Weighing your options with Microsoft’s Windows servers

In the course of this year, almost 10 million antiquated Windows Server 2003 servers will have their applications and data removed and deployed on new servers, and the old servers will be shut down and disposed of. It is a natural assumption that the destination servers will be Server 2012, but that's not necessarily the case, nor should it be.MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 10 (FREE!) Microsoft tools to make admins happier You have three choices from Microsoft: Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2008 R2, and the Azure cloud service. Here are the pros and cons of each.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

HP sells majority stake of China server, storage business to Tsinghua Holdings

Hewlett-Packard has sold a majority stake in its China server and storage business to Tsinghua Holdings as they launch a joint venture they expect will boost sales of HP enterprise hardware products in the country.Tsinghua will buy 51 percent of the joint venture, called H3C, for US$2.3 billion. H3C will include HP’s China-based server, storage and technology services assets, as well H3C Technologies, an HP networking equipment subsidiary in China.The transaction comes ahead of HP’s plan to split its enterprise and PC and printing business into separate companies, which is expected to happen by the end of the year. Hewlett-Packard Enterprise will sell software and enterprise hardware, while HP Inc. will sell printers, PCs, mobile devices, monitors and accessories.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 8 things we’re looking for at Google I/O 2015

Don’t call it a developer conference… …when it’s really Google Prom. OK, it’s also a developer conference, but isn’t that what you picture if I say the words “Google Prom?” I/O generally features at least a couple fairly major announcements from Google, and the 2015 edition isn’t expected to disappoint. Here are the seven things we’re looking for this time around.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

The 7 things we’re looking for at Google I/O 2015

Don’t call it a developer conference… …when it’s really Google Prom. OK, it’s also a developer conference, but isn’t that what you picture if I say the words “Google Prom?” I/O generally features at least a couple fairly major announcements from Google, and the 2015 edition isn’t expected to disappoint. Here are the seven things we’re looking for this time around.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Cisco bypassed Russia sanctions to continue sales: report

Cisco reportedly skirted sanctions in order to sell networking equipment to Russia’s military.In an investigative piece published this week, Buzzfeed alleges Cisco knowingly sold gear through straw companies fronting for Russian government and military institutions in violation of American sanctions. Cisco denies any wrongdoing and any knowledge of the scheme, allegedly perpetrated by its Russian operations, according to Buzzfeed.Cisco says some of the bogus customer names were errors, Buzzfeed reports.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Netgear and ZyXEL confirm NetUSB flaw, are working on fixes

Networking device manufacturers ZyXEL Communications and Netgear have confirmed that some of their routers are affected by a recently disclosed vulnerability in a USB device-sharing service called NetUSB.ZyXEL will begin issuing firmware updates in June, while Netgear plans to start releasing patches in the third quarter of the year.The vulnerability, tracked as CVE-2015-3036, is located in a Linux kernel module called NetUSB that’s commonly used in routers and other embedded devices. The module is developed by a Taiwan-based company called KCodes Technology and allows routers to share USB devices with other computers via the Internet Protocol (IP).To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Yandex tries to improve privacy features of its new browser

Russian Internet company Yandex has released a beta version of its new browser that the company says is more privacy-friendly than an earlier build.Unlike an alpha version released last year, the Yandex.Browser beta doesn’t send usage statistics to the company by default. However, other information will still be shared, so it remains to be seen whether the privacy safeguards will be compelling enough to attract a substantial number of users, as the company hopes.Yandex, which runs Russia’s most popular search engine, decided to make this beta version more privacy friendly than the alpha in response to feedback from users in Germany, Canada and the U.S.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Apple restores iCloud after global disruption hinders services

Apple says it has resolved a widespread iCloud issue that caused service disruptions for 40 percent of its users—that comes out to at least 128 million people, based on a company customer count.Several services, including iCloud Mail, had been running slower for some people, Apple said in an early status report. Apple later updated iCloud’s status page to reflect that all services were working normally. The service issue lasted for around seven hours, starting at approximately 2:15 a.m. ET and ending around 9:30 a.m. ET, according to the service’s status page.Apple didn’t provide details on what caused the disruption or how many people were affected. However, the company said in a 2013 earnings report that 320 million people use iCloud, which lets them back up and sync information stored on Apple devices via the company’s cloud.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

No, I do not believe this steak was cooked by an iPhone, but I’ll bite anyway

Generally speaking, I’m pretty good at skipping past ads in my Twitter stream, but this one grabbed my attention with a clickbait headline that proved harder to resist than a perfectly grilled slab of beef.“Would you believe this steak was cooked by an iPhone?”Not for a nanosecond, of course, despite the multitude of stories connecting fire and iPhones over the years.But I couldn’t escape the attendant curiosity: What in the name of Steve Jobs might allow a marketing professional – no, make that even a marketing professional -- to suggest such a preposterous feat might be possible.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Using an Apt Proxy

In this post I’ll show you how to use apt-cacher-ng as an Apt proxy for Ubuntu systems on your network. I’m sure there are a lot of other resources that also provide this information, but I’m including it here for the sake of completeness and making it as easy as possible for others. Using an Apt proxy will help reduce the traffic coming from your network to external repositories, but it simpler and easier than running your own internal repository or mirror.

This isn’t the first time I’ve discussed apt-cacher-ng; almost two years ago I showed you how to use Puppet to configure Ubuntu to use apt-cacher-ng. This post focuses on the manual configuration of an Apt proxy.

On the server side, setting up an Apt proxy is as simple as one command:

apt-get install apt-cacher-ng

I’m sure there are some optimizations or advanced configurations, but this is enough to get the Apt proxy up and running.

On the client side, there are a couple of ways to configure the system. You could use a tool like Puppet (as described here), or manually configure the system. If you choose manual configuration, you can place the configuration in either /etc/apt/apt. Continue reading