| Solaris
Migration - New Theme for SUSE 11 |
Editor:- March 17, 2008 - Novell
today announced its development plans for the next generation of its enterprise
Linux platform, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11.
Solaris
Migration is one of the 11 key themes listed in the press release about
this.
To eliminate the expensive lock-in that comes with traditional
UNIX installations, customers are migrating to Linux on multiple hardware
platforms. SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 will focus on meeting or exceeding
performance benchmarks of Solaris and providing best-in-market toolsets and
features from the kernel on up.
Novell anticipates that advances in the
Linux kernel and the supporting toolset will establish SUSE Linux Enterprise 11
as the industry-standard platform for UNIX migrations.
Novell will
focus on an upgrade to the latest Linux kernel (currently planned to be 2.6.27),
leading-edge storage management technologies such as the OpenAIS cluster
communication infrastructure, a fully POSIX-conforming cluster file system
(Oracle* Cluster File System 2) and distributed replicated block device (DRBD)
support.
Diagnostic and system management features such as improved
kernel instrumentation, enhanced crash dumping and hardware monitoring, and
support for embedded service processors are expected to distinguish SUSE Linux
Enterprise as a reliable and robust operating system for mission-critical
computing.
...Novell
profile
SPARC Users - Heads Up Alert! - Re Data Storage Reliability
Editor:-
March 5, 2008 - a few years ago I set up a directory page on the theme of
storage reliability
- which I anticipated would eventually become as big an issue as the
Y2K
bug of a decade ago.
I often publish 3 to 7 year ahead
technology
and market projections - so don't worry if you haven't missed it. The impact
on end users hasn't happened yet.
Unlike the Y2K bug - which harmed
budgets rather than data - I expected that the storage reliability problems
wouldn't be anything can users would immunize themselves against. But one bright
morning - as with bird
flu - you would find the floor covered with dead data in the deepest
safest parts of your server farm (or archive vaults) because surprise!
surprise! they actually housed a species of data storage device which turned out
to be a turkey.
Some of the problems were already being researched
by a handful of specialists but it was a subject which most people didn't worry
about. At the time my list of candidates for the trouble spots were
hard disk drives (where
uncorrectable data corruption was already starting to appear - for those with
the tools sensitive enough to recognize it) and maybe one those forever emerging
(but never quite emerged) optical
storage technologies.
But regarding the most likely first wave of
the big data storage pandemics - I admit I was wrong on 2 counts.
First
- you can see it coming... It's months away for some companies - rather than
years away.
Second - you can actually do something about it.
I
know that you use SPARC servers because you care about the smooth running of
your enterprise - and don't like to fire fight foreseeable, avoidable irritating
glitches.
Something which you or your organization may do (for what
seems like perfectly valid economic reasons) could soon result in unwittingly
letting the vulnerable data turkeys into your server farm.
If you read
my new article - you'll be better placed to make those much needed budget cuts
and performance upgrades - without falling foul of the uncorrectable data
corruption pests.
Here's the link.
Squeak! - Are
MLC SSDs Ever Safe in Enterprise Apps?
PRC Becomes New OpenSPARC Incubator
Beijing,
Santa Clara, CA - February 27, 2008 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. and the
Ministry of Education for the People's Republic of China today announced a 3
year collaboration agreement designed to meet China's demand for cultivating IC
engineering talent.
The agreement is based on Sun's
OpenSPARC program which MOE said it
selected because it is the fastest microprocessor in the world, and Sun is the
only major processor vendor to freely offer its designs to the open source
community. As a result over 100 educators each year in selected universities
will be trained and qualified on OpenSPARC technology. ...Sun Microsystems
profile
TSMC SPARC CPUs will Have Even More Cores
SANTA
CLARA, Calif - February 19, 2008 - Sun Microsystems Inc. today
announced that it had selected Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company
as its foundry partner for processors based on a 45-nanometer design as well as
future generations.
Sun will continue to design its chips while
long-time Sun partner TI
will continue to test and build the 45-nanometer processors in TSMC.
"After a lengthy evaluation we selected TSMC for one reason:
they're simply the best at turning complex processor designs into silicon,"
said David Yen, Sun's executive vice president, Microelectronics group. "TSMC
is already fully engaged with engineers from both Sun and TI and I expect we'll
all benefit from the cross-pollination of ideas among these three companies."
Sun, which currently designs processors based on 90- and 65-nanometer
processes, is moving to the smaller 45-nanometer to allow more circuitry to be
squeezed onto the same amount of silicon. The result: chip designers are free to
add new features such as processing cores or encryption engines that improve
overall chip performance.
The 45-nanometer design process also allows Sun to increase the
number of threads per processor. storage chips
XML Firewall Supports Solaris on SPARC
Vancouver,
Canada - February 11, 2008 - Layer 7 Technologies announced today its
XML Firewall and XML Networking Gateway software products support Solaris 10
on SPARC platforms from Sun Microsystems.
The SecureSpan
XML Firewall provides advanced identity and message level SOA security for
cross-domain, B2B and portal applications, while the SecureSpan XML Networking
Gateway adds support for complex SOA message routing, mediation, virtualization
and Service Level Agreements. In addition to gateway software Layer 7 also
offers a family of turnkey, hardware-accelerated XML appliances for the data
center.
"To meet the growing demand for enterprise SOA and Web
2.0 deployments, Sun and Layer 7 are expanding their initiatives to accommodate
large scale and diverse audiences," said Juan Carlos Soto, VP of Market
Development, Sun Microsystems. "As these initiatives change to meet
customer requirements, we are positioned to meet these demands effectively by
offering flexible governance on the open source Solaris OS for both SPARC-based
and x86-based servers; a platform known for running some of the world's largest
data centers."
...Layer 7 Technologies,
Storage Security
How Many Apps on Solaris? etc
Editor:- January 24,
2008 - an article published today on ITJungle.com discusses how many
ISVs actually support Solaris.
An interesting part of the article
is speculation about how some other OS's which were important in SPARC's infancy
have fared since. According a Sun survey cited in the article most ISVs still
love Solaris.
That's in stark contrast to IHVs. Most IHVs which
strongly supported the SPARC platform in the 1990s exited the market many
years ago. Although there are genuine opportunities for leveraging Sun's newer
processors many IHVs are safer with Intel architecture processors because of the
availability of alternative sources.
That's the coffee which helped
create the buzz about SPARC in the early 1990s - when many chipmakers made
SPARC chips which could be used in workstations. It could happen again. When
someone is prepared to go public on this I'll let you know on these pages.
AMD Processors Inside Sun Storage
SUNNYVALE,
CA - January 23, 2008 - AMD announced today that it continues to see
strong demand among its commercial storage customers.
AMD said
there are currently more than 20 commercial storage systems available on the
market today that rely on AMD's Direct Connect Architecture.
"Many of Sun's storage servers are powered by AMD Opteron
processors - including the Sun Fire X4500 and the new Sun StorageTek 5800 - and
have already started to change the way customers store and retrieve data on a
large scale," said Graham Lovell, senior director of storage servers &
IPTV marketing at Sun Microsystems. ...AMD profile
Sun Reports Preliminary Results
SANTA
CLARA, CA - January 16, 2008 - Sun Microsystems, Inc. reported
preliminary results today for its second quarter of fiscal 2008, which ended
December 30, 2007.
Sun expects to report revenues for the second
quarter of fiscal 2008 of approximately $3.60 billion, an increase of
approximately 1 percent as compared with $3.57 billion for the second quarter of
fiscal 2007. Net bookings for the second quarter of fiscal 2008 were
approximately $3.85 billion, an increase of approximately 7% year over year.
Net income for the second quarter of fiscal 2008 on a GAAP basis is
expected to be in the range of $230 million to $265 million.
Editor's
comments:- at one time most people thought that the shape of the Earth was
flat. That's the essential shape of Sun's year on year revenue performance.
One of the predicted
effects of network storage
storage standards in the past decade has been a decoupling of customer spend
when it comes to servers (processors) and storage.
As storage has
become a bigger slice of the overall IT budget Sun's various attempts to do more
in this segment over the past 5 years or so (including buying StorageTek) have
looked prudent. But Sun has executed much worse than the
storage market as a
whole, due to not anticipating customer needs and bland / overpriced
me-too products.
Unfortunately Sun's other
announcement
today that it is acquiring MySQL is another me-too move that will do little
to change Sun's relative success compared to other OS companies who also have
had their own pet database products for many years.
Don't get me wrong.
"Me-too" strategies can be very successful if you're following the
right trends and execute smartly. Sun's SPARC is a leader in multi-core
processors - but many other parts of Sun's business do too little, too late,
or do the wrong things altogether. | |
| . | |
Solaris
Migration - New Theme for SUSE 11
PRC Becomes New OpenSPARC
Incubator
TSMC SPARC CPUs will Have Even More Cores
XML
Firewall Supports SPARC Solaris
How Many Apps on Solaris? etc
AMD
Processors Inside Sun Storage
Sun Reports Preliminary Results
earlier news - archive |
|
|
|
 |
Founded in 1973,
DSI is the premier
supplier of solid state disk solutions
to the financial services
industry. | |
| . |
| Can You Trust Your Flash
SSD's Specs? |
Editor:- I've noticed is that
the published specs of
flash SSDs change
a lot -from the time a product they are first announced, then when they're
being sampled, and later again when they are in volume production.
Sometimes
the headline numbers get better, sometimes they get worse. There are many good
reasons for this.
The product which you carefully qualified may
not be identical to the one that's going into your production line for a
variety of reasons... ...read the article | | |
