Meeting – March 9th 2004

Topic:

Main presentation: VMWare by Jim Small
6:00pm Doors open, registration
6:30pm Mug business
6:45pm Main presentation – VMWare

Jim Small will give an overview of VMWare Workstation, a powerful virtual
machine that runs under both Linux and Windows. VMWare allows the user to
run other Operating Systems on top of their base Operating System. For
example, a user that needed to test a !NetWare server, could install VMWare
under Linux. !NetWare could then be installed within the VMWare virtual
machine essentially letting you use your computer as both a Linux
workstation and a !NetWare server. Because VMWare is a virtual machine,
there are many advanced features you can take advantage of such as point in
time snapshots, multiple networks, and multiple Operating Systems. A
complete tour of the product will be provided.

Jim Small is a Security and Network Analyst at EDS. Jim also teaches at
Global Information Technology (www.global-itech.com) and does
occasional freelance consulting.

8:00pm 2nd presentation – NFSv4 and Kerberos by Ann Adams

Ann Adams will give an overview of NFSv4 and Kerberos. NFS is a popular
file sharing protocol. Kerberos is a single sign-on authentication system.
Kerberos security has been integrated into NFSv4.

Ann has been investigating NFSv4 while looking for a more secure file at
Ford. While Sun came out with many enhancements for NFSv3, they were not
picked up by other vendors. So, Sun sponsored NFSv4 as an open standardized
file sharing protocol, including a full Linux implementation. The
impressive features integrated into NFSv4 have it poised to be the remote
file system of the future.

Ann will discuss the following:

  1. Features of NFSv4.
  2. Comparison to NFSv3.
  3. Kerberos Security enhancements in Solaris 10 NFSv4 Beta.
  4. Potential Integration into a corporate environment.

Ann Adams is a Computer Architect in Advanced Technology Research at Ford Motor Company. She has her Masters in Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Rackham School of Engineering. Ann has ten years at Ford Motor Company in Network Management, UNIX Server Development, and Infrastructure Architecture. Ann has also done work in Cellular Engineering Network Management as well as the development of a Kerberos infrastructure at Ford.

8:45pm Meeting adjourns
9:00pm Dinner at a local establishment
After the meeting, everybody is invited to grab dinner at a local restaurant