Sun rolls out OpenSolaris 2009.06 release
Sparcs finally get it
Cloud storage: Lower cost and increase uptime
As odd as it may seem, the OpenSolaris development release of Sun Microsystems' Unix operating system has only been available officially on x64 PCs, workstations, and servers. The OpenSolaris distribution has not been packaged up for Sparc workstations or servers. Starting today, with the OpenSolaris 2009.06 release, both x64 and Sparc iron are now supported in the distro.
According to the release notes, OpenSolaris 2009.06 can run on all Sun4v-based platforms (that is UltraSparc T1 and T2 machines) and Sun4u-based platforms (that's UltraSparc-II, UltraSparc-III, and UltraSparc-IV machines). These latter machines have to have an OBP level of 4.17 or greater, and across all Sparc machinery, the distro is only available as an Automated Install image. (Fujitsu's Sparc64 platforms were not mentioned as being supported.)
The initial "Project Indiana" OpenSolaris 2008.05 release, which came out a little more than a year ago, was targeted mainly at 32-bit x86 and 64-bit x64 desktops and laptops for students and workstations, and with the OpenSolaris 2008.11 update Sun started pushing the distro as suitable for production workloads on x64 servers.
The OpenSolaris 2009.06 release is notable for a few reasons. Unlike other development operating systems, such as Red Hat's Fedora and Novell's openSUSE, OpenSolaris is available with the full suite of support services from Sun. The support was a bit different than that available on standard Solaris 10 platforms, and with bigger x64 boxes - the kinds that customers use to run production Solaris workloads - Sun was charging higher prices for OpenSolaris than it was charging for Solaris 10. It did so presumably because it was more expensive to deliver 24x7 support on OpenSolaris because the code was a little more raw, as a development release always is.
But starting today, according to Charlie Boyle, director of Solaris product marketing, OpenSolaris 2009.06 and Solaris 10 (in its many updates) have exactly the same Sun Spectrum support prices for silver, gold, and platinum support, and they are the Solaris, rather than the higher OpenSolaris, prices. Solaris and OpenSolaris have the same support contracts, even if they use different mechanisms to deliver support. This is something that Sun's field sales and support people have been asking for because customers wanted it.
The updated OpenSolaris is also the first release of any Sun Unix variant to sport the Project Crossbow networking virtualisation and management stack to market. Crossbow has a reimplemented networking stack with revised architecture that virtualises Ethernet network interfaces and InfiniBand host adapters.
Up until now, Solaris and OpenSolaris tied an Ethernet NIC or InfiniBand adapter to a specific CPU inside of a machine or, in a virtualised environment, to a virtual machine. But with the Crossbow stack, Ethernet NICs and InfiniBand adapters are themselves now virtualised, and system administrators can carve up slices of high-bandwidth networking adapters to provide each VM or processor core with a suitable amount of bandwidth. Before, a fast 10 Gigabit Ethernet or 20 Gigabit InfiniBand adapter card would be tied to a CPU or VM, which it could easily flood.
Boyle says that the Crossbow stack can be managed using standard SNMP tools (for both physical and virtual network links), which means HP OpenView, IBM Tivoli, and other system management tools can reach into the OpenSolaris servers and monitor and manage them. This is not the case, Boyle says, with the "California" Unified Computing System built by Cisco Systems with the help of VMware. "Cisco and VMware do proprietary stuff, and you have to use their tools to manage networking."
OpenSolaris 2009.06 also has fine-grained control for networking, which means you can do traffic shaping and provide quality-of-service guarantees (such as a minimum bandwidth or latency) for the networking for physical and virtual machines. This kind of fine-grain control, and monitoring through dynamic tracing (DTrace) has been available in Solaris for processors and memory capacity for years, but networking has been set up as a shared resource that the operating system can just hog at will. "We now give you the tools to set network limits and the tools to observe the effect of the limits that you set," says Boyle.
In addition to the Crossbow features, OpenSolaris 2009.06 includes a bunch of other tweaks and tucks. The Zettabyte File System (ZFS) is now tweaked to automatically turn any flash-based memory or drives in a system into read and write accelerators for disk subsystems. The native OpenSolaris CIFS Windows file server has been added as a full peer to NFS in OpenSolaris, and faster iSCSI and Fibre Channel block protocols have been added into the OpenSolaris kernel as well.
OpenSolaris 2009.06 already has support for the "Istanbul" six-core Opteron processor whose launch is imminent, and supports most of the features in the "Nehalem EP" Xeon 3500 and Xeon 5500 processors from Intel, which were launched in March. Support for Sun's future "Rock" UltraSparc-RK processors is also in the release, and this software could, in theory, run on Intel's eight-core "Nehalem EX" Xeon 7500 processors, even though they won't be here until next year. Boyle says that more tweaks for the Nehalem and Istanbul processors will come out with the next OpenSolaris release in about six months.
Because Sun is competing against Linux for a lot of accounts, it is always comparing OpenSolaris to Linux. On its Project libMicro performance benchmark suite, OpenSolaris 2009.06 has 35 per cent better memory management, 22 per cent better integer math performance, and 18 per cent better multithread scheduler management compared to the latest Linux releases on the same iron.
According to the release notes, Sun is not planning on putting another OpenSolaris release into the field until 2010, and it is a fair guess that this release will be timed to the eight-core Nehalem EX processor from Intel and the six-core "Lisbon" and twelve-core "Magny-Cours" Opterons. That future OpenSolaris will have full interactive installation on Sparc platforms (including installing a custom spin based on the OpenSolaris repository), and will also presumably support Fujitsu Sparc64 machines. That future OpenSolaris will sport a new Gnome interface, ZFS deduplication and user quotas for storage and "cloud integration." ®
COMMENTS
RE: RE: @Matt Bryant - The Benefits of CIFS in the Solaris Kernel
".....Read the posted URL's. If you read, you may not be so ignorant....." The link you posted with ref to the claimed "POSIX issues" is to the Sun marketerring slideset and has no details on any POSIX issues. Try proof-reading your own marketing before posting. With over a decade of using Samba in real production I have never seen any POSIX/Windoze compatibility issues that have been such show-stoppers as to make me want something more built into the kernel. A quick straw poll with other users I know (some whom have been using Samba since it was called nbserver back in '93) drew similar blanks for any such "issues". Same for a scan through the Samba release notes and a look at Samba.org. Not that I expected there to be anything, but I thought I'd best look just to confirm my suspicion that this is all just Sunshiner make bovine manure and feature sell. Even stretching the definition of "issue" to cover the known problem where a Windows users can cause timestamp differences with owners files, this can be handled in the smb.conf file with the DOS filetimes setting. Please go read the Samba man pages to realise how ignorant you sound.
".....Nope - just a developer who works on open source projects from SaMBa and OpenSolaris. You should read & understand....." Here's your problem - I already have good sources for advice on opensource projects I turst, and Sun and Sun-sponsored developers are not any of them. You'll find that theme quite common amongst what you no doubt refer to as "freetards", namely that we treat Sun with the same derision and suspicion as M$. Still, I went and read through the material at all the links you provided and it hasn't changed anything - there is still no information on the supposed "POSIX issues" you claim, and no case for pushing CIFS into the kernel. For a start, it means that any changes to the CIFS package have to be made as kernel changes, unlike with a Samba server package where it is outside and independent. And by sticking CIFS into the kernel on Slowaris, Sun are tieing it to ZFS - ah, now I see the point! This is just Sun trying to hijack opensource CIFS development and muddy the waters.
"....ZFS has better interoperability than any other non-windows filesystem - LOL! How about a reference to your funny FUD?...." Really? Ignoring the many opensource options such as BTRFS, want to compare to WAFL? Should be a fair comparison seeing as ZFS is just a WAFL rip off. Maybe if you did a bit more reading on a wider scope (i.e., not just swallowing the Sunshine) you might realise Slowaris brings very little new to the table, a lot that has been done before and better by others, and nothing of real value compared to established competitors such as RHEL or SLES. Every time you open your mouth an squeal "the OpenSolaris option is the ONLY option because I say so" you sound just like the old Sun mantra ""Solaris on SPARC and nothing else", and look where that ended!
"....By the way, you should learn how to spell Solaris. There was no one named Novatose in the thread, not sure why you talk to yourself...." Looks like your memory is as short as your objectivity. We've already been over the fact that Sun's own customers came up with the Slowaris moniker, not me. But I admit I christened you Novatose after a particularly nauseating bit of Sunshiner blather you posted on The Reg not too long ago, where you stupidly cherrypicked SAP benchmark figure in an attempt to FUD Itanium. That was fun, it left you wide open to a counter showing how poor Sun's own kit did on the same benchmark. For those wanting to relive the comedy, take a gander at http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/02/27/hp_sun_oem_comment/comments/ and enjoy a real Novatose moment (and please note Jake's correction on the whole petard thing). I chose Novatose due to your complete and unquestioning faith in Sun's Nova project, and how it mimic the objectivity of the comatose. I seem to remember around that tie you were posting a whole load of male bovine manure about how Sun was doing just fine, no need for a sale, Nova was going to save/change the World, and Slowaris on SPARC was going to rise again and crush the competition..... Yeah, you got that one so right - not!
"...Can't read, can't spell, talk to people who do not exist - not the sharpest knife in the drawer." Oh dear, the usual Sunshiner insults in lieu of counters. Seeing as you obviously have both memory issues and problems with reality, I'd advise anyone to keep you and knives far apart, if only for your own safety.
/the Novatose Workout - I'm getting bulging biceps from all this pointing and laughing!
RE: @Matt Bryant - The Benefits of CIFS in the Solaris Kernel
"Again, what issues?"
Read the posted URL's. If you read, you may not be so ignorant.
"Expecting an independent discussion, especially given the Samba.org link? Nope, just another Sun marketeering slideset"
Nope - just a developer who works on open source projects from SaMBa and OpenSolaris. You should read & understand.
"But, it does give us the first hint of the real problem"
The issues surround interoperability between POSIX and Windows systems manipulating the same files, access lists, etc. Reading will help you understand.
"ZFS - poor Windows interoperability"
ZFS has better interoperability than any other non-windows filesystem - LOL! How about a reference to your funny FUD?
By the way, you should learn how to spell Solaris. There was no one named Novatose in the thread, not sure why you talk to yourself.
Can't read, can't spell, talk to people who do not exist - not the sharpest knife in the drawer.
RE: @Matt Bryant - The Benefits of CIFS in the Solaris Kernel
"....Kernel based CIFS offers benefits with cross-vendor compatibility and performance unseen with a userland SMB protocol. Solaris is now a first-class citizen in the CIFS world, leaving SaMBa reliant operating systems suffering with unresolved POSIX/Windows compatibility issues....." Again, what issues? If you hadn't noticed (and you probably didn't because your head is so far up Ponytail's rectum), the rest fo the industry is doing just fine with Samba when needed, and real fine with standard Windows.
"....A summary of the basic requirements for CIFS under Solaris...." Expecting an independent discussion, especially given the Samba.org link? Nope, just another Sun marketeering slideset. But, it does give us the first hint of the real problem - it's also pushing ZFS. Suddenly the penny drops - this is just trying to paper over another of the holes in ZFS - poor Windows interoperability.
"....Some of the best direct answers to your question comes from Solaris CIFS developers...." And again, more Sunshiner material, nothing from the rest of the community saying "Hey, wouldn't it be nice to have CIFS in the kernel". In short, just more Sun hogwash, but it does admit the core problem for Slowaris - Windows is the king in the new area Slowaris has to play in. Seeing as Sun is being driven out fo the datacenter, for Slowaris to survive it has to be able to integrate better with Windows if it is to survive in the appliance world, and that means it has to acknowledge Windows is the prime OS that their applienaces will be tacked onto. Congratulations to Ponytail and McNeedy - they not only turned a $200bn company into a has-been, they also turned one of the leading UNIX OSs into a cheap appliance OS. Not happy with copying NetApp's WAFL to make ZFS, Sun is now turning Slowaris into a poor Data ONTAP clone.
The real merriment is that Sun and the rabid Sunshiners like Novatose are highlighting the appliance tech of the new OpenSlowaris rather than any advances in datacenter technologies like FCOE (not surprising seeing as the OpenSlowaris implementation is just a copy of the Linux OpenFCOE initiator). Just another example of how the Sunshiners are abandoning the high ground of the enterprise for the edge server market. The real laugh is this just makes them more vulnerable to Linux, which already has a massive advantage there.
/SP&L
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