To be a Major Software Update for Sun Storage 7000 Series Appliances
Is the 2010.02 release of the Sun Unified Storage System imminent, asks Joerg Moellenkamp after stumbling upon the wikis.sun.com page that offers release notes for the 2010.Q1.0.0 expected major software update for the Sun Storage 7000 series appliances. Although it was not yet downloadable for the public at the time of this writing, the software update promises to support the Sun Storage 7110, 7210, 7310, 7410, and 7000 Simulator.
Examines Query Performance for Data Warehousing Workload
A database study comparing the performance of storage architectures using Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array and storage architecture based only on traditional hard disks was recently conducted, and its results presented by Chang Shu. Both atomic queries such as sorts / joins, and advanced queries containing complex business logic were tested in order to observe the performance gains in using F5100 Flash Array.
The power to achieve better performance with fewer drives - lowering acquisition, support and operational costs - is what Sun proposes the Sun Storage 6180 Array offers customers. It also scales and integrates seamlessly all the way up to the flagship Sun Storage 6780 Array. Offering redundant components, the Sun Storage 6180 Array provides automated I/O path failover, and extensive online configuration, reconfiguration and maintenance capabilities.
Sun Storage 7310 and 7110 now come with new configurations containing six-core AMD Opteron processors as part of the assemble to order (ATO) model. With ATO, customers will get a system fully assembled and tested with the additional components ordered. Existing configurations using four-core AMD processors now have a last order date of January 29, 2010, and last ship date of April 30, 2010.
Takeover and failback are the two operations users most commonly associate with clusters. A recent Sun blog addresses how these operations in their latest iterations work on the Sun Storage 7310 and 7410 NAS appliances.
Query Volume, Speedup Ratio Increases on Oracle Database 11g, Release 2
The Sun BestPerf blog “Oracle Flash Cache — SGA Caching on Sun Storage F5100″ posted by Senthil Ramanujam reports on the combination of new features delivered by Oracle and Sun’s Flash Cache technology and its effect on the improved database performance of the Sun Storage F5100. The benchmark results in this blog deal with the performance of Oracle Database 11 (Release2), which enables extending the System Global Area (SGA) size and caching beyond physical memory, to a large flash memory storage device as the Sun Storage F5100 flash array.
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.
VMware ESX on the SunFire x4150 and Unified Storage 7000 Series
Ron Graham has written a 10-page PDF for system administrators outlining the basic steps of setting up VMware Infrastructure 3 functionality on the Sun Fire X4150 and implementing shared storage with the Sun Storage 7210 Unified Storage System. The quick start guide covers installing VirtualCenter Server and VI Client, ESX Server installation, starting the VI Client and shared storage implementation.
