Open Storage and Open Solaris continue to grow and Sun has increased its commitment to
Partners.
learn more about
xVM as Steve Wilson chats with RedMonk analyst Michael Cote
and see a demo of xVM server.
Hear how the new
Sun Fire X2250, a 1RU, Intel Processor Base Server, fits into HPC in the latest
Radio HPC podcast with host Tony Warner.
Read about the
broader HPC market from Tabor Research
who belies "that new technologies, methodologies, and applications are emerging outside of the traditional
HPC markets that have the essential characteristics of high productivity computing".
Sun has extended its family of Intel Xeon-based Sun Fire servers with two new offerings for High Performance Computing (HPC), Web 2.0 and back office computing workloads, including the fastest 1U server for HPC workloads and the most expandable 2U enterprise-class system based on Intel Xeon processors. The Sun Fire X2250 and Sun Fire X4250 servers, powered by one or two dual- or quad-core Intel Xeon processors 5200 or 5400 series, run a variety of operating systems, including the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), Linux and Windows.
Sun has nearly doubled shipments of its Sun Ray thin clients during the Q2 of 2008 , compared to Q1 2008. Sun Ray unit shipments are growing faster than the thin client industry at large, underscoring the increased appeal thin client and desktop virtualization solutions are experiencing among businesses and organizations.
Contributing to this growth is strong market demand for Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 2.0, which now ships on approximately 25% of Sun Ray units since being introduced in March 2008, in addition to the choice Sun Ray thin clients offer customers, enabling them to display Solaris, Windows or Linux desktops on the same device.
Sun Ray virtual display clients, Sun Ray Sofware and Sun VDI Software 2.0 are key components of Sun's broad desktop virtualization offering, which are a set of core desktop technologies and solutions within Sun's xVM virtualization portfolio.
The adoption numbers for the OpenSolaris Storage community that showed over 20% growth in registered members in just six months. The community now has over 40 projects that range from a peer to peer distributed storage system to the latest drivers for storage connectivity. This growing and diverse community support for the Open Storage eco-system is comprised of Enterprise, Web 2.0 and high performance computing developers and researchers as well as storage administrators and architects from around the world.
As part of Sun's commitment to its Partner-first strategy, there will be enhancements to the Sun Partner Advantage Program that will provide new resources to accelerate business growth and momentum for channel partners in the US. Sun augmented its Partner Growth Fund (PGF) with a new Demand Generation component to enable partners to earn additional marketing funds and bolstered its incentive program for those partners that are broadening Sun's footprint by selling Sun solutions to new customers.
This Gartner Case Study explores how Callidus, which offers sales performance management software, went about taking its applications on-demand, with emphasis on the infrastructure and services required to run in a high-volume production environment with very high utilization rates and uptime. Gartner looks at how Callidus went about choosing an infrastructure and IT services provider to operate its software as a service (SaaS) "backroom." Callidus chose to have Sun Microsystems provision and operate a private IT utility service.
There is a Solaris for everyone, as shown by a blog in The Observatory: Distributions of OpenSolaris. Here there are brief examples of the different versions of Solaris and their applications. Roman Strobl, who is responsible for the entry shows the different distributions of Solaris.
To access information on everything (literally, everything) you might ever have wanted to know about OpenSolaris, have a look at "Introduction to Operating Systems: A Hands-On Approach to Using the OpenSolaris Project."
With over half of every dollar cost of every server being spent on power and cooling, and with the power and cooling capacity of datacenters at design limits, clearly a solution is in order that will address the utilities cost. Sun is at work on power monitoring and power management technologies to address these critical issues. These are reviewed in the white paper "Sun's Approach to Intelligent Power Monitoring" by Subodh Bapat and others.
As a contributor to the development of the SPECjAppServer benchmarks, Tom Daly has developed an interest in defending their utility, which is exactly what he did in a recent blog devoted to explaining the value of SPEC benchmarks in determining performance measurement. Daly does not profess a blue skies view of SPEC benchmarks but he does have a stake in establishing their value and in making that plain to readers with some remarks about their background, their principal benefits, and their shortcomings.
In yet another blog entry [20449] Steve Wilson spends a few moments in conversation with RedMonk analyst Michael Cote on how the xVM Server fits in to Sun's virtualization portfolio.
Steve "Virtual" Wilson gives viewers a sneak preview of the xVM Server user interface in a recent blog. Wilson points out that the UI in the video is served by an embedded web server inside the xVM Server software, adding that users can also choose to use xVM Ops Center to manage many virtualized (or non-virtualized!) servers centrally. This option features a similar user interface, but one with even more management options.
Just as server virtualization revolutionized how IT managers think about compute
power and resource management in the datacenter, desktop virtualization is changing
the office landscape.
Desktop virtualization enables some or all of the applications—
including the desktop environment—to be moved off individual desktops and
centralized on dedicated application tier servers in the datacenter.
As a result, organizations are better able to take advantage of client device independence, provide true mobility for workers, streamline management, and keep information secure.
Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software is a compelling new architecture for
providing office desktop environments and IT services to users. It delivers applications and full desktop environments to clients using a server-based computing model.
All the intelligence —- compute power, storage, software, and administration -— is concentrated in the datacenter. Web browsers running on Sun Ray™ ultra-thin clients, PCs, or mobile devices provide access to services and applications running in the datacenter.
Michael Rosenthal and Stefan Schmitz-Homberg's Sun Blueprint explain an operational model for a desktop environment that is based on the Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software using ITIL as a foundation. Their blueprint will help users optimize operations and provide steps towards industrializing IT services.
Sun Convergence - Web 2.0 client
For Sun Java System Messaging Server, Sun Java System Calendar Server, and Sun Java System Instant Messaging
Sun Convergence is a Web 2.0 client for Sun Java System Messaging Server, Sun Java System Calendar Server, and Sun Java System Instant Messaging. Convergence ships as part of Sun Java Communications Suite 6 and utilizes Ajax. Also, convergence is designed to avoid potential complications brought in by plug-ins such as Flash. It focuses on using the capabilities common within the most popular types of web browsers, including Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla FireFox, and Apple Safari.
In episode #6 of the Radio HPC podcast, host Tony Warner interviews David Maples from Allinea, and guest Brian Huynh fills listeners in on Sun's newest x86 server, the Sun Fire x2250, based on the Intel Xeon architecture.
Tabor Research has new report on the other HPC - High Productivity Computing.
"Tabor Research believes that new technologies, methodologies, and applications are emerging outside of the traditional HPC markets that have the essential characteristics of high productivity computing. These requirements include: leading edge capabilities, incorporating, testing, and perfecting of new technologies and methodologies, and market creation and expansion. This HPC market segment is generating a "new edge" by leveraging major technological advances to enable application growth in non-traditional markets. This new area, which we cleverly call Edge HPC (or eHPC), leverages the experience and technologies of the traditional HPC market, while introducing new areas for innovation. Most importantly we believe that eHPC is at the cusp of significant market generation and growth."
"Supercomputing at the Edge: Non-Traditional High Productivity Computing Segment Definitions" was written by Christopher G. Willard, Ph.D., Debra Goldfarb, and Addison Snell. (7 pages)
The Sun Fire X2250 server demonstrates Sun's commitment to deliver one of the most compelling entry-level HPC 1U rack-mount servers in the industry. The Sun Fire X2250, with no redundant PSU & fans, is a 2-socket server based on Intel's "Stoakley" platform.
Within its 1U form-factor, the Sun Fire X2250 supports leading operating systems and applications, the fastest processor speed grades available, and the fastest memory available. All of this makes the Sun Fire X2250 ideal for companies with massively parallel technical computing workloads.
With the introduction of the RoHS Compliant Sun Fire X4250 Intel Xeon-based x64 Server Standard Configurations and Options, customers have available a two-rack enterprise-class server that is fast, expandable and energy efficient and that offers both Dual-Core and Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors that range from 50W to 120W to meet the various requirements of customers. The revenue release date for this offering was July 25, 2008, and the general availability date July 25, 2008.
Standard configurations of the Sun Fire X4150 x64 Rack-Mount Servers are available through Sun. The X4150 powered by Quad-Core Intel Xeon processors, is a 1RU 2-socket x64 server. With Sun's design principles, the Sun Fire X4150 server is for performance, expandability, and energy efficiency for Solaris, Linux, Windows, and VMware applications. For maximum compute density, leading storage capacity, and networking connectivity in a single rack unit, the Sun Fire X4150 has a lot to offer.
As tape moves from a pure backup solution to a premier long-term storage technology, it is expanding its role in the overall tiered storage infrastructure. Tape is one of the most economically responsible storage tiers through the lowest cost per GB, low power and cooling costs during operation and no energy consumed and zero heat generated when at rest.
Sun has announced the Sun StorageTek LT04 mid-range tape drive conversions for the Sun StorageTek SL500 tape library with a general availability date of August 5, 2008. When customers upgrade or consolidate their existing Sun StorageTek tape library, the LTO drive conversions allow them to preserve the investment in LTO drives by facilitating drive redeployment in the new library.
Virtual tape library (VTL) technology is the way to introduce disk into a tape based backup infrastructure. A VTL is a set of disks that emulate tape. Rather than a disk array, the backup software sees a tape drive or a tape library. Tape virtualization is used to improve backup performance and reliability while keeping existing tape infrastructure in operation. There are different solutions for different environments.
We track how frequently each article is viewed on the web site to determine which the readers consider the most important.
The top 10 articles for last week, Vol 126 Issue 2, were:
The Sun Studio Performance Analyzer can shed light on a variety of questions concerning your system that range from whether tuning Message Passing Interface (MPI) code could produce significant performance improvements, to how long it might take for program performance to equilibrate, to whether processes that send messages synchronize with processes that receive them. These are only a few of the several issues Performance Analyzer can illuminate. The tutorial focuses on guiding readers through some of the basic new features of the Performance Analyzer.
Bernard Golden has done us all a favor, or at least those of us hesitant to get our feet wet with the whole virtualization process, having written a 50-page treatment of his longer book "Virtualization for Dummies." You can register with Sun and AMD, who sponsor this offering, to receive your copy of the summary.
Sun Java System Message Queue is a full featured Message Oriented Middleware (MOM) product which implements the Java Message Service API. It is included in Sun Java System Application Server and in the GlassFish application server. It is the JMS Provider implementation in the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition Reference Implementation as the provider for MDB asynchronous messaging.
The Sun Java System Message Queue 4.2 spans the range of light-weight message buffering to world-wide deployments
which require high performance, and high reliability.
Java developers now have a scripting language with Groovy. Also NetBeans will support Groovy and the Grails framework. Also available is support for Hibernate in 6.1 as an add-on via the Update Center. In 6.5, Hibernate is now built-in to Java EE/Web bundle. New features in 6.5 includes support for reverse engineering, SQL query execution support, and refactoring of Hibernate mapping files.
The NetBeans community has made available to users a free, unrestricted download of NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta in keeping with its goal of providing a superior environment designed to reduce development time. The simplified installation and configuration of NetBeans IDE 6.5 Beta gives users easy access to the enhancements and features of this newest version that supports Java technology, JavaScript, Ruby on Rails, C/C++, and now PHP.
Bill Vass, president and COO of Sun Microsystems, Federal, likens middleware to plumbing, the sort of infrastructure no one bothers to think about until, suddenly, it doesn't work. Vass reminds readers that IT technology is cyclical and that Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) and Enterprise Service Buses (ESB) are part of the current cycle around distributed computing. He and Ashesh Badani have done a podcast that reviews the evolution of distributed computing to the current state of SOA, as well as how SOA is being used in the Federal Government, and some of the technical and business challenges involved.
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