SUNWfrk Sweet Feeds

More than this

2012-02-26T07:36:12Z

I had many interesting discussions in the last few days. However some of them gave me the impression that i should explain one thing. I want to use one example for it: A customer asked me while having some coffee at the Tech Days: "Zones? Isn't that just jails like in FreeBSD?". It's that old question, i get since the introduction of Zones. Just to make it clear: It's not a text in regard of FreeBSD. It's a text about the tendency of people just to pick a single feature and to say "Isn't that feature like …". But it isn't that easy.

I don't want to discuss about that question, if a feature is really like another. However i want to introduce a different tought into this:"A feature is not only a feature when you have an overarching architecture and an overarching idea where the architecture is heading to.It's an enabler. And a feature is often just the next question".

A feature is just the next question? Yes, that right. Because every feature you introduce is just the starting point for the next feature. When we introduced Zones years ago, we had a lot open questions not much later: How do you patch those zones? Especially when you have dozens of them? How to delegate administration? How do you install zones in a fast manner? How to implement bootenvironments, for the OS as well as the Zones? How do you reduce hard-to-find problems of an architecture that shares a kernel, but has several copied userlands? Questions, that have perhaps no technical background, but resulting in technical changes because of operational requirements. Perhaps, at the beginning Jails and Zones may have been similar concepts. But when you look today into the construct, Zones is a lot more. Zones is a large interdepending web of features inside of zones and outsides of zones to enable customers to work with them as efficient as possible.

However: Some of the challenges are just solvable when you have an overarching architecture and the power to decide on the architecture. And this is what i want to say with "a feature is not only a feature". Sometimes it's an enabler for a different feature. For example you have to be capable to say "ZFS is the only filesystem for booting and keeping zone roots" then you have a foundation you can use to implement other features. You can take all the mechanisms of ZFS for example for granted to base other features on it.

An example from the automobile sector? Ever asked why the automatic parking for a VW Golf is that cheap? Well, it just reuses an electro motor that it's there for power steering. You just need some software and a computer to give directly orders to this already existing power steering motor? When you allow all engineering teams to use it's own power steering implementing automatic parking in all vehicles is much more difficult.

Or in Solaris: Fast zone cloning? You need snapshots for it. So go to the ZFS people. Exclusive IP-Stack for a zone? You need a revamped IP stack for it. Ask the Crossbow people. Many things are severely depending on each other? Boot environments like in Solaris 11? Just feasible with a filesystem capable to do snapshots. IPS was invented to a part to have a packaging format that is much more aware of a concept like zones than just post/pre install scripts where zones was just an afterthought. Bandwidth Management? The Crossbow people again. Resource Management for your zones? You could use the foundation already laid out by the people with the Solaris Resource Manager years ago.

And there i'm at the point where i'm saying it doesn't suffice to have a feature, for example like Jails. At the introduction of a feature, a new journey just begins to solve all implication of a new feature. And you have to go all the way to make it really good.

2.25 Vorerst nur eine Antwort

2012-02-25T10:59:15Z

Hier gibt es im Moment keine neuen Übungsfragen.

2.24 Pakete, Importdeklarationen

2012-02-25T10:57:12Z

Die Klasse Strecke aus dem Paket Nahe (Datei 3) soll die beiden Referenzvariablen anfang und ende vom Typ Punkt verwenden. Die beiden Referenzvariablen anfang und ende sollen aber die Implementierung eines Punktes aus dem Paket Entfernt (Datei 1) verwenden und nicht die Implementierung aus dem gleichen Paket (Datei 2).
Die genaue Typdeklaration der beiden Variablen anfang und ende fehlt in Datei 3. Fügen Sie die korrekte Typbezeichnung ein.

Using a low cost HDTV antenna to gain access to lots of free over the air digital TV channels

2012-02-24T22:25:18Z

I talked previously about how I saved a bunch of money by ditching cable. When I first disconnected my cable, my HDTV’s built-in scanner was only able to pick up two two stations. While this was better than nothing, I figured given the size of our city there had to be more content available. So [...]

2.23 Anwendung von Assertions

2012-02-24T17:07:09Z

Wann soll ein Entwickler Assertions anstatt einer regulären Prüfung bei jedem Aufruf in einer Anwendung nutzen?

A couple of cool Illumos videos

2012-02-23T23:18:05Z

I’ve been reading more about the Illumos project over the past few weeks. As most of my blog readers know, I’m a huge fan of Solaris and used to be quite active in the OpenSolaris community. My involvement in OpenSolaris came to an end in 2011 after the project was squashed by Oracle. I started [...]

Three Enterprise Architecture Principles for Building Clouds

2012-02-23T10:49:00Z

After having gone through TOGAF training and certification, I've now caught the Enterprise Architecture bug, as you can probably tell by this article. It is a really neat way to add structure to the IT development process and to better understand what it really means to solve business problems with IT.

One of the first things TOGAF recommends architects do when establishing an Enterprise Architecture practice within a company is to formulate Architecture Principles that guide the development of solutions. During the last few workshops and during some discussions with other architects, three principles in particular struck me as being key to successfully developing a Cloud solution:

Cloud Architecture Principle #1: Standardization

Principle

When establishing a cloud solution, there should be only one standard, and it's the point of service where you standardize the kind of cloud service you provide to your cloud customers. No other standards are necessary or useful after that.

Rationale

As explained here, a standard is really only an interface you define for the purpose of providing a service to your customers. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything below that point is your responsibility and should not concern your customers, anything above the point of standardization is your customer's business and not yours.

It's the clear separation of Cloud provider and Cloud consumer through a standardized Cloud interface that enables the necessary independence you need in order to maximize efficiency of your Cloud service.

Implications

The standardized interface should be minimal: Just enough service to be useful and no more, to ensure flexibility and independence. The standard should also be implementation agnostic, so you're free to choose how to implement your Cloud service without being dependent on what your Cloud consumers do with it.

This is the magic behind Amazon-style Cloud optimization: They only give you a simple API, then optimize the heck out of it below their chosen API level.

Cloud Architecture Principle #2: Optimization

Principle

Optimize as much as you can below the point of standardization.

Rationale

This is key to your cloud's success: Cloud computing, from the point of view of the infrastructure supplier is nothing more than a ruthlessly optimized way of supplying a well defined (see point of standardization above) service. All bets are off here, as long as you focus on providing the most efficient implementation of your Cloud service.

Commercial break: This is the reason Engineered Systems exist: They're ruthlessly optimized cloud building blocks for well defined Database, J2EE and other services.

Implications

There's no need for or utility in adhering to limitations here. As long as you satisfy you Cloud service requirements, you're free to choose whatever technology, architecture or other means are useful in providing your service. This is good news for those who always wanted to break out of their "This is how it has always been done" mentality and like to start something new.

Cloud Architecture Principle #3: Separation

Principle

The implementation details of your Cloud service should always be hidden from your customers. They should never know how exactly you provide your J2EE, database or other service, and certainly never depend on the particular way you do it.

Rationale

This is basic layer separation hygiene: As soon as the consumers of your service start depending on some detail of your implementation, you lose the ability to change that detail because now you have to satisfy backward compatibility to a feature you haven't committed to in the first place. Therefore it's best to make it clear upfront what the minimum set of supported features are, and to hide any extra features that may or may not be present, so you're free from entanglement between service and implementation.

Implications

This also means you need some sort of filter that ensures any specifics of your Cloud service implementation are hidden from your consumers. If your J2EE service is implemented using, say, WebLogic, your consumers should never know, and in particular should never be able to tell. This is one of the beauties of Solaris Containers: You know what you get, but you never know how and where that Container has been implemented, so you can't really take advantage of any machine specifics.

Conclusion

So here they are: Standardization, Optimization and Separation. Three principles that you should keep in mind when designing a Cloud solution, and adhering to which can save you a lot of headaches.

S11 and S10 inside LDOM 2.1 on T4

2012-02-21T16:04:00Z

I've finally managed to get some time to play with live migration on a pair of SPARC T4-2. This post is not really adding any new information but is a walk-trough and initial reflections. I am going to continue to write LDOM instead of Oracle VM for SPARC Domains or something like that, even Oracle people still say LDOM and everyone else knows what is.

An interesting note is that I've used Solaris 10 as I/O and Control domain for the T4 servers while the LDOM is installed with Solaris 11 11/11. The disks for the LDOM are on LUNs over FC and MPxIO is used for multipathing from the I/O domain:

t42-01# dskinfo list-long
disk                                   size lun   use           p   spd type lb
c0t5000CBA015B85D98d0                  279G -     rpool         -   -   disk  y
c0t5000CBA015B93B90d0                  279G -     -             -   -   disk  y
c0t50002870000254901593534030832420d0  33G  0x0   -             4   4Gb fc    y
c0t50002870000254901593534030832420d0  33G  0x1   -             4   4Gb fc    y

Examples of migrating and reconfiguring the LDOM while running:

t42-01# ldm list
NAME             STATE      FLAGS   CONS    VCPU  MEMORY   UTIL  UPTIME
primary          active     -n-cv-  UART    16    16G      0.1%  12d 6h 37m
ldms11-01        active     -n----  5000    16    8G       0.0%  24m

t42-02# ldm list
NAME             STATE      FLAGS   CONS    VCPU  MEMORY   UTIL  UPTIME
primary          active     -n-cv-  UART    16    16G      0.1%  12d 1h 26m

ldms11-01:~$ uptime 
  5:11pm  up 19 min(s),  1 user,  load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.01
henrikj@ldms11-01:~$ prtconf -v |grep Mem
Memory size: 8192 Megabytes
henrikj@ldms11-01:~$ psrinfo | wc -l
      16

t42-02# ldm set-vcpu 96 ldms11-01
t42-02# ldm set-memory 200G ldms11-01

t42-02# ldm list
NAME             STATE      FLAGS   CONS    VCPU  MEMORY   UTIL  UPTIME
primary          active     -n-cv-  UART    16    16G      0.1%  12d 6h 50m
ldms11-01        active     -n----  5000    96    200G     0.1%  24m

ldms11-01:~$ prtconf -v |grep Mem
Memory size: 204800 Megabytes
ldms11-01:~$ psrinfo | wc -l
      96

When performing a live migration between the two hosts, running processes and open network connections are as expected intact, there is only a small delay in the network traffic visible. For my initial tests the delay was about 10 ms.

The live migration seems to work very well and the T4 seems to perform several times faster than the T2/T3 for general workloads. The only thing missing is that LDOM 2.1 is unable to dynamically reconfigure memory and CPU resources for a domain after migration. A reboot is then required, hopefully this will be fixed in the 3.0 release, which people at Oracle Open World said would be focused on removing current limitations (including migration between different types of sun4v processors).

The Difference Between a Standard and a Preferred Vendor

2012-02-21T14:39:30Z

Recently, I attended a customer workshop where the customer declared that they standardized on x86, VMware and Linux.

That got me and my colleague thinking about what standardization really means and whether that actually makes sense.

The workshop was actually about defining a PaaS platform for the customer, and early in the process they just said: Fine, but it's gonna be x86, VMware and Linux, because that's our standard. WTF?

What Standards are Not

x86 is not a standard, it's a processor architecture. VMware is not a standard, it's a hypervisor implementation. And Linux is not a standard either, it's an operating system.

J2EE is a standard, and the only one that is relevant to the particular project we were talking about: The goal was to create a Private PaaS Cloud for the customer, and J2EE is the standard that establishes the interface between the PaaS cloud as a service provider and their customers. Nothing else.

Once the interface between you and your internal customers is defined through a standard, it doesn't matter what processor architecture, what hypervisor or what OS you are using to deliver against that standard. At least not to the consumers of your service, because the purpose of defining an interface is to abstract away all implementation details from your customer so you get to choose the best possible way to provide your service!

Standardization is a Common Language

Standardization is about agreeing on a common language so you're free to use whatever you want to do your job. Standardization should not dictate your choice of CPU, Hypervisor or OS. It's that simple.

So the next time you say "We have standardized on x86", you're really saying: We have limited our choices of CPUs and stopped thinking about them. Think twice because you may be missing a lot of opportunity.

And that brings us to another important principle in building clouds: After you define the standard that abstracts your service away from your customers, there's no point in using any type of standardization at a lower level than that. This is best explained in this blog post about PaaS is not Middleware over IaaS.

Which means: If you're about to create a PaaS service, you should do whatever is necessary to make it as efficient as possible, without resorting to someone else's service. Because that would limit your choices, limit your service level and limit the opportunities you have in making your approach to delivering your service as efficient as possible.

So here are some good architecture principles for building clouds and establishing standards:

Standardize on one thing only: Your interface between you, the service supplier and your customers, the service consumers.
Don't accept any standardization below the level of the interface you provide, because it limits your choices and your opportunity to deliver quality.
Learn to distinguish standardization from choosing a preferred vendor. They are different things with different purposes.

And here's the plan on how to build clouds:

Define the service that you want to deliver as a standard. It could be Database as a Service, J2EE as a service or even dogfood as a service.
Make that service definition as product agnostic as possible. It should survice at least ten years of usage.
Stop caring about your service consumers (they have the manual, right?) and start optimizing the heck out of your service delivery stack, without any restrictions on what technologies, vendors or stuff you use.

Really, it's that simple. But it's not "We have standardized on x86, VMware and Linux."

Solaris 11 in Common Criteria evaluation

2012-02-21T07:12:31Z

As i got the question on the Solaris 11 Techdays: As reported by the Oracle Tech Network Solaris 11 is now in evaluation under the Operating System Protection Profile using the extended packages Advanced Management, Extended Identification and Authentication, Label Security, and Virtualization at level EAL4+.

Solaris 11 Common Criteria Evaluation

2012-02-20T17:00:32Z

Oracle Solaris 11 is now "In Evaluation" for Common Criteria at EAL4+. The protection profile is OSPP with the following extended packages: AM - Advanced Management EIA - Extended Identification and Authentication, LS - Label Security, VIRT - Virtualization. For information on other Oracle products that are evaluated under Common Criteria or FIPS 140 please see the general Oracle Security Evalutions page.

Please email seceval_us@oracle.com for all inquiries regarding Oracle security evaluations, I can't answer questions about the content of the evaluation on this blog or directly by email to me.

2.22 Assertions (Annahmen, Zusicherungen)

2012-02-20T07:47:00Z

Die Klasse Zusicherung hat zwei Methoden verkettung() und alterInMonaten(). Die geforderten Randbedingungen sind textuell als Javakommentar in den beiden Methoden eingefügt. Fügen Sie bitte im Quellcode für jede Methode die notwendigen Assertions hinter den Kommentaren ein.

Solaris 11 compliance with DISA Security guidance

2011-12-01T15:34:52Z

Disclaimer

This article should not be construed as a statement of compliance by Oracle or by DISA. It is simply the result of a casual review of Solaris 11 against current DISA Security Guidelines

Some of my dedicated readers (I know you're out there) remember that back in Janauary of this year, I reviewed Solaris 11 for compliance to the DISA Security Technical Implementation Guidelines (STIGs). The STIGs are written by DISA and used by the DoD community to ensure that systems are secured properly before connecting to the network.

With the release of Solaris 11 in November, I decided to update the document.

Update: Thanks to Darren Moffat's comments I've updated the document as of 12/9/11.

Download the PDF document to review

The great news is that the one item that I listed as RED in January has been fixed in the release of Solaris 11. At that time, the installation scripts did not provide any way for /var to be mounted as a separate file systems as required by the scripts. The default installation now automatically sets of /var as a separate ZFS data set.

Building a Solaris 11 repository without network connection

2011-11-11T21:58:38Z

Solaris 11 has been released and is a fantastic new iteration of Oracle's rock solid, enterprise operating system. One of the great new features is the repository based Image Packaging system. IPS not only introduces new cloud based package installation services, it is also integrated with our zones, boot environment and ZFS file systems to provide a safe, easy and fast way to perform system updates.

My customers typically don't have network access and, in fact, can't connect to any network until they have "Authority to connect." It's useful, however, to build up a Solaris 11 system with additional software using the new Image Packaging System and locally stored repository. The Solaris 11 documentation describes how to create a locally stored repository with full explanations of what the commands do. I'm simply providing the quick and dirty steps.

The easiest way is to download the ISO image, burn to a DVD and insert into your DVD drive. Then as root:

pkg set-publisher -G '*' -g file:///cdrom/sol11repo_full/repo solaris

Now you can to install software using the GUI package manager or the pkg commands. If you would like something more permanent (or don't have a DVD drive), however, it takes a little more work.

After installing Solaris 11, download (on another system perhaps) the two files that make up the Solaris 11 repository from our download site
Sneaker-net the files to your Solaris 11 system
Cat the two files together to create one large ISO image. The file is about 6.9 GB in size
mount -F hsfs sol-11-11-repo-full.iso /mnt

You could stop here and set the publisher to point to the /mnt/repo location, however, this mount will not be persistent across reboots. Copy the repository from the mounted ISO image to a permanent, on disk location.

zfs create -o atime=off -o compression=on rpool/export/repoSolaris11

rsync -aP /mnt/repo /export/repoSolaris11
pkgrepo -s /export/repoSolaris11/repo refresh
pkg set-publisher -G '*' -g /export/repoSolaris11/repo solaris

You now have a locally installed repository for adding additional software packages for Solaris 11. The documentation also takes you through publishing your repository on the network so that others can access it.

2.21 Checked Exceptions

2012-02-19T14:13:28Z

Was muss ein Entwickler bei einer „Checked Exception“ immer tun? Welche beiden Möglichkeiten hat er?

Veranstaltungshinweis für Düsseldorf

2012-02-18T13:50:55Z

Ich möchte noch mal einen Veranstaltungshinweise loswerden. Mein Kollege Michael Faerber organisiert für den 8.3 ein Oracle Breakfast in Düsseldorf. Das ist quasi "Vorträge mit Mampf". Zwei Vorträge sind für dieses Event geplannt. Von 09:15 bis 10:30 "Einsatz und Administration von LDOMs" und von 10:45 "Datenmanagement mit ZFS unter Solaris 11". Bei beiden Vorträgen wird es nur wenig Folien, aber dafür sehr viele Livevorführungen am Objekt geben. Beide Vorträge werde ich halten. Wenn Ihr kommen möchtet, schickt bitte eine Mail an oraclebreakfast_dus@c0t0d0s0.org. Da ist ein Forwarder an den Kollegen hinter. Anmeldeschluss ist der 6. März. Weiss nicht ob es der Kollege so toll findet, wenn ich seine Mailadresse hier poste

Für die Solaris 11 Tech Days am 28. Februar in Zürich kann man sich übrigens immer noch anmelden: Solaris 11 Tech Days 2012

A great introduction to ZFS de-duplication

2012-02-18T12:57:56Z

I’ve been looking into deploying ZFS de-duplication, and I have one application in particular (backup staging) that would greatly benefit from it. George Wilson did an awesome introduction to ZFS de-duplication video, and it’s a great place to get started. I’m planning to start testing out de-duplication as soon as my SSDs are ordered, and [...]

So far ...

2012-02-18T10:05:55Z

It's a few days since the event in Munich, the last one in the series in Germany. The last two weeks were really cool. There were many many people at the Solaris 11 Techdays 2012. That are the moments where i really love my job. Speaking in front of an interested audience about technology. I hope that Zurich will be as great as the events in Germany, but after the last two weeks i have no doubts about it.

That said we had really luck with the dates: A day after the event in Munich snow got a major problem there and as you may know flying to or from FRA is a major pain in the asymmetric photons at the moment due to the apron.

Oracle OpenWorld Live / Oracle on Youtube / Oracle Solaris TechCasts

2012-02-17T17:57:00Z

Here are some multimedia links on Oracle OpenWorld Live, Oracle on Youtube, and Oracle Solaris TechCasts:

Watch Oracle OpenWorld Live

Watch Oracle OpenWorld Live, including Keynotes and TechCast Live

http://www.oracle.com/openworld/live/index.html

Oracle Channel On YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/oracle

Oracle Media Network

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/media/

Follow some highlighted TechCasts:

TechCast: Oracle Solaris Virtualization

Joost Pronk, CTO for Oracle Solaris Product Management, provides an overview of the robust virtualization functionality built into the Oracle Solaris OS.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/89371481001

TechCast: Is Solaris Dead (Again)?

Lynn Rohrer, director of Oracle Solaris product management, explains the strategic importance of Solaris to Oracle, and why Oracle invests so heavily in it.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1218920897001

TechCast: Oracle Systems Strategy Update: Oracle Solaris

John Fowler, Oracle Executive Vice President, Server and Storage Systems, details the strategy for Oracle Solaris.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/591036338001

TechCast: What's Important about Oracle Solaris 11 Installation

Improving the Installation Experience in Oracle Solaris 11.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1160018293001

TechCast: Oracle Optimized Solutions

Marshall Choy, Director Optimized Solutions, explains why Oracle's optimized applications-to-disk configurations free the sysadmin from mundane and trivial tasks.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1113393796001

Techcast: Oracle Database chooses Oracle Solaris Studio

Learn about what the Oracle Database likes most about the Oracle Solaris platform and Oracle Solaris Studio development tools. Find out what's new in Oracle Solaris Studio and how you can get early access to the latest innovations.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1113393741001

TechCast: Oracle Solaris 11 Security Overview

A high-level overview of Oracle Solaris 11 security capabilities.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1092539954001

TechCast: Changes in Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3

All about Oracle Solaris Cluster, including changes that have occurred since it became a part of Oracle and planned future developments.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/1069491134001

TechCast: Oracle Solaris Optimizations for x86 Hardware

Chris Baker explains the optimizations for x86 hardware provided by Oracle Solaris, and how developers and sysadmins can take advantage of them.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/941780492001

TechCast: Oracle Solaris 11 Express IPS

Bart Smaalders, Solaris Core Engineering, explains how sysadmins will install and manage updates and patches using the new-and-improved Image Packaging System (IPS).

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/850059088001

TechCast: Oracle Solaris Studio and Solaris 11 Express

Don Kretch and Vijay Tatkar discuss new features in Solaris Studio and the capabilities of Solaris 11 Express, including optimizations for the Oracle stack and both SPARC and x86 hardware.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/677760187001

TechCast: What's Great in Solaris 11 Express for Developers

George Drapeau, from Oracle ISV engineering, talks about the capabilities of Oracle Solaris 11 Express that will interest application developers, including the use of Solaris 10 branded zones and new DTrace probes.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/676329028001

TechCast: What's Great in Solaris 11 Express for Sysadmins

Markus Flierl, Dan Price, and Lianne Praza, from Solaris Core Engineering, describe how the new architecture of Solaris 11 Express Provides an integrated system that simplifies administration.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/676289533001

TechCast: DTrace for System Administrators, with Brendan Gregg

Rick Ramsey, Solaris Community Leader, interviews Brendan Gregg.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/610283520001

TechCast: Preparing for Solaris 11 Installation

Dave Miner, architect for Solaris Installation, describes the changes to the installation process and tools for Solaris 11.

http://medianetwork.oracle.com/video/player/610231229001

Using MySQL query logs to debug authentication issues

2012-02-17T10:00:55Z

I recently installed LogAnalyzer, and after the install completed I noticed that nothing was being displayed in the web interface. I figured I fat fingered something, but needed a way to verify this. Luckily for me I was using MySQL, so I enabled MySQL query logging and low and behold I proved my hypothesis: 120212 [...]