More articles..

A couple of weeks ago, I finished my third article for ;login: on LDoms, which will be out in the February issue. I had soo much material, that the original draft was about 16 pages long! Needless to say, I had to shorten the article down to 10 pages. As a result, the third article will focus on advanced configurations for resources. I used Solaris 10 and Solaris Express on the T5120 for tests and examples in the article. I don't want to give away any details, but I think many readers will find the third article very helpful. I could not have written the article without this wonderful machine!

So now, I'm getting ready to write the fourth and final article for ;login: on LDoms. I have lots of new things that I've been toying around with over the past week and it's hard not to spoil things. But here's a small glimpse into one topic, I'll be discussing:


Something you don't see on the console of a guest domain every day:)

I'm also toying around with the idea of putting together a single white paper on LDoms and the T5x20 platform. I think it might be an interesting way to do a review of both technologies and give people a guide to follow. I'd probably publish it as a PDF on the OpenSolaris LDoms community site. If you have suggestions on what you'd like to see, let me know!

Speaking of LDoms, there have been many fixes around VDISK and VIO for LDoms in OpenSolaris. Here's the latest bit that should be of interest to readers. As you can see build 80 implements the USCSI and multi-host reservations of VDISKS. As you can imagine, I can't wait to test this out:) There have also been other advances in the past couple of releases, such as the ability to use volumes (SVM, ZFS,etc) as true block devices in guest domains, meaning that you get all the slices you would expect:)

A Peek Under the Hood of the T5120

It's time to take a peek under the hood of the T5120. Lets start with some of the items on the front:

The drive sleds or spuds are pretty nifty! I like the new look and the latch mechanism. The grills on the front of the spuds, allows better air-flow. In the above photo, you can see a SAS drive in the spud on the left and a filler spud on the right. Lets take a look at the top:


On the top there is a panel that allows you to access the fan modules without having to take apart the server. Each fan module consist of two small fans with a carrier that has a connector on the bottom. It's very well organized and each module plugs easily into a slot. The chassis for the T5120/T5220 is the same that found on the current Sun x64 Galaxy boxes. So you can see there are other slots for extra modules, probably to keep those x64 procs nice and cool. As you can see, the UltraSPARC-T2 only needs 4 fan modules. Lets take a look at one:


How cute? If you look closely, you'll see that each of the modules that are plugged in have a green light. Meanwhile, the socket our module was plugged into has an amber light. I noticed that the chassis fault light went on and even a message was displayed on the ILOM console. One thing I found kinda odd was that the access panel can not stay open on its own and there is even a warning label that it might injure your hand if you are not careful. I used a pen to keep the panel open so I could take the pictures. When it's running, it probably makes sense that the door can't stay open as it would disrupt the air-flow.

Before we open the top, lets look at the instructions:

It's nice to see instructions and information like this on a server. Definitely makes it easier to service and prevents you from having to carry a printout into a data center! Hmm.. even the bottom of the lid has more instructions:

Well, lets get to it!

Finally, the inside of the T5120! Just infront of the fan modules, youc an see a clear plastic air duct that directs the air-flow over the DIMMs and the CPU. The T2 processor has a copper heat sink and the DIMMs seem to have heat sinks too. Beyond that, you can see the ASICS, PCI-E raiser slots, and the power supplies to the right.

I'll post some more pictures shortly:)

T5120 First Impressions

It has been a couple of weeks since I've posted. I know:( The holidays are a busy time of the year. But enough with the excuses..

So the T5120 is setup in my home office. I had a hard time figuring out where to place it, but found that my storage bins (full of computer junk) works great! The machine is absolutely amazing!

It came pre-loaded with Solaris 10 Update 4, JES, and the LDM 1.0.1 software. Here is the hardware configuration:

• T5120 ( 1 x UltraSPARC-T2 8-Core @ 1.4Ghz)
• 32GB RAM
• 2 x 146GB SAS HDDs
• 1 x DVD-RW

It's amazing to think that in a 1RU box, there are 64 threads on a single socket CPU!

The sound of the machine powering on is like a jet getting ready to launch off an air-craft carrier. It definitely moves plenty of air through the front! Obviously, it's not designed for home or personal use! Although it would be interesting to see a workstation version in the future. I'm sure many SA's, engineers, and developers would love to get their hands on a workstation with this feature set.

I'll try to make a video of the system booting so you can see and hear it:)

JET Module for LDM Software

I took a few minutes to put together a JET module for deploying the LDM software. I've packaged it up and you can download it from here. When a client is being built, you'll see the following:

LDM: Installing ldm....
LDM: Installing ldm....
LDM: Register postinstall script 'add_packages' for boot 1

During the last phase, the software will install:

LDM: Running 002.ldm.001.add_packages
LDM: Installing SUNWldm.v from: /var/opt/sun/jet/js_media/pkg/ldm/1.0.1/sparc
LDM: SUNWldm.v installation complete
LDM: Installing SUNWldmib.v from: /var/opt/sun/jet/js_media/pkg/ldm/1.0.1/sparc
LDM: SUNWldmib.v installation complete

In the future, I'll have to see if I can squeeze the firmware and configuration pieces into the module. The firmware would be the more complicated piece. For now, it just installs the software.