PommFritz

Die Tage werden kühler. Das merkt man auch in unserer Mensa.
Die Gartenterrasse ist nun geschlossen, die Tische und Stühle sind bereits abgeräumt und für den kommenden Winter verstaut.

Unser geschätzter Dozent Fritz Rothenbühler hatte sich jedoch bei unserem geschätzen und freundlich gesinnten Chefkoch Volker über die Schliessung der Terrasse beschwert. Herr Rothenbühler wollte wohl die letzten Sonnenstrahlen in diesem Jahr draussen geniessen.

Volker hat sich das Anliegen sehr zu Herzen genommen und hat Herrn Rothenbühler prompt einen VIP Platz auf der Terrasse aufgestellt.

Aber seht doch das Ergebnis selbst an:

PommFritz

2009-10-29 | Posted in: Fun | Comments Closed

Finally! – Blog’s back online

This was quite some work…. and the solution was quite simple in the end….

no matter where I increased log levels or enabled debug modes, WPMU simply didn’t want to tell me why it would not display any pages. Not even a fresh install onto a new server with only the database transferred could fix it.

More by chance than anything else I found a forum message which told me to disable all plug-ins for each blog on it’s own (not only globally), which meant manually modifying some database tables. After that and re-adding some themes all the blogs seam to work again…. hopefully it stays like this for a while.

And now I’m moving on to reinstall our planet … I guess that’s gonna be fun too :-)

Virtual Lab Automation

For the eProcess project, we want to provide easy access to our scenarios to users. A scenario consists usually of multiple hosts, which interact together, and provides different services (such as Service Buses, Applications, WebServices, Identitiy Metasystems, etc.). Users should have the possibility to access those hosts outside our domain and get a feeling of the provided services and how they interact together. They don’t need to provide their own infrastructure and install and configure software, which is very time consuming and usually needs expert knowledge.

Users just can access our infrastructure and configuration in the cloud and use the provided services without wasting time for installation and configuration.

Virtualization

But, what if a scenario consists of three hosts and two users want to access simultaneously the same scenario? This means, that we need to provide six hosts. By more users this means even more hosts.
We need a more flexible approach. Instead of using real (physically dedicated) hosts, we will use virtual hosts (also called virtual machines). Virtual machines are running on a real host (usually a more powerful server), which supports virtualization technology.

VMWare Virtualization

This leads to a better yield of the hardware resources, which reduces the IT costs. When more users want to access a scenario, just more virtual machines will be deployed on the server (without adding more real hosts to the infrastructure).

Virtual Lab Automation

Here comes Virtual Lab Automation (VLA) into play. VLA software is capable of managing virtual machines. Whole scenarios (here: Labs) can be deployed in just few seconds. Network access will be configured automatically and users can easily access the virtual machines through a web interface or a remote desktop connection.

We are using the VMLogix LabManager VLA software. This product can administer different virtualization platforms from different vendors (VMWare, Microsoft, Citrix). It also has an intuitive management web interface and is easy to use. For more detailed information you can watch the VMLogix LabManager Features.

Print Preview Crash

Gedruckt hat’s nur eine Seite und die restlichen Blätter waren leer.

Irgendwie hat’s den Editor total verhauen, sogar die Zeilennummerierung stimmte nicht mehr :-D

printpreviewcrash

2009-10-14 | Posted in: Fun | Comments Closed

Microsoft Surface

Die iHomeLab Abteilung unserer Schule hat ein neues Spielzeug bekommen. Einen Microsoft Surface Tisch für bescheidene 20’000 CHF.

Nun, wir wollten uns den Spass nicht entgehen lassen und haben die Möglichkeiten von MS Surface erkundet.

YouTube Preview Image
2009-10-11 | Posted in: Gadgets | Comments Closed

Tracergasmessungen mit Windows 3.1

Fragt mich nicht was Tracergasmessungen sind. Jedenfalls benötigt man dazu hochsensible und teure Messsysteme um die Luftaustauschrate und ähm, wie hiess das genau, Verweilzeitverteilung zu messen.

Nun gut, hab mich gewundert, was da für teure Geräte zum Einsatz kommen. Und man glaubt es kaum, auf der Konsole sieht man folgendes, aus Wolfenstein 3D Zeiten vertrautes, Bild.

Die guten alten Zeiten.

Die guten alten Zeiten.

2009-10-06 | Posted in: Fun | Comments Closed

Federated Identity Management

For software developers, working with identity management isn’t a piece of cake. A developer needs to decide which identity technology to use for a particular application. If the application will be accessed in different ways, such as within an organization, across different organizations and via the public internet, one identity technology might not be enough. Next, the developer needs to figure out how to retrieve the identity information (e.g. job title, salary, favorite color etc.) from different locations (directory services, SAP database etc.).

Sounds complex and it is complex. Why not create a single interoperable approach to identity that works in pretty much every situation? Why making the applications hunt for identity information, why not make sure, that this single approach lets users supply each application with the identity information it requires?

Claims-based identity achieves both of these goals. It provides a common way for applications to acquire the identity information they need from the users inside their organization, in other organizations and on the internet. This is making the lives of developers significantly simpler and can also lower the cost of building and manage applications.

Making claims-based identity real requires developers to understand how and why to create claims-based applications. It also requires some infrastructure software that applications can rely on.

We already implemented some claims-based identity test scenarios, where users could single sign-on and use services across organizations. We used for this tests the forthcoming Microsoft Technologies:

  • Active Directory Federation Services 2.0 (formerly known as “Geneva” Server)
  • Windows Identity Foundation (formerly known as “Geneva” Framework)
  • Windows CardSpace (formerly known as Windows CardSpace “Geneva”)

Thanks to supported standards as WS-Trust, WS-Federation and SAML 2.0 in Microsoft “Geneva” (Beta 2), interoperability will be ensured with identity management solutions from other vendors.

References:

2009-10-05 | Posted in: Security | Comments Closed

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