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Have you heard about the REMUS project? It's a fantastic piece of code maintaining an exact copy of your XEN virtual machines on a backup host.

Better yet: it's now incorporated into the XEN hypervisor and expected in the next major release!

"The Remus project has just been incorporated into the Xen hypervisor. Developed at the University of British Columbia, Remus provides a thin layer that continuously replicates a running virtual machine onto a second physical host. Remus requires no modifications to the OS or applications within the protected VM: on failure, Remus activates the replica on the second host, and the VM simply picks up where the original system died. Open TCP connections remain intact, and applications continue to run unaware of the failure. It's pretty fun to yank the plug out on your web server and see everything continue to tick along. This sort of HA has traditionally required either really expensive hardware, or very complex and invasive modifications to applications and OSes."

http://dsg.cs.ubc.ca/remus

From the moment we introduced SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for the mainframe more than ten years ago, our commitment to helping you optimize on IBM System z has never wavered. Together, with our valued partner IBM, we’ve developed more Linux-for-mainframe innovations than any other provider, delivering the simplest, most cost-effective alternative server consolidation platform to x86 platforms available today. So, as the only distributor that’s been delivering an enterprise-class and fully supported Linux operating system since the very start of Linux on the mainframe, we can safely say that if history often repeats itself, the future looks even brighter.

View the timeline today at: http://bit.ly/a8dW44

Mainframes are about 40 years old. And as you probably know, several years ago mainframes were written off as expensive, dated computers that were capable of running only large business applications. Mainframe go south, many said. Not anymore - thanks to Linux!

Linux on mainframes has evolved rapidly during the past 10 years - yes - 2010 is the 10th anniversary of Linux on the mainframe. The more, there has been shifting of dynamics with the System z10. IBM has done an excellent job with the price/performance ratio, and many companies that have gone through a cost per transaction analysis have determined that the z10 can process their transactions at half the cost of a distributed environment. And the new IBM System z Solution Edition for Enterprise Linux and the Enterprise Linux Server is an additional catalyst for bringing new workloads to Linux on the mainframe.

Today, in general we see many companies taking a critical look at their existing and new workloads, and asking hard business questions to determine the best platform. These companies are recognizing they need outstanding RAS to manage their mission-critical workloads, and the mainframe uniquely fulfills this business requirement. And these companies are realizing that investing in a first move turns back in consequence - even more if they run Linux on their mainframes.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z has been available since the very start of Linux on the mainframe - yes - 2010 it has its 10th anniversary, too. If you want to hear from happy customers running SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for System z on their mainframes why and how they do so, and learn more from our experts, you should consider to drop over at one of the upcoming conferences for System z.

SHARE in Seattle
March 14-18 2010, Washington State Convention and Trade Center, Washington

Recommended sessions:

• Linux System Management for the Mainframe System Programmer - Part 1&2 (Mark Post, Novell), Mar 15 1:30-4:00 PM Room 608
• Using Logical Volume Manager (LVM) to Reduce the Hassle Managing Disk Space on Linux (Mark Post, Novell), Tue Mar 16 9:30-10:30 AM Room 609
• Linux Installation Planning (Mark Post, Novell), Mar 16 3:00-4:00 PM, Room 609
• What's New with SLES 11 on System z (Mark Post, Novell), Mar 18 9:30-10:30AM, Room 609
• Linux on System z at Wells Fargo: Penguins Board the Stagecoach (Marcy Cortes, Wells Fargo Bank), Mar 17 1:30-2:30 PM, Room 611
• Success with Linux on System z at Nationwide - Lessons Learned (Jim Vincent, Nationwide Insurance), Mar 17 3:00-4:00PM, Room 611
• Linux Servers on System z: Benefits and Features of Virtualization in the Enterprise Data Center (Rick Barlow, Nationwide Insurance), Mar 17 4:30-5:30PM, Room 611

For more information, see
http://www.share.org/Events/UpcomingConference/tabid/349/Default.aspx<

Novell BrainShare Salt Lake City
March 22-25 2010, Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah

• ELS208 German Pension Fund Goes Linux: Legacy Application Migration to z/Linux with Minimal Risk (Falk-Oliver Bischoff, German Pension Fund/Florian Delonge, Clerity/Olaf Senger, IBM), Mar 22 11:30AM, Room 150 D/E
• ELS206 Hands-on Workshop: Install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on IBM System z (Richard Lewis, IBM), Mar 23 9AM-1PM and Mar 25 9AM-1PM, Room 255B
• ELS310 What's New with Linux on System z (Richard Lewis, IBM/Ihno Krumreich, Novell), Mar 24, Room 251 F

For more information, see: http://www.novell.com/brainshare/<

WAVV - World Alliance of VSE VM Linux
April 9-13, 2010 Covington, Kentucky, Embassy Suites Cincinnati - River Center

• Linux Installation Planning (Mark Post, Novell), Apr 10 3:00PM
• Using Logical Volume Manager (Mark Post, Novell), Apr 12 11:45AM
• What’s new with SLES 11 on System z (Mark Post, Novell), Apr 12 4:15PM

For more information, see: http://www.wavv.org/

OK -- we're in Drupal 6 now, if you don't count the bugs ;-) The IS&T Team is working like mad to address all the issues, so patience remains a virtue.

If by tomorrow you still see vestiges of strangeness, pop us an email at coolguys@novell.com<.

Thank you for being so understanding all day long. You can't believe how many customizations we have in here...

-- Susan

Summary

This document provides a step-by-step approach in order to successfully establish SSL VPN connections in Enterprise mode from Fedora 11 machines and access the resources that are being protected by SSLVPN.

Problem

Fedora 11 is not an officially supported platform for Novell SSL VPN. Any attempt to establish the SSL VPN connection fails to get installed on Fedora 11 as the SSL VPN client binaries are specific to SUSE Linux Enterprise Servers.

When SSLVPN connection is tried on Fedora 11 using Firefox browser, the users are likely to encounter the error shown in Figure 1:

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Click to view<.

Figure 1: Error while connecting to Novell SSL VPN

Solution

In order to enable the Novell SSL VPN connection on Fedora 11, the client binaries have to be manually downloaded and installed.

Follow the steps given below on Fedora 11 to connect to SSL VPN in enterprise mode:

1. Link the libssl.so and libcypto.so files by using soft links as shown in the Figure 2.
   <

   Click to view<.

   Figure 2: Linking of files

2. Download /var/opt/novell/tomcat5/webapps/sslvpn/linux/novell-sslvpn-serv.tar.gz file on to Fedora 11 from the SSLVPN server.
3. Untar novell-sslvpn-serv.tar.gz and install the extracted rpm as shown in Figure 3:
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   Click to view<.

   Figure 3: Downloading and Installing the service

   (The above figure shows an example where 'novell-sslvpn-serv.tar.gz' service file is being downloaded from SSLVPN server with IP address 192.168.30.86 using SCP)

4. After the installation, novell-sslvpn-service, the init file is created under /etc/init.d/ directory.
5. Overwrite the init script /etc/init.d/novell-sslvpn-service with the script available at the following link: http://www.novell.com/communities/files/novell-sslvpn-service.zip<
   

   $cp <attached script> /etc/init.d/novell-sslvpn-service 
   			<

   (The provided script is also called 'novell-sslvpn-service' )

6. Execute the commands shown in Figure 4 to start the Novell SSL VPN service on Fedora 11:
   <

   Click to view<.

   Figure 4: Bringing up Novell SSL VPN service on Fedora 11

   You will now be able to establish a successful SSL VPN connection in Enterprise mode on Fedora 11 using Firefox.

   <

   Click to view<.

   Figure 5: Successful Novell SSL VPN connection establishment on Fedora 11

The above figure depicts successful SSLVPN connection using Firefox 3.5.4