon for corporate network managers. A growing number of IPv6 experts say that corporations probably will skip autoconfiguration and instead stick with DHCP, which has been updated to support IPv6.
VIRTUALIZATION CAN BE A TOUGH SELL
VMware customers at VMworld conference say virtual server technologies have advantages and disadvantages and they share their tips for improving virtualization projects.
AMD BARCELONA PREMIERE BRINGS OUT THE STARS
AMD hosted stars from IBM, HP, Oracle, VMware and other tech giants for a Barcelona launch event; those same companies play a dual role with Intel.
