The Virtual Compute Appliance provides the entire hardware and software stack needed to deploy a virtualised x86 environment, according to Oracle, together with software-defined networking (SDN) software to simplify the management of the network. Oracle claims it should be possible to deploy a production workload in about one hour using the appliance.The appliance is based on Oracle's X3-2 servers, which include two Intel Sandy Bridge-EP Xeon E5 processors with eight cores running at 2.2GHz.Each server node in the cluster has 256GB of 1.6GHz memory and two mirrored 900GB hard drives and a dual-port 40GBps InfiniBand adapter card.The base rack comes with at least two nodes to run the virtual stack, as well as two nodes reserved for Oracle's virtualisation management software, but can be expanded up to 25. New nodes can be slotted into the rack and will be automatically detected and configured ready for use once connected.The rack links to an Oracle ZFS 7320 storage appliance, but this can be replaced by alternative Oracle or non-Oracle NFS or iSCSI storage.Oracle's virtual networking is able to allocate each server a mix of virtualised InfiniBand and Ethernet adapters, and will support Fibre Channel modules at a later date. The base appliance includes a 36-port InfiniBand spine switch and two 24-port Gigabit Ethernet switches.The software stack sits on the Oracle VM, its implementation of the Xen hypervisor, while Oracle VM Manager is used to manage the hypervisor and virtual machines. Oracle SDN software running on Xsigo I/O director switches is used to virtualise the network switches.Linux, Windows and Oracle Solaris,comprehensive MileWeb Operating System Software helps you integrate and optimize physical and virtual environments, its Unix OS, can run as virtual guest operating systems on the appliance.Our Managed MileWeb Private Cloud and Virtual Dedicated Servers. Oracle VM Templates provides software images to make it easier to deploy entire application stacks.Oracle Virtual Compute Appliance Controller Software takes care of orchestration and automation of virtual servers, and Oracle's Enterprise Manager Cloud Control can be connected to the appliance to control multiple racks.No pricing is available for the Virtual Compute Appliance, which will start shipping to customers in September.Microsoft released a pair of advisories yesterday in addition to its regular Patch Tuesday security updates alerting users to the fact it would in six months restrict the use of digital certificates with MD5 hashes issued under roots in the Microsoft root certificate program. Admins should use the leeway to find any systems or applications relying on MD5 and determine whether the patch will break anything and otherwise impact their environments.After my previous article about Cisco LISP and the IPv6 transition, I fully expected to hear about all the ways that LISP could improve things. I had argued the merits of tunnel services over LISP as a transition tool. Instead, I was pleasantly shocked when I got an email from Fred Baker, a Cisco Fellow who co-chaired the IPv6 Operations Working Group in the IETF.Our customized dedicated MileWeb windows dedicated server allow a tailor-made solution. Fred gave the first Cisco Live presentation I ever attended back in 2006, which was based in large part on his work with RFC 4192, Procedures for Renumbering an IPv6 Network without a Flag Day. It was my first stop down the IPv6 highway.Fred wanted to talk to me a bit about my stance on IPv6 -- how it's not being widely deployed outside LANs that have it enabled by default. He gave me some interesting numbers about IPv6 adoption, which indicate that we may not need LISP or tunnel services to aid the transition from IPv4. Based on graphs from the Reseaux IP Europeens Network Coordination Centre (RIPE), around 17% of the Internet is advertising IPv6 prefixes to the global routing table. There are more prefixes being originated from the Asia-Pacific Network Information Centre (APNIC), but that makes sense when you realize they are in the final stage of depletion for the remaining IPv4 prefixes.Read the full story at www.mileweb.com/public-cloud/pre-build-cloud-servers!