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As part of its server announcements today in San Francisco, executives at the Systems Group of Sun Microsystems
will be talking about the holistic approach to server virtualization
that the company is taking across its various platforms. The company
will also pre-announce a home-grown logical partitioning technology
called Logical Domains, or LDoms, that it created for its Sparc
T1-based server products as well as give an update on the long-awaited
containerized Linux runtime environment, known by the "BrandZ" code
name.
As part of its server announcements today in San Francisco, executives at the Systems Group of Sun Microsystems
will be talking about the holistic approach to server virtualization
that the company is taking across its various platforms. The company
will also pre-announce a home-grown logical partitioning technology
called Logical Domains, or LDoms, that it created for its Sparc
T1-based server products as well as give an update on the long-awaited
containerized Linux runtime environment, known by the "BrandZ" code
name.
According to Larry Wake, group marketing manager for Solaris, Sun
created the LDom partitioning technology as part of the development of
the "Niagara" T1 processor because at that time partitioning was still
not standardized on X86 or future X64 platforms--and to a certain
extent, it still isn't. Rather than wait to see how the open source Xen
hypervisor from XenSource
might pan out, Sun decided to create its own LDom logical partitioning
specifically for the Niagara chips. LDoms will not work on
Opteron-based servers, and they will not work on any other Sparc-based
servers, including those that use the current UltraSparc-IV+ chips.
LDoms makes use of server virtualization features that are on the
Niagara chip itself. A lot of the wizardry that allows a single T1 chip
to support up to 32 logical partitions is built into the Niagara cores,
according to Wake. Each Niagara chip has eight trimmed-down Sparc
cores, each with four instruction threads. So obviously the hypervisor
that is the software firmware part of the LDoms is able to isolate a
processor thread and make it look like a single-threaded processor to a
full instance of Solaris.
The LDom support will be part of the Solaris 10 11/06 update to Sun's
Unix operating system, which is expected in early December. (Yes,
perhaps naming it the 12/06 update would have been a better idea, but
hope springs eternal in the scheduling calendars of the major IT
players.) Sun has not said its LDoms will be a priced feature, but
considering that Sun is giving away Solaris 10 these days, it seems
very unlikely that Sun will try to charge directly for LDom technology.
Incidentally, LDoms are distinct from Solaris containers, which were
developed for Sparc-based and Opteron-based servers. (Solaris
containers are sometimes called Solaris zones.) With containers, a
single Solaris kernel, a single file system, and a virtulized set of
network and device interfaces is used to create multiple, isolated
execution environments for Solaris applications. Applications running
inside a container can't see what is going on outside of that container
or access resources outside of the container. This is a very powerful
means of creating virtual private servers, but does not provide a
completely isolated software stack in each virtualized instance.
With LDoms, companies will be able to have up to 32 logical partitions--just like those IBM has on mainframes and Power-based servers and Hewlett-Packard
has on its Itanium-based Integrity machines. Each logical partition
will be able to run a full instance of Solaris 10, and according to
Wake, should companies want to, they will also be able to run Solaris
containers inside of these LDom partitions.
While LDoms are currently only supported on Niagara processors, it
stands to reason that similar hypervisor electronics in the Niagara
cores and related firmware will also end up in the future "Rock"
massively multithreaded Sparc processors, which are due in 2008. Wake
would not confirm this, but it is a pretty good guess.
Then again, Sun could just chuck it all in and adopt the Xen hypervisor
on Sparc and Opteron servers. Wake said that Sun was expecting to get
official Xen support inside Solaris 10 in an update that is expected in
early to middle 2007. The OpenSolaris development version of Solaris is
currently able to run the Xen hypervisor on an X86 or X64 machine that
has Solaris as the host environment, and can also run Solaris as a
guest platform atop the Xen hypervisor. Wake hinted that whatever Sun
does with LDoms, the approach will be similar to the way Xen works even
if Sun decides that LDoms are better suited for its customers. While
porting Xen to Sparc would be challenging, VMware doesn't seem inclined
to support Sparc servers and this may ultimately be Sun's best option
to serve its customers.
Solaris 10 is already certified to be a guest operating system on VMware's
ESX Server 3.0.1 hypervisor, which was launched a few months ago. ESX
Server is, however, only available on X86 and X64 servers and is only
licensed on two-socket servers, which means neither the Niagara servers
(which are Sparc architecture) nor the entry Galaxy servers (which have
only one socket) can use ESX Server.
Sun is also still working on the BrandZ Linux runtime environment,
which will run inside Solaris containers. These Branded Zones are
supposed to support any Unix-like operating system coded for an X86
server and translate the calls from the operating system in
question--for example, Linux--into Solaris calls on an X86 or X64
server. Because the processor architectures are the same, the binary
applications can run unchanged, and if the runtime environment is
perfect, then the Linux applications would not even know they were
running on Linux even if they were running within a runtime environment
on Solaris. (This is very similar to the lxrun Linux runtime
environment that is available inside of open source Unix platforms,
which allows them to execute X86 Linux binaries.)
The key concepts behind BrandZ containers were formerly known as
"Project Janus" and were conceived of as a standalone runtime
environment for applications coded for the 32-bit Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 3 operating system on X86. But, apparently, after
Solaris 10 was being prepped for final release two years ago, Sun's
customers asked for this Red Hat runtime environment to be put inside
of Solaris containers. While this sounds simple, it is apparently quiet
a complex task.
The BrandZ Linux runtime containers have been woven into the
OpenSolaris development release, just like Xen support, and are
expected to be delivered inside an update to the commercially supported
Solaris 10 in early- to mid-2007. By that time, Red Hat will have RHEL
5 in the market, and RHEL 4 will have been in the market for two years.
Wake says that should Sun need to, it can quickly rev BrandZ to support
more current Red Hat Linuxes, but added that most customers are still
running code that is compliant with RHEL 3.
As part of the virtualization extravaganza today, Sun will also provide
customers with a two-day collaborative workshop on
virtualization--which it valued at $10,000--to help them figure out how
to best virtualize and modernize their server and operating system
infrastructure. This workshop helps customers figure out their current
total cost of ownership for their server infrastructure and how much
money they could save by virtualizing using any one of the many
virtualization technologies that Sun supports on its iron. Sun's
services unit has also created a service called Lifecycle Services for
Virtualization, which rolls out consulting, education, and support
services to help customers actually implement virtualization in their
data centers.
Read the original article: http://www.itjungle.com/breaking/bn101706-story03.html
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