Sun's strong customer loyalty will keep most of its users on its side as the company transitions through its acquisition by Oracle, reports a Frost & Sullivan IT analyst. The deal is currently under review by the US Department of Justice, which extended its check of the deal on June 26 over concerns about the way rights to Java are licensed, and the European Commission, which is planning on releasing its first opinion on Sept. 3.

The online application TweetMeme that tracks the popularity of links sent via Twitter has selected MySQL Enterprise database to help the microblogging service keep pace with the ever-growing Twitter user base that has experienced 83% month-over-month growth for the first half of 2009. Upgrading from the MySQL Community Edition, TweetMeme has deployed MySQL Enterprise on Sun Fire x86 servers as part of the Sun Startup Essentials program.

Sun is hosting a free webinar on OpenSSO Express. Set for Wednesday, August 19th at 10:00 am PST / 1:00 pm EST / 19.00 CET, the 40-minute presentation to be given by Daniel Raskin, Sun's chief identity strategist, will focus on the latest version of OpenSSO and how it can help secure a data center's core resources regardless of whether they are internal, external or in the cloud. The presentation will be followed by a question and answer session so that specific listeners' questions can be addressed.

An argument is made for the use of SSD devices in benefiting HPC applications with large I/O components in a Sun BluePrints Online article by Lawrence McIntosh in Sun's Systems Engineering Solutions Group and Dr. Michael Burke in Sun's Strategic Applications Engineering. The two compare traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) and the newer solid state drive (SSD) technology in high-performance computing (HPC) applications. Application-based benchmarking and storage performance benchmark testing are used and demonstrate significant benefits in the use of SSD devices for HPC applications with large I/O components, the authors conclude.

The Sun white paper "Maximize IT Uptime by Utilizing Dependable Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 Servers" explains why deploying those servers can help support organizational efforts to achieve high IT service uptime goals. The authors contend the features of these servers, identified as a low component count, extensive data integrity features and superior energy efficiency, promote reliability. In addition, redundant components foster high levels of availability, and Integrated Lights Out Management (ILOM) and self-healing features simplify serviceability.

The Sun Server Hardware Management Pack 1.1 consists of Sun Server Hardware Management Agents and associated Sun Server Hardware SNMP Plugins used for monitoring Sun x64 Server and Blade module's hardware. Part of this pack includes the Sun x86 SNMP Hardware Monitoring Agent. To explain exactly what this agent is and what it does, Tony Kay introduces the agent in the System Management blog.

In a three-part blogged article, Said Syed offers architectural guidelines to implement a VMware configuration on basic storage arrays, such as the iSCSI Sun Storage 2510, to modular midrange and high Sun Storage arrays. The guidelines are based on general VMware storage capabilities along with advanced features such as VMware VMotion, VMware HA, VMware DRS, VMware Fault Tolerance and Disaster Recovery. Detailed best practices for such implementations are discussed, however application storage considerations are not.

We track how frequently each article is viewed on the web site to determine which the readers consider the most important. For last week, Vol 137 Issue 5, the top 10 articles were:

• Best Practices for Migrating SAP Environments
• Sun GlassFish Web Stack 1.5 Released
• Making Good Use of Single-Node Clusters
• Sun-Emerson Network Power Alliance
• OpenSolaris 2009.06 Offers Users Many New Features
• Selecting Open-Source Software to Develop Web Applications
• Sun Fire X4140, X4240 and X4440 Options with Six-Core AMD Opteron Processors
• Designing Tiered Storage with Sun Java System Messaging Server
• Two SPEC Record Setting Results on the Sun Constellation System
• An Illuminata Report Spotlights Optimizing Virtualization for Business Apps

The longer version of this article has list of top ten articles for the last 8 weeks.

International Speedway Corporation (ISC) is a leading promoter of NASCAR and other motor sports. With the company experiencing 10-15% growth over several years, it decided to leave its third-party vendor hosted systems and build its own data center, engaging an IT vendor to remotely manage its mission-critical systems that include a ticketing system, ERP system and 54 interactive web sites. ISC chose Sun Remote Operations Management and reports its expectations have been far exceeded.

At the start of July, Sun set a new SPECmail2009 result on a Sun Fire X4275 server and Sun Storage 7110 Unified Storage System running Sun Java Messaging server 6.2. According to Guido Ficco posting these results in BestPerf blog, OpenStorage and ZFS were a key part of the new World Record SPECmail2009.

New Tech Tip About Running the Solaris OS on IBM Servers

"Installing Solaris 10 5/09 OS on IBM HS22 Type 7870 Blade Server" is the latest Sun tech tip on the BigAdmin Resource Center for IBM Servers. This tech tip provides advice for using the GUI during boot or installation. The Resource Center also links to workarounds for running the Solaris 10 OS on other IBM hardware (listed under the Sun Wikis section).

Sun.com: A Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 Reference Deployment

This article describes the system architecture and configuration for the sun.com web site, which runs on Sun Java System Web Server 7.0 update 4. Sun.com site administrators describe some of the configuration tweaks added to the various Web Server instances to fulfill business requirements.

Get performance tuning recommendations and best practice guidelines on MSC.Software’s HPC application, MD Nastran, and the hardware platform in a Sun BluePrints piece that aims to educate its readers on

• estimating the optimum amount of memory (RAM) needed to run a particular MD Nastran analysis,
• determining the number of concurrent MD Nastran jobs that can efficiently run on one compute node and
• maximizing MD Nastran's File Management System (FMS) interface to access the available storage devices for optimum I/O performance.

The 39-page PDF is written for experienced MD Nastran users who are interested in performance-related issues.

In his Sun BluePrints Online paper "Using Sun Systems to Build a Virtual and Dynamic Infrastructure" Jacques Bessoudo describes a proof-of-concept exercise setting up a flexible data center infrastructure using the Sun Blade 6000 Modular System, Logical Domains, and Scalent V/OE software. The configuration and installation procedures described are intended as a starting point for readers interested in implementing a dynamic data center that includes clients running any combination of Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems.

In a recent blog posting GlassFish v3 was labeled a "lightweight application server" by Alexis Moussine, who lists seven reasons for his characterization. "...painting every application server as being monolithic and heavyweight is a gross caricature...," he writes. See whether you agree.

Sun will be discontinuing the Solaris Express Community Edition (SXCE) and intends for its end of life (EOL) to be complete by the end of October. This move is part of a consolidation of how OpenSolaris and Solaris are distributed. In an announcement, Sun's OpenSolaris Product Manager Glynn Foster indicated that Sun does plan on continuing the bi-weekly release schedule, but will move towards producing native Image Packaging System (IPS) packages of the latest Solaris packages, allowing users to upgrade from an existing release or pre-release.

Sun Distinguished Engineer Glenn Brunette introduces Immutable Service Containers (ISC) as a new method for organizations to better protect their services and data. ISCs are expected to become one of the most basic architectural building blocks for more complex, highly adaptive and autonomic security architectures, he writes, offering some insight into the project and details on its instantiation in the OpenSolaris community.