LDoms 1.2 Released!

Well it's that time of the year again when a new version of LDoms has been released! Version 1.2 has some great new features and enhancements:

• Physical-to-Virtual Migration Tool
• Configuration Assistant
• Power Management for the CPU
• Jumbo TCP/IP Frames for Virtual Networking
• Restriction of Delayed Reaction for the Control Domain
• Domain Dependency Configurations
• Auto-Recovery of Configurations
• Exporting Virtual Storage Back-ends Multiple Times
• API to Support LDMD Auto-Discovery

The included P2V tool allows one to take a sun4u server running Solaris 8-10 and convert it into a Solaris 10 sun4v image! This is very similar to the Solaris 8/9 Migration Assistant for Containers. The Configuration Assistant gives you an ncurses and Java GUI for doing the initial configuration of your server. Definitely a handy tool for getting people started. The other enhancements will help with power management, networking, configuration management, sharing storage, and enabling management products such as Wand.

I've already updated the main LDoms Community page with all the links to the software, firmware, and documentation. I'll have some more posts over the weekend as I upgrade my environment.

Also for your viewing pleasure, here are some links to demos done on rapid provisioning and mobility with LDoms. Also a sneak peak at xVM OpsCenter managing LDoms is here:)

I'd like to thank all the Sun Engineers and Managers involved with the 1.2 release! Continue doing an excellent job and keep those features coming:)

PS, if you can't find the 1.2 release on the main download site, here is the direct link.

He's Dead Jim!

Well the rumor on the street this week is that Sun has killed off the UltraSPARC-RK or ROCK processor. This was suppose to be a 16 core processor for the upcoming SuperNova servers. This would be an unfortunate blow to the SPARC family and to Sun customers as there was a lot of hope that ROCK would take the high-end of CMT against the M-Series servers and allow customers to consolidate large amounts of applications. Hopefully, this is all just rumor and speculation. I could only imagine this happening if one of the following were true:

• The 8-core SPARC64 VIIIfx "Venus" processor out-performs ROCK by a significant amount, thusly making it impractical to move forward with ROCK.
• The 16-core UltraSPARC-KT "Niagara 3" processor out-performs ROCK by a significant amoutn, thusly making it the new high-end CMT processor.

Unfortunately, without real sources to confirm any of this, it's difficult to know for certain if ROCK has been canceled or just delayed again. There have been numerous delays over the past few years and some have been rumored to be the result of layoffs and politics. Either way, it's not looking good for the ROCK processor or SuperNova systems at this point. If it has been canceled, it'll be a big blow to the LDoms Community and users as those servers would have been LDOM enabled and given a higher level of RAS features than are currently available on volume CMT servers. Time will tell..

SPARC64 Strikes Back on Super-Computing

It would appear that Fujitsu has learned a lot from Sun's CMT processor designs and is testing out its new SPARC64 VIIIfx or Venus processor which is an 8 core SPARC64 chip that can perform 128 Giga-flops! Here are some interesting points about this processor:

• 8 core SPARCv9 with extended SIMD extensions for supercomputing, known as HPC-ACE.
• Dedicated L1 data and instruction cache for each core.
• Shared 6MB L2 cache
  
• 45nm CMOS process on 2 cm squared die
  
• 2x the number of transistors as the SPARC64 VII, yet only one third the power consumption.
  
• Integrated DDR3 Memory Controller
• Hardware optimization for non-parallelized traditional workloads
• 128 Giga-flops performance per chip, more than 2.5 times the fastest Intel processor.
• Liquid cooled!

Fujitsu is first targetting this processor for super-computer applications into a 3D torus arrangement that will allow for over 100,000 nodes to be connected together and deliver around 12.8 Peta-flops! This will out perform the FX1 SPARC64 VII super-computers which run at 40 Giga-flops per chip. The FX1 is only sold in Japan, you can read more about it at this link.

Here is a picture of a Venus node:


As you can see, the front of the module is on the right-hand side where the latches are. You can also see what look like the liquid cooling connector on that side. This would suggest that the node plugs into a larger chassis and that the I/O components are on a separate module. I would not be surprised to see that the frame uses a custom switch-less fabric on the back-end, with mainframe level RAS, and SPARC Enterprise M-Series features.

It remains to be seen when this processor will make its way onto the M-series or a future SPARC product line for Fujitsu and Oracle/Sun. However, with the investment from Japan in deploying this in super-computers and Fujitsu's focus on making traditional workloads benefit from this new processor, it is very likely we'll see Venus based SPARC servers in the near future. The M-series was designed to handle several generational upgrades. It has already gone from Dual-Core to Quad-Core. As such, an 8-core upgrade is only logical. How this will play into Sun's ROCK processor is in question as well. It would appear that Fujitsu has indeed learned a lot from Sun around building multi-core and multi-threaded processors. ROCK and next-gen Niagara processors may be more focused on general purpose computing, while Venus is focused on large number crunching super-computer tasks.

Mergers and Legal Dribble

The SEC filings on the merger are available for the public to review. The document has lots of interesting details about the merger process, conditions, etc. Reading through the document provides an interesting lesson in how mergers are designed and how things get sorted out. Items such as severance pay for the executives, beneficial stock holders, waiving of rights, etc. are all very fascinating to read through. It provides an interesting glimpse into the legal process and how companies organize such activities. I was not surprised to see my old employer BGI holding a significant amount of securities in the company. I think those who hold on to their stock and enjoy the gains from the conversion to Oracle common stock will be happy over time.

Of course some of the other interesting bits of information surround the history behind the merger itself. Some of the other parties who were interested, have been masked over. Reading through the document, it's obvious the other suiters were HP, Fujitsu, and of course IBM. I never thought that Sun would be a good fit for HP, other than to kill off the competition, considering HP's rather bloody and unfruitful past mergers. Fujitsu has done worse in the server market space outside of the Asia region, and has such a limited market in the US, it didn't make sense unless they were willing to commit to the US market. While the R&D mentality of Fujitsu would have brought something to the table with Sun, they seem to suffer the same sales and marketing issues Sun has been unable to address over the years. Ultimately, I still think the Oracle merger makes the most sense seeing how Oracle has strong ambitions, sales, and marketing power. The vision of supplying the whole solution stack makes increasingly more sense as one looks at the IT landscape. Oracle stands to change the game and go headon with IBM and HP.

Speaking of a changing landscape, Rackable is merging with SGI and taking on its name. SGI has been through some rough times over the years. I remember when I first lived in Silicon Valley seeing the huge campus for SGI and thinking they must be doing well. It's amazing how fast things can change.

And speaking of Oracle, it is buying out Virtual Iron which will give Oracle access to some interesting Xen management tools. It might also be interesting to see how Oracle will cherry-pick components from Oracle VM, Virtual Iron, and Sun's xVM. Oracle is definitely tooling up on components for its stack. Considering that Oracle will own Dynamic Systems Domains, Logical Domains, Solaris Containers, xVM Server, VirtualBox, Sun Rays, etc. through the Sun merger, they will have the widest virtualization portfolio in the industry. A solution for each situation and platform. Something to think about:)

More Rumblings and Solar Flares

There has been some talk lately over Sun's SEC filings which list some interesting turn of events:

• Sun shareholders acting to block the Oracle take-over.
• Violations of bribery laws

The first one, I am not surprised at since Sun's management has indeed failed to meet their responsibilities to the shareholders for manning the ship and keeping the profits up. I'm not sure how this will help, since a failure to complete the acquisition would probably place Sun into further uncertainty and force it to go private or bust. Hopefully this will get resolved peacefully. But I do understand the frustration and anger shareholders must have for being let down constantly over the past 8 years.

The second item though, is indeed troubling and could hurt Sun's position in the GSA program. Idealistically, business should not resort to such tactics. But that is not the way of the world. Recently news of the EU filing anti-competitive charges against Intel for paying manufacturers to not sell AMD processors demonstrates this clearly. Not to mention that Microsoft is having its own issues abroad as well. I've seen enough business deals change direction due to vendors using such tactics or discounting hardware to bargain-basement prices just to make the sale, but charge you an arm and a leg on support and licensing. The sad thing is that customers forget that they have choices and need to leverage that to not only get a good price, but to have a good business partnership based on trust. Hopefully those responsible for the bribery issues will be dealt with. Atleast Sun has been honest about this issue and is helping the authorities.

Ecoviv Beta Testing Wand for LDoms

The company Ecoviv is beginning to beta test their management product for LDoms, called Wand. This product was previously known as Virtvue, but has some significant enhancements:

• Web based remote management of LDoms
• A robust three tier architecture that leverages Solaris’ Cacao Agent
• Support for LDoms 1.1
• LDoms Life-Cycle Management
• Live Migration
• Provisioning of the Logical Domains Manager and of Guest Domains
• LDom Search and Discovery
• SNMP Support

This is great news and I'll hopefully get into the beta program. This would be a fun product to write an article or white paper on.

Oracle Confirms Commitment to SPARC

Reuters did an interview with Larry Ellison over the acquisition of Sun that has some great news. In the interview the subject of software vs hardware came up. He confirmed that Oracle will retain Sun's hardware business and increase development of the SPARC processors as important to Oracle's strategy for delivering a complete solution stack. This is great news for SPARC customers to hear and understand. Larry Ellison even specifically stated that Oracle wants to compete directly with IBM in the data center for dominance. Oracle is aware of the value of the SPARC64 and the UltraSPARC CMT lines as they are power efficient, scalable, and heading in the right direction. I highly recommend this article for customers, users, engineers, etc. to get the message out that Oracle is committed to Solaris and SPARC. I think with Oracle's focus on competing with IBM Power systems, we'll see some significant focus on ROCK and the next generation CMT systems. Hopefully, we'll see SPARC kick Power7 in price and performance.

Solaris 10 05/09 Released

The latest update to Solaris 10 has been released. There are new features and fixes for Solaris Containers, SMF, IPSec, 10GbE, iSCSI, Infiniband, SunSSH, and even SunVTS. No major updates on platform support or virtualization. Seems this should be a fairly stable update.

In other news, it's encouraging to finally see builds of the Indiana or OpenSolaris.com flavour for SPARC. Unfortunately, this release can only be installed by the new AI installer over the network and can not be booted from CD/DVD or through Jumpstart. Another major limitation is that Xsun is not included, which limits framebuffer support significantly. Until recently, we only had Solaris Express or one of the other distributions such as MilaX or MarTux. You can check these different distros out on Genunix. Overall, it is encouraging to see the number of distros for OpenSolaris grow and mature. Hopefully, the Indiana codebase and support will mature quickly on SPARC. (We can only hope that Oracle will see the value in making cheap UltraSPARC-T2 workstations).