Archive for September, 2008

Teacher runs a virtualized lab using JumpBox and Xen

Published by Sean Tierney on September 22, 2008 under User Stories

We love to read stories like this one where a DIY-minded person was able to capitalize on the JumpBox technology and put it to work in a new and inventive way.  In this particular case a teacher divided his class of 75 students into small groups and gave each its own Joomla instance for a hands-on learning experience.  

You can read Josh’s explanation of how he used Xen Open Source and the JumpBox for Joomla to conduct a virtualized learning lab and teach his students how to use this popular CMS.  Way to go Josh! You’ll be getting a t-shirt from us shortly for sharing a great story. 

Do you have a story of your own of how you’ve used a JumpBox in a new or creative way to solve a problem?

A new JumpBox and so much more

Published by Kimbro Staken on September 17, 2008 under Announcements, Application Updates

We’ve been quite busy over the last few weeks and today everything finally comes together so I have a bunch of things to share.

JumpBox for Openfire

First there is a new addition to JumpBox Open, the JumpBox for OpenFire. OpenFire is a real-time collaboration server (better known as instant messaging) based around the open Jabber XMPP protocol. It provides private and public instant messaging and group chat with support for any client that supports Jabber. It’s a really great system that we believe provides a nice addition to JumpBox Open. This release is available to all JumpBox Open subscribers and existing subscribers should have already received a download link and license keys. If you are a JumpBox Open subscriber and did not receive your key please contact us.

Powered by JumpBox

Next we’re very happy to be announcing a new service from JumpBox targeted at Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). This service is called “Powered by JumpBox” and allows ISVs to work with us on the creation of JumpBoxes for commercial applications. This allows us to share the expertise and quick to deploy experience we’ve developed for our Open Source based JumpBoxes with other developers and to bring greatly simplified deployment to their applications. This also brings more JumpBoxes into the world and while the applications won’t be part of JumpBox Open they will retain the common set of features that make up a JumpBox. This new service will also drive improvements to the JumpBox Platform that will find their way back into JumpBox Open.

Six Apart is the first customer for Powered by JumpBox

We’re also very excited to be announcing that Six Apart is the first customer for “Powered by JumpBox”. Over the past few months we’ve been working with them on simplifying the deployment of Movable Type and this has resulted in a number of exciting developments.

  1. A new JumpBox for the commercial version of Movable Type. This is being released today under the name “Virtual Movable Type Pro by JumpBox” and is available directly from movabletype.com.
  2. The current JumpBox for Movable Type Open Source is now available completely free through the JumpBox web site.
  3. The JumpBox for Movable Type is now an official distribution format for the Open Source version of Movable Type as well as for Movable Type Pro.

If you’re not familiar with Six Apart and Movable Type, here’s the summary.

Movable Type is Six Apart’s flagship blog software product, launched in 2001. Today, this robust social publishing platform powers the websites and blogs of many of the world’s largest media companies, Fortune 100 businesses, small and medium sized businesses, and power bloggers. Movable Type is a fully integrated, scalable, proven social publishing platform upon which to build highly interactive websites, blogs and social networks.

JumpBox participates in VMware Ready program

And one final announcement, this week we also participated with VMware in the launch of the VMware Ready verification program for virtual appliances. This is of primary benefit to customers of Powered by JumpBox, but since all JumpBoxes share a common base any improvements we release will be inherited by everything in JumpBox Open. You can find out more about VMware Ready here.

Find me at VMworld and get a JumpBox T-Shirt

OK, just one more thing, this week I’m at VMworld in Las Vegas and will be wearing the new JumpBox t-shirt around. Steven debuted it on the blog earlier this week, but I’m carrying some extras with me so if you happen to be attending VMworld and see me walking around, feel free to stop me. I’d love to talk with some JumpBox users while I’m here.

Updated JumpBoxes

Wow, that’s quite a lot of news, no wonder we’re so exhausted, but there is more. We also have a bunch of JumpBox updates to share.

  • JumpBox for Joomla 1.5.x 1.1.4 (Download)

    Joomla! is arguably the world’s most popular open source content management system for public facing web sites. Joomla 1.5 is a ground-up rework of the Joomla 1.0 code base moving it to a true MVC architecture.

    Updated to Joomla 1.5.7 which is a security release with a number of important fixes. (Joomla 1.5.x release notes)

  • JumpBox for OTRS 1.1.3 (Download)

    OTRS is an Open source Ticket Request System (also well known as trouble ticket system) with many features to manage customer telephone calls and e-mails. The system is built to allow your support, sales, pre-sales, billing, internal IT, helpdesk, etc. department to react quickly to inbound inquiries.

    OTRS has been updated to 2.3.2. (OTRS release notes)

  • JumpBox for Movable Type 1.1.3 (Download)

    Movable Type is Six Apart’s flagship blog software product, launched in 2001. Today, this robust social publishing platform powers the websites and blogs of many of the world’s largest media companies, Fortune 100 businesses, small and medium sized businesses, and power bloggers. Movable Type is a fully integrated, scalable, proven social publishing platform upon which to build highly interactive websites, blogs and social networks.

    Updated to Movable Type 4.21 and made free. (Movable Type Release)

  • JumpBox for PunBB 1.1.3 (Download)

    PunBB is a lightweight discussion forum that provides the essential features to host a thriving community without the tedious database, web server and application setup. It may have fewer bells and whistles than other forum applications but it has an intuitive user interface and renders XHTML-compliant output.

    Updated to PunBB 1.2.20 which fixes a cross site scripting security problem. (PunBB release notes)

Hello, from the new Marketing guy.

Published by steve on September 14, 2008 under Announcements

Hey it’s Steve, the new marketing guy.

I know you’ve all been wondering how things are going for me since my arrival at JumpBox, here are some highlights.
  • Since reading a recent customer success story I can’t stop saying the words “no clobbering software” in my head.
  • Since my arrival here at JumpBox I’ve been beaten by Sean at Foosball in five out of five games we’ve played so far.
  • I was brainwashed for a weekend due to a run in with a writing discipline called E-Prime.
  • I’ve become addicted to your “to the rescue stories”.

No clobbering software
When it comes to marketing, I like to get a good feel for the customer. (”Duh” you say?  Believe me, some marketers just want to go home early, versus getting involved.)  Meanwhile I’m launching JumpBoxes on Amazon’s EC2 like rockets at midnight.)

To get a good feel I’ve been looking for the interesting situations that lead our customers to deploy a JumpBox, and the benefit they receive in doing so.  Chandler’s story on the Integrum blog about using the JumpBox for Cacti to resolve a network issue introduced me to new way to refer to a key JumpBox enabled benefit, “No clobbering software on another machine.”

I like the sound of  “no clobbering” so I asked Chandler for more detail.  Here is what he had to say.

“In my experience, larger IT organizations attempt to provision hardware with a “one box, one task” mentality. Unfortunately, sometimes a need comes up that necessitates software becoming available immediately without waiting for the tasks of provisioning/deployment. The danger of simply adding that software to another machine ranges from no-impact to possibly damaging shared libraries and bringing the entire box down. Virtual appliances provide a quick “drop load”-like functionality that functions essentially like adding a full-fledged machine onto the network immediately without violating the one-box-one-task compartmentalization approach. So no software clobbering needs to occur.”

No clobbering software.  It just rolls off the tongue.  I can see it in marketing materials now.

“JumpBox.  No clobbering software.”

Like it?

Foosball.
Sean is world class Foosball player.  It’s probably worth a minor mention that Sean won all five games playing one-handed (to ensure fairness).  I don’t like losing, especially when my opponent is playing one-handed and I get the feeling that it’s a bit frustrating for the JumpBox team to repeatedly hear me shout things like, “How the *&($ did that go in?” or “No &%#$ way, how do you even see the ball!” when they are trying to work.

In fact, one day Sean and I struck up a game while Kimbro was sitting at his desk trying to get some work done.  I began getting whooped pretty badly and each point Sean scored drew increasingly loud expletives from me.  After only a few minutes (Sean is really good) Kimbro couldn’t take it.  He finally stood up from his desk, walked over, leaned in and said “Shh!”.   The look on his face carried the rest of his message, “or else!’  (Sorry Kimbro)

E-Prime

Never mind.

Your “to the rescue stories”
From stories like Chandler’s I’ve learned that virtualization has long been used by the unsung heroes of IT.   We business types just haven’t noticed.  Typical right?  Well no more! *Steve raises fist*
Thing is, although the title of Chandler’s post on the Integrum blog is “Deployable infrastructure to the rescue”, I think a more appropriate title might be “Chandler to the rescue with deployable infrastructure”.  It’s you out there who come to the rescue.  (We’ve even rescued ourselves here at JumpBox.)

You guys are awesome, and I want more.  I mean seriously, how many ways have you guys been saving the day out there?  If you have a great rescue story to tell, lemme know.  Post comments on this blog, post on your own and shoot us a link, send a tweet, send me an email Steve at you know where dot com, whatever.  If you follow JumpBox on Twitter and wake up to find us following you back, you’ll know it’s me looking to see who you rescued today.

As a prize for your efforts I’ll be giving away a limited number of limited edition JumpBox tee shirts designed by Sean himself.  Yes, you too can look as good as I do (but hopefully you are better at Foosball.)

Our master list of app candidates exposed: Delicious tag “newjumpbox”

Published by Sean Tierney on September 10, 2008 under Tips & Tricks

We get suggestions every day for open source applications that people would like to see turned into JumpBoxes. Until now we’ve been tracking these suggestions internally on a private Scuttle instance (of course running as a JumpBox).  Austin made an interesting suggestion last week though and we’ve decided to take a page from Chris Pirillo’s “Freedbacking” concept and expose this list in a decentralized and transparent manner.  

So, in a bit of an experiment, we’ve assembled what may be the most comprehensive list of valuable open source server applications on the planet in such a way that allows anyone to suggest, rate or view the submissions.  It uses the delicious bookmarking service and here’s how it works:

For any application that you’d like to see JumpBoxed, simply tag its main page with “newjumpbox” in delicious.  We monitor the RSS feed of that tag and the more bookmarks an app gets, the more attention we’ll pay to that project (and consequently the greater likelihood that it will be next in line to become a JumpBox). 

For now that page is seeded with over 130 candidate applications that have been suggested to us over many months. We’ve screened the ones that don’t seem appropriate so that list is the culmination of many hours of vetting and input from hundreds of avid open source fans. If there’s an app missing that you’d like to see, take a sec and bookmark it.  You’re of course welcome to continue sending us suggestions via the contact form on our site or by posting in the forums or comments on this blog, but we’ll be looking to that delicious tag as a main source of input on what apps should be converted to JumpBoxes next. 

What do you think of this experiment? How about the Freedbacking concept in general?  

And by the way I don’t know if anyone’s ever delicious’d a delicious page itself but I just did it and I think I may have briefly warped the spacetime continuum. My bad.

Heading to VMWorld next week?

Published by Kimbro Staken on September 10, 2008 under Events

Just wondering if anyone heading to VMWorld in Las Vegas next week would like to meet? I’ll be at VMWorld Tues-Thurs and would love to hear some experiences with JumpBox, virtual appliances and virtualization or cloud computing in general. Let me know in the comments here or feel free to contact me through the JumpBox site.

Kimbro