System News for Sun Users - The Blog

Solaris Containers or Zones are lightweight virtual Solaris instances similar to a full Solaris OS instance but which share a single Solaris kernel. They are easy to provision, require only a small amount of incremental disk space, and can be rebooted as needed in seconds. Containers can also be cloned, detached, moved and reattached. In a blog by Michael O’Connor, he shares the advantages of combining multiple applications onto a single server using lightweight Solaris Containers versus hypervisors.

In a follow-up entry, he explains that in some rare cases, applications are unable to run in a local or non-global zone and should go through a qualification process to identify potential installation or runtime issues, especially if root permission is needed to install or run the application.

“Local zones operate with a reduced set of process privileges relative to the global zone. As a result, all processes running in a non-global zone also have reduced privilege and certain system calls may return errors,” O’Connor writes. “Again, 99% of applications will run just fine in non-global zones but it pays to take the time to fully qualify new or migrating services before attempting a production deployment.”

Resources for ISVs and system administrators interested in taking a more cautious entry into Solaris Zones:

• Bringing your Application into the Zone
• Qualification Best Practices for Application Support in Non-Global Zones
• System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones
• Zones and Containers FAQ at OpenSolaris.org
• Virtualization Blueprints at wikis.sun.com

Find out how to optimize OpenSolaris on Intel Xeon processors in a video clip series hosted by Software Engineering Manager David Stewart, who is part of the Open Source Technology Center at Intel.

So far, Stewart has three video clips posted on YouTube, each of which run a little over five minutes:

Episode 1: “Why Intel and OpenSolaris?”

Episode 2: “Power Utilization”

Episode 3: “Getting Instant Performance Boosts”

OpenSolaris Build 90 allows multiple products, protocols and device types to be supported by any Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS)-based server with a common framework - COMSTAR or the COmmon Multiprotocol SCSI TARget.

This OpenSolaris project provides a software framework enabling any OpenSolaris host to be turned into a SCSI target storage device, which can be accessed over the network by initiator hosts. With COMSTAR, a SCSI target subsystem is broken down into independent functional modules that are then integrated by the SCSI Target Mode Framework (STMF).

COMSTAR’s framework allows for all SCSI device types (tape, disk, SES, etc.) connected to any transport (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, iSER, SAS, FCoE, etc.) with concurrent access to all LUNs (Logical Unit Numbers) and a single point of management.

“A key objective of COMSTAR is to provide a simple framework for users to add transport protocols and device types to build new block storage devices,” blogs Sun’s Scott Tracy. “This allows any block storage device to be built from one common framework. No other commercially available operating system allows this type of flexibility or coordination.”

During this past May’s CommunityOne gathering, Sun Engineering Manager Peter Buckingham gave a presentation on COMSTAR that includes instructions on creating a multiprotocol server using ZFS to create a file share, installing COMSTAR and using COMSTAR to create a FC target. Visit the Storage Stop blog to view the video.

The Image Packaging System (IPS) in OpenSolaris 2008.05 comes with a graphical user interface known as the Package Manager that features install/remove packages, package repository search, package information, and more.

“I also noticed that I could use the CLI as well as the GUI simultaneously which struck me, since all the package management systems such as ‘apt-get’, allow only a single instance of the package manager running,” writes a
fascinated Amit Kumar Saha. In an inquiry to the OpenSolaris pkg-discuss, the following response was given:

“AFAIK IPS does not do locking (yet). So running multiple UIs at the same time can produce unpredictable results. See bug: http://defect.opensolaris.org/bz/show_bug.cgi?id=1668”

Saha offers an image example of the GUI and links for more on the IPS on his weblog.

The source code for the current Sun StorageTek 5800 1.1.1 (build 95) has been posted. This is for the 1.1.1 release candidate.

The Sun StorageTek 5800 System is the first integrated digital archive storage system that is powered by the Solaris Operating System (Solaris OS) and built using open source software.

“The popular Sun StorageTek 5800 ‘Honeycomb’ system has revolutionized the economics of storing, managing and archiving fixed content data,” Graham Lovell, senior director, storage servers and appliances, Sun, said when the original source code was initially released. “Sun now makes fixed content object storage free and open. We’ve donated the source code for this next-generation technology to help create communities that will more easily find answers to fixed-content data storage issues and save customers money over closed, proprietary technologies.”

Honeycomb Fixed Content Storage is an OpenSolaris project. This project proposes to manage large amounts of fixed content by providing an object-oriented storage system with traditional Java and C interfaces later expanded by a “StorageBean” Java interface. Large data-repository applications access the fixed content through these interfaces which are designed to manage data collections that can total up to 100 million objects or petabytes of storage.

Learn more by visiting the community’s home page - OpenSolaris Project: HoneyComb Fixed Content Storage

The PowerTop tool for OpenSolaris shows users how effectively the system is taking advantage of the CPU’s power management features. The tool allows the user to see how long the CPU is running at different power states, and which events are causing the system to wakeup and consequently consume more energy.

PowerTop’s first release is available at the Tesla Project page from the OpenSolaris Website, provides rv’s techblog, which also has posted a quick look screenshot.

The tool requires Solaris Nevada build 82 or higher, and eventually Solaris 10 Operating System (Solaris OS) Update 6 when it becomes available. x86 and SPARC packages are offered.

The VirtualGuru blog has posted a “warm welcome” for OpenSolaris 2008.05 on Amazon EC2 by offering a few helpful hints on how to get started:

Hands-on Experience: OpenSolaris on Amazon AWS (EC2 and S3)

• Creating OpenSolaris based JeOS
• JeOS on OpenSolaris Nevada line
• Netboot install of OpenSolaris Nevada line
• FreeWare SW for OpenSolaris Nevada line
• OpenSolaris 2008.05 released
• JeOS on OpenSolaris Indiana line
• Installing OpenSolaris 2008.05 into xVM or XEN VM in PARA mode
• Determining OpenSolaris 200805 CLI JeOS RNJS conf
• Creating OpenSolaris CLI JeOS RNJS by Uninstall
• Instalation of IPS freeware SW into OpenSolaris or Indiana

Pre-Prepared AMI images plus Inst&Conf hits

• Pre-build SXDE79 JeOS RNJS AMI images
  • AMI Evaluation Image: Liferay on Glassfish bundle DEMO
  • AMI Developer Image: Glassfish & MySQL bundle from Java EE
  • AMI Composite Image: Empty SXDE79 JeOS RNJS + S3 Glassfish V3 TP2 update

Amazon AWS (EC2, S3) useful tools and libs

• GUI tools for Amazon AWS (EC2,S3) - Usefull Firefox Plugins

There is a new splash page for the http://opensolaris.org site

The OpenSolaris.com side has a link to the new OpenSolaris.com site and the OpenSolaris 2008.05 CD image. To quote Glynn Foster, Product Manager for Project Indiana:

OpenSolaris 2008.05 is the first official release in a new binary distribution based on the OpenSolaris operating system. The single Live CD install image allows you to boot up to a desktop environment in seconds, and enjoy it before needing installing it onto a system. The introduction of a new package management system, IPS, allows users to install additional packages from network-based software repositories. The benefits of ZFS as the default root file-sysem provide the best environment to snapshot and rollback your system at any stage, with a best-of-both-worlds inclusion of the GNU utilities like bash(1). In many ways, hell has frozen over, and we’ve fundamentally changed how software is delivered to our users. For the better.

Another way to look at OpenSolaris 2008.05

• Core operating system
• Freely Re-distributable
• New system installer
• Support subscriptions available
• New package management system (IPS)
• Includes DTrace, Containers, ZFS and more

The site has three main areas:

1. get - focused on how to obtain the OpenSolaris software
2. share - a community forum area
3. learn - the knowledge center

Sun has provided details on how to install OpenSolaris in VirtualBox. That will allow you to run 2008.06 as a guest under Windows, Linux or the Mac.

It is anticipated that general availability of OpenSolaris or Project Indiana will be sometime in May, reports Phoronix , which based its estimation upon documentation for the yet unreleased Solaris desktop.

Officially named OpenSolaris 2008.05, users can get a jumpstart by previewing the release’s Getting Started Guide.

The HA-xVM Server x86-64 webrev, agent and cheat sheet recently were released and are now accessible from the OpenSolaris Project Cluster Agent: OpenSolaris xVM’s Website.

The project’s aim is to provide a failover agent for OpenSolaris x86 Virtual Manager (xVM) guest domains as part of the open-source code base for Solaris Cluster, namely Open High Availability Cluster (OHAC). It is intended that an OHAC failover agent for xVM guest domains will perform the following:

• Manage the start/stop and restart of xVM guest domains within an OHAC environment.
• Failover a xVM guest domain between OHAC nodes.
• Allow for strong positive and negative affinities between xVM guest domains across OHAC nodes.
• Allow for different failover techniques between OHAC nodes, i.e. Stop/Failover/Start or Live Migration.