Oracle has published an update to the Processor Core Factor Table, according to a blog post by Stefan Hinker. This update lists the still unreleased T4 CPU with a factor of 0.5, which leaves the license cost per socket the same compared to T3 while putting T4 in the same league as SPARC64 VII+ and all current x86 CPUs. A later announcement is expected that will provide performance details, although this core factor seems to confirm that T4 will deliver on Oracle's performance claims.
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The blog post "Deploying Oracle RAC DB 11gR2 on LDoms Virtualization" is a "cookbook" approach to configuring and installing Oracle Real Application Cluster (RAC) Database 11.2.0.2 on Solaris 10 and Logical Domains on Sun CMT servers (also using ZFS). He concludes that LDom is a good choice for RAC deployment for, among other reasons, it is a virtualized hosted environment; it permits easy reallocation/deallocation of system resources dynamically; it allows for optimized system utilization and space/utility consumption.
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With the release of Oracle VM Server SPARC 2.1 (OVMSS) users can now enjoy several new and important features that amount to useful enhancements of this solution. These features are:
Live Domain Migration
CPU Dynamic Resource Management
DTrace enablement
Improved allocation and deallocation of CPUs and crypto units
Bug fixes and performance improvements are included in the release as well. A blog devoted to the live migration feature in this release will soon be available. OVMSS was once referred to as Logical Domains (or LDoms) but, whether by that name or by OVMSS, this solution is a virtual machine capability built into Oracle's T-series SPARC Chip Multithreading (CMT) servers, permitting up to 128 domains (virtual machines) on a single server at no extra cost. That last phrase is worth repeating: " ... at no extra cost."
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From the Oracle blogs site comes a post by Stefan Hinker on securely erasing disks, that reminds readers it is possible using Solaris to erase disks sufficiently completely that the method satisfies the requirements of Department of Defense wipe disk standard 5220.22-M. Hinker includes links to the manpage of format(1M) and to the Data remanence article on Wikipedia. He also adds a caution that this method does not work well with all SSDs.
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The series on the network virtualization features of Oracle Solaris 11 Express written by Jeff Victor continues with his third post, which deals with the creation of virtual network elements (VNEs). Victor explains that his example employs an old Sun Fire T2000 with a single SPARC CMT (T1) chip and 32GB RAM. He pretends to be implementing a 3-tier architecture in this one system, where each tier is represented by one Solaris zone. This mythical example provides access to an employee database, he continues, and the 3-tier service is named 'emp' and VNEs will use 'emp' in their names to reduce confusion regarding the dozens of VNEs created for the services this system will deliver. Victor remarks on the convenience of the dladm(1M) command in Solaris that one can use to create, destroy and configure datalinks such as VNICs. He illustrates his post with numerous code samples.
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