Upgraded to Solaris Express: Community Release B38

So I upgraded my Netra X1 and Ultra60 to Solaris Express: Community Release B38! I used JET 4.3.0, which just came out as well! The new version of JET has some new features such as support for wanbooting, RBAC integration, GRUB integration, and of course bug fixes. It didn't take long for me to add support for Solaris 11 to JET. I'll post some helpful hints on that later on.

Along with this upgrade, I installed the latest JDS build Vermillion 40. I'm really impressed with the changes to JDS, although I do miss the Sun branding:) There are lots of enhancements to the interface in JDS which is based off of GNOME 2.14. Even on the same hardware, it's more responsive than it has been in the past. The other plus is the inclusion common add-ons: FireFox, Thunderbird, Macromedia plugins, Adobe Acrobat, Realplayer, Rhythmbox, Sound Juicer, etc. I'm starting to test out these features, so far only Rhythmbox has proven to be truely buggy and non-functional. There are some quirks, such GAIM not starting properly unless the $PATH is short, missing icons for StarOffice, and gdm.conf disappearing after the install. Here is a screenshot of my desktop.

I still have to re-install a lot of software, SunStudio, SunRay 4.0, N1GE6u8, etc. So I have lots to post in the next few days.

Gripes about DataCenters

I've been in the computer industry for almost 10 years (gee.. time flies). I've seen a lot of different data centers over the years. I've seen things that would make most experienced SA's cry! I've seen servers on tables, cables on top of raised floors, bad rackmounting, using telco racks for servers, hack-sawed rails, leaking HVAC units, tubing for water drainage over servers, etc. Yet it never ends! Even in environments where companies buy nice cabinets, they rare go beyond that to keep things neat. Okay.. so I like my data centers to be neat and organized! I've gotten a few places to change and use some best practices to keep things organized. So here are my suggestions for people:

• The space under raised floors should only be for HVAC and power.
• Network cabling, fibre cabling, and console cables should be colour coordinated and bundled in tracks above the equipement.
• Buy good rack cabinets! No point in spending tons of $$ on servers and then going cheap on the cabinets. The cabinets should have anti-tilt bars, be strong enough support a full load, have zero rack unit power strips or PDU's, support the correct screws in the mount posts for your equipment, and have cable management channels.
• Put patch panels in your cabinets for your network and console connections. this reduces headaches of searching for cables. Make sure to always rate your cabling and patch panels for the communications being used. No point in using Cat5 patch panels when you need GigE speed for your network connections! Your cabinet patch panels should goto a master patch panel for your switches and routers. This makes things easier!
  
• Use console servers that are easy to setup, use Cat5 patch cables, have on-line configuration of port settings (DTE, etc.), and are secure (SSH,RADIUS,LDAP,etc.).
• Use cable management arms for your servers. No point in sliding a server out of a cabinet for maintenance or upgrades and having to disconnect all the cabling too.
• Make sure you have vented floor tiles in the front and back of your servers. This helps bring in cold air and pushes the hot air up to be recirculated. It's also important to have alternate cabinets rows so that the fronts of two rows face eachother, while the backs face backs. This prevents hot air from one row affecting another row. Read the documentation on environmental requirements. This is very important for SF3800's and above!
• Make sure you have enough space between rows so you can move equipment in and out! Nothing funny about having to replace parts on a server you can't pull out far enough!
• When populating cabinets, always put the largest servers on the bottom (i.e. V890's) and smaller servers on top:)
• Make sure you have plenty of power available in each cabinet for current and future needs.
• Always spread the power load. Equipment with multiple power supplies should be connected to different power strips that are connected to different UPS's.
• Make sure you have enough HVAC for your datacenter and save space for future growth.
  
• Label.. Label.. Label..
  

Well I could probably go on for a long time. But I think that covers my major gripes!

Soap box mode off..

Booting on ZFS

So OpenSolaris is getting close to being able to use ZFS for the root filesystem! Check this blog out:) So it's almost there, still have to get SPARC to boot on ZFS. There is of course the issue of getting the installer and jumpstart to work with ZFS. When this happens, it'll put ZFS another step closer to replacing UFS. The big thing that is needed for ZFS is cluster support (Sun Cluster and Veritas Cluster). Hopefully that will be around the corner. Another plus would be cluster ZFS (active/active) for grid computing or parallel databases (Oracle RAC).

Interestingly enough the discussion on translucent/union filesystems came up again. This is an interesting topic because is brings up the idea of taking a source filesystem and create delta copies that are mountable. This could be very useful for zones. It could reduce disk usage considerably. Some of this functionality is in the read/write clones for ZFS. Something I haven't tested out yet.. need some more disks:)

Guess who I saw last week..

So last week, I went with my wife to see Depeche Mode at the Shoreline Ampetheatre! It was packed full of people of all ages and backgrounds. Very kewl! They played some of the songs from their new album, and lots of familiar songs from previous albums. We were out on the lawns, which I think worked out really well. We brought blankets and food, so things were comfy:) The music was loud and energetic! Sadly, I forgot to bring film for the camera.. daft! Yes I still have a camera with fill.. I should have brought the new Sony camera, but didn't want them taking it away since it's a video camera. They did have a live CD to buy after the show, but it was really just a coupon for the real CD. That doesn't arrive for weeks! So we skipped buying that and just got some t-shirts. Atleast Bauhaus had that one down to a tee;) Hopefully they'll fix that in the future. I highly recommend seeing Depeche Mode if you can! The show was awesome!