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Opsware's new automated script execution; PowerCenter enhanced for DB2 loading; Windows Server 2003 updates announced

• By Stephen Swoyer
• 05/13/2003

Opsware Automates Remote Script Execution

Opsware Inc. last week announced the Automated Script Execution (ASE) Subsystem, a new capability for its Opsware System that can facilitate execution of scripts across hundreds or thousands of servers.

The Opsware System automates IT lifecycle management and includes support for provisioning, deploying, changing, scaling, securing, recovering, consolidating, auditing, and reallocating servers and business applications.

The new ASE is designed to simplify the way IT administrators make common changes—e.g., auditing configurations, changing passwords, or reconfiguring network settings on servers—in highly distributed environments.

Administrators can use Opsware APIs to retrieve information from the Opsware System. Using this information, the new ASE can adapt a script dynamically to different environments and situations.

ASE also provides a central repository to store and manage scripts; it also generates an audit trail so IT organization can track who authored or last changed a script. In addition, it facilitates role-based access control and supports encrypted communications along with digital signatures.

Finally, ASE includes an automated reporting component.

Opsware ASE is available for all platforms supported by the Opsware System, including Windows, Linux, Solaris, HP-UX and AIX.

See http://www.opsware.com for more details.

PowerCenter Optimized for DB2

Infomatica Corp. last week announced new technology in its PowerCenter data integration platform that delivers enhanced loading performance for the DB2 Universal Database from IBM Corp.

Informatica says that version 6.2 of PowerCenter exploits a data smart parallelism loading technology that enables it to accurately insert data into multi-node DB2 databases 10 to 20 times faster than prior PowerCenter releases—while adapting at the same time to changing database cluster configurations.

Informatica says that the enhanced capabilities of the new PowerCenter 6.2 were validated during tests at the IBM Solution Partnership Center in San Mateo, Calif. During those tests, PowerCenter 6.2’s data smart parallelism technology demonstrated that it could dynamically detect DB2 database configurations and automatically map data directly to appropriate nodes for enhanced performance. The tests were performed on pSeries p690 hardware and exploited IBM’s TotalStorage Enterprise Storage Server 800.

See http://www.informatica.com for more details.

Windows Server Roadmap "Out of Band"by Scott Bekker(Courtesy of http://www.entmag.com)

NEW ORLEANS—Just because Windows Server 2003 launched a few weeks ago doesn't mean Microsoft is finished with it.

In a keynote Wednesday at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference about the future of Windows servers, Dave Thompson detailed dozens of major improvements to the server platform that will be released in the coming months and years.

"Innovation does not have to wait for major releases," said Thompson, corporate vice president for Windows servers. He proceeded to detail some of the major enhancements slated for 2003 alone in a category he called "out of band" releases.

First Microsoft plans to release iSCSI support in June, followed by another storage enhancement in the form of its 3.0 release of a Network Attached Storage appliance version of Windows. A technology called Automated Deployment Services will follow in the third quarter, with Virtual Server technology coming in the fourth quarter and support for AMD 64-bit processors being delivered with the first service pack for Windows Server 2003 near the end of the year.

Read the complete article at http://www.entmag.com/news/article.asp?EditorialsID=5803.