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Welcome to the OpenSAF quarterly newsletter, which brings you news and updates on the OpenSAF open source community and the OpenSAF Foundation, as well as information on how OpenSAF is being put to use. |
 Welcome to the inaugural issue of OpenSAF News! I'd like to take this opportunity to invite you to learn more and to become involved with OpenSAF. There are several avenues for you to pursue this. You can start with OpenSAF software itself: download and review the code, and then see what our open source community is all about - use the Quick Links at right to explore the development site and the OpenSAF Foundation pages. If you are with a company that wants to contribute at the highest level and become a leader in developing highly available middleware and furthering its adoption, I encourage you to look into joining the OpenSAF Foundation. See the article about becoming involved below. As a member, your company will receive a variety of valuable benefits, and you as an individual will enjoy being part of an energetic group that is building a foundation for the high availability networks and mission-critical applications of the future.Please feel free to forward this newsletter to your colleagues and business associates. We'd like this to become an interactive effort -- if you'd like to submit an article or comment for publication, write to us. Let us know at the same email address if you want to tell us anything about the Newsletter or about OpenSAF - we want to make sure that this Newsletter brings valuable information and that the OpenSAF software is useful to you.Sincerely, Monica Hatlen, EricssonPresident, OpenSAF Foundation |
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OpenSAF 4.0: Why This New Release is Important |
Overall, OpenSAF Release 4.0, issued in July 2010, represents what the founders of the OpenSAF project have been working toward -- it is a real milestone. It is the first distribution that stands alone: a developer can work with it in its entirety without having to add on other pieces of functionality from elsewhere. And, it represents the most complete implementation of the SA Forum specifications to date.
Let's look briefly at specific enhancements, in three areas.
First, OpenSAF 4.0 incorporates an architectural reworking of the base code, driven by feedback from the community, which increases modularity and adds new features that improve scalability. It also has a number of logging, tracing and debugging enhancements. The code was re-architected to be much more modular, yielding improved scalability and packaging for applications that do not require all the services available in OpenSAF. Users may now build and install only the features they need, reducing overhead for maintaining unneeded services.
Second, a major addition to Release 4.0 is the very first implementation in the industry of the SA Forum Software Management Framework (SMF), which enables users to upgrade application software from one deployment configuration to another without affecting service availability. This seamless update capability applies to software version rollback as well. And since it is a framework, the actual mechanisms and processes used to update a platform can still be architected by the design team and are not dictated by the SMF implementation.
A third important new feature in Release 4.0 is the implementation of the SA Forum Platform Layer Management (PLM) service, which provides a bridge between OpenSAF and the SA Hardware Platform Interface (HPI) specification. This makes for smoother hardware management and also facilitates virtualization.
OpenSAF Release 4.0 realizes the vision the initial community had when the project was created. In the open source tradition, OpenSAF 4.0 is the fruit of many person-years of collaborative effort by community members. It is freely available to anyone under the LGPLv2.1, and anyone may contribute to the code base. Find out more at www.opensaf.org. |
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Supporting OpenSAF Developers | |
by John Fryer, GoAhead Software, OpenSAF Foundation Board
With OpenSAF 4.0, the project has reached a level of stability that brings into sharp focus the next stage of evolution around OpenSAF: how to make it easy to use the implementation, and in particular, how to educate system architects and application developers to create highly available systems using OpenSAF.
New applications are perhaps the easiest area to address, which is why the initial use of OpenSAF has been targeted toward emerging technologies, such as WiMax, LTE and video applications. A more common challenge is migrating existing applications, whether they are highly available or not, to utilize OpenSAF features. The simplest approach is to use a wrapper around the existing technology, which enables the applications to run over OpenSAF without modification but limits the benefits of using OpenSAF. Perhaps the most challenging situation is modifying existing applications to directly use OpenSAF interfaces and thus to become highly available in an OpenSAF context.
Read the full article. |
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 Join the OpenSAF Foundation | |
If your company seeks leadership or influence in the evolution of highly available middleware, we encourage you to join the OpenSAF Foundation, a non-profit 501(c)3 organization, and help steer our course. In return for support and participation, OpenSAF Foundation members receive a variety of benefits, according to membership category.
OpenSAF Foundation membership benefits include regular opportunities to discuss and influence the OpenSAF project roadmap in an open forum, and inclusion in marketing activities that promote OpenSAF and Foundation member companies through editorial coverage, public speaking engagements, and publicity for members' OpenSAF-related products and services.
Any organization may join the OpenSAF Foundation at one of three membership levels. Membership at the Sponsor or Contributor level includes an obligation to provide resources to actively work on the project; Supporter members can benefit from close collaboration with the OpenSAF project without a resource commitment.
The process to join is simple -- visit our website to find out how to become an OpenSAF Foundation member.
If you need additional information, please contact the OpenSAF Foundation directly at info@list.opensaf.org. |
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| High-Profile Commitment to OpenSAF: GoAhead Software & Ericsson | | |
Recently GoAhead Software, an OpenSAF Foundation member, announced that Ericsson - the leading telecommunications equipment and services supplier, and also an OpenSAF Foundation member -- has chosen OpenSAFfire, GoAhead's commercial distribution of the OpenSAF open source high availability software project, providing more evidence of the rapid maturation of the OpenSAF project.
Click here to read the full press release. |
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OpenSAF at the AdvancedTCA Summit | |
November 9-11 in Santa Clara, California
Come visit OpenSAF in booth 207 on the exhibit floor at the 2010 AdvancedTCA Summit Conference, to be held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, California, USA, November 9-11.
Hear about OpenSAF in the conference sessions as well - John Fryer of the OpenSAF Foundation will present at 2:30 pm on Wednesday on "ATCA & OpenSAF: Ideal Combination for Mission-Critical Systems."
Learn more about the event. |
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