Sun Solutions by Forsythe
Jarod Jenson
Chief Technology Architect
Paul Zajdel
Sun Solutions Practice Director
Fred King
Practice Manager
Corey Brune
Master Consultant
John J McLaughlin
Sun Product Specialist
David Rubio
Senior Consultant

Blogs

Beginners Guide to LDoms

Mon, 05/26/2008 - 02:10 by Corey Brune

A Beginners Guide to LDom  Sun Microsystems’ Logical Domains (LDoms) technology “provides the ability to split a single physical system into multiple, independent virtual systems.” (BEGINNERS GUIDE TO LDOMS: UNDERSTANDING AND DEPLOYING LOGICAL DOMAINS http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0207/820-0832.pdf) In effect, one machine is able to support multiple systems running CPUs, memory, and devices, each independent and secure from one another. Security, scaling, kernel management, patch sets, and packages can be applied to individual systems as required. There are other ways to partition systems, such as Solaris Containers, Solaris Resource Management, Sun Fire Domains and XVM. LDoms are ideal for environments requiring management for multiple kernels, or increased security between servers. However, a huge benefit is the reduction in administrative support as a result of the management of one kernel image. What makes this technology possible is the hypervisor, a software layer between the operating system and hardware. It is the hypervisor’s ability to act on behalf of the OS to manage and control hardware that enables this technology. Ultimately, with this consolidation of resources, data centers are not only more efficient; costs can be significantly reduced.  There are four types of domains, the Control Domain, Service Domain, I/O Domain, and Guest Domain. The first domain to be installed is the Control Domain. This is where the Logical Domain Manager resides and is responsible for communications with the hypervisor. The Service Domain shares the virtualized services, such as network switches. The I/O domain controls and shares physical hardware devices when needed. The guest domain is where the virtualized systems are located, and reports to the Control Domain. “The guest domain must run an operating system that understands both the sun4v platform and the virtual devices presented by the hypervisor. Currently, this is the Solaris 10 11/06 OS with required patches 124921-02 and 125043-01 (with kernel update 118833-36) at a minimum.” (BEGINNERS GUIDE TO LDOMS: UNDERSTANDING AND DEPLOYING LOGICAL DOMAINS)

 

After the analysis of your system resources and desired configuration, you are ready to install and setup LDoms. How you setup and configure your system will depend on your specifications, however, at minimum you will have one Control Domain supporting one Guest Domain.  



OpenSolaris dot Org and dot Com

Mon, 05/05/2008 - 11:23 by John J McLaughlin

There is a new splash page for the http://opensolaris.org siteopensolaris

The OpenSolaris.com side has a link to the new OpenSolaris.com site and the OpenSolaris 2008.05 CD image:

To quote Glynn Foster:



Using mdb on the Solaris kernel to dump pages of memory

Wed, 04/09/2008 - 17:44 by David Rubio

I will demonstrate the power of mdb(1) by displaying kernel data structures related to virtual memory (VM) in order to show how to dump the contents of any running application's memory or any page of memory in general. As an example I will run a simple shell script that I will end up locating in the shell's heap. When I first figured out this example, it was an educated guess on my part that a shell script would end up in the heap of the shell interpreter. The file name of an interpreter script (files starting with #!) gets passed to the invoked interpreter as one of its arguments.



UltraSPARC T2 Performance

Fri, 03/28/2008 - 04:10 by John J McLaughlin

Recently, a customer asked to review the value proposition of Sun's UltraSPARC T2 servers vs x86 servers. I started off by providing some benchmark results. This page on Sun's web site is a good starting point to access those benchmark results:

http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/benchmarks/index.jsp



Virtual Memory in Solaris 10

Sun, 03/23/2008 - 17:56 by David Rubio

Virtualization is the big buzz word these days. I would like to describe one of the older virtualization  techniques around: Virtual Memory (VM) on Solaris 10. Every 32-bit application, command, utility (e.g. ls, vi, fmd, acroread, oracle process, etc) is given 2 to the 32 = 4Gb of virtual memory to potentially use. 64-bit applications are given 16 Exabytes of virtual memory which is 4 billion times more than 32-bit programs.



Why I am at Forsythe

Sun, 03/23/2008 - 17:51 by David Rubio

 

I  joined Forsythe to be able to work closely with a person whose name kept popping up every time I taught a DTrace class for SunEd. A customer in the class would say oh yea Jarod Jenson was here last week or last month and he solved our performance problem in less than a day. I wrote the DTrace course (SA-327-S10) for Sun Educational Services starting in March of 2004 and then taught it for 3 plus years (as well as Solaris 10 Internals, Multi-threaded Programming and Crash Dump Analysis) before joining Forsythe.



dtrace.conf(08) experience

Sun, 03/16/2008 - 03:36 by Jarod Jenson

There is only one way to describe dtrace.conf(08) - sick.

The software developer talent present at this conference (at a mere 70 or so folks) has got to be the highest concentration of insanely gifted develepor talent ever assembled. When you have presenters talking about pte's, TLB's. CR3's, VMM's, and traps and the majority of the audience is not only engaged, but experts in the field - you have a conference at the next level.



DTrace isn't just for Solaris 10

Thu, 03/06/2008 - 04:42 by Jarod Jenson

I am not just talking about MacOS X or FreeBSD here. DTrace works great for Solaris versions prior to Solaris 10 as well. In fact, it works great for Linux and Windows too.



Configuring the Sun Fire x4500 with Symantec Enterprise Vault

Sat, 02/16/2008 - 14:22 by John J McLaughlin

Symantec describes Enterprise Vault as "... software-based intelligent archiving platform that stores, manages, and enables discovery of corporate data from email systems, filer server environments, instant messaging platforms, and content management and collaboration systems.



Sun xVM Server and Ops Center Q&A with Steve Wilson

Sat, 02/16/2008 - 14:13 by John J McLaughlin

virtualization.info has posted an interview with Steve Wilson, "Sun xVM Server and Ops Center Q&A with Steve Wilson".

Some of the key points that Steve makes in the interview are:



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