George Carlin and Napalm

It's definitely a sad day. We just saw George Carlin here in Houston this year. It was the second time that I've had the honor of seeing him perform live and it was amazing! He really opened the minds and ears of a society that was closed minded and unimaginative. He reminded America how to question authority and even our own social oddities. He rambled on about the mundane and even the most serious issues we still face today. Most importantly, he reminded America how to laugh at itself in the face of it's own shortcomings and failures, to place things into perspective.

"Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck."
- George Carlin

Scalent and CA Support LDoms

Scalent and CA recently announced the ability of their products to manage and integrate with LDoms:

• Scalent Announcement
• CA Announcement

It's good to see 3rd party products emerge to fill the void that currently exist with the LDoms product line. Hopefully, we'll see xVM OpsCenter take stage at some point in the near future to provide a native management tool. In the meantime, it looks like we'll see virt-manager first.

New Server to Review!

Yesterday, a wonderful package arrived on my doorstep..


It's a T5240! I'll be writing a review of the server, with a focus on virtualization and practical uses. I'm also thinking of doing some sort of benchmarking to show the difference between my Sun Blade 2000 and the T5240. Keep your eyes out for more posts as I get started on this server!

Simulating the UltraSPARC-T2

Two months back, I started playing around with the UltraSPARC-T2 development tools that are available. Included with the tools are the following simulators:

• SAM (SPARC Architecture Modeler)
• Legion (Fast Instruction Simulator)

These tools are intended for developers to simulate the architecture on other SPARC systems. I took the time to compile the tools on my Sun Blade 2000. It does take some considerable overhead to simulate a single UltraSPARC-T2 processor core. However, the learning experience is worth the effort. Both tools enable you to simulate the complete stack (processor, POST, hypervisor, and OBP), and enable you to run a guest OS. Definitely an interesting way to learn about the architecture under the hood!

Here is a screenshot of SAM:


Here's a screenshot of Legion:


Now that the hypervisor API has been released, I'll be playing with this more. Hopefully, I'll be able to get my arms around the programming and do something useful:)

Meeting the LDom Engineers

So last week, I had a chance to meet some of the engineers behind LDoms in person! The meeting was amazing! Communicating with engineers at Sun is much easier thanks to the revolution of the OpenSolaris community. But having a chance to actually meet some of the engineers is always a pleasure. I talked with them about the future of LDoms and especially about our LDoms community. The good news is that the LDM software will be open sourced! So far, we have the processors, hypervisor, and the Solaris hooks available. This means the last piece of the puzzle will be available for developers and enthusiasts to participate through. I'm pleased with the discussions around opening up the development of LDoms. I also talked with them about ideas for the future and how to build out our community. I'll have more information as things develop.

Sad news though, Ashley Saulsbury, one of the engineers behind LDoms, has left Sun:( Definitely a sad situation. Needless to say, I think the development of LDoms is in good hands. Ashley was kind enough to publish the API for the hypervisor, before parting. I've setup a link on the community page. The document goes over the details of how the hypervisor, OS, and LDM software interact. So far, it's a very interesting read and definitely fills in the gaps with the other documentation out there today. Big thanks to Ashley for all of his dedication and hard work in developing this technology! I wish him luck with his future ventures!