Dave Brillhart's Blog https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/ Enjoying the Journey... Anticipating the Destination en-us Copyright 2007 Sun, 23 Sep 2007 06:33:57 +0000 Apache Roller BLOGS401ORA6 (20130904125427) https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/sun_kit Sun "Kit" dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/sun_kit Mon, 25 Apr 2005 23:47:13 +0000 Computers <p>Have you noticed the increasing use of the term 'kit" to refer to a hardware vendor's products? Articles will refer to, for example,&nbsp;Sun's "kit", when discussing our latest servers or storage and desktops.<br> </p> <p>I really like that term - because it drives home the point that when you are in the market to purchase "kit" from a product vendor, you sign up to be the kit builder. And for the hobbyist out there, that can be really fun and educational, even thrilling to some degree.</p> <p>Many of us grew up <a href="http://hem.bredband.net/thomaskolb/art/models/introduction_e.htm">building kits</a>. I \*loved\* building ships, trucks, airplanes, tanks, cars, rockets, etc. It was a blast, and possibly contributed to (and/or was because of) my engineering mindset. The sense of accomplishment of building highly realistic, detailed and customized models, from a bunch of bare parts, is quite rewarding.<br> </p> <p>However, most IT shops I work with are less interested in the process of constructing their own unique one-off configurations from collections of parts (kit). I applaud clients for their increasing demand for solutions built from established patterns and reference implementations. I applaud IT vendors for their increasing portfolios of pre-integrated and hardened solutions.</p> <p>Kit building is a great&nbsp;weekend hobby for kids (and adults). But when it comes to running our businesses and defending our country, we need to leverage, as much as possible,&nbsp;the experience and factory integration of trusted IT solution vendors. For some, it is hard to give up the thrill/challenge of the IT equivalent of "junk yard wars". But&nbsp;there&nbsp;are even more interesting and higher-valued challenges and rewards awaiting those who free up their time from the tyranny of the "nuts and bolts".</p> <p>The following is a great weekend hobby project. But you don't need to let your IT projects look like this...</p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/Kit.gif"></p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/project_lifecycle_cartoon Project Lifecycle Cartoon dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/project_lifecycle_cartoon Sat, 9 Apr 2005 16:16:33 +0000 Computers While this is intended to be funny, it's a little too close for comfort in many cases. But due diligence up-front <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 0, 153);"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">VOC</span> </span>(voice of the customer) needs assessment interviews, and a subsequent translation into well-formed and reconciled SMART (<a href="http://www.lucka.nl/education/downloads/whitepapers/cttnews3q04_smart_requirements.pdf">1</a>, <a href="http://www.win.tue.nl/%7Ewstomv/edu/2ip30/references/smart-requirements.pdf">2</a>) [Specific, Measurable, Achievable/Attainable, Realistic/Realizable, Traceable/TimeBounded] <span style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(204, 0, 0);">Requirements</span><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">, along with an ongoing <span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0); font-weight: bold;">Risk Log</span>, would have made this a very boring cartoon. A lesson we would be well advised to remember in many contexts.</span><br> <br> <img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/Proj_LifeCycle.gif"><br> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/stocks_sunw_vs_ibm_hpq Stocks: SUNW -vs- IBM, HPQ, MSFT, ORCL dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/stocks_sunw_vs_ibm_hpq Fri, 8 Apr 2005 15:59:17 +0000 Computers In the following graphs I've compared Sun Microsystems (SUNW) to some of our competitors and/or partners: IBM, HP, Oracle, Microsoft. The charts look at the five companies all the way back to the late 80s, and back just five years. In the first graph, you clearly see the "exuberant" six year ramp that SUNW experienced starting in 1995. That's the year we launched Java and the UltraSPARC processor. I also joined Sun that year :-). The post Y2K dot-com implosion hit us pretty hard, but after a two year slide we've settled down and ended up a significantly better long-term investment than some. In hindsight at least.<br> <br> The second graph looks at the same companies since Y2K. It's interesting to see that we all declined (at various rates) until mid-2002, at which point we all found a plateau that we've pretty much sustained for the last two and a half years.<br> <br> I don't know about you, but I think the market is primed to move again. The IT industry landscape has changed a lot since the Y2K peak. Pressure is building. Innovation has been occurring all along. Which of the five will break out of the horizontal? My bet is that it'll be those companies that successfully combine targeted innovation and exceptional services.<br> <br> <img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/Stock.gif"><br> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/64_bit_smp x86: 64-bit & SMP dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/64_bit_smp Wed, 30 Mar 2005 12:32:06 +0000 Computers <P>The following news story "<EM><STRONG>IBM, HP take different tack as Xeon MP moves to 64-bit</STRONG></EM>" has some interesting quotes: <A href="http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/0330ibmhpta.html">http://www.nwfusion.com/news/2005/0330ibmhpta.html</A></P> <P><STRONG>First</STRONG>: "<FONT color=#990000><EM>HP has decided to cease production of its eight-way ProLiant DL740 and DL760 systems.</EM>..</FONT>".&nbsp;HP is following&nbsp;Dell's withdraw of the 8-socket server space. Apparently Dell and HP believe that there is little market demand for more than a handful of threads (today an OS schedules&nbsp;one thread per core or hyperthread context). Or, could it be that their Operating Systems of choice&nbsp;(Windows and Linux) simply can't (yet) scale to larger thread counts? Hey Dell &amp; HP... you might want to check out Solaris 10. A million of your prospects have <A href="http://www.sun.com/smi/Press/sunflash/2005-03/sunflash.20050328.1.html">downloaded and registered</A> this OS in just the last two months! And it <A href="http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/data/sol/systems/views/desktop_server_system_all_results.page1.html">runs just fine</A> on your (small and large) x86/x64 servers, up to hundreds of threads.</P> <P><STRONG>Second</STRONG>:&nbsp;<!--StartFragment --> Andy Lees, corporate vice president with Microsoft's server and tools business, said&nbsp;"<EM><FONT color=#990000>If you run a 32-bit application on 64-bit Windows [Windows Server 2003 x64 Edition] on 64-bit hardware, you'll get about a 5% bump in terms of performance," he said. "If you go ahead and add 64-bit [application] capabilities, then things get dramatically better.</FONT></EM>"</P> <P>Hmmm. This is an interesting admission that 64-bit might&nbsp;actually be worthwhile. It is (not really) amazing that up until Microsoft (x64 Edition) and Intel (EM64T) had decent 64-bit offerings,&nbsp;that&nbsp;they told the world that 32-bit was all that anyone would need for the foreseeable future - except maybe for huge databases and extremely large memory footprint compute jobs. I guess "foreseeable" means <EM><STRONG>until we can field a team</STRONG></EM>. Oh, by the way, Solaris has been 64-bit forever (in Internet years), has unmatchable security features and reliability, and a bundled virtualization technology that alone is worth the price of admission (oh yeah, it's free).</P> <P>Combine small and high-thread count performance, security, reliability, and virtualization... and Solaris 10 will allow you to stack multiple applications on a single x86/x64 server with confidence. All of a sudden an 8-socket server (with 16 high-performance cores) looks like an important sweet spot for driving utilization rates up and operation cost and complexity down.</P> <P>HP and Dell have withdrawn from that space (a strategic blunder I believe).&nbsp;It'll be interesting to see who steps up to claim that prize!</P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/itanic_davy_jones_locker Itanic: Davy Jones' Locker dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/itanic_davy_jones_locker Tue, 29 Mar 2005 07:33:44 +0000 Computers <p><!--StartFragment -->In the year 2000, just as the first Itanium processor from Intel hit the market, <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/02/28/itanium_04_sales/">IDC predicted</a> that 2004 Itanium server sales would hit the $28 billion mark! But IDC missed their projection slightly. They were off by about $26.6 billion, or ~95%. Ouch!!</p> <p>Of the few Itanium-based servers that were actually sold in all of 2004, HP lead the "crawl" and accounted for 76% of them. But HP, as of mid-2004, joined Sun and IBM in the Opteron-based server market, so expect Itanium sales at HP in 2005 to slow at a faster rate than HP's general server sales numbers. IBM came in 2nd with 10% of the Itanium market, but has strongly hinted that they are killing off their Itanium-based server offerings in favor of Opteron, Power, and traditional Intel processors. Dell captured 3rd place with just 5% of the tiny Itanium pie, and so far Dell has resisted selling Opteron-based servers... but how long will Michael watch from the sidelines?</p> <p>For those who like to look under the hood, it seems to me there are three server-oriented processor families that <a href="http://freespace.virgin.net/m.warner/Roadmap2005.htm">deserve attention</a> and will still be important in 2010:</p> <ol> <li>Sun's (and Fujitsu's) SPARC-based CMT families (US-IV, Olympus, Niagara, Rock, etc)</li> <li>IBM's Power family (Power4, Power5, Power6, etc)</li> <li>AMD/Intel's x86/x64 families:</li> <ol> <li>Opteron/AMD64 [Egypt, Italy, etc]</li> <li>IA-32/EM64T [Nocona, Potomac, Smithfield, Tulsa, etc]</li> </ol> </ol> <p>It will be fun to watch. They all have well funded R&amp;D, aggressive rates of innovation, compelling roadmaps, and market/ISV traction. I believe all three horses will be in the race five years from now, but only two will be perceived as the market leaders. Unpredictable market dynamics and execution challenges will likely cause one of the three to stumble and fall behind. But anyone's guess as to which will stumble would be just that - a guess. Intel can survive a $25 billion dollar mistake, and learn from it; and AMD is actually delivering new processors faster than their roadmaps suggest (an amazing feat for a processor design shop)! IBM's roadmap and processor technology look great, but massive CMT could explode and their Cell Processor&nbsp;could turn into the next Itanic for server applications. Sun has Olympus to compete with Power6, and very exciting new yearlings (Niagara and Rock) that could, well, Rock the world soon. Single-threaded deep pipeline performance processors, throughput-oriented massive-CMT chips, and price-efficient desktop/presentation CPUs are all up for grabs. I doubt one horse will win the Triple Crown. Stay tuned.</p> <p>Of course, OS traction will dictate this to some degree (Solaris, Linux, and Windows64 are all interesting candidates), as will J2EE&nbsp;-vs- .NET adoption and COTS app support. I think that security and efficient/reliable virturalization technology will be key drivers of&nbsp;platform selection in future years.</p> <p>The one thing we can predict with near certainly is that Itanium (aka: Itanic) is headed to <a href="http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-dav1.htm">Davy Jones' locker</a>.</p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/Itanium.gif"></p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/good_enough_vs_gratuitous_upgrades Good Enough -vs- Gratuitous Upgrades dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/good_enough_vs_gratuitous_upgrades Wed, 23 Mar 2005 05:20:28 +0000 Computers <p>Sun offers a really cool thin-client called the <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/simons/sunray.jpg">SunRay</a>. Check out <a href="http://www.sun.com/software/media/flash/tour_sunray">this flash</a>! We've got 30,000 or so running our desktops throughout Sun. Zero-admin, highly-reliable, energy-efficient clients have saved us millions and driven up productivity. Many of our customers are running these as well. There isn't much to the device... No OS, no disk, no fan, no viruses, no patching, no state... you can almost think of it as a remote/networked frame buffer on steroids. Coupled with USB peripheral support, mobile session capability, Java card security, DoD approved multi-compartment support, VIOP telephony, this is a device that deserves all the attention and acceptance it is getting.</p> <p>Using Tarantella, Citrix, or other techniques, this device can even display full screen Windows (indistinguishable from a Windoze thin client) if desired, or it can run "Windows in a window" from a native GNOME Linux or Solaris desktop. With the Java Desktop System's integration of hundreds of bundled apps (StarOffice [MS Office], Mr. Project [MS Project], GIMP [Photoshop], Evolution [Outlook], etc, etc) some are looking at the oppty to stop payment to Redmond.</p> <p>Whatever your choice of display and environment, just pull your Java Card (your session is preserved on the server) and reinsert it later at home, or the next day in another office, and your session will "instantly" pop up in front of you ready to continue your work.</p> <p>However, a customer recently expressed a concern that the SunRay isn't powered by the latest processor technology, and isn't populated by a huge bank of RAM. Hmmm. I wonder if this person might also consider writing to and asking:</p> <p><font color="#993300"><i><b>Norelco </b>why their electric razors are powered by two AA batteries! When MegaRaz offers your choice of 220V 3-phase or dual-feed 30A single-phase units that can rip thru facial hair and auto-exfoliate the top layer of skin in record time.</i></font></p> <p><font color="#993300"><i><b>Panasonic </b>why their microwave ovens are still powered by radio-wave emitting magnetrons. Don't they know that MicroRad now offers lead-lined plutonium-powered resonant-coupled chamber ovens that can cut food prep time by a factor of 50 over obsolete microwave ovens?</i></font></p> <p><font color="#993300"><i><b>Kenmore </b>why their refrigerators have not kept up with the times. That DeepFrz and many others now offer a turbo-switch option that circulates liquid hydrogen to drop the freezer compartment temp to near absolute zero, extending food storage times to future generations. Many use this feature to preserve small pets during vacations, eliminating the need for pet sitting or boarding.</i></font></p> Those were designed to be funny, and to make the point that often engineering makes design choices that are "good enough". The SunRay has to have enough power to paint pixels. And it does. Future versions might require more capable processors to handle stronger encryption at faster network speeds, 3D Acceleration, etc. But gratuitously incorporating leading-edge technology into a design can increase cost, heat, power, noise, and instability with no added benefit. Be careful what you ask for... because you'll end up paying for it. <u><b>Requirements should be linked to the business value they provide</b></u>,&nbsp; and not to an emotional "got to have it just because" craving that is fueled by consumer marketing campaigns.<font color="#660000"><em><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"></span></em></font> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/debating_our_cto_in_public SOA: Debating our CTO dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/debating_our_cto_in_public Mon, 14 Mar 2005 04:25:15 +0000 Computers <p>I have the utmost respect for our CTO of <strong><em>Enterprise Web Services</em></strong>, John Crupi. He is a great guy and one of our sharpest arrows. If you get a chance to hear him speak, you will enjoy the time and take away valuable insights. John recently joined the BSC community (blogs.sun.com) and posted a <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/crupi/20050312#br_br_soa_means_a">brief intro to SOA</a>. Welcome John! I look forward to future updates on this topic on your blog.</p> <p>Me, I'm a Lead Architect with a background built on consulting and systems engineering&nbsp;primarily at the IT Infrastructure&nbsp;level,&nbsp;focused on most of the solution stack - up to but not generally into the functional business logic&nbsp;or S/W app design space. Prior to Sun I spent years as a programmer translating business requirements into S/W solutions... but that's been a while.</p> <p>With that context (the fact that I come to the table with certain biases and experiences that color my perceptions, and I suspect John does as well, to some degree) I'm going to suggest that <font color="#990000"><em>maybe John is slightly off-base w.r.t. his premise about SOA</em></font> and IT / Business Unit (BU) alignment. In the spirit of extracting deeper insights and clarifying positions, I'm going to challenge John with an alternate view (a debate), and ask him to either agree with me or defend his position. Hmmm...is this a <em>Career Limiting Move</em> - publicly challenging one of our Chief Technology Officers? No... not at Sun. We encourage our folks to question assumptions and even our leaders, resolve/align, and then move forward in unity. Okay, with that:</p> <p>John, you suggest that: <em><strong><font color="#990000">one of the critical success factors for SOA is a tighter relationship/alignment between Business Units and IT</font></strong></em>. In fact you say we can not even do SOA without effort on the part of the Business Unit.<br> </p> <p>Now I could not agree more that Business/IT alignment is absolutely paramount. The lack of&nbsp;business focus and alignment is one of the top reasons why so many IT initiatives fail to deliver or meet expectations or provide a higher return to the business than its cost. I've blogged about that very topic.</p> <p>However, that alignment, IMHO, is not related to SOA. In fact, I believe there are benefits to <span style="text-decoration: underline;">isolating</span> service construction techniques from the consumers and owners of those services. To reuse the power utility metaphor:<br> </p> <p style="margin-left: 40px; font-style: italic;">You don't care how <a href="http://www.sargentlundy.com/fossil/">S&amp;L</a> built the power plants that deliver your electric service,&nbsp;or how power distribution provisioning logic taps into multiple grid suppliers and peak-load gas turbines. You simply have specific service level and financial demands, and expect a quality experience when/if you have to interact with the service desk to resolve a dispute, request a change in your service, or report an incident.</p> <p>There are two primary components to IT... the <span style="font-weight: bold;">design/development</span> of services, and the <span style="font-weight: bold;">opertaion/delivery</span> of services.<br> </p> <p>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Business - IT </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Development" </span>alignment is driven by business requirements (functional, service level, cost, time-to-market, etc). SOA isn't a "requirement", but a technique that helps IT achieve the desires of the business to support their business processes.<br> </p> <p>"<span style="font-weight: bold;">Business/IT </span><span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">Operations" </span>alignment is properly performed as defined by ITSM/ITIL Best Practices, and as illustrated in my graphic below. Business and IT need to work as a intimate partnership to define, implement, deliver, and continually refine an optimized&nbsp;Service Portfolio at contracted service levels and an established and predictable cost point. Again, SOA is simply a technique that helps IT achieve operational excellence.<br> </p> <p>All other functions are internal to IT. The fact that requirements are fleshed out in an Agile fashion and constructed/deployed using a SOA strategy is meaningless to the Business Unit. They simply want IT to build the capability they need, adjust it when asked, and deliver it as expected.<br> </p> &lt;&gt; <p>As a consumer and purchaser of various utilities (electricity, gas, cable, phone, water, etc) you don't need nor want to know the details of how the utility achieves scale economy or service resiliency or security or efficiency/utilization or adaptability or regulatory compliance. Well, okay, you and I by nature might be curious and like to know how these things work. But, in general, exposing the internal details of how a Service Delivery Platform is constructed is, IMHO,&nbsp;counter-productive to the Business/IT conversation and partnership. Some curious BU stakeholders will likely want to understand and even attempt to influence your model (eg: buy EMC, use .NET, etc). But that kind of inquiry can expose dysfunction and introduce inefficiency in the model. You don't tell Pacific Power to buy GE turbines or supply power at 62 hertz, unless you want to pay extraordinary fees for your own custom power plant. </p> <p>I strongly believe in the principles of Agile development and architecture. Clearly the days of throwing a fixed requirements document over the wall are over. Business Units, IT Operations, and IT Development all must work together in a healthy partnership focused on continuous business process optimization and refinement. However, in my opinion, the true value of SOA is in the benefits it delivers to the <i><b>internal</b></i> IT function w.r.t. scale economy, resiliency, efficiency, adaptability, etc. Business Units don't need nor want to know about SOA... they simply have (frequently changing) requirements and expectations.</p> <p>Bottom line: SOA is a architectural style/technique that IT Shops will employ to quickly respond to changing service level demands, while operating IT as an efficient adaptable business with an ability to tap into&nbsp;(integrate with) <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/dcb/?anchor=sun_the_nobel_prize">external/outsourced partners</a> (blog on Coase's Law).<br> </p> <p>John - I respectfully invite a reply.</p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/Crupi.jpg"><br> </p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/itsm_transforming_it ITSM: Transforming IT dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/itsm_transforming_it Fri, 11 Mar 2005 13:50:56 +0000 Computers <p><!--StartFragment --><font color="#000000">Here are two recent letters I sent to customers following workshops designed to map out a strategy to transform their IT organization&nbsp;thru the assessment of their people, processes, and technologies and the application of best practices. I thought that these might be beneficial to others who are attempting to do likewise. There are no great pearls of wisdom here, but it might get you thinking about having the conversation. ITSM = IT Service Management.<br> </font></p> <p>One client is <!--StartFragment -->attempting to synthesize several frameworks (ITIL, Sigma, ISO, and CMM-I) into a multi-year strategy to uplevel their operational capability. They asked for a mapping between ISO and ITIL, to which I replied in the 2nd letter (below).</p> <p><font color="#003300"><i>Hi &lt;---&gt;,<br><br>I'm glad to see you are moving forward with this. As we mentioned during our workshop, some clients choose to perform the SunTONE assessment by themselves. Others seek assistance from Sun or a partner. Still others do both... performing an informal survey themselves and then requesting a formal evaluation from Sun. Either way, since I'm just down the street from you, I would like to keep tabs on your efforts and help ensure you get the assistance you need and the results you desire. If you find there are areas that you'd like to target for improvement, I can also help suggest services and/or technologies and/or best practices that will help improve your "score". Of course, it isn't about the score - but a firm's ability to deliver a quality service and experience that meets documented SLOs at a desired level of security and cost.<br><br>As I've mentioned, your operational capability is already (it appears) at a higher state of maturity than most. A SunTONE "stamp" will certify this capability and is a badge of honor. You'll join hundreds of other firms that have attained this status, and will differentiate yourselves from the other hosting centers.<br><br>If you have a standing meeting to discuss status and actions and gaps associated with this effort, and if you think I could add value to this meeting, I would be more than happy to attend and provide insights and suggestions where appropriate.</i></font> <br><br><font color="#663300"><i>Hi &lt;---&gt;,<br><br>I'm more of a Sigma guy than an ISO guy... But from my investigation of ISO, it seems clear that a clean mapping exists between ISO and Sigma. These are initiatives to create and document and control processes to ensure a high degree of quality and predictability and continuous improvement/refinement. These are wonderful tools to ensure a process continues to be aligned with expectations and goals, and is as efficient as possible.<br><br>ITIL and SunTONE, on the other hand, DEFINE best practices and processes.<br><br>See the difference? ITIL is a set of practices/processes, whereas Sigma and ISO are mechanisms to ensure any process is (and continues to be) optimized.<br><br>So, in that sense, they are HIGHLY complementary, but orthogonal. I don't believe there is overlap or mapping between ISO and ITIL. You really need both the processes (ITIL) and the means to define and measure and analyze and implement and control (Sigma/ISO) those processes.<br><br>Note that both ITIL and Sigma/ISO are systemic/intrusive frameworks that, if done right, will infiltrate the whole organization and will be embraced and promoted from the highest levels. It is a culture change that takes more than a training campaign, MBOs, and a tiger team. You already know this, but many clients fail because they are not prepared to endure the multi-year evolution that this kind of change requires. But, for those that succeed, there are great rewards all along the way... incremental quick-hit benefits that don't require huge time or resource investments.<br><br>Many IT shops, I believe, will be outsourced and/or be "consolidated" over the next few years because they can not control their costs, security, and service levels. ITIL+Sigma/ISO is the path to survival and excellence.<br><br>Hope this helps!!</i></font> <br></p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/java_jingle Java Jingle dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/java_jingle Fri, 11 Mar 2005 11:09:46 +0000 Computers <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/JavaLogo.jpg" height="70" width="41">&nbsp;<strong><font color="#990000" size="4">Java Jingle from 1997</font></strong>:&nbsp; <a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/Java.mp3">http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/Java.mp3</a></p> <p><em><font color="#330033">I think Sun employees wrote and recorded that song. Anyone recall who? A verse near the end states: "Nobody can tell you what the future may bring...". Well, that was 8 years ago. Check this out!<br> </font></em></p> <p>As Java technology enters its 10th year, the Java Brand is a one of the most powerful technology brands on the planet. You'll see it on your Java powered mobile phone from Sony Ericcson, Motorola, etc or your Palm PDA, on a variety of new PCs from the factory, built into various printers from Ricoh, baked into mobile games, and a part of slew of websites from our partners like Borland, Oracle, and others. Java technology is on over <em><u>2 Billion devices</u></em> and counting! <br><br><strong><em><u>The Facts</u></em></strong> <br>In our most recent study we found that 86% of consumers and 100% of developers and IT recognize the Java brand. In addition we have seen the association of Java and Sun grow by 15% year over year. Over 80% of Developers and IT professionals know that Java comes from Sun. In addition 1 in 3 consumers will buy a product with the Java brand over a comparable product, this is up from 1 in 5 just a year ago.&nbsp;<!--StartFragment --> <a href="http://java.com">Java.com</a> just blew past 10 Million visitors per month, which is more visitors than Nintendo.com, Wired.com, Playstation.com, Time.com, Businessweek.com, and many others. Here are some facts and figures:</p> <ul> <li>2 million downloads of J2EE 1.4 - the most popular release ever!</li> <li>4.5 million Java developers, up 7% from June 2004</li> <li>2 billion Java-enabled devices, up 14% from June 2004</li> <li>750M Java Cards, up 25% from June 2004</li> <li>579M phones, up 65% from June 2004</li> <li>650M PCs, up 8% from June 2004</li></ul> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/power_hungry_grids Power Hungry Grids!! dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/power_hungry_grids Fri, 11 Mar 2005 07:03:47 +0000 Computers <p>I find it ironic that our industry uses Power Generation and Distribution Grids as a metaphor to describe the utility based computing model that is being promoted by vendors and demanded by an increasing number of customers. Actually, it is a reasonable and appropriate analogy. You&nbsp;don't build your own unique power generator for your home or business, and you don't hire a Chief Electrical Officer. Instead you plug into the Power Grid(s)... and leverage standards and scale economics and the variable cost structure of a reliable shared service provider for which you pay for what you consume at a predictable cost per unit. Being a commodity adhering to standards, you can easily switch providers with little or no impact to your operation. You demand a level of service quality, and know what you are willing to pay for that service.</p> <p>I find it ironic simply because it will take a main artery from the Power Grid to, well, <font color="#660000"><strong>power</strong></font> the Compute Grids being designed. There are plans on drawing boards to increase the compute density of future servers such that a standard 19" datacenter rack will (fully populated with the most dense compute servers) consume up to 25KW of power!! That's huge. Consider a data center floor filled with these racks. You can imagine the engineering challenges associated with extracting that much heat from these blast furnaces. And then, of course, it's up to the datacenter to do something with that all that heat. One customer measured hurricane force chilled air speeds underneath their raised floor tiles! To make matters worse, according to p.20 of <a href="http://datacenters.lbl.gov/docs/Data_Center_Facility7.pdf">this report</a>&nbsp;(see the table below), computer equipment&nbsp;accounts for less than half of the power demand for a typical data center.</p> <p>The good news is that you'll have an unprecedented amount of compute power on each floor tile, so in theory, you won't need as many racks. Of course, we all know that the demand for compute capability exceeds the supply.&nbsp;On the other hand,&nbsp;the ultimate realization of the utility model suggests that you might not even have your own datacenter. Like your gas, water, electricity, cable, and phone services, the cost of the building, of powering, cooling, and administering the equipment, of security, insurance, disaster recovery, etc, will all be absorbed by the utility provider. You simply pay for the service at a known rate per unit of consumption.</p> <p>That sure sounds great in theory (unless you are the Chief <span style="font-weight: bold;">Integration</span> Officer, or Chief <span style="font-weight: bold;">Infrastructure</span> Officer). It'll be fun to watch this play out. And watch IT earn the title: "Information Technology".<br> </p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/GridPwr.jpg"></p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/DC_Pwr.jpg"></p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/the_science_of_data_recovery The Science of Data Recovery dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/the_science_of_data_recovery Wed, 9 Mar 2005 00:19:53 +0000 Computers <p><a href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/chrisg/20050308#disk_scrubbing">Chris Gerhard</a> made an off hand comment about the fact that disk scrubbing simply hinders (doesn't necessarily prevent) a motivated attempt to retrieve information from a disk drive. Disk Scrubbing is the process of (attempting to) securely erasing a disk to prevent others from accessing previously stored information. This is typically done by writing (possibly multiple times) random data over the entire surface of a disk.</p> <p>Since I&nbsp;work with&nbsp;various government accounts/agencies/programs, this is an area of interest to me and some of my clients.</p> <p>You might think that a digital medium designed to store only zeros and ones would be immune to forensic recovery of residual data once the zeros and ones are randomly altered. The fallacy with this&nbsp;is that magnetic storage is not a digital medium at all. Magnetic domains are created when the read/write head applies energy to a bit location to align some (not all) of the particles to reflect either a zero or a one. The precise location of the "domain" for each write varys slightly in three dimensions (including depth). This reality provides interesting opportunities or risk (depending on your perspective).<br> </p> <p>A&nbsp;colleague (thanks Joe)&nbsp;pointed me to a <a href="http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery/learn-more-about-microscopy.htm">fascinating report</a> on techniques involved in recovering data from ostensibly erased disks and computer memory. This is amazing and spooky&nbsp;stuff for the technically inclined. Here is <a href="http://mareichelt.de/pub/notmine/livegate.netwipe.html">another report</a> (thanks Kurt) that's also very interesting and enlightening. Joe also pointed me to&nbsp;<a href="http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/%7Epgut001/">Prof. Gutman's website</a>, who has a lifetime of security related knowledge to share!</p> <p>Here are a few brief excerpts (read the <a href="http://www.dataclinic.co.uk/data-recovery/learn-more-about-microscopy.htm">article</a> for context):<br><br><font color="#666600"><i>When all the above factors are combined it turns out that each (disk) track contains an image of everything ever written to it, but that the contribution from each "layer" gets progressively smaller the further back it was made. Intelligence organisations have a lot of expertise in recovering these palimpsestuous images.<br></i></font><br><font color="#666600"><i>To effectively erase a medium to the extent that recovery of data from it becomes uneconomical requires a magnetic force of about five times the coercivity of the medium... (</i><i>a modern hard drive has a&nbsp; coercivity of 1400-2200 Oe).... </i><i>Even the most powerful commercial AC degausser cannot generate Oe needed for full erasure. </i><i>It may be necessary to resort to physical destruction of the media to completely sanitise it (in fact since degaussing destroys the sync bytes, ID fields, error correction information, and other paraphernalia needed to identify sectors on the media, thus rendering the drive unusable, it makes the degaussing process mostly equivalent to physical destruction).<br><br></i><i>One example of an adequate degausser was the 2.5 MW Navy research magnet used by a former Pentagon site manager to degauss a 14" hard drive. It bent the platters on the drive...</i></font></p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/sun_db_the_open_database "Sun DB" The Open Database dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/sun_db_the_open_database Mon, 7 Mar 2005 09:00:09 +0000 Computers <P><SPAN class=artText><FONT color=#660000><BIG><FONT color=#000000><SMALL><SPAN class=artTitle>Our President &amp; COO recently talked to the press about our plans regarding Sun's Open Source SQL database (see the link and excerpt below).</SPAN></SMALL></FONT></BIG></FONT></SPAN></P> <P><SPAN class=artText><FONT color=#660000><BIG><FONT color=#000000><SMALL><SPAN class=artTitle></SPAN></SMALL></FONT></BIG></FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=artText><FONT color=#660000><BIG><FONT color=#000000><SMALL><SPAN class=artTitle>I believe "Sun DB" (a generic term for the concept) will provide huge value to our industry. Many will continue to choose to deploy their largest, most active, and most mission critical data stores on technology from traditional database vendors. However, Sun DB will provide a supported open standard and open source SQL data store at an extremely attractive price point (free?).&nbsp;IT Shops, Government Programs, Research Facilities, etc,&nbsp;will find this offering to be technically and financially irresistible for many&nbsp;types of deployments. And, I'm guessing that traditional database vendors will find intensified market pressure to readdress license models increasingly irresistible. It's a win-win for everyone... Well, almost everyone.</SPAN></SMALL></FONT></BIG></FONT></SPAN><!--StartFragment --></P> <P><SPAN class=artText><FONT color=#660000><BIG><FONT color=#000000><SMALL><SPAN class=artTitle></SPAN></SMALL></FONT></BIG></FONT></SPAN><SPAN class=artText><FONT color=#660000><BIG><SPAN class=artTitle><A href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/02/16/HNsunpresident_1.html"><I><SMALL><FONT color=#000000>http://www.infoworld.com/article/05/02/16/HNsunpresident_1.html</FONT></SMALL></I></A></WEBHEADLINE></SPAN><B><SPAN class=artTitle><WEBHEADLINE><BR><BR>Sun president talks databases, Sparc, and HP</WEBHEADLINE></SPAN></B></BIG></FONT><BR>Jonathan Schwartz talks about Sun's open source plans and offers Fiorina's successor some advice</SPAN></P><SPAN class=artText> <P class=ArticleBody page="1"><STRONG>IDG: Does Sun have a concrete plan to offer an open source database, or was Scott McNealy just being provocative when he suggested that recently?</STRONG> </P> <P class=ArticleBody page="1"><FONT color=#003300>Schwartz: To be a complete application platform you have to have some form of persistent storage. You can achieve that through a file system, a directory engine, a messaging store, the persistence engine in our application server -- those are all forms of databases. What we haven't done is address the SQL access database, which has been served well in the open source community by MySQL and PostgreSQL. We're committed to filling the hole -- all of the hole, not just the file system. We have to address the requirements of the SQL database, so I think we're quite serious about it. </FONT></P> <P class=ArticleBody page="1"><STRONG>IDG: Would you use the same model as you did with Linux on the Java Desktop System, i.e. take an existing open source product, tweak it for your needs and put a Sun label on it?</STRONG> </P> <P class=ArticleBody page="1"><FONT color=#003300>Schwartz: That's to be determined. Customers have said, 'We'd like an alternative to the existing choices we have.' And they are consistently asking Sun to go work on that issue.</FONT> </P> <P class=ArticleBody page="1"><STRONG>IDG: So it's a matter of when and not if?</STRONG> </P> <P class=ArticleBody page="1"><FONT color=#003300>Schwartz: Absolutely.</FONT></P></SPAN> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/in_good_company_ceo_cio In Good Company: McNealy/Vass dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/in_good_company_ceo_cio Fri, 4 Mar 2005 12:15:44 +0000 Computers <P>My&nbsp;30 minutes of fame!&nbsp;Some of our C-levels came to town to yesterday to present at the IPIC 2005 Conference. Our execs love to meet with customers at every opportunity, so we&nbsp;were given a couple hours of their time before their flights -&nbsp;to host an exec roundtable. We invited some of our&nbsp;top customers. Scott entertained and enlightened the crowd from 10-11am. Bill Vass was on from 1-2pm. And, during our catered lunch, between Scott and Bill's talks, I was asked to talk about "Innovation &amp; Value". It was a blast. Mapquest tells me I'm 2908 miles from Corporate HQ. <A href="http://www.geobytes.com/CityDistanceTool.htm">CityDistance</A> tells me I'm 2443 miles away. But, for 30 minutes... I was on the "A", um "C" team!&nbsp; :-)</P> <P><IMG src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/GoodCompany.jpg"></P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/client_engagement_prep_form Client Engagement Prep Form dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/client_engagement_prep_form Tue, 1 Mar 2005 18:19:42 +0000 Computers <P><!--StartFragment --><FONT color=#006600>I created this a few years ago when I was an Area Product Specialist, flying into accounts all over the place for workshops&nbsp;and architectural or technology discussions. At the time, I needed a way to synchronize details about the account, the specific challenges/opptys we needed to flesh out at the meeting, and travel logistics. It helps to set expectations and align messaging before a customer facing meeting. Account teams were great at filling these out.... I have 100+ of these in my e-mail archive! I generally used a descriptive subject line, such as:</FONT></P> <P><B>Subject: Brillhart Customer Engagement: Xerox@Rochester [9 May 03]</B><BR><BR><FONT color=#006600>Here is the form. Feel free to adapt and reuse!</FONT></P> <P>This note contains important information regarding our upcoming meeting(s). Please verify that the meeting logistics are correct, and then complete the Meeting Questionnaire (see below).<BR><BR>If you intend on us disclosing any confidential information, please ensure you've completed all the&nbsp;Non-Disclosure (ND)&nbsp;paperwork and secured any approvals in advance. Some account teams believe they have a general bi-lateral ND in place, when in fact each meeting requires a separate approval. Please have the paperwork at the meeting. Thanks!<BR><BR>This Questionnaire doesn't take long to complete, and it really does help ensure success. Sales teams often benefit from this exercise as much as the presenter.<BR><BR><U><B>MEETING LOGISTIC SUMMARY</B></U><BR>I'm scheduled to meet with you and your customer, [<FONT color=#cc0000>Xerox</FONT>], in the [<FONT color=#cc0000>Rochester Area</FONT>] on [<FONT color=#cc0000>Friday, May 9th</FONT>] for [<FONT color=#cc0000>about 2 hours</FONT>]. This engagement [<FONT color=#cc0000>\*is\*</FONT>] covered by a signed ND agreement. The primary focus of this meeting will be [<FONT color=#cc0000>item #3</FONT>] as described below, with particular emphasis on VCS competitive positioning.<BR><BR>Please let me know ASAP if any of this has changed. It might be useful for your customers to know a little about me before the meeting: <A class=moz-txt-link-freetext href="http://brillharts.com/sig">http://brillharts.com/sig</A><BR><BR><U><B>MEETING QUESTIONNAIRE</B></U><BR>In order to prepare for our upcoming meetings, I'd like you to fill out the following brief questionnaire as soon as possible for my preparation. Please try to fill out everything just to be sure we are all on the same page. I've found this process really helps ensure a successful meeting. Thanks in advance for your time!!<BR><BR><I><B>1. Account Team Contact Info:<BR></B></I>Sales Rep: 10-digit office/pager/cell<BR>Client Solutions Contact: 10-digit office/pager/cell:</P> <P><I><B>2. Customer Name and their Function, Department or Group:</B></I><BR><B><BR><EM>3. Directions to Meeting </EM></B><EM>(<FONT color=#666666>or an address - and I'll use MapQuest</FONT>)<BR></EM>Hotel Recommendations, if an overnight stay is required<BR>Do I need a car, or will you be picking me up at the airport?<BR><BR><I><B>4. Customer Prep Call</B></I><BR>Do we have a customer con call scheduled with one of the key meeting participants to better understand their expectations for this meeting?<BR><BR><I><B>5. Primary \*Business\* Challenges/Goals</B></I><BR>What are the primary \*business\* challenges/goals we are trying to help them with during this meeting?<BR><BR><I><B>6. Key Discussion Topics &amp; Desired Outcome/Takeaway/Actions/Agreements</B></I><BR>When we leave, what do \*we\* hope was accomplished?<BR><BR><I><B>7. How many people will be attending? Who are they?</B></I><BR>What is their experience level or technical competence related to the topic of the meeting? Are they generally advocates, skeptics, or opponents of our&nbsp;approach to or stand on this topic? What level of influence do they have to make commitments and/or decisions? Who else from Sun will be in attendance? Consider inviting SunES personnel and strategic partners. Should someone from Sales Mgmt attend?<BR><BR><I><B>8. Do you anticipate the need to talk about Futures?</B></I><BR>CPUs, Servers, Clustering, Storage/SANs, Solaris, Web Services/SOA, etc.... If so, have you secured ND approval?<BR><BR><I><B>9. Competition / Position / Traps?</B></I><BR>What is the main competitive threat related to the topic of this meeting? Are we the incumbent or the challenger in this space? What "traps" might have the competition set for us?<BR><BR><I><B>10. Service Escalations / Quality Issues?</B></I><BR>Have they had any serious product or service issues that might surface in this meeting?<BR><BR><I><B>11. Odds and ends:</B></I><BR>What is the dress code?<BR>Will there be a laptop projector?<BR>Do they understand the general Sun product line and vision?<BR><BR>A quick FYI: Presentations are often more effective in a "chalk talk" interactive format. Please ensure there is something to write on (white board or easel). Sometimes the best approach is a laptop projector that projects onto a white board to facilitate annotations to the slides that relate to the customer's situation. Also, if we only expect the meeting to last a couple hours, try to secure other meetings to make the most of the day.</P> <P><U><B>MY SERVICES</B></U><BR>1. Engage the customer in an open discussion about their technical and business requirements, goals, and the expectations of both their mgmt and the end-users of the services they plan to deliver. Assist the customer in thinking through the various options and tradeoffs they can choose from during the architecture and design phase. Work with the Sales Team to produce a solution proposal. Continue to provide support to the Sales Team and customer as needed to secure the order.<BR><BR>2. Discuss our Vision and Roadmap and the Technologies that surround Datacenter Architecture and Operations. This can include N1, SOA and Web Services, ITIL Disciplines, Operational Capability, Utility Computing, Managed Services, etc.<BR><BR>3. Discuss High Availability using SunCluster 3, Replication Techniques for Disaster Recovery, and End-to-End Solution Architectures, and help the customer design a solution that solves the business challenge they are facing.<BR><BR>4. Perform an Architectural Review and Systems Performance Audit of the customer's current environment, and propose changes that will optimize their environment for their current and projected business requirements.<BR><BR>5. Deliver an in-depth technical review of our Servers, Interconnects, and Chip Architectures and position Sun w.r.t. competitive offerings, to help guide the customer to a decision that is appropriate for their current and projected needs.<BR><BR>6. Provide a high-level strategic overview of our Vision, Value Proposition, Broad Product and Technology Overview, and Competitive Positioning, to help the customer make an informed and confident decision to partner with Sun.<BR><BR>7. Work with Customer Engineers and SysAdmins at the customer's site to build a Proof of Concept evaluation environment using Best Practices, and then assist the customer in exercising the POC to demonstrate how it's features and functions will enable the customer to succeed.<BR><BR>8. Other. Such as Storage NDs, Blade NDs, Volume Server NDs, etc.<BR></P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/rocket_science_open_standards Rocket Science & Open Standards dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/rocket_science_open_standards Thu, 24 Feb 2005 15:10:47 +0000 Computers <P>Here is a letter I sent to a Lead Architect I met at a particular "space agency", as a follow up&nbsp;to our&nbsp;discussion about one of their&nbsp;infrastructure redesign projects. I think many clients are wrestling with this topic, so I offer this as an open/anonymous letter for your consideration.<!--StartFragment --></P> <P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color=#330033>Hi &lt;-----&gt;,</FONT></P> <P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color=#330033>It was great meeting with you yesterday. Thanks for sharing some insights into your strategy and challenge. I applaud you for starting to think about your future infrastructure needs and the potential risk of status quo at this point. Too many clients wait until the last minute and then they find themselves in an urgent/reactive mode making poor and costly choices.<BR><BR>I was thinking more about your philosophy regarding the use of non-proprietary open standards. This is very important, and I'm a huge advocate of this approach. I agree that it is critical to architect a solution that promotes choice and permits you to migrate to different products and technologies and vendors without cost, delay, or pain. To me, and I would guess to you as well, this is the reason to select interoperable standards and "open" platforms.<BR><BR>As you know (although many people confuse the two) the "open source" movement is different than the value proposition of "open standards". The measure of whether something is open or not is determined by the cost/pain of extracting that component out of your solution and replacing it with another choice. Examples could include the server vendor (eg: HP to Sun Opteron), the OS (eg: Linux to Solaris), the SAN fabric switches, the J2EE App Server, the SQL Database, the Compilers, etc, etc....&nbsp; Note that open source does not factor into the measure of being "open".<BR><BR>I do also recognize the value of open source. It can increase the rate of innovation through a global community. It can provide for independent security assessment and validation. It can offer a client the ability to tweak the product for their own needs (although I generally discourage this due to support and quality and complexity reasons). As you know, Sun has open sourced the code to Solaris10! I never thought I'd see that happen, but it has.<BR><BR>There is another aspect that I believe is part of your strategy. If you build the upper layers using interoperable standards, then the layers below are often interchangeable even if they aren't fully open. For example, if you build your business logic using J2EE running in an App Server, then the OS and the H/W choice is much less "sticky". You can switch between SPARC and Opteron or between Solaris and Linux without cost or delay or pain. Also, if you code and compile your own apps, you can choose to use standard library calls that make the underlying platform easy to change.<BR><BR>There are, however, drawbacks associated with choosing products that do not have a well established and directed engineering and support mechanism. The key, in my opinion, is to select partners and products that embrace open standards (and open source) and yet have an auditable and proven support and engineering model. This gives you high confidence in your solution as well as the ability to change at will.<BR><BR>I believe Linux is fine as a personal desktop operating environment. I also think Linux can be a viable choice on which to run stateless replicated (load balanced) presentation tier services. However relying on Linux to host mission critical applications and tier 2+ services, in my professional opinion, will significantly increase the risk associated with your mission support. It just isn't mature enough yet. There are reliability concerns, security concerns,&nbsp; scalability concerns, functionality concerns, support concerns, bug fix responsiveness concerns, legal indemnification concerns, etc.<BR><BR>I offer the same counsel about the choice of your supplier of Opteron servers and other components in your solution stack. Many have found that the potential initial cost savings associated with building a whitebox generic server, and using freeware software, is often lost many times over in the frustration and hassle of dealing with bugs and quality issues and the lack of features. These issues are highly mitigated when using "open standard" products offered by a partner like Sun that pours billions per year into R&amp;D and QA.<BR><BR>I'll close by reiterating my suggestion that these should probably play a role in your infrastructure redesign:<BR>&nbsp; - Sun's industry leading Opteron servers (btw, our future roadmap is extremely interesting)<BR>&nbsp; - Sun's open source Solaris 10 operating environment<BR>&nbsp; - Sun's open standards "platform software stack"<BR>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; (app server, directory server with ActiveX interoperability, portal server, identity server, etc, etc)<BR><BR>We also have an interesting suite of virtualization and automation solutions, including our N1 Service Provisioning Server.<BR><BR>I'd love to support you in learning more about&nbsp;and even evaluating these products and technologies and strategies. I'd also be glad to act as a general sounding board and/or provide architectural review and guidance as desired.<BR><BR>Please feel free to contact me any time. I look forward to hearing from you.<BR><BR>Best Regards,</FONT></P> <P><FONT face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color=#330033>-- Dave</FONT></P> <P><!--StartFragment --> <BIG><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Dave Brillhart</SPAN></BIG><BR><SPAN style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold; COLOR: rgb(51,0,153)">Lead Architect - Strategic Government</SPAN><BR style="COLOR: rgb(51,0,153); FONT-STYLE: italic"><SPAN style="COLOR: rgb(51,0,153); FONT-STYLE: italic">Client Solutions Organization</SPAN><BR style="COLOR: rgb(51,0,153); FONT-STYLE: italic"><SPAN style="COLOR: rgb(51,0,153); FONT-STYLE: italic">Sun Microsystems, Inc.</SPAN></P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/superg_2005_paper SUPerG 2005 Paper dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/superg_2005_paper Wed, 23 Feb 2005 02:00:00 +0000 Computers <P>SUPerG (<I>Sun Users Performance Group</I>) is Sun's premiere technical event for customers interested in large scale solutions architected for data centers and high-performance and technical computing. The program is designed to provide highly interactive and intimate exchanges between Sun's leading technical experts and our customers.</P> <P>You can read more about the event, and register to attend at: <A href="http://www.sun.com/datacenter/superg/">http://www.sun.com/datacenter/superg/</A></P> <P><STRONG>This year, I've been invited to speak</STRONG> at this event. In the spirit of blogging, I've posted my abstract (below). I need to get busy writing the paper and creating a clear, concise, and compelling technology demonstration. If you'd like me to address a particular topic or concern or challenge in the paper (related to the abstract), or have an idea that I might include in the demo, please drop me a line or submit a comment to this entry. If I use your idea, I'll attribute it to you in the published paper, and here in blog land, so please include your name and contact info.</P> <P>Hope you see you at SUPerG in April in Virgina. Stop by and say "hi".<BR><BR><U><B><FONT color=#993300>\*SUPerG 2005 Abstract\* </FONT></B></U><BR><FONT color=#663366><B>Effective Deployment &amp; Operational Practices for Dynamically Scaled SOA and Grid Environments<BR><BR></B><I>Scalability is taking on a new form and introducing new challenges. The traditional "vertical" platform with dozens of powerful CPUs bound by local memory offering (nearly) uniform memory access, is being threatened by a new model - networked grids of powerful but low cost compute nodes. <BR><BR>Grids are not new. But powerful new techniques are emerging that allow commercial workloads to take advantage of this style of computing. This includes SOA-based application design, as well as auto-deployment and provisioning to drive efficiency and utilization in infrastructure operation. <BR><BR>Modern designs provide for on-the-fly horizontal scaling with the push of a button.... in which new containers join the grid into which a distributed app may expand to offer new levels of performance and service level. A side effect of this approach is a highly-resilient platform, such that bound dependencies can fail without a catastrophic impact on the running service. <BR><BR>This talk will provide an update on the State of the Technology with respect to SOA and Infrastructure Provisioning, and how these can be leveraged to offer Adaptable, Scalable, and Resilient services. <BR><BR>I may also include a demonstration that will show how a collection of bare metal servers can be established into a Grid using N1 SPS (integrated with JET). Following this provisioning phase, the demo will then show a sample app deployed and executed across multiple nodes. Finally, it'll show a node being added to the live Grid using SPS, and how that app can then expand, at run-time, to leverage this new node, increasing its work rate.</I></FONT> </P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/boycotting_oracle Boycotting Oracle dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/boycotting_oracle Tue, 15 Feb 2005 04:26:43 +0000 Computers <p>So the news (<a href="http://news.com.com/2102-1006_3-5572958.html">news.com.com</a>) is reporting that Intel and HP are getting into the game... joining the ranks of multi-core chip vendors and their customers who see Oracle's license strategy (to charge by the core) as misaligned with the times. These are times of virtualized resources that are consumed and funded as needed, they say.<br><br>I was thinking of an analogy for Oracle's position... Consider how you would feel about a policy at Blockbuster Video if, when you rented a DVD, you had to pay $10.00 per seat (your sofa counts as three - being multi-seated). No, it doesn't matter if it'll just be you and your spouse watching the movie. Since you have 15 seats that you \*could\* utilize (the bar stools and folding chairs count too) you will pay $150.00 per night for that movie. Oh, you'd like to display that movie in PARALLEL in your family room and in your entertainment room? Sure, you can do that with their "shared disc" technology. But now add up all the seats in both rooms (25), and that'll be $20.00 per seat! So please pay us $500.00 per night for that movie.<br><br>Now, why in the world would Oracle change that policy? They've maximized their revenue pull - and customers are still writing checks. They are in business to extract as much from their "value" as the market will bear, not offer charity discounts to a world that can't rationalize the price tag assigned by a market share leader (I won't use the other "m" word).&nbsp;Oracle reports&nbsp;having $10B in cash, about equal to their annual revenue. It would take less than a thousand E25K customers to decide to run Oracle RAC on their servers to deliver&nbsp;another&nbsp;$10B to their warchest. Not bad, for the price of DVD blanks :-)<br><br>Choice in this market segment is the only lever that will work. Customers are demanding choice. And they will respond when it appears. Oracle should note that when choice knocks, many will answer even if they then respond with a competitive position. It takes a long time to get a bad taste out of your mouth. Many will boycott Oracle just because they finally can.<br><br>There are some hints that choice might be <a href="http://techrepublic.com.com/5102-10585-5563417.html">just around the corner</a>.</p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/the_fall_and_rise_of The Fall and Rise of IT: Part 1 dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/the_fall_and_rise_of Sat, 12 Feb 2005 14:15:15 +0000 Computers <P>Here's a collection of charts, graphs, and images that provide insight into the abyss of the typical datacenter operation. It's scary out there, when we apply benchmarks used to measure utilization, efficiency, and contribution from other part of the business.</P> <P>But there is hope. For example, just this month Sun released a valuable and comprehensive (and free) <A href="http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0205/819-1693.html">BluePrint</A> book called "Operations Management Capabilities Model". We've been working on this one for some time - so check it out. In addition, you can sign up (for free) with our <A href="http://www.suntone.org/">SunTONE Program</A> for self-assessment guides and self-remediation activities related to our ITIL-plus Certification program. It is based on, but extends ITIL. Thousands of companies are registered. We'll help if you'd like. Finally, the <A href="http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/sodc/">Service-Optimized DataCenter</A> program will act as a Center of Excellence for putting these concepts into practice along with innovative new technologies in virtualization, provisioning, automation, and optimization, and other best practices. As you read about the state of IT below, realize that there is an escape from the pit of mediocrity. Part 2 will explore the oppty.</P> <P>For now, for this post, I'll survey some of the problems that need fixing...</P> <P>Let's assume that the prime directive for a datacenter is simply to: <FONT color=#990000><STRONG>Deliver IT Services that meet desired Service Level Objectives at a competitive cost point</STRONG></FONT>. There are all kinds of important functions that fall within those large buckets [Service Level and Financial Mgmt], but that'll work for this discussion.</P> <P>In my experience working with customers, there are two primary barriers that prevent a datacenter from being as successful as it might be&nbsp;in this mission. First, there is <FONT color=#000099><STRONG>rampant unmanaged complexity</STRONG></FONT>. Second, most <FONT color=#000099><STRONG>IT activities are reactive </STRONG></FONT>in nature... triggered by unanticipated events and often initiated by unsatisfied customer calls. The result: <B>expensive services that can't meet expectations</B>. Which is the exact opposite of the what an IT shop should deliver!</P> <P>Here are some related graphics (with comments following each graphic):</P> <P><IMG style="WIDTH: 629px; HEIGHT: 363px" height=389 src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/stovepipes.jpg" width=656></P> <P>This illustrates the typical "silo" or "stovepipe" deployment strategy. A customer or business unit wants a new IT service developed and deployed. They might help pick their favorite piece parts and IT builds/integrates the unique production environment for this application or service. There is often a related development and test stovepipe for this application, and maybe even a DR (disaster recovery)&nbsp;stovepipe at another site. That's up to four "n"-tier environments per app, with each app silo running different S/W stacks, different firmware, different patches, different middleware, etc, etc. Each a science experiment and someone's pet project.</P> <P>Standish, Meta, Gartner, and others describe the fact that ~40% of all major IT initiatives that are funded and staffed are eventually canceled before they are ever delivered! And of those delivered, half never recover their costs. Overall, 80% of all major initiatives do not deliver to promise (either canceled, late, over budget, or simply don't meet expectation). Part of the reason (there are many reasons) for this failure rate is the one-off stovepipe mentality. Other reasons are a lack of clear business alignment, requirements, and criteria for success.</P> <P><IMG src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/complexity.jpg"></P> <P>This is a interesting quote from a systems vendor. While 200M IT workers seems absurd, it describes the impact of accelerating complexity and the obvious need to manage that process. We saw the way&nbsp;stovepipe deployment drives complexity. We're seeing increasing demand for&nbsp;services (meaning more stovepipes), each with increasing service level expectations (meaning more complex designs in each stovepipe), each with increasing rates of change (meaning lots of manual adjustments in each stovepipe), each with with increasing numbers of (virtual) devices to manage, each built from an increasing selection of component choices. The net result is that each&nbsp;stovepipe looks nothing like the previous or next IT project. Every app lives in a one-off custom creation.</P> <P><IMG src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/utilization.jpg"></P> <P>If all this complexity isn't bad enough, as if to add insult to injury, each of these silos averages less than 10% utilization. Think about that.... say you commit $5million to build out your own stovepipe for an ERP service. You will leave $4.5M on the floor running idle! That would be unacceptable in just about any other facet of your business. Taken together, high complexity (lots of people, unmet SLOs) and low utilization rates (more equip, space, etc) drive cost through the roof! If we could apply techniques to increase average utilization to even 40% (and provide fault and security isolation), we could potentially&nbsp;eliminate the need for 75% of the deployed equip and related overhead (or at least delay further&nbsp;<!--StartFragment --> acquisitions, or find new ways to leverage the resources).</P> <P><IMG src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/outages.jpg"></P> <P>We've seen what complexity and utilization does to cost... But the other IT mandate is to deliver reliable IT services. This graphic summarizes a few studies performed by IEEE, Oracle, and Sun as to the root cause of service outages. In the past, ~60% of all outages were planned/scheduled, and 40% were the really bad kind - unplanned. Thankfully, new features like live OS upgrades and patches and backups and dynamic H/W reconfigurations are starting to dramatically reduce the need for scheduled outages. But we've got to deal with the unplanned outages that always seem to happen at the worst times. Gartner explains that 80% of unplanned outages are due to unskilled and/or unmotivated people making mistakes or executing poorly documented and undisciplined processes. In theory, we can fix this with training and discipline. But since each stovepipe has its own set of unique operational requirements and processes, it nearly impossible to implement consistent policies and procedures across operations.</P> <P><IMG src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/opr_maturity.jpg"></P> <P>So it isn't surprising, then, that Gartner has found that 84% of datacenters are operating in the basement in terms of Operational Maturity... Either in Chaotic or Reactive modes.</P> <P>Okay... enough. I know I didn't paint a very pretty picture. The good news is&nbsp;that most firms recognize these problems and are starting to work at&nbsp;<!--StartFragment --> simplifying and standardizing their operations. In Part 2, I'll provide some ideas on where to start and how to achieve high-return results.</P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/the_cell_processor The Cell Processor dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/the_cell_processor Wed, 9 Feb 2005 03:27:25 +0000 Computers <P>The <A href="http://www-1.ibm.com/businesscenter/venturedevelopment/us/en/featurearticle/gcl_xmlid/8649/nav_id/emerging">latest buzz</A> on the streets, at least around those neighborhoods frequented by the eXtreme crowd, seems to be about the <A href="http://www.blachford.info/computer/Cells/Cell0.html">Cell Processor</A>. I wrote a little <A href="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/dcb/?anchor=the_fallacy_of_ibm_s">blog</A> on the Power 6 recently and one reader warned me to watch out for The Cell.<BR><BR>Well, I have to admit, I'm a bleeding edge junkie myself at times. And the theory of operation around The Cell is pretty compelling. The problem is that theory doesn't always translate to reality! In fact, it seldom does. Especially when S/W is a critical component of the translation.<BR><BR>Gartner suggests that only 1 in 5 major initiatives that Sr. Mgmt funds and resources ever delivers to promise... 80% fail to meet expectations. IBM talks about a recent <A href="http://www.standishgroup.com/sample_research/chaos_1994_1.php">Standish Group</A> report that suggests only 16.2% of S/W projects are delivered to promise. <A href="http://www.knowledge-advantage.com/your_why.asp">Another study</A> suggests that &gt; 40% are canceled before delivered (and most that are delivered are late and/or way over budget, often never recovering costs).<BR><BR>If you read the reports about Cell, it isn't about the H/W... That's the point really. The H/W is made up of standard building blocks (cells) of Power cores. A&nbsp;socket holds a Processor Element which contains&nbsp;a main Processor Unit (core) and several (often 8) Attached Processor Units (cores). However, the&nbsp;interesting part is the "Cell Object", which is a S/W construct that includes code and data that can migrate around looking for a "host" Cell system on which to execute. There is talk of dynamically-orchestrating pipelines. Of S/W self-healing properties. Of dynamic partitionability with multiple native OS support. All S/W ideas.<BR><BR>So it isn't really about H/W.&nbsp; The H/W "Cells" are simply the "amino acids". The more interesting question might be: <STRONG><EM>is there an "intelligent designer" who can breath life into a soup made up of these "single celled" organisms?</EM></STRONG> There is a precedent for doom&nbsp;- where advanced life forms failed to thrive due to a lack of S/W life support (eg: EPIC/VLIW, Stack Machines, etc).</P> <P>We saw earlier the dismal failure rate of projects using well established S/W development paradigms. It'll be amazing if Sony/Toshiba/IBM can turn the PlayStation3 engine into a viable <STRONG><U>general purpose computing platform</U></STRONG> that can threaten AMD, Intel, and SPARC at home and in the datacenter. From what I hear, the development tools and processes for PlayStation2&nbsp;are an absolute nightmare.</P> <P>It'll be fun to watch this pan out. One thing is for sure... at least PlayStation3 will ROCK, if they can&nbsp;deliver a reasonable flow of affordable immersive networked games. I hope so.</P> <P>The Cell makes for great reading. Unfortunately, when it comes to a general purpose platform, this one might never recover from Stage 3:</P> <P><IMG src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/HypeCycle.jpg"></P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/chips_cores_threads_oh_my Chips, Cores, Threads, OH MY!! dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/chips_cores_threads_oh_my Sun, 30 Jan 2005 12:47:55 +0000 Computers <P>I don't know about you, but the whole mess around the emerging lexicon associated with modern processors is very frustrating. Terms are frequently redefined and twisted based on each vendor's whim and fancy. But words (should) mean something and obviously it's important that we all talk the same language.</P> <P>A perfect example... you might have been approached by a <A href="http://www.carm.org/jw/nutshell.htm">Jehovah's&nbsp;Witness</A> in the past. Or have a friend who is a <A href="http://www.carm.org/lds/nutshell.htm">Mormon</A>. I do. They are wonderful people in general. When they talk about their faith their words and themes sound very similar to Biblical Christianity. But dive a little deeper and you'll find the belief systems&nbsp;are radically different. I'm not making a statement on value or correctness or anything like that (so don't bother starting a religious debate). My point is that two people can talk and maybe even (think they) agree, when in fact they are as far from each other as heaven and hell (so-to-speak).</P> <P>When it comes to the engines that power computers, people talk about CPUs, and Processors, and Cores, and Threads, and Sockets, and Chips, and n-Way, and TEUs, and CMT, and Hyper-Threading, and and and... Whew!</P> <P>I like to use three terms...&nbsp;Chips, Cores, and Threads. Note that this is pretty much what SPEC.ORG uses: <A class=moz-txt-link-freetext href="http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/rint2000.html">http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/rint2000.html</A></P> <P>I stay away from Sockets and Processors and CPUs and n-Way, as these are confusing or ambiguous or redundant.</P> <P><U><STRONG><BIG>Here are some examples [Chips/Cores/Threads]:<BR></BIG></STRONG></U>V880:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 8/8/8<BR>V490:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4/8/8<BR>p570:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 8/16/32<BR>V40z:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 4/4/4<BR><A href="http://www.sun.com/processors/throughput/MDR_Reprint.pdf">Niagara</A>:&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; 1/8/32&nbsp; (for a system with just one of these chips)</P> <P><BIG><U><B>Here are my definitions:</B></U></BIG> </P> <P><STRONG><U><FONT color=#009900>Chips </FONT><BR></U></STRONG>This refers to the laser scribed rectangle cut from a semiconductor wafer, which is then packaged in a plastic or ceramic casing with pins or contacts. A "chip" may have multiple processing "cores" in it (see: Cores). The US-IV and Niagara and Power5 and Itanium and Opteron are all single "chips".</P> <P><STRONG><U><FONT color=#009900>Cores</FONT><BR></U></STRONG>This term refers to the number of discrete "processors" in a system or on a chip. Some chips, such as Power5, US-IV,&nbsp; Niagara, etc, have more than one core per chip. A core is also know as a TEU (thread execution unit). Each "core" may also be multi-threaded (see Threads), which can support concurrent or switched execution. Some cores have more than one integer, floating point or other type of "execution unit" that supports instruction level parallelism and/or more than one concurrent thread.</P> <P><STRONG><U><FONT color=#009900>Threads</FONT><BR></U></STRONG>Threads are really a S/W construct. These are the streams of execution scheduled by the OS to do work driven by the computer's processor(s). Some cores can handle more than one thread of execution. Some cores can execute more than one thread at the same time. Other cores can be loaded with multiple threads, but perform H/W context switching at nanosecond speeds. The Thread Count of a processors equals the number of cores multiplied by the number of threads handled by each core. The US-IV has a Thread Count of 2\*1=2. The Power5 has a Thread Count of 2\*2=4. Niagara has a TC of 8\*4=32.</P> <P><STRONG><U><FONT color=#cc0000>Sockets (avoid)</FONT><BR></U></STRONG>This term is designed to communicate the number of processor "chips" in a system. However, in reality it is an ambiguous term, because IBM's MCMs (multi-chip modules) have four "chips" per motherboard "socket". And, a long time ago, some sockets were stacked with more than one chip. Regardless, this term is supposed to equate to the number of "chips", so why confuse the issue. Just use "chips".</P> <P><STRONG><U><FONT color=#cc0000>Processors (avoid)</FONT><BR></U></STRONG>This is technically equal to the number of cores. However, marketing has corrupted this term and some vendors (like Sun) equate this to the number of chips (or sockets), while others equate this to the number of cores. Vendors also use the term "n-Way". But since the number "n" equals the number of processors, this means different things depending on the vendor. For example, a 4-way V490 from Sun has 8 cores, and Oracle will charge you $320,000.00 (list price) to run Oracle on it.</P> <P><STRONG><U><FONT color=#cc0000>CPUs (avoid)</FONT><BR></U></STRONG>This suffers from the same marketing overload problem as Processors. </P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/soa_jsr_208_reality_check SOA & JSR 208: Reality Check dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/soa_jsr_208_reality_check Sun, 30 Jan 2005 11:22:16 +0000 Computers <p>A friend recently asked me what I'm hearing about SOA adoption and the buzz around JSR 208.</p> <p>"JSR 208" might be a new term for some. Here is a brief overview: <a href="http://www.bijonline.com/PDF/Chappell%20oct.pdf">http://www.bijonline.com/PDF/Chappell%20oct.pdf</a></p> <p>SOA is so over hyped these days that everyone probably has something different in mind when they hear that TLA (three letter acronym). Kinda like "Grid" - the concepts are real and useful, but the hype around SOA and Grid is running years ahead of reality.</p> <p>Remember when N1 was first discussed... the vision of heterogeneous datacenters managed by a meta-OS that auto-provisions virtual slices into which services are deployed and managed to sustain business-driven SLOs based on priorities and charge-back constraints. Just roll in new equip and N1 will "DR" (read: dynamically reallocate) services into the increased capacity. If something fails... no problem... N1 will detect and adapt. We'll get there... eventually. And we've made important steps along the way. Investing almost $2B/yr in R&amp;D will help.&nbsp;But it'll take (a long) time.</p> <p>In some circles I'm hearing similar visions of grandeur around SOA. They talk of business apps described at a high level of abstraction (eg: business process models) loaded into an "application orchestrator" that broadcasts descriptions of the various components/services it needs, and then auto-builds the business app based on services from those providers (both internal and external) that offer the best cost point and service level guarantees. As new "service" providers come on-line with better value (or, if existing providers go off-line), business apps will rebind (on-the-fly) to these new service components.</p> <p>Now, combine N1 and SOA and ITIL, and we could paint a beautiful picture of Service Delivery based on self-orchestrating business apps made up of discrete reusable and shared (possibly outsourced) components that each exist in their own virtual containers that are auto-provisioned and auto-optimized (based on SLAs and Cost and Demand) to maximize asset utilization and minimize cost, all while meeting service level objectives (even in the event of various fault scenarios).</p> <p>Okay - back to reality :-) I'm finding there is a common theme from many of my customers/prospects. Many are seeking to increase efficiency and agility thru "horizontal integration" of reusable building blocks (eg: identity, etc), a shared services platform (grids, virtualization, etc), and higher-level provisioning (automation, SPS).</p> <p>That isn't SOA, per-se, but is a good first step. The "building blocks" most are looking to share today are infrastructure services, rather than higher-level business app components. There is a maturity gradient that simply takes a lot of hard technical and political work to negotiate. Every customer is at a different place along that gradient, but most are embarrassingly immature (relative to the grand vision). It takes strong leadership and commitment at all levels, and a synchronization of people, processes, technology, and information, to even embark on the journey. It takes a tight coupling of S/W engineering, IT Architecture, and Business Architecture.</p> <p>So, yes, I'm passionate about SOA, and JSR 208&nbsp;will help integrate discrete business services.&nbsp;There are some firms that are pushing the envelope and building interesting business/mission apps from shared "service providers". But, in general,&nbsp;SOA is an abused term and the hype can derail legitimate efforts.</p> <p>I'd be curious if others are sensing "irrational exuberance" around SOA, which can lead to a <a href="http://www.wordspy.com/words/hypecycle.asp">"Trough of Disillusionment"</a> and a rejection of the legitimate gains that an evolutionary progression can provide. As Architects, we can establish credibility and win confidence (and contracts) by setting realistic expectations (hype-busting) and presenting not only a desired state "blueprint" (something that gets them existed about the possibilities for their environment), but a detailed roadmap that demonstrates the process and the benefits at each check point along the way.<br> <img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/HypeCycle.jpg"><br> </p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/sun_the_nobel_prize Sun & The Nobel Prize dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/sun_the_nobel_prize Thu, 27 Jan 2005 06:44:09 +0000 Computers <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">Back about 15 years ago,&nbsp;an economist named Ronald Coase won the Nobel Prize based on some very interesting ideas that we're just starting to see drive serious considerations and behavior in the the world of IT. Sun is well aware of this and responding with initiatives (that I can't talk about here). Like the "perfect storm", our industry is at an inflection point driven by the confluence of various trends and developments. These all add up to an environment that is ripe for <a href="http://www.strassmann.com/pubs/cw/outsourcing-it.shtml">Coase's Law</a> to be enforced with prejudice.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">Coase's Law states that: <strong><em>firms should only do what they can do more efficiently than others, and should outsource what others can do more efficiently</em></strong>, after considering the transaction costs involved in working with the outside suppliers.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">There is nothing earth shattering about that simple and intuitive statement. However, back in the 90's, when this idea was explored in theoretical circles by bean counters, the "escape clause" related to transactional costs rendered the idea impotent, or at least limited,&nbsp;in the IT world. A captive internal service (eg: payroll) might not be highly efficient, but the thought of outsourcing a business function was quickly evaporated under the heat of a financial impact analysis. It just cost too much per transaction to realize a worthwhile return. And the incredible growth and prosperity of the "bubble years" leading up to Y2K was not a climate that drove consideration of the business value of outsourcing.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">But all that is changing. You are familiar with many of the&nbsp;<a href="http://mstm.gmu.edu/mstm720/Articles/TechnologyLaws.htm">various "laws"</a> that describe trends in IT, such as:</font></p> <ul style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"> <li> <font size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Moore's Law</span> (fab process trends that underpin&nbsp;cheap powerful compute infrastructures)</font></li><li><font size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Gilder's Law</span> (the ubiquity of high-bandwidth network fabrics interconnecting businesses and consumers)</font></li> </ul> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">You are also familiar with concept of Web Services that leverage standard interfaces and protocols and languages to facilitate secure B2B and B2C transactions over these networks.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">Taken together, the cost of an outsourced transaction is now&nbsp;<strong>dramatically</strong> lower than it was pre-bubble. Today, outsourcing is not only a viable consideration for certain business functions, but a necessary competitive reality. Here's the way I interpret and apply Coase's Law... Every business has a strategy to capture value and translate that value into revenue and profit. But the realities of running a business require common support functions. Every company had to build their own network of these supporting services (think: Payroll, HR, PR, Legal, Marketing, Manufacturing, etc, etc, etc). Think of these as chapters tucked away in the back of a company's Business Process handbook... necessary ingredients to implement the Business Design, but not part basic value capture. Many of these necessary support functions operate with limited efficiency and effectiveness, because delivering these services is not part of the company's DNA.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">But there are provides that live on Gilder's external network fabric, operating grids of Moore's compute capability, offering highly efficient Web Services based business functions. These providers specialize in specific support services and can drive efficiency (and lowered cost) by aggregating demand. Their core competency is delivering secure reliable business functions at contracted service levels at a highly competitive transactional cost point. Wow! Think about that.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">And moving forward, as we begin to explore the implications of Service-Oriented Architectures, as we&nbsp;implement business processes by orchestrating applications that are built from&nbsp;loosely coupled networked "services", it is not unreasonable to expect some or many of these SOA-based business components to be supplied from one (or more) outsourced suppliers.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">Some people believe that targeted outsourcing will drive massive deconstruction and reconstruction, and&nbsp;that this will be THE major disruptive catalyst in business designs over the next several years. If so, IT will play a major part in this transformation. Sun needs to aggressively tap into this oppty (and we are). To do so will require building B2B/B2C services (and the underlying distributed service delivery platform) that integrates &amp; optimizes business processes beyond the four walls to include the external value chain.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">In his 1997 book, <b><i>The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail</i></b>, Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen posited that, thanks to the Internet, companies are becoming more vulnerable than ever to a competitor wielding a disruptive technology - a technical process or business model so transformative that it could shake a Fortune 500-sized corporation, or even an entire industry, to its foundation. The lesson is that companies must structure themselves so they can rapidly build a new business around a disruptive technology even as they sustain their core competency.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">IBM's OnDemand Enterprise is described as: "An Enterprise whose business process â€“ integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers and customers â€“ can respond with speed to any customer demand, market oppty or external threat".</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><font size="3">Like Coase's Law, the expression of IBM's OnDemand vision is really common sense. It is the confluence of technology and economics today that has caused these ideas to become very interesting. Now it all comes down, as it always does, to execution.</font></p> <p><font size="3"><span style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;">And one of the initiatives we're driving at Sun that I can talk about is the </span><a style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;" href="http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/sodc/">Service Optimized Data Center</a><span style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"> (SODC).&nbsp; The Sun Service Optimized Data Center program is comprised of an extensive set of services and technologies. Sun creates a comprehensive roadmap, which is used to transform your data center into an efficient, risk-averse, and agile service-driven environment that emphasizes IT operation as a strategic business driver and competitive weapon</span>.</font></p> <p style="font-family: times new roman,times,serif;"><!--StartFragment --></p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/oracle_tech_day_ny_cabbies Oracle Tech Day & NY Cabbies dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/oracle_tech_day_ny_cabbies Wed, 19 Jan 2005 15:41:46 +0000 Computers It's been awhile since I've visited New York. Last time I was there I met with customers in the World Trade Center. Yesterday I was in <span id="textEdit0">midtown Manhattan at the Grand Hyatt, attached to Grand Central</span> Station.<br> <br> I presented at an <a href="http://www.oracle.com/webapps/events/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=34998&amp;src=3226594&amp;src=3226594&amp;Act=181">Oracle Technology Day</a>. Over 500 people registered for the event to hear about technology and solutions from Sun and Oracle. I discussed, among other things, our ERP Grid <a href="http://www.sun.com/products/architectures-platforms/referencearchitectures/">Reference Architecture</a> that combines Oracle's 10g RAC with our Opteron-based Servers and Infiniband. Sun is sponsoring five cities. Over 700 are registered for the Atlanta session, to whom I'll be presenting next week.<br> <br> On the way back home from the NY session, I was dropped off at LaGuardia. I had to cross a two lane street to get across to the main gate/check-in curb. It was a clear (but cold) day, 100% visibility. In front of me was a wide brightly painted cross-walk. Several people were standing there waiting to cross (which should have been my first clue that things are different in New York). Finally a natural break in traffic... the next group of vehicles is about 70 feet away, lead by a black limo approaching at about 20mph. Great! It's our turn... I step out and start to cross. Suddenly someone yells out to warn me... "Hey Buddy, Watch Out"! I look to my right and the limo driver apparently has no intention to respect the <b>inalienable </b>rights of pedestrians in crosswalks! He slows down just enough to allow me to back up onto the curb and get out of his way!<br> <br> The term "inalienable" is apropos to this experience :-) The root, <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=alien">alien</a>, has this definition:<br> <span style="font-style: italic; color: rgb(153, 0, 0);"> Adj. Belonging to, characteristic of, or constituting another and very different place, society, or person; strange</span><br> <br> I think I saw the cabbie mutter: "you're not from around here, are you". Or, something like that :-) I'm reminded of Morpheus' line in <span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Matrix</span> when he explains to Neo that: "Some rules can be bent, others can be broken". Seems to be the creed of the <a href="http://www.nycabbie.com/">NY cabbie</a>.<br> <br> Anyway, New York is a lot of fun. Just look both ways before you cross. And then, run like hell.<br> <br> <img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/NYCab.jpg"><br> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/cio_longevity_and_it_execution CIO Longevity and IT Execution dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/cio_longevity_and_it_execution Sat, 15 Jan 2005 06:35:33 +0000 Computers This is a little longer than I generally like for a blog entry. So, I tell you what to expect... I quickly review the essence of IT, then consider why many IT groups are considered ineffective, and finally what can be done to improve execution.<br> <br> The essence of Information Technology is to create, deliver, and sustain high-quality IT services that meet (on time and within budget) the <b><font color="#006600"><i>functional specs</i></font></b> and the on-going <b><font color="#006600"><i>service level agreements</i></font></b> (SLAs) as established thru a partnership with the owners of the requested services. This is, in a nutshell, the role and ultimate responsibility of the CIO.<br> <br> The <b>creation </b>of IT services generally focuses on functional requirements (the purpose of the application - what the service needs to do for the consumer/user). The <b>delivery and support</b> of those services focuses more on quality of service (QoS) attributes, such as performance, as well as the non-functional or systemic qualities (aka: the "ilities") such as reliability, availability, maintainability, securability, manageability, adaptability, scalability, recoverability, survivability, etc. A quick Google search found <a href="http://www.objs.com/aits/9901-iquos.html">this</a> paper among many on the topic.<br> <br> Unfortunately, achieving success is often doomed from the start. And is probably why the average <a href="http://www.strassmann.com/pubs/cw/jobholding.shtml">CIO survives for just 30 months</a> (a new <a href="http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20712">Gartner report</a> even suggests that 2/3rds of CIOs are worried about their job)! Quality is sacrificed on the alter of expedience. Developers focus exclusively on the functional spec. For example, it is rare to find developers who are concerned with <a href="http://roc.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/ROC_TR02-1175.pdf">Recovery-Oriented Computing</a> techniques (ref: Berkeley's David Patterson, et al) that can help mask infrastructure faults by, say, performing run-time discovery and binding of alternate dependencies. It is too easy for a developer to assume their target platform is failsafe, or that recovery is outside their area of concern. That's just lazy or ignorant, IMHO.<br> <br> Just as guilty are the teams responsible for the implementation of those services. Too often new services stand alone in a datacenter as a silo, constructed using a unique set of components and patterns. Often, even if there is an <b>IT Governance Board</b> and/or an <b>Enterprise Architectural Council</b>, their strategic vision, standards and best practices are ignored, ostensibly to achieve time-to-market goals. In reality, it's just easier to not worry about the greater good.<br> <br> What am I leading up to? Well, I believe there are <span style="font-weight: bold; text-decoration: underline;">two key areas</span> that IT must take more seriously in order to increase their value to shareholders and to those who desire their services. These might even help the CIO keep his or her job.<br> <br> <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The first is the effective leadership and influence of an Enterprise Architecture Council</span>. One that has a clear and compelling vision of a shared services infrastructure, and has established a pro-active partnership with the developer community and strategic vendors to realize that vision. One that fights hard against human nature to ensure that IT services meet standards in quality, adaptability, observability, platform neutrality, etc.<br> <br> <span style="font-weight: bold; font-style: italic;">The second is a focus on the disciplines associated with running a world-class datacenter operation</span>. There is a well established set of standards that are useful as a framework around which these disciplines can be built. It's called the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and is widely adopted in Europe and increasingly being pursued in the States across business, agencies, and institutions.<br> <br> There are 10 ITIL "Best Practice" disciplines associated with the Delivery and Support of IT Services. These prescribe relevant and desirable processes that an IT group should seek to implement if they desire to evolve to a higher level of Operational Maturity. ITIL is highly focused on building a working partnership between IT and the associated Business Units, on increasing the quality of IT services, on reducing the true cost of operations, on establishing communications and execution plans, on the promotion of the value of IT, on understanding the cost and priority of services, etc.<br> <br> Of the ten focus areas, the ITIL discipline that is probably the most important to start with is "Change Mgmt". This is a key area with a significant ROI in terms of service quality and cost. The cost of sloppy change control is huge. In a Fortune 500 acct I visited recently, the S/W developers all have root access to the production machines and make changes ad hoc!! Unfortunately, this isn't uncommon. The introduction of structure and discipline in this area is a great test case for those who think they want to implement ITIL. While the benefits are self evident, it isn't easy. The change will take exec level commitment. There will be serious pressure to resist a transition from a cowboy/hero culture to one that produces repeatable, consistent, predictable high-quality service delivery. The "heroes" won't like it, and they often wield influence and power. But, if this ITIL discipline can be instilled, the other nine have a chance. It's a multi-year effort, but the results will be a highly tuned and business linked competitive weapon.<br> <br> The journey that many IT shops will have to take to achieve higher levels of maturity as suggested by Gartner and Meta, and described by the ITIL Best Practices, is a systemic culture change that fills gaps, eliminates overlap, aligns effort, and establishes structure and methods, designed to increase quality and lower costs. But, ultimately, it is a journey to prosperity and away from dysfunction. ITIL isn't to be taken lightly. It isn't for all IT departments (well, it is to some level, but many aren't ready to make the commitment). These charts show that most (&gt;80%) have stopped and camped on the shore of mediocrity way too early in the journey.<br> <br> <img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/OMCM.jpg"><br> <br> <img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/Meta.jpg"><br> <br> There is a certification track for ITIL. A 3-day ITIL Essentials class is available to provide an introduction and "conversant" knowledge of the various discipline areas. A multiple choice cert test validates this level of understanding. This class is a pre-req for the very intense two-week ITIL Managers (aka: Masters) class. More than 50% fail the two 3-hour Harvard Business School type essay exams that are taken to achieve this level of certification. This is a respected certification and actually demonstrates true command of the principles of IT service excellence.<br> <br> Sun also has offerings around our <a href="http://www.sun.com/products-n-solutions/sodc/">Service Optimized Data Center</a> program, a new comprehensive roadmap of services and technologies to help customers deploy and manage IT services faster, smarter and more cost-effectively in their data centers. EDS Hosting Services is <a href="http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/041115/sfm125_1.html">pleased</a> with it. SODC leverages, among other things, our Operations Management Capability Model, based on principles from the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) and the Controls Objective for Information and Related Technology (COBIT).<br> <br> I believe Sun can establish itself as more than a parts and technology vendor by demonstrating value in helping our customers address the "Process of IT", into which our Technical Solutions are best delivered.<br> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/the_fallacy_of_ibm_s The Fallacy of IBM's Power6 dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/the_fallacy_of_ibm_s Fri, 14 Jan 2005 09:00:54 +0000 Computers <p>IBM is leaking FUD about its processors again. The Power5+, it is said, will be released later this year, ramping to 3GHz. The Power6, according to a "leaked" non-disclosure preso discussed by <a href="http://www.theregister.co.uk/2003/08/07/ibms_power5_to_hit_3ghz/">TheRegister</a>, will sport "<i><b>very large frequency enhancements</b></i>". At the end of another <a href="http://news.com.com/2102-1006_3-5091294.html">news.com</a> article, IBM suggests the Power6 will run at an "<i><b>ultra-high frequency</b></i>".</p> <p>In engineering terms, those kinds of phrases generally imply at least an "order of magnitude" type of increase. That's [3GHz \* 10\^1], or an increase to 30GHz! But let's view this thru a marketing lens and say IBM is only talking about a "binary" order of magnitude [3GHz \* 2\^1]. That still puts the chip at 6GHz.</p> <p>And therein lies part of the problem. First, even <a href="http://news.com.com/2102-1006_3-5409816.html">Intel can't get past 4GHz</a>. In an embarrassing admission, they pulled their plans for a 4GHz Pentium and will concentrate their massive brain trust of chip designers on more intelligent ways to achieve increasing performance. More on that in a minute. Now I know IBM has some pretty impressive semiconductor fab processes and fabrication process engineers. But getting acceptable yields from a 12" wafer with 1/2 billion transistor chips at 6GHz and a 65nm fab process is pure rocket science. They can probably do it, at great shareholder expense. But even if that rocket leaves the atmosphere, they are still aiming in the wrong direction. As Sun, and now Intel, have figured out, modern apps and the realities of DRAM performance (even with large caches) render "ultra-high" clock rates impotent.</p> <p>I've also got to hand it to IBM's chip designers...Here is an interesting technical overview of the<a href="http://www.research.ibm.com/journal/rd/483/slegel.html"> z990 (MainFrame) CPU</a>. The Power6 is targeted as the replacement for the z990, so it'll have to meet the z990 feature bar. The Power6 is rumored to be a common chip for their M/F zSeries and Unix pSeries platforms... (but they've been talking about a common chip for 10 years now, according to <a href="http://regionals4.gartner.com/regionalization/img/gpress/pdf/2004_chapter_datacenter.pdf">Gartner</a>). Here is an excerpt of the z990 description:</p> <p><small><font color="#990000"><i>"These include millicode, which is the vertical microcode that executes on the processor, and the recovery unit (R-unit), which holds the complete microarchitected state of the processor and is checkpointed after each instruction. If a hardware error is detected, the R-unit is then used to restore the checkpointed state and execute the error-recovery algorithm. Additionally, the z990 processor, like its predecessors, completely duplicates several major functional units for error-detection purposes and uses other error-detection techniques (parity, local duplication, illegal state checking, etc.) in the remainder of the processor to maintain state-of-the-art RAS characteristics. It also contains several mechanisms for completely transferring the microarchitected state to a spare processor in the system in the event of a catastrophic failure if it determines that it can no longer continue operating."</i></font></small></p> <p>Wow! Still,&nbsp;they are continuing to fund rocket science based on the old "Apollo" blueprints. And that "dog don't hunt" any longer, to mix metaphors. Single thread performance and big SMP designs are still important. Sun leads the world in that area, with the 144&nbsp;core E25K. And our servers with US-IVs (et al), AMD Opterons, and the engineering collaboration we're doing with Fujitsu should continue that leadership. But extreme clock rates are not the answer going forward.</p> <p>In the benchmarketing world of TPC-C and SPECrates, where datasets fit nicely inside processor caches, performance appears stellar. But the problem, you see, is that for real applications, especially when micro-partitioning and multiple OS kernels and stacked applications are spread across processors, the L1/L2/L3 caches only contain a fraction of the data and instructions that the apps need to operate. At 6GHz, there is a new clock tick every 0.17 ns (light only travels about 2 inches in that time)!! However, about every 100 instructions or so, the data needed by a typical app might not appear in the processor cache chain. This is called a "cache miss" and it results in a DRAM access (or worse - to disk). Typical DRAM latency is about 150-300ns for large/complex SMP servers. Think about that... a 6GHz CPU will simply twiddle it's proverbial thumbs for over 1000 click ticks&nbsp; (doing nothing but generating heat) before that DRAM data makes it way back up to the CPU so that work can continue. If this happens every 100 instructions, we're at &lt;10% efficiency (100 instructions, followed by 1000 idle cycles, repeat). Ouch!! And that ratio just gets worse as the CPU clock rate increases. Sure, big caches can help some, but not nearly enough to overcome this fundamental problem.</p> <p>What to do? The answer is to build extremely efficient thread engines that can accept multiple thread contexts from the OS and manage those on chip. And we're not talking 2-way hyper-threading here. Say a single processor can accept <b>dozens </b>of threads from the OS. Say there are 8 cores on that processor so that 8 threads can run concurrently, with the other threads queued up ready to run. When any one of those 8 threads need to reach down into DRAM for a memory reference (and they will, frequently), one of the H/W queued threads in the chip's run queue will instantly begin to execute on the core vacated by the "stalled" thread that is now patiently waiting for its DRAM retrieval. We've just described a design that can achieve near 100% efficiency even when DRAM latency is taken into account. <a href="http://www.aceshardware.com/read.jsp?id=65000333">Ace's Hardware</a> reports that "<font face="trebuchet ms,tahoma,arial,helvetica" size="-1"><strong><em>Niagara has reached first silicon, and is running in Sun's labs</em></strong>".</font></p> <p>I won't comment on the veracity of that report. But if true, we are years ahead of competition. We're orbiting the Sun, and IBM is still sending its design team to the moon.</p> <p>An analogy - consider an Olympic relay race... There are 8 teams of 4 runners. Each runner sprints for all they are worth around the lap once, and then hands the baton, in flight, to the next runner. We've got 32 "threads" that are constantly tearing up the track at full speed. On the other hand, a 6GHz single threaded core is like a single runner who sprints like a mad man around the track once, and then sits down for 15 minutes to catch his breath. Then does it again. Which model describes the kind of server you'd like running your highly threaded enterprise applications?</p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/Niagara.jpg"></p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/solution_consulting_sun Solution Consulting @ Sun dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/solution_consulting_sun Thu, 13 Jan 2005 13:21:45 +0000 Computers <p>I just met with&nbsp;a large customer&nbsp;up here in&nbsp;Virginia.&nbsp;The rep I was with spoke of a colleague who has an amazing ability to sell complete solutions (not just a collection of parts). He delivers Solution Proposals with the not so subtle expectation that they will not be broken down into component parts with line item veto authority on the part of the customer. Somehow we need to bottle that sales behavior... The benefit of a proven solution w.r.t. cost, risk, complexity, support, etc, is self-evident. Too often, I believe, Sun's field is&nbsp;conditioned to (or we've conditioned the customer to think that we) offer solutions as strawmen that we expect will be hacked up and put back together (with many pieces left on the garage floor).</p> <p>Client Solutions (read: Professional Services from Sun and our Partners)&nbsp;needs to be part of the total Solution Package. And we need to present the package with the clear expectation that we'll assist in the design, test, deployment and on-going mgmt/support, be committed to our customer's success, share in the risk, etc. But that the solution stands as a whole... If the customer simply wants a miscellany of parts, then we'll need a note from their mom :-)&nbsp;(eg: the CIO) that they understand the increased risk to their project's cost, timeline, and ultimate success. That they are "skiing outside the boundary area".</p> <p>I've noticed that about half of the customers I deal with have senior techo-geeks on their staff. They often go by the title "Architect". Often they are far from it... but they've been there forever, and they are often brilliant technologists that can integrate "creative" solutions from random piece parts. In fact, this is how they thrive and how they (think they) sustain their value add... They become threatened by and obstacles to a solution sale in which the integration work is done for them. Somehow we need to figure out how to make these "technical grease monkeys" feel comfortable with a custom automobile that comes from Detroit already well tuned and ready to run. Sun can't survive being&nbsp;in the auto parts business.&nbsp; We need to leverage their brilliance and secure their vote of confidence. There is an art to getting folks like this to "come up with an idea" that you already have :-) If they become the "owner" of the reference architecture (upon which the proposed solution is built), and still get to play with the technology and learn new techniques, and they can still look like they came up with the idea, then I think we can get past that common roadblock.</p> <p>However, I think there is a development gap in Client Solutions&nbsp;that we have an oppty to address... We have a lot of people who can talk the talk... but we have fewer people&nbsp;that have actually implemented complex solutions such as N1 SPS, Trusted Solaris based SNAP solutions, Retail-oriented SunRay POS gigs, comprehensive ITIL compliance audits, strategic BCP consultation, etc... This is a natural fallout of the fact that most of us came from the pre-sales side of the merged Client Solutions organization. As we become even more successful in securing solution architecture and implementation gigs, we'll need to step up and hit the ball out of the park - not just talk about being able to do it. I encourage everyone to get as much hands on experience as possible with our strategic solution offerings. I know I'm doing that with N1 SPS, SOA, and Sol10. I know we're all are ramping our skills. That's goodness. Thankfully, I think it is easier to engage partners and teach (or remind) bright technical pre-sales "SEs" how to architect and implement solutions, than it is to teach implementation gurus the inter-personal skills and acumen needed to&nbsp;talk to CIOs about business value and relevance.</p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/original_think_pad Original "Think Pad" dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/original_think_pad Sun, 9 Jan 2005 21:53:58 +0000 Computers <p>As an Electrical Engineering undergrad, I worked for IBM for four semesters as an intern/co-op student back in the very early 80's in Boca Raton, FL, just as the first IBM PC was brought to market. It was an incredible experience, in many ways. Today, about 25 years later (wow, I can't be that old!!) I was cleaning out my attic, preparing to put back all the Christmas boxes for another year. I opened some of the boxes to figure out what I had up there... And came across something from my days at IBM. An original IBM "Think Pad".&nbsp;Measuring just 3" x 4.5", this is the pocket-sized progenitor of the now ubiquitous lap-sized room heater.</p> <p>You know... there is something to be said for the utility and durability and availability and cost-effectiveness of the original. Where will your "modern" ThinkPad be in 25 years? I'll still have mine, and it'll still be as useful as it was in 1980 :-) No upgrades and no viruses.</p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/ThinkPad.jpg"></p> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/cobalt_qube3_w_sunrays_redhat Cobalt Qube3 w/ SunRays, RedHat 9 dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/cobalt_qube3_w_sunrays_redhat Wed, 5 Jan 2005 13:17:19 +0000 Computers <P>I've got a Cobalt Qube 3 Professional Edition computer. Remember those cute blue cube Linux appliances?&nbsp; Sun was handing these out to SEs at one point.</P> <P><IMG src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/cobaltqube.jpg"></P> <P>They only have a 450MHz processor. But they are the perfect little home file server and networked backup device. The Business and Professional Editions also have a SCSI port to which additional storage can be attached. In fact, the Professional Edition has two internal disks and a built-in Raid1 Controller. It's headless, but has nice features for a server. Problem is (well, you might consider this a problem) it runs an old Linux release (based on a 2.2 kernel) and has been EOL'ed.&nbsp;But in true Open fashion, there is a grassroots community of developers and advocates, and there are instructions for how to refresh this device to a 2.4-based RedHat (v7.2)kernel here:</P> <P><A href="http://www.gurulabs.com/rhl-cobalt-howto/index.html">http://www.gurulabs.com/rhl-cobalt-howto/index.html</A></P> <P>I just exchanged e-mail with&nbsp;<!--StartFragment -->Dax Kelson of Guru Labs, who told me that this procedure can be used to install RedHat 9 or even&nbsp;<!--StartFragment --> the newer Fedora releases.</P> <P>I think I'm going to give this a try. I'll let you know if/how this works out. Hmmm, with the new Linux-based SunRay Server Software, I could even potentially drive a couple wireless SunRays around the house, using an 802.11g Wireless Bridge, such as: <A href="http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=241">http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=241</A></P> <P><IMG src="http://blogs.sun.com/roller/resources/dcb/HomeNet.jpg"></P> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/big_sun_clusters Big Sun Clusters!! dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/big_sun_clusters Thu, 23 Dec 2004 15:34:02 +0000 Computers <font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT"><font face="TimesNewRomanPSMT"> <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">The Center for Computing and Communication (CCC)&nbsp;at the RWTH Aachen University has recently published details about two interesting clusters they operate using Sun technology.&nbsp;<!--StartFragment --> RWTH Aachen is the largest university of technology in Germany and one of the most renowned technical universities in Europe, with around 28,000 students, more than half of which are in engineering (according to their website).</font></p> <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Check this out!</font></p> <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">First, there is a huge Opteron-Linux-Cluster that consists of 64 of Sun's V40z servers, each with four Opteron CPUs. The 256 processors total 1.1TFlop/s (peak) and have a pool of RAM equal to 512GB. Each node runs a 64-bit version of Linux. Hybrid Programs use a combination of MPI and OpenMP, where each MPI process is multi-threaded. The hybrid parallelization approach uses&nbsp;a combination of coarse grained parallelism with MPI and underlying fine-grained parallelism with OpenMP&nbsp;in order to use as many processors efficiently as possible.&nbsp;For shared memory programming, OpenMP is becoming the de facto standard.</font></p> <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">See: </font><a href="http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/computing/info/linux/primer/opteron_primer_V1.1.pdf"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/computing/info/linux/primer/opteron_primer_V1.1.pdf</font></a></p> <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Another Cluster is based on&nbsp;768 UltraSPARC-IV processors, with an accumulated peak performance of 3.5 TFlop/s and a total main memory capacity of 3 TeraByte. The Operating System's view of each of the two cores of the UltraSPARC IV processors is as if they are separate processors. Therefore from the user's perspective the Sun Fire E25Ks have 144 â€œprocessorsâ€, the Sun Fire E6900s have 48 â€œprocessorsâ€ and the Sun Fire E2900s have 24 â€œprocessorsâ€ each. All compute nodes also have direct access to all work files via a fast storage area network (SAN) using the QFS file system. High IO bandwidth is achieved by striping multiple RAID systems.</font></p> <p align="left"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">See: </font><a href="http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/computing/info/sun/primer/primer_V4.0.pdf"><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">http://www.rz.rwth-aachen.de/computing/info/sun/primer/primer_V4.0.pdf</font></a></p></font></font> https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/big_vs_small_servers Big -vs- Small Servers? dcb https://blogs.oracle.com/dcb/entry/big_vs_small_servers Thu, 23 Dec 2004 13:57:51 +0000 Computers <p>Big Iron -vs- Blades. Mainframe -vs- Micro. Hmmm. We're talking Aircraft Carriers -vs- Jet Skis, right?</p> <p>Sun designs and sell servers that cost from ~$1000 to ~$10 million. Each! We continue to pour billions&nbsp;into R&amp;D and constantly raise the bar on the quality and performance and reliability and feature set that we deliver in our servers. No wonder we lead in too many categories to mention. Okay, I'll mention some :-)</p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/val.jpg"><br><br>While the bar keeps rising on our "Enterprise Class", the Commodity/Volume Class is never too far behind. In fact, I think it may be inappropriate to continue to refer to our high-end as our Enterprise-class Servers, because that could imply that our "Volume" Servers are only for workgroups or non-mission-critical services. That is hardly the case. Both are important and play a role in even the most critical service platforms.<br><br>Let's look at the next generation Opterons... which&nbsp;are only months away. And how modern S/W Architectures are fueling the adoption of these types of servers...<br><br>Today's AMD CPUs, with on-board hypertransport pathways, can handle up to 8 CPUs per server! And in mid-2005, AMD will ship dual-core Opterons. That means that it is probable for a server, by mid-2005 or so, to have 16 Opteron cores (8 dual-core sockets) in just a few rack units of space!! If you compare SPECrate values, such a server would have the raw compute performance capability of a full-up $850K E6800. Wow!<br><br><span class="moz-txt-link-freetext">AMD CPU Roadmap:</span> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_608,00.html">http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/ProductInformation/0,,30_118_608,00.html</a><br><span class="moz-txt-link-freetext">AMD 8-socket Support: </span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543%7E72268,00.html">http://www.amd.com/us-en/Corporate/VirtualPressRoom/0,,51_104_543~72268,00.html</a><br><span class="moz-txt-link-freetext">SPECint:_Rate:</span> <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/rint2000.html">http://www.spec.org/cpu2000/results/rint2000.html</a><br><span class="moz-txt-link-freetext">E6800 Price: </span><a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://tinyurl.com/3xbq2">http://tinyurl.com/3xbq2</a><br><b><br></b>Clearly, there are many reasons why our customers are and will continue to buy our large SMP servers. They offer Mainframe-class on-line maintenance, redundancy, upgradability. They even exceed the ability of a Mainframe in terms of raw I/O capability, compute density, on-the-fly expansion, etc.<br><br>But, H/W RAS continue to improve in the Opteron line as well. One&nbsp;feature I hope to see soon is on-the-fly PFA-orchestrated CPU off-lining. If this is delivered, it'll be Solaris x86 rather than Linux. Predictive Fault Analysis detecting if one of those 16 cores or 32 DIMMs starts to experience soft errors in time to fence off that component before the server and all the services crash.&nbsp;The blacklisted component could be serviced at the next&nbsp;scheduled maintenance event. We can already do that on our Big Iron. But with that much power, and that many stacked services in a 16-way Opteron box, it would be nice not to take a node panic and extended node outage.</p> <p>On the other hand, 80% of the service layers we deploy are already or are attempting to move to the horizontal model. And modern S/W architectures are increasingly designed to provide continuity of service level even in the presence of various fault scenarios. Look at Oracle RAC, replicated state App Servers with Web-Server plug-ins to seamlessly transfer user connections, Load Balanced web services, TP monitors, Object Brokers, Grid Engines and Task Dispatchers, and SOA designs in which an alternate for a failed dependency is rebound on-the-fly.<br><br>These kinds of things, and many others, are used to build resilient services that are much more immune to component or node failures. In that regard, node level RAS is less critical to achieving a service level objective. Recovery Oriented Computing admits that H/W fails [<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://roc.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/ROC_TR02-1175.pdf">http://roc.cs.berkeley.edu/papers/ROC_TR02-1175.pdf]</a>. We do need to reduce the failure rate at the node/component level... but as Solution Architects, we need to design services such that node/component failure can occur, if possible, without a service interruption or degradation of "significance".<br><br>In the brave new world (or, the retro MF mindset) we'll stack services in partitions across a grid of servers. Solaris 10 gives us breakthrough new Container technology that will provide this option. Those servers might be huge million dollar SMP behemoths, or $2K Opteron blades... doesn't matter from the architectural perspective. We could have dozens of services running on each server... however, most individual services will be distributed across partitions (Containers) on multiple servers, such that a partition panic or node failure has minimal impact. This is "service consolidation" which includes server consolidation as a side effect. Not into one massive server, but across a limited set of networked servers that balance performance, adaptability, service reliability, etc.</p> <p><img src="https://blogs.oracle.com/roller/resources/dcb/sc.jpg"></p> <p>Server RAS matters. Competitive pressure will drive continuous improvement in quality and feature sets in increasingly powerful and inexpensive servers. At the same time, new patterns in S/W architecture will make "grids" of these servers work together to deliver increasingly reliable services. Interconnect breakthroughs will only accelerate this trend.<br></p> <p>The good news for those of us who love the big iron is that there will always be a need for aircraft carriers even in an age of powerful jet skis.</p>