Oracle Ends Microsoft Windows Platform Support

Oracle Ends Microsoft Windows Platform Support

Abstract:

Sun Microsystems had branched out into Intel Support, even as far as alternate operating systems, to gain market share. For awhile, Sun was #3 in servers shipped. Oracle had purchased Sun Microsystems, advanced the SPARC processors, to make the fastest servers in the world, running Solaris. This occurred, as Oracle continued to advance Intel based Engineered Systems. Microsoft Windows was a key native platform support for Intel Oracle hardware.

[Microsoft Windows Logo, courtesy seeklogo.net ]

Oracle Orphans Windows on Intel Based Bare Metal:

Oracle had discontinued Intel Hardware Management support for Microsoft Windows on the their Intel based chassis. As per their note:

Note - Oracle Hardware Management Pack version 2.3.8 is the last release of Oracle Hardware Management Pack to include support for the Microsoft Windows operating system.

August 2018 Release Notes for Oracle Hardware Management Pack version 2.4 clearly states that it has removed Microsoft Windows Support.

Removed support for the Microsoft Windows operating system. Oracle Hardware Management Pack version 2.3.8 is the last version to support Microsoft Windows.

Windows on Oracle's Bare-Metal Servers will no longer be a best-practice in datacenters.

[Solaris Logo, courtesy Sun Microsystems]

Oracle Solaris on SPARC & Intel Lives On

The Oracle Hardware Management Pack has become integrated & delivered in Oracle Solaris 11 releases, directly from Oracle. It has been bundled in 11.2, 11.3, and now 11.4 - from the very first releases of the operating systems. Support for Oracle Solaris on Oracle Hardware lives on!




Conclusions:

The push seems to be on to push Microsoft Windows off of native hardware support on Oracle Intel based systems. If there is a desire to properly manage an OS on Oracle bare metal, Microsoft Windows is not a good choice, from a lifecycle management perspective. Solaris and Linux are best-practices. While Oracle Linux is a best practice under Intel, Solaris is a best-practice both under SPARC and Intel.

Hardware: American Sell-Off with IBM and Google

[IBM Logo, courtesy IBM]

Abstract:
As the misguided U.S. economy continues to run up massive debt and continue massive trade deficit, the sell-off of U.S. High Technology assets continues to non-U.S. companies, fat with outsourcing cash. Lenovo, a Chinese company, continues their purchases in the United States of inventors of technologyu.

[Chinese glorifying revolution, courtesy, The Telegraph]

Chinese Lenovo Purchasing U.S. Hard Technology

Chinese global company Lenovo has been purchasing their way into the U.S. market through many technologies essentially invented in the United States. IBM seems to be the most significant seller.

[IBM PC, courtesy Wikipedia]

• 2005-05-01 - PC Division acquired from IBM (PC's and ThinkPad Laptops)
  

  Chinese computer maker Lenovo has completed its $1.75 billion purchase of IBM’s personal computer division, creating the world’s third-largest PC maker, the company said Sunday. The deal — one of the biggest foreign acquisitions ever by a Chinese company

  

  [IBM Thinkpad, courtesy tecqcom]

• 2006-04-10 - Lenovo makes break with the IBM brand (on PC's, not ThinkPad Laptops)
  

  Since Lenovo took over the IBM personal computer business on May 1, 2005, the company's advertising and marketing efforts have excluded IBM almost entirely. The four television spots that Lenovo ran during the Turin Winter Olympics, for example, never mentioned IBM at all. In fact, the only connection to the iconic brand is the IBM logo, which still adorns Lenovo's ThinkPad laptops.

• 2013-01-07 - Lenovo to create ThinkPad-focused business unit to compete at the high end
  

  Lenovo is reorganizing its operations into two business groups... As part of the restructuring, it will create two new divisions, Lenovo Business Group and Think Business Group.The reorganization, which will be completed on April 1 [2013]

  

  [IBM Servers, courtesy Wikipedia]

• 2014-01-23- Lenovo to buy IBM's x86 server business for $2.3bn (PC Servers)
  

  Lenovo and IBM announced on Thursday they have signed a definitive agreement that will see the Chinese hardware giant acquire the IBM's x86 server business for the tidy sum of $2.3bn, with approximately $2bn to be paid in cash and the balance in Lenovo stock.
  Adding to the PC business Lenovo acquired from IBM in 2005, Lenovo will take charge of IBM's System x, BladeCenter and Flex System blade servers and switches, x86-based Flex integrated systems, NeXtScale and iDataPlex servers and associated software, blade networking and maintenance operations.

  

  [Motorola Droid RAZR, courtesy Wikipedia]

• 2014-01-29 - Motorola Cellphone Company acquired from Google (by Lenovo)
  

  Lenovo has signed a deal to buy the loss-making Motorola Mobility smartphone manufacturer for $2.91bn, but a switched-on Google is keeping the patents owned by the firm it gobbled two years ago for $12.5bn.
  "The acquisition of such an iconic brand, innovative product portfolio and incredibly talented global team will immediately make Lenovo a strong global competitor in smartphones," said Lenovo's CEO Yang Yuanqing. "We will immediately have the opportunity to become a strong global player in the fast-growing mobile space."

• 2014-01-29 -  Lenovo splits into 4 groups after buying IBM's server business

  A few days after announcing its plan to buy IBM’s x86 server business, the Chinese company is dividing its operations into four business groups... enterprise products... developing a software ecosystem...PCs and mobile products. The changes go into effect on April 1 [2014]

Clearly, Lenovo has a vision for the U.S. Market and is executing upon it. How unfortunate that American companies such as IBM and Google see little value or possibility in domestic hardware innovation, moving into the future.

[HP Logo, courtesy eWeek]

Impacts in the U.S. Market

There is a great deal of uncertainty felt by partners and customers of IBM through such acquisitions. Previous attempts to leverage the IBM logo to help assure customers was performed, but with the latest purchase - competitors such as HP are seeing the a lot of noise.

• 2014-04-11 - HP: Lenovo's buy of IBM x86 biz is bad, bad, bad...
  

  "Customers and partners are concerned. They are concerned about what the future will be for them – not only in the product but also in support and services," claimed the exec veep and GM of the Enterprise Group.
  HP has an internal migration programme to support customers with IBM servers as they decide to make the switch, he pointed out.
  But providing maintenance support is something that HP and other vendors already offer on third-party kit as standard.

HP was tried to consolidate all of their computing systems under Intel Itanium, before trying to shut them all down. HP also tried to sell off their PC business, but relented, possibly due to customer pressure. How conservative customers who would only buy IBM will respond in the U.S. to their favorite manufacturer leaving the industry may not be a difficult conclusion to reach, especially from companies like HP.

It

Concluding Thoughts:
The massive technology bleed from the United States is partially due to commoditization, but also due to the migration to Cloud and Appliances and value provided by Intel computing vendors becoming less significant with Intel shipping entire motherboards bundling CPU, Floating Point, Memory Management Units, Ethernet, and most recently Video. Cell phones appear to be drastically simplifying, as well. Perhaps there was nothing of value left for Intel or cell phone based manufacturers to do? Can Apple buck the trend?

Ubuntu 10.10 server desktop GUI installation

# sudo apt-get update
# sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

Reboot and the GUI will start automatically.

Microsoft IIS Vulnerabilities Across Releases

Microsoft IIS Vulnerabilities Across Releases

New IIS attacks (greatly) expand number of vulnerable servers

The Register published a short article of concern for those of us in the Network Management industry, where we customer or internet facing platforms for reporting delivery.

Microsoft continues to say that IIS5 running on Windows 2000 appears to be the only version that is vulnerable to attacks that can remotely execute malicious code on an underlying server. But it's now clear that hackers can target every version of IIS to cause denial-of-service attacks.

If you have a current or legacy IIS server - this may place your installation at risk. This is an piece of old code, meaning that historical code that you have not touched for awhile will be at risk. The risk centers around industry standard FTP protocol, one of the backbone protocols of the internet.

If Microsoft is not releasing patches for your old release of IIS, time to think about replacing that old portal.

Microsoft rejects call to fix SQL password-exposure risk

Microsoft rejects call to fix SQL password-exposure risk



Abstract

Most serious Managed Services Element Management Platforms, which depend on external databases, traditionally do not depend on databases such as Microsoft SQL. This article illustrates one of the reasons: security.

The Problem

"Applications go to great lengths to obfuscate passwords when they are needed within the software, and should not store passwords as 'clear text,' either in memory (as is the case with this vulnerability) or on disk," Sentrigo's advisory stated.

Microsoft has rejected the company's calls to change the way the software handles passwords, saying people with administrative rights already have complete control of the system anyway.

The Response

"Microsoft has thoroughly investigated claims of vulnerabilities in SQL Server and found that these are not product vulnerabilities requiring Microsoft to issue a security update," a spokesman wrote in an email. "An attacker who has administrative rights already has complete control of the system and can install programs; view, change, or delete data; or create new accounts with full user rights."

What this means to Network Management

The problem with passwords being stored in the clear is not that an infected system could have data destroyed on it, but rather other systems what work with that infected system could be infected!

Of course, behaviors like this are rampant with Day-0 Exploits, Microsoft SQL Worms, Microsoft Windows Viruses, etc. Another place to get passwords by malware is just another reason not to implement such a system in an area where customer managed devices are routable.

If a system is storing passwords for thousands of managed systems in the clear, an infection of a central system could be disastrous for the managed customer edge devices.

A developer in a company may have the option to secure passwords or not - but if the developer in a company ever has to meet a PCI audit and the vendor does not offer that option, then the company providing the managed services is placed in tremendous risk.