[ANNOUNCE] release of Apache VCL 2.4.2

[Josh Thompson <jf...@apache.org>]

The Apache VCL project is pleased to announce the release of version 2.4.2. 
There are several new features and quite a number of bugs fixed since 2.3.2 
(2.4 and 2.4.1 were never officially announced due to problems with them).

Information on downloading and installing it can be found on our download 
page:

http://vcl.apache.org/downloads/download.cgi

Release notes can be found here:

http://vcl.apache.org/docs/releasenotes.html

A change log for these releases can be found here:

http://vcl.apache.org/docs/changelog.html

Installation and upgrade scripts are included in the release. There are web 
instructions on manually doing installs and upgrades linked to from the 
download page.

The Apache VCL is a self-service system used to dynamically provision and 
broker remote access to a dedicated compute environment for an end-user. The 
provisioned computers are typically housed in a data center and may be 
physical blade servers, traditional rack mounted servers, or virtual machines. 
VCL can also broker access to standalone machines such as a lab computers on a 
university campus.

One of the primary goals of VCL is to deliver a dedicated compute environment 
to a user for a limited time through a web interface. This compute environment 
can range from something as simple as a virtual machine running productivity 
software to a machine room blade running high end software (i.e. a CAD, 
GIS, statistical package or an Enterprise level application) to a cluster of 
interconnected physical (bare metal) compute nodes.

Using the scheduling API, VCL can be used to automate the provisioning of 
servers in a server farm or HPC cluster.

Josh Thompson
Apache VCL release manager