01/12/2005 - End of support for HP-UX and IRIX

A long chapter of the computing history at ESRF comes to an end. At the end of this year, HP-UX and IRIX will not be supported any more. HP-UX, the operating system of HP computers was one of the very first UNIX operating systems at ESRF. The last HP computers were purchased in 1999, and their replacement was done gradually with SUN and LINUX workstations and servers. IRIX, the operating system of Silicon Graphics computers, was never widely used at ESRF. The systems were confined to particular applications for data analysis and visualization within the MX community. Most of those applications are now available on Intel platforms.

02/11/2005 - Replacement of the central network router

After 4 months of various tests and simulations, the central network router was successfully replaced last week by a BlackDiamond10K model from the company Extreme Networks.
The new router brings a huge increase in performance: the packet switching is multiplied by 2 (now 320 at Gigabit/sec) and the packet routing capability is multiplied by more than 160.
The BlackDiamond10K is based on brand new technology, and provides the following unique features:

• The ability to analyse packets "at the speed of the wire" (1 Gigabit/sec) thanks to a smart hard- and software
• The ability to automatically protect itself against cyber attacks and in particular against “denial of service” attacks
• The ability to detect abnormal data flows, e.g. viral activity, and react to them by blocking or lowering the speed and/or redirecting the flow to a packet analyser.

The new central network router also brings better availability: 100% redundant hard- and software, ability to start/stop services without rebooting, and the ability to upgrade the software without interruption of service.

08/10/2005 - TANGO Workshop

A workshop aimed at beginner and advanced users of TANGO was held at Archamps (Haute Savoie) on 8 October 2005, just before the ICALEPCS 2005 conference in Geneva.
The morning was dedicated to introducing newcomers to the concepts of TANGO, how to write a device server and deploy it in a TANGO-based control system. The afternoon was spent discussing hot topics in the TANGO community. These included abstract classes, web, patterns, eclipse, events, atk, hardware repository etc.

More information can be read on the TANGO web site.

Onsite information: