Includes Virtualization and Cloud Computing, Solaris 10 Patching, Ops Center Administration
New listings of Sun Learning Services instructor-led and live virtual class were recently noted. Some of these classes cover topics on Developing Web Applications using JSF technologies, Virtualization and Cloud Computing Concepts, Solaris 10 Patching Best Practices, and Sun Ops Center Administration.
Just the Ticket for Rapidly Growing Company
StubHub, an eBay affiliate, and the world’s largest ticket marketplace, upgraded a mission-critical, online transaction processing (OLTP) database from Oracle 9i Real Application Clusters (RAC) to Oracle 10g RAC. To take advantage of high scalability and mainframe-class performance, StubHub also moved the database from a 32-bit platform to a 64-bit platform with Sun SPARC Enterprise M5000 servers running the Solaris 10 Operating System.
Configuring a Development Environment to Practice OpenSolaris, Solaris Cluster Technologies
Learn how to set up a single x86-based system with OpenSolaris, configuring a training and development environment for Solaris 10/Solaris Cluster 3.2 and using VirtualBox to set up a two node cluster. These instructions can be found in the white paper “Practicing Solaris Cluster using VirtualBox” by Thorsten Frueauf. The presented configuration can be used to practice using various technologies such as Crossbow, COMSTAR, ZFS, IPsec, software quorum, and zone clusters.
Sun Software Engineer Also Adds Some Interesting Insight
Sun Software Engineer Also Adds Some Interesting Insight 
An Oracle white paper explains how the Oracle Business Intelligence Suite Enterprise Edition (Oracle BI EE) Release 10.1.3.4 performs under high user-loads, and how well it scales vertically and horizontally on two Sun SPARC Enterprise T5440 servers running Solaris 10. The two identical T5440 servers, each with 4 x 8-Core 1.6 GHz UltraSPARC T2 Plus processors delivered the best performance of 50,000 concurrent BI EE users at around 63% CPU utilization.
Mapion Achieves 99.999% Availability with Sun Technologie
The Japanese online map search service Mapion recently standardized its systems environment on Sun, running Solaris 10 and deploying Sun servers, Sun StorageTek 9985V system for storage, and Solaris Containers to improve performance in its data center. Mapion Mobile leveraged MySQL Cluster Database to create a database with 99.999% availability; while Mapion BB for its broadband users deployed open source technology using the Sun GlassFish Enterprise Server to reduce application management time.
Sun Netra x4250 Running Solaris 10 OS Offer Proves Effective CRM Tool
Terry Gardner reports that a Sun Netra x4250, dual-CPU, 8-core (2.13 Ghz), 64 GB RAM running Solaris 10 update 7 using internal disk drives and a Gigabit Ethernet accommodated 13,800,000 entries loaded into the Directory Server database in 2 hours; sustained 17,000 searches per second over 8 hours with an average latency of less than 2 milliseconds with no update (replication) traffic; and sustained 11,000 searches per second sustained over 8 hours with average latency of than 2 milliseconds in the presence of update (replication) traffic.
DTrace Aids in Identifying Latency Causes
A duel in the Suns of sorts involving a Sun Fire V40z and a Sun Fire X4450 connected back-to-back was performed to discover their ability to exchange UDP or TCP messages with a round-trip latency under 100 ms per message. In addition, both servers were occupied with some business logic, to bring the overall CPU utilization to 60-80% on each machine. Both were running Solaris 10 Update 5 and Java RTS 2.1 (build 1.5.0_16_Java-RTS-2.1_fcs-b11_RTSJ-1.0.2). Frederic Pariente reports the results in his blog “Real Time opens system and network surveillance to Java,” a proof-of-concept to evaluate Java RTS 2.1 on Solaris 10.
Also New Immutable Service Containers on OpenSolaris 2009.06 
Sun Distinguished Engineer Glenn Brunette has created a new Solaris 10 Security Deep Dive training mediacast updated for Solaris 10 10/09 or Update 8. Items added to this new version include: ZFS user and group quotas, ZFS pre-defined ACL sets, NTPv4, and nss_ldap shadowAccount support. In addition, there was a bit of cleanup throughout and a new example was added for Trusted Extensions. There is also a recent update to Immutable Service Containers (ISC) for OpenSolaris 2009.06.
Short Items of Interest for Solaris Users
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.
