The Logical Choice for Enterprise Archival Storage
The need to develop data archiving capabilities is a challenge that every enterprise faces these days for any or all of several needs: whether to accommodate explosive data growth; to respond to the pressure to meet promised service levels and backup windows for users; to provide archive data retention and retrieval requirements; and to better manage rising energy costs. Dean Halbeisen’s Sun BluePrints Online paper “Sun Systems for Sun StorageTek Enterprise Backup Software” details the openly architected, intelligent and massively scalable general purpose archive solutions Sun is developing to assist enterprise users in meeting these challenges.
Sun Solution Increased User and IT Productivity, Security and Added Easy Remote Access
In September 2008, medical products maker ResMed decided to replace 160 PCs with Sun Ray 2 Thin Clients, and purchased two SPARC Enterprise T2000 Servers with chip multithreading, and four Sun Fire X4440 Servers to support its new solution. According to ResMed, IT productivity has increased by the equivalent of two additional IT staff, and the company has saved about $267,850. The Sun solution also increased security and substantially reduced energy costs as well as the noise-level.
Configuring Highly Available Paths from Sun LDoms Guest Domains to Storage
The Sun BluePrints article “LDoms I/O Best Practices - Storage Availability with Logical Domains” by Peter A. Wilson discusses the approaches and trade-offs for configuring highly available paths from Sun Logical Domains (LDoms) guest domains to storage. Topics include I/O availability, multipath I/O with Solaris OS MPxIO, multipath I/O with virtual I/O failover, virtual I/O failover and network file storage, and multipath I/O to network file storage with virtual I/O failover.
Logical Domains (LDoms) provides built-in virtualization capabilities for Sun Chip Multithreading (CMT) Servers at no cost. The latest free release of LDoms is version 1.3, which now features CPU dynamic resource management (DRM), domain mobility performances improvement, crypto unit dynamic reconfiguration and migration support, link-based IPMP for virtual network, large virtual disk (>1TB) boot support, and more.
The Sun BluePrints paper “Taking Advantage of Wire-Speed Cryptography” provides an overview of how to off-load application security functions that include cryptographic operations in conjunction with Oracle WebLogic Server and Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE platform) application environments in order to accelerate performance while minimizing compromises.
A Sun case study focuses on its CMT series, including the UltraSPARC T1, T2 and T2 Plus processors. Author Wynne Wang looks at how a slip in the performance of a non-CMT platform might become a bottleneck in the CMT environment and the possible solutions that could alleviate these type of data center issues.
Covers CPU, Memory, Virtual Network -Disks-Console, and More
Logical Domains (LDoms) provide built-in and no-cost virtualization capabilities for Sun Chip Multithreading (CMT) Servers, and many are considering implementing it as part of a virtualization strategy. But what about security? Sun’s Jim Laurent recently had to address this question with a federal government customer and decided to share his findings.
Solutions Accommodate Growth, Improve Service Delivery
Monmouth Independence Network (MINET) is a public utility that delivers voice, data and cable services to 3,500 customers in the cities of Monmouth and Independence, Oregon, using Sun technologies. Faced with the need to expand services while minimizing costs, providing for high performance and availability and scaling to support rapid growth, MINET looked to Sun for the servers, unified storage, flash memory, thin clients, and virtualization necessary to meet these business needs.
Oracle Offers Companies $10M in Performance Challenge
A new world record TPC-C benchmark result has been set for Oracle Database 11g running on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 servers with CMT technology, along with Solaris 10 and the new Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array. Oracle reports this world record proves that the Oracle-Sun combination runs faster than IBM DB2 running on IBM’s flagship Power 595. Oracle believes so much in Sun hardware, it is offering companies $10 million if one can prove Oracle Database 11g runs at least twice as fast on IBM’s fastest computer.
White Paper Presents Virtualizing with Sun CMT Solutions
This new white paper addresses issues many datacenters are currently facing - how to lower TCO while supporting more customers and reducing time to market for new services. This Sun white paper describes some Sun solutions and their technologies, including Sun Blade T6340 and T6320 Server Modules, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440, T5240, T5140, T5220, and T5120 Servers, Sun Logical Domains, and Solaris Containers, to demonstrate the business benefits of consolidating enterprise applications onto Sun CMT rackmount and blade servers.
The need to develop data archiving capabilities is a challenge that every enterprise faces these days for any or all of several needs: whether to accommodate explosive data growth; to respond to the pressure to meet promised service levels and backup windows for users; to provide archive data retention and retrieval requirements; and to better manage rising energy costs. Dean Halbeisen’s Sun BluePrints Online paper “Sun Systems for Sun StorageTek Enterprise Backup Software” details the openly architected, intelligent and massively scalable general purpose archive solutions Sun is developing to assist enterprise users in meeting these challenges.
