blog'o thnet

Press Review #22

Julien Gabel — Tue, 30 Apr 2013 18:11:00 +0200

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

Permissive and Restricted Policies

https://blogs.oracle.com/gfaden/entry/permissive_and_restricted_policies

Recently I posted two entries about the new Extended Policy functionality in Oracle Solaris 11.1. One demonstrated how to create application sandboxes, and the other how to confine services, like MySQL. Both of these are examples of restrictive policies, whereas privileges have traditionally been used to implement permissive policies, hence the term privilege escalation. The basic functionality and terminology first appeared in Trusted Solaris in 1991. Unfortunately, a draft of the POSIX 1.e Security Specification (withdrawn), used the term capabilities for this functionality, which was subsequently used by Linux developers. Oracle Solaris privileges do share some common terminology with Linux, including the permitted, effective, and inheritable privilege sets. But almost everything else is different.

Midrange Power7+ Servers: The More Oomph You Want, The More It Costs

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh040113-story01.html

In last week's issue of The Four Hundred, I walked you though the pricing for various sized configurations of the new Power 750+ and Power 760+ midrange servers using IBM's dual-chip module (DCM) variant of the Power7+ processor. That just looked at the system hardware costs. This week, as I have done in the past, I want to walk you through how the raw computing, operating system, and Software Maintenance costs compare across each processor SKU and how those costs stack up with prior Power 750 machines.

Ksplice Inspector

https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/ksplice_inspector

With so many kernel updates released, it can be difficult to keep track. At Oracle, we monitor kernels on a daily basis and provide bug and security updates administrators can apply without a system reboot. To help out, the Ksplice team at Oracle has produced the Ksplice Inspector, a web tool to show you the updates Ksplice can apply to your kernel with zero downtime.

Oracle Solaris and SPARC Performance, Part 1

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_and_sparc_performance

To start with: we've just released an update to Oracle Solaris Studio, with compiler optimizations specifically designed to get the most performance out of applications on Oracle T5, Oracle M5, and Fujitsu M10 systems.

And no ... zfs scrub isn't a hidden fsck

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7570-And-no-...-zfs-scrub-isnt-a-hidden-fsck.html

I've got quite a number of tweets and mails with the question "But is zfs scrub" not something like fsck. And the answer is "Well ... no".

For Big Data Customers, Top Performance Means High Speed And Low Cost

http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2013/04/02/big-data-performance-speed-cost/

I hate to quibble with the general manager of IBM’s Power systems division, but his argument that systems speed and power are no longer top priorities for businesses is, to use his own words, “not at all in tune with the market today.”
[...]
As a result, IBM is trying to shift the terms of the debate in order to buy itself some time so that it can try to come up with some sort of story that might blunt the simple facts that Oracle’s new T5 servers have not only posted benchmark results several times faster than comparable IBM products, but are much less expensive as well.

SPARC T5/M5-32 VAR Training Replay NOW AVAILABLE!

https://enablement20.webex.com/enablement20/ldr.php?AT=pb&SP=MC&rID=74262692&rKey=ec671a779516a233

Promote to your partners who were unable to attend the SPARC T5/M5-32 VAR Training session on March 28th or if you just want to review some of the content again.

7 big reasons you should be running Solaris on Oracle x86 servers

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/best-x86-platforms-solaris-wp-1907496.pdf

Oracle’s x86 Systems: The Best x86 Platforms for Oracle Solaris.

Deploying an application in Solaris 11

https://blogs.oracle.com/unixman/entry/deploying_applications_in_solaris_11

Glynn takes his time to provide a thorough explanation to anyone who might be entering the world of Solaris 11 and is interested in seeing how things can be put together. Glynn goes over IPS components such as actuators, facets, variants, mediators, a family of pkg* commands, reviews SMF elements such as manifests, profiles, and svcbundle, as well as ties everything into building a zone and performing basic resource management on how the zone consumes network bandwidth.

Oracle Solaris and SPARC Performance, Part 2

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_and_sparc_performance1

This is a perfect example of what we can do by co-engineering the processor, the system, the OS, and the database.

Oracle VM Templates now available on SPARC platforms

https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/oracle_vm_templates_now_available

Oracle VM Templates provide an innovative approach to deploying a fully configured software stack by offering pre-installed and pre-configured software images. Use of Oracle VM Templates eliminates the installation and configuration costs, and reduces the ongoing maintenance costs helping organizations achieve faster time to market and lower cost of operations. Customers have been enjoying the benefits of accelerating software deployment with Oracle VM Templates on x86 platforms. Now we have made Oracle VM Templates available when deployed with Oracle VM Server for SPARC.

Massive Solaris Scalability for the T5-8 and M5-32, Part 1

https://blogs.oracle.com/sistare/entry/massive_solaris_scalability_for_the

How do you scale a general purpose operating system to handle a single system image with 1000's of CPUs and 10's of terabytes of memory? You start with the scalable Solaris foundation. You use superior tools such as Dtrace to expose issues, quantify them, and extrapolate to the future. You pay careful attention to computer science, data structures, and algorithms, when designing fixes. You implement fixes that automatically scale with system size, so that once exposed, an issue never recurs in future systems, and the set of issues you must fix in each larger generation steadily shrinks.

Shared Storage Pools (SSP3) and Disaster Recovery in 30 seconds

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/shared_storage_pools_ssp3_and_disaster_recovery_in_30_seconds

Shared Storage Pools - just got even more interesting!

Massive Solaris Scalability for the T5-8 and M5-32, Part 2

https://blogs.oracle.com/sistare/entry/massive_solaris_scalability_for_the1

Last time, I outlined the general issues that must be addressed to achieve operating system scalability. Next I will provide more detail on what we modified in Solaris to reach the M5-32 scalability level. We worked in most of the major areas of Solaris, including Virtual Memory, Resources, Scheduler, Devices, Tools, and Reboot. Today I cover VM and resources.

Oracle Solaris and SPARC (and x86) Performance, Part 4

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_and_sparc_and

Simply speaking, east/west traffic is the traffic that rather than going in and out of the data center (which in the world of this metaphor is called north/south traffic), goes between servers in the same data center -- or even in the same physical server.

Oracle takes apparent step toward standardizing on a single chip design

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238181/Oracle_takes_apparent_step_toward_standardizing_on_a_single_chip_design

Analysts say the unveiling of midrange and high-end servers running Oracle-built Sparc chips that share the same architecture is a step toward fulfilling the company's post-Sun plans.

Sizing with rPerf but Don't Forget the Assumptions

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/size_with_rperf_if_you_must_but_don_t_forget_the_assumptions98

POWER Relative Performance (rPerf) is often used as a way to approximate the expected difference in performance between two Power Systems servers. Although rPerf is a useful tool, it is important to understand the limitations of using rPerf to provide an estimate the performance of your specific workloads in your particular environment with a new server.

Systems Strategy Update Hartford CT April 2013

http://fr.slideshare.net/OracleHardware/systems-strategy-update-hartford-ct-april-2013

Slides from Systems Strategy Update Hartford CT April 2013 on the SPARC Server Announcement and Oracle Virtual Networking (OVN) also known as Xsigo.

Clonez vos bases avec Oracle Snap Management Utility sur baies Sun ZFS

http://www.digora.com/blog/clonez-vos-bases-avec-oracle-snap-management-utility-sur-baies-sun-zfs/

Voulez-vous utiliser la technique des Snapshots avec vos bases Oracle ? La solution Sun ZFS Storage Appliance peut vous simplifier la vie...

Massive Solaris Scalability for the T5-8 and M5-32, Part 3

https://blogs.oracle.com/sistare/entry/massive_solaris_scalability_for_the2

Today I conclude this series on M5-32 scalability [ Part1 , Part2 ] with enhancements we made in the Scheduler, Devices, Tools, and Reboot areas of Solaris.

DoD customer receives authority to operate SparcSupercluster

https://blogs.oracle.com/jimlaurent/entry/dod_customer_receives_authority_to

Recently, one of our good U.S. DoD customers purchased a SPARC SuperCluster system and received their "Interim Authority to Operate" on the DoD network. Why is this a big deal? First, allow me provide an overview of the SPARC SuperCluster system.

Oracle Launches T5 and M5 Servers: A New Generation of Oracle's SPARC/Solaris Servers

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/analystreports/idc-t5-launch-2013-1933475.pdf

For longtime Sun customers, the technology refresh will be welcome, leading to improved SPARC server sales right away. But Oracle can be expected to look far beyond its own installed base, planning to grow its total available market (TAM) by taking share from its longtime Unix competitors, IBM and HP. Now that the new T5 and M5 technology is ready, IDC will watch with great interest in coming quarters to see whether the T5 and M5 announcements will lead to near-term market share gain and to a long-awaited turnaround in Oracle's hardware business.

Solaris 11 SRU naming convention change

https://blogs.oracle.com/Solaris11Life/entry/solaris_11_sru_naming_convention

We're tweaking the naming convention used by Oracle Solaris SRUs (Support Repository Updates) to use a 5-digit version taxonomy.

For example, Oracle Solaris 11.1.6.4.0. The digits represent Release.Update.SRU.Build.Respin. For the above example, Oracle Solaris 11.1 SRU 6.4.

Understanding I/O: Random vs Sequential

http://flashdba.com/2013/04/15/understanding-io-random-vs-sequential/

I have another article planned for later in this series which describes the inescapable mechanics of disk. For now though, I’ll outline the basics: every time you need to access a block on a disk drive, the disk actuator arm has to move the head to the correct track (the seek time), then the disk platter has to rotate to locate the correct sector (the rotational latency). This mechanical action takes time, just like the sushi travelling around the conveyor belt.

A File System All Its Own

http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2463636

In the past five years, flash memory has progressed from a promising accelerator, whose place in the data center was still uncertain, to an established enterprise component for storing performance-critical data. It's rise to prominence followed its proliferation in the consumer world and the volume economics that followed. With SSDs (solid-state devices), flash arrived in a form optimized for compatibility—just replace a hard drive with an SSD for radically better performance. But the properties of the NAND flash memory used by SSDs differ significantly from those of the magnetic media in the hard drives they often displace. While SSDs have become more pervasive in a variety of uses, the industry has only just started to design storage systems that embrace the nuances of flash memory. As it escapes the confines of compatibility, significant improvements in performance, reliability, and cost are possible.

What is the best platform to run your Oracle Database on?

https://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/what_is_the_best_platform

As a Systems Consultant I am often faced with the following question: What does Oracle recommend as the best platform to run the Oracle DB in large enterprise environments on? Is the Exadata DB Machine the recommended platform? Are SPARC/Solaris servers the way to go? Or should customers consolidate on SPARC SuperCluster setups?

ZFS Analytics

http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2013/04/zfs-analytics.html

While working with ZFS performance I created a dashboard to get a good overview with lots of different statistics. It's powered by Dtrace, python and graphite. There is a high level of detail but still easy to correlate different statistics.

Oracle Solaris 11 and PCI DSS Compliance

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/solaris11/solaris11-pci-dss-wp-1937938.pdf

This paper provides guidance to IT professionals who are implementing Oracle Solaris 11 within their Cardholder Data Environment (CDE) and to the Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) assessing those environments. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) applies to all organizations that store, process, or transmit cardholder data. This includes entities such as merchants, service providers, payment gateways, data centers, and outsourced service providers.

Oracle have announced new systems based on the new SPARC T5 and M5 processors

Julien Gabel — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 20:22:00 +0200

Oracle have announced new systems based on the new T5 and M5 processors (thank you Henkis, from It's a UNIX system!, for the following short resume):

T5 16 cores @ 3.6GHz 8MB L3$ 1-8 socket systems PCIe 3.0
M5 6 cores @ 3.6GHz 48MB L3$ 32 socket system PCIe 3.0

The T5 has doubled the number of S3 cores from the T4 and increased the clock frequency to 3.6GHz.

The M5 processor is also based on the S3 core (rebranded M4) clocked at 3.6Ghz but is has 6 cores and 48MB L3$. The M systems supports up to 32 M5 processor so a fully configured systems will have 192 cores and 1536 strands (hardware threads). The M5-32 have 32TB of memory in a single system.

Example of a SPARC T5 configuration:

8 CPU x 16 cores x 8 compute threads = 1024 vCPU
4TB of RAM
8 x 600GB = 4.8TB (10KRPM SAS)
4 x 10GbE
8 RU (Rack Unit)
Support Oracle Solaris 10 and Solaris 11
Logical Domains (up to 128 by chassis), and Zones (8192 per OS instance)
Public list price: 626,000$

Example of a SPARC M5 configuration:

32 CPU x 6 cores x 8 compute threads = 1536 vCPU
32TB of RAM
Support Oracle Solaris 10 and Solaris 11
Dynamic Domains (up to 4 by chassis), Logical Domains (up to 512 by chassis), and Zones (8192 per OS instance)
Public list price: nothing public ;)

All new systems both T5 and M5 supports LDOM (Oracle VM for SPARC), plus the old Dynamic Domain technology for the M5. The M5 gets an ILOM as Service Processor (as for T5 and the x86 server lines), exit the legacy XSCF.

Oracle Unveils SPARC Servers with the World’s Fastest Microprocessor

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1923343

New SPARC Servers Redefine the Economics of Enterprise Computing: Deliver Extreme Performance and Value for Database and Enterprise Applications, Trump the Competition on Multiple Business-Critical Workloads.

Oracle's new T5 Sparcs boost scalability in chip and chassis

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/26/oracle_sparc_t5_m5_server/

Oracle is launching its much-awaited Sparc T5 processors for entry and midrange servers, along with Sparc M5 processors to effectively replace the iron it currently resells from server and chip partner Fujitsu.

The T5-8 maxxes out at 128 cores, 1,024 threads, and 4TB of memory [...]

At the moment, Oracle is shipping only one box based on the Sparc M5, with 32 sockets, called the Sparc M5-32 (obviously). Fully configured, this big-iron box weighs in at 192 cores, 1,536 threads, and 32TB of main memory. No one has as much memory in a single image today – not IBM, not Silicon Graphics, not HP, and not Fujitsu.

The Sparc M5-32 box puts Oracle/Sun back into big iron.

The SPARC T5 Servers have landed

https://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/t5

Having announced the T5 servers doesn't make the T4s go away. It is not a platform replacing technology, but a platform extending one! Oracle is going to offer SPARC T4 and T5 servers side-by-side!

Oracle claims performance crown with SPARC processor

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/337901,oracle-claims-performance-crown-with-sparc-processor.aspx

Oracle this morning launched the SPARC T5 processor and servers based on it which the company says are the fastest machines currently in the world.

Ellison aims his first Oracle 'mainframe' at Big Blue.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/03/26/oracle_ellison_m5_t5_launch/

"These machines deliver better integer performance than the IBM Power series," proclaimed Ellison. "The T5 microprocessor itself delivers better integer performance than IBM's PowerPC chip. Now that is really extraordinary, because IBM has had that lead for a very, very long time for integer rate performance, but that lead now moves over from IBM Power to Sparc T5.

"A lot of people are surprised by this," continued Ellison. "When Oracle bought Sun, a lot of people thought the Sparc microprocessor was a real laggard. There were a lot of people who believed that we would never catch up. Well, we have done better than catch up. We caught up, and then we passed the competition. We passed x86 and we passed IBM Power."

Announcing New SPARC Servers with the World's Fastest Microprocessor

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/events/sparc2013/index.html

Announcing New SPARC Servers: Webcast replay.

Oracle Processor Core Factor Table

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/contracts/processor-core-factor-table-070634.pdf

The "Oracle Processor Core Factor Table" has been updated in order to include SPARC T5 and M5: It's 0.5 for both.

Oracle's SPARC T5-2, SPARC T5-4, SPARC T5-8, and SPARC T5-1B Server Architecture White Paper

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sun-sparc-enterprise/documentation/o13-024-sparc-t5-architecture-1920540.pdf

SPARC M5-32 Server Architecture Whitepaper

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sun-sparc-enterprise/documentation/o13-024-m5-32-architecture-1920556.pdf

Driving Up Price/Performance and Driving Out Cost with Oracle ’s SPARC T5 Servers

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc/oracle-sparc/sparc-t5-biz-wp-1924220.pdf

Performance & Best Practices

https://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/

SPARC T5-8 Produces TPC-C Benchmark Single-System World Record Performance
SPARC T5-8 Delivers SPECjEnterprise2010 Benchmark World Record Performance
SPARC T5-2 Achieves SPECjbb2013 Benchmark World Record Result
SPARC T5-8 Realizes SAP SD Two-Tier Benchmark World Record for 8 Chip Systems
SPARC T5 Systems Deliver SPEC CPU2006 Rate Benchmark Multiple World Records
SPARC T5-2 Achieves JD Edwards EnterpriseOne Benchmark World Records
SPARC T5-2 Scores Siebel CRM Benchmark World Record
SPARC T5 Systems Produce Oracle TimesTen Benchmark World Record
SPARC T5-8 Delivers Oracle OLAP World Record Performance
SPARC T5-2 Achieves ZFS File System Encryption Benchmark World Record
SPARC T5-2 Obtains Oracle Internet Directory Benchmark World Record Performance
SPARC T5-2 Scores Oracle FLEXCUBE Universal Banking Benchmark World Record Performance
SPARC T5-2 Performance Running Oracle Fusion Middleware SOA
SPARC T5-1B Performance Running Oracle Communications ASAP
SPARC M5-32 Produces SAP SD Two-Tier Benchmark World Record for SAP Enhancement Package 5 for SAP ERP 6.0

Boom!

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/boom

So that's quite a "boom." With the launch of the new SPARC T5 and M5 series of servers, we've set over a dozen new performance records, and shown that back in 2010 Oracle did indeed establish a SPARC roadmap that it could execute on.

Hot Chips 24: SPARC T5 Overview

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2013/03/hot-chips-24-sparc-t5-overview.html

Every year, the best of engineering talent comes together in academia for Hot Chips conference, to present the best system designs. During Hot Chips 24, Session 9 - the SPARC T5 was presented by Sebastian Turullols and Ram Sivaramakrishnan from Oracle on Wednesday, August 29, 2012. This processor was released 6 months later, by Oracle with their T5 systems on Tuesday March 26, 2013.

SPARC T5 System Performance for Encryption Microbenchmark

https://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/entry/20130326_sparc_t5_ucrypto

The cryptography benchmark suite was internally developed by Oracle to measure the maximum throughput of in-memory, on-chip encryption operations that a system can perform. Multiple threads are used to achieve the maximum throughput. Systems powered by Oracle's SPARC T5 processor show outstanding performance on the tested encryption operations, beating Intel processor based systems.

Press Review #21

Julien Gabel — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 22:58:00 +0200

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

Implementing Root Domains with Oracle VM Server for SPARC

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/ovm-sparc-rootdomains-wp-1914481.pdf

This paper describes how to implement an increasingly useful type of virtualization feature known as root domains. It also describes an operational model where root domains can be used in conjunction with Solaris Zones for maximum performance and a high degree of flexibility.

Oracle Magazine: SPARC at 25

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2013/03/oracle-magazine-sparc-at-25.html

The SPARC architecture is perhaps the first and longest lasting open and mainstram computing architecture in human history. In Ocrober 2012, Network Management published a reminder for people to attend the "SPARC at 25" event at the Computer History Museum. In November of 2012, Network Management published an short article pointing to the replay of the historic events: SPARC at 25: Past, Present, and Future. Diana Reichardt published an article "SPARC at 25" in the bi-monthly printed Oracle Magazine, covering the event.

New Tab: OpenSXCE New Distribution!

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2013/03/new-tab-opensxce-new-distribution.html

OpenSolaris grew from an Open Source repository to Open Solaris Distribution (for both Intel and SPARC.) Solaris Express Community Edition (Solaris SXCE) was the Intel/SPARC forerunner of Oracle Solaris 11, which abandoned UltraSPARC processors. OpenSXCE, based upon the work of MarTUX, brings OpenIndiana and Illumos back to SPARC as a full distribution, based upon standards such as SVR4 packaging.

Encapsulating Oracle Databases with Oracle Solaris 11 Zones

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/database/database-cloud/private/dbcloud-s11-zones-wp-1911914.pdf

Implementing higher degrees of isolation can be accomplished by encapsulating each database environment. Encapsulation can be accomplished with physical or logical isolation techniques. Oracle recently certified 11gR2 RAC in Solaris 11 Zones, which is an important capability for database clouds, because it enables strong isolation between databases consolidated together on a shared hardware and O/S infrastructure.

How to Build a Secure Cluster

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/howto-build-secure-cluster-1908780.html

This article discusses how to enable Trusted Extensions on an Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1 cluster and configure a labeled-branded Exclusive-IP type of zone cluster.

How to Install Oracle Linux 6.3 with a Btrfs Root File System

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/linux/howto-install-linux6-3-btrfs-1911478.html

This article is a step-by-step guide for installing Oracle Linux 6.3 with a Btrfs root file system on an Oracle VM guest.

Improve Your Hardware Support Experience

https://blogs.oracle.com/GetProactive/entry/improve_your_hardware_support_experience

Oracle Hardware customers who are running Oracle Solaris or Oracle Solaris x86, can improve their support experience. Oracle Support recommends these three Hardware Essentials to all Oracle Hardware customers:

Download and install the Services Tools Bundle.
Set up Oracle Explorer.
Enable Automatic Service Request (ASR).

Console logging in Oracle VM Server for SPARC

https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/console_logging_in_oracle_vm

A new feature in Oracle VM Server for SPARC provides logging for guest domain consoles. Console I/O - all text on the serial console - is logged for all or selected domains, including text that appears before the domain boots Solaris. Logs are stored in files under the directory /var/log/vntsd/domain. These directories are root-owned to protect them from unauthorized access.

ZFS Write Performance (Impact of fragmentation)

http://blog.delphix.com/uday/2013/02/19/78/

In the past few months, George Wilson and Adam Leventhal made significant improvements to how writes are handled in ZFS. In this multi part blog post, I will talk about a benchmark we created to measure improvements in ZFS write performance as we make changes to the OS. In this post, I will talk about the benchmark setup and run. I will show some of the results from this benchmark on Delphix OS. In part two, I will present data and some analysis on the bottlenecks discovered and how they are going to be addressed.

Performance

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7529-Performance.html

Brendan Gregg has written an interesting piece about finding performance problems: "The USE method addresses shortcomings in other commonly used methodologies".

Announcing Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 3/13

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/announcing_oracle_solaris_cluster_31

Today we released Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 3/13 (that's a lot of threes!). This update is specifically for use with Oracle Solaris 10, delivering even more high availability and disaster recovery capabilities for mission-critical application deployments.

What is DSSD building?

http://storagemojo.com/2013/03/13/what-is-dssd-building/

The brains behind the ZFS filesystem – including Jeff Bonwick and Bill Moore – have been hard at work for several years at start up DSSD. What are they doing with Andy Bechtolsheim’s money?

Welcome to the mainline Linux kernel blog

https://blogs.oracle.com/linuxkernel/entry/welcome

I'd like to welcome everyone to this new blog, where I'll be discussing what's happening with the Oracle mainline Linux kernel development team. I'm James Morris, manager of the team. I report to Wim Coekaerts. I'm also the maintainer of the Linux kernel security subsystem, which I blog about separately here.

OpenAFS on Solaris 11 x86 - Robert Milkowski

http://www.ukoug.org/what-we-offer/library/openafs-on-solaris-11-x86-robert-milkowski/

The March Solaris SIG event is about running OpenAFS on Solaris 11 x86. This talk will explore what makes Solaris unique in large OpenAFS deployments with petabytes of storage - how it can save millions of dollars and make debugging and performance analysis much easier and quicker compared to other platforms. Some of the unique features of OpenAFS will be described and how we used them to migrate one of the largest OpenAFS deployments in the world - completely on-line and transparently to AFS clients. Real world examples of how DTrace was used to improve OpenAFS performance and scalability will be discussed.

Dear StorageMojo: should I go all SSD?

http://storagemojo.com/2013/03/19/dear-storagemojo-should-i-go-all-ssd/

This came in this morning’s email from a reader I’ll call Perplexed. How would you advise Perplexed?

10Gbit Ethernet, bad assumption and Best Practice - Part 1

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/10gbit_ethernet_bad_assumption_and_best_practice_part_137

We find many people are over optimistic and making assumptions - which can catch them out - we learnt the hard way too.

PowerVM Virtual Ethernet Speed is often confused with VIOS, SEA IVE/HEA speed

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/powervm_virtual_ethernet_speed_is_often_confused_with_vios_sea_ive_hea_speed

I have had a couple of Power systems administrators make assumptions about the virtual Ethernet speed improvements when they install a 10 Gb IVE/HEA in a VIOS which are simply not true. I guess that if three teams have made this mistake then others are about too. So I intend here to put the record straight.

a few words about EtherChannel

http://www.wmduszyk.com/?p=9780

Originally, this technology was meant to protect a host against a failure of its network adapter and/or switch (network switch). Additionally, some unscrupulous salesmen claimed a fantastic increase in throughput aka two adapters tied together will double, three adapters tied together will triple throughput of the associated with them EtherChannel adapter – yes, in a salesman pure land of fantasy.

Less known Solaris Features: Highly available loadbalancing

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7549-Less-known-Solaris-Features-Highly-available-loadbalancing..html

As you may know, Solaris contains an integrated load balancer. It's really easy to configure. Not that well known is the point, that you can make it higly-available in an easy way as well. The following tutorial will give you an overview on the configuration of this feature.

Less known Solaris Features - Data Link Multipathing

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7553-Less-known-Solaris-Features-Data-Link-Multipathing.html

I used this feature in the HA-loadbalancing tutorial already. However the future too useful to stay just a "by-word" in a different article. It is DLMP. Or by its full name:"Data Link Multipathing".

SVM hang due to error disk (analyze)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-svm-hang-due-to-error-disk-analyze-116565678.html

Last weekend, I found the origin of the SVM bug using the mdb tool. Good reading !!

After restarting the server, I wanted to mount a filesystem (metaset object), but the following command was not responding...

Less known, but frequently used Solaris feature: Address space layout randomisation

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7562-Less-known,-but-frequently-used-Solaris-feature-Address-space-layout-randomisation.html

One of the features introduced with 11.1 is the Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR) . And when you work with 11.1 you are already using it. So it's a less known, but frequently used feature: less known in the point that it exists, less known in the point of the methods to control it, frequently used as it's activated per default for selected binaries (and many were selected).

How to Use an Existing Oracle Solaris 10 JumpStart Server to Provision Oracle Solaris 11 11/11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/howto-s10jumpstart-s11-1918535.html

This article illustrates how to take an existing JumpStart server, install the Oracle Solaris 11 Provisioning Assistant for Oracle Solaris 10 on it, create and configure an installation service, and then provision a client system using that installation service.

Q&A About the Latest Oracle Linux Releases

https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/q_a_about_everything_oracle

We sat down with Monica Kumar, Senior Director, Oracle Linux, Oracle Virtualization, and MySQL Product Marketing, to discuss the latest update on Oracle Linux.

Exemple: Link Aggregations and VLAN Configurations for your consolidation (Solaris 11 and Solaris Zone)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-exemple-link-aggregations-and-vlan-configurations-for-your-consolidation-solaris-11-and-solaris-zo-116675436.html

Everyone knows that one of the major problem for consolidating Solaris 10 is network. if each Solaris Zones use a different network (vlan), the configuration of the Global Zone becomes a real headache.

No, ZFS still doesn't need a fsck. Really!

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/permalink/No,-ZFS-still-really-doesnt-need-a-fsck.html

Friday was a day that i called once 10k day. More 10.000 visitors to my blog in one day. Saturday was similar. This surge was create by an link on news.ycombinator.com article i wrote roughly four years ago about ZFS: No, ZFS really doesn't need a fsck.

Just wanted to express that four years later and a lot more experience with ZFS later, 12 years after ZFS saw the light of the word, i'm more of the opinion that ZFS doesn't need a fsck than ever.

Press Review #20

Julien Gabel — Fri, 01 Mar 2013 09:53:00 +0100

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

Network Virtualization and Network Resource Management

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/network-virt-resource-mgmt-1893965.html

After discussing Oracle VM, OS virtualization, and some aspects of resource management in the previous articles of this series, this article will now cover a special area of resource management and virtualization of resources: network virtualization and network resource management.

The network is a special shared resource that glues all the virtual machines (VMs), zones, and systems together and provides a communication channel with the world. Thus, the network is a very important layer of the virtualization stack.

Oracle: Solaris 10 Update 11 Released!

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2013/02/oracle-solaris-10-update-11-released.html

Solaris 10 was launched in 2005, with ground-breaking features like: DTrace, SMF (Services), Zones, LDom's, and later ZFS. The latest, and perhaps last, update of Solaris 10 was expected in 2012, to co-inside with an early release of the SPARC T5. In 2013, Oracle released yet another update, suggesting the T5 is close to release. The latest installment of Solaris 10 is referred to as 01/13 release, for January 2013, appears to be the final SVR4 Solaris release, with expected normal Oracle support extending to 2018. Many serious administrators will refer to this release as Solaris 10 Update 11.

IBM Announces updated Power710 to 740 and brand new Power 750/760

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/ibm_accouneces_updates_power710_to_740_and_brand_new_power_750_76070

This time it was very different as looking at the POWER7+ Power 750/760 s we thought: "Hang on!! We have seen this before! It looks just like a Power770 but one U taller (5U instead of 4U)." So it is a completely different machine inside - if it was not for the 32 CPU cores in the Power 750 model and so fits in the uprated range in the same place, it should have been given new number. I guess using the same number means we all know where it fits. The 760 is very much the same machine but with all the higher features as the 750 but you can't convert between them.

Consommation CPU & Gestion mémoire (2ème partie)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-consommation-cpu-gestion-memoire-2eme-partie-114961653.html

Cela fait déjà un petit moment que j'ai écrit la 1er partie de cet article et j'imagine que vous aviez hâte dans connaître le dénouement ?

Pour rappel, la forte consommation CPU (notamment le temps system) provenait de l'agent Grid d'Oracle. Suite à la modification dans le kernel du mode d'allocation des pages (pg_contig_disable), la charge CPU semblait se répartir plus équitablement entre le temps system et le temps user. Mais... quelque chose me choquait encore...

Création d'un serveur AI personnalisé (archi Sparc)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-creation-d-un-serveur-ai-personnalise-archi-sparc-115050511.html

Après avoir créé vos repos (méthode pas-à-pas disponible dans un précédant article), il est temps de créer votre serveur AI personnalisé. Je vais découper ce sujet en deux partie, un article sur l'architecture Sparc et un autre sur l'architecture x86. Et pourquoi donc ? J'utilise deux méthodes d'initialisations différentes, wanboot pour l'architecture Sparc et la paire pxe/dhcp pour l'architecture x86. Du coup je préfère distinguer ces deux architectures.

Observations : analyse d'un core "...Unable to fork..."

http://www.gloumps.org/article-observations-analyse-d-un-core-unable-to-fork-115142835.html

Les apparences sont quelques fois trompeuses… Petite démonstration confirmant cet adage.

Situons le contexte : plusieurs DBA Oracle nous remontent un incident sur un de leur serveur. Le symptôme étant le suivant : connexion impossible. Après une rapide vérification le diagnostic initiale semble être le bon. Petite connexion au déport console du serveur et me voilà devant un message des plus explicite « Unable to fork ». Hop, je provoque un petit panic et en avant pour une petite analyse.

Création d'un serveur AI personnalisé (archi x86)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-creation-d-un-serveur-ai-personnalise-archi-x86-115228826.html

Lors d'un précédent article, j'ai traité la mise en place d'un serveur AI personnalisé pour l'architecture Sparc (déploiement via Wanboot). Comme convenu, je vais traité ici la mise en place d'un serveur AI mais sur l'architecture x86. La différence entre ces deux architectures (d'un point vue installation) se situe principalement sur la phase d'initialisation juste avant le début de l'installation.

Sur une architecture x86, la phase d'initialisation est le plus souvent exécutée par le couple pxe / dhcp. Il est donc nécessaire de configurer un serveur dhcp permettant d'interpréter la requête pxe que le client enverra. Il peut s'agir d'un serveur dédié ou mutualisé avec le serveur AI. Dans mon exemple ci-dessous, il n'y a qu'un serveur pour la configuraton dhcp et AI.

Best Practices - Top Ten Tuning Tips

https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/best_practices_top_ten_tuning

Oracle VM Server for SPARC is a high performance virtualization technology for SPARC servers. It provides native CPU performance without the virtualization overhead typical of hypervisors. The way memory and CPU resources are assigned to domains avoids problems often seen in other virtual machine environments, and there are intentionally few "tuning knobs" to adjust.

However, there are best practices that can enhance or ensure performance. This blog post lists and briefly explains performance tips and best practices that should be used in most environments.

Oracle VM Manager used with SPARC - demo

https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/oracle_vm_manager_used_with

Rather than describe this in text, the best thing to do is show it in demo format. Fortunately, the wizardly Steen Schmidt has produced outstanding Youtube videos showing Oracle VM Manager in action at https://www.youtube.com/user/gandalf3100.

Serial Console with VirtualBox on Solaris host

https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/serial_console_with_virtualbox_on

First make sure you have nc(1) available it is in the pkg:/network/netcat package.

Then configure COM1 serial port in the VM settings as a pipe. Tell VirtualBox the name you want for the pipe and get it to create it.

The Year in Review

https://blogs.oracle.com/gfaden/entry/the_year_in_review

As 2012 comes to a close, I thought it would be a good time to look back at some of the changes that have been made to the Trusted Extensions features in Oracle Solaris.

Linux YAMA Security equivalents in Solaris

https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/linux_yama_security_equivalents_in

The Linux YAMA Loadable Security Module (LSM) provides a small number of protections over and above standard DAC (Discretionary Access Controls). These can be roughly mapped over to Solaris as follows...

Itanium: Another Step Closer to Death

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2013/02/itanium-another-step-closer-to-death.html

Intel had produced the Itanium architecture to compete in the higher-end 64 bit arena and eventually sun-set their aging 32 bit x64 architecture. With the release of AMD's x64 architecture, and vendors such as Sun Microsystems abandoning the Itanium roadmap for AMD x64 - pressure was placed upon Intel to include 64 bit instructions in the x86 chipset. Now with Intel x86 supporting 64 bit processing, there is little reason for Itanium to exist, placing pressure on remaining Itanum system vendors.

How to Update A Linux Kernel Without Rebooting

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/ksplice-update-tour-1896119.html

The uptrack-update command applies patches to your Linux kernel while your system is still running. A Ksplice Uptrack subscription gets you so much more than rebootless kernel updates. Here are some details.

Configuring a Basic LDAP Server + Client in Solaris 11

https://blogs.oracle.com/paulie/entry/configuring_a_basic_ldap_server

Solaris 11 ships with OpenLDAP to use as an LDAP server. To configure, you're going to need a simple slapd.conf file and an LDIF schema file to populate the database.

How to Configure the Linux Out-of-Memory Killer

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/oom-killer-1911807.html

This article describes the Linux out-of-memory (OOM) killer and how to find out why it killed a particular process. It also provides methods for configuring the OOM killer to better suit the needs of many different environments.

Observation : fastresync et ACFS

http://www.gloumps.org/article-observation-fastresync-et-acfs-115622826.html

Petite observation lors d’une recette cluster d’un Oracle RAC 11gR2 sur Solaris 10 Sparc. Pendant le test suivant « perte d’une baie SAN », nous avons observé un petit problème lors de la resynchronisation des diskgroups ASM utilisant des volumes sous ACFS. Nous nous attendions à utiliser la fonctionnalité fastresync et pourtant...

Announcing Oracle Linux 6.4

https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/oracle_linux_6_4_has

The Oracle Linux team is pleased to announce the availability of Oracle Linux 6.4, the fourth update release for Oracle Linux 6.

Press Review #19

Julien Gabel — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 14:00:00 +0100

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

Oracle Linux Ksplice offline client

https://blogs.oracle.com/wim/entry/oracle_linux_ksplice_offline_client

By introducing the offline client, customers with Oracle Linux Premier or Oracle Linux Premier Limited support can create a local intranet yum repository that creates a local mirror of the ULN ksplice channel and just use the yum update command to install the latest ksplice updates. This will allow customers to have just one server connected to the oracle server and every other system just have a local connection.

Resource Management as an Enabling Technology for Virtualization

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/resource-mgmt-for-virtualization-1890711.html

In this article and the next, we will cover some enabling technologies for virtualization. Here, we discuss IT resource management as an enabling technology for virtualization.

Oracle Premier Support for Oracle Solaris 10 extended by 3 years - now ends January 2018

http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-support-hardware-301321.pdf

Release        GA Date         Premier Support Ends    Extended Support Ends   Sustaining Support Ends
Solaris 10      Jan 2005        Jan 2018                Jan 2021                Indefinite
Solaris 11      Nov 2011        Nov 2021                Nov 2024                Indefinite

BrandZ Solaris 10 (exemples de migration P2V et V2V)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-brandz-solaris-10-exemples-de-migrations-p2v-et-v2v-114194764.html

Comment réduire efficacement les coûts d'une infrastructure de serveurs sous Solaris 10 ? En les consolidant !! Cela va de soi, la forte utilisation des zones en est un très bonne exemple. Oui mais... Pourquoi ne pas utiliser les nouvelles possibilités qui s'offrent à nous : Un serveur sous Solaris 11 et des brandZ Solaris 10.

Je vous présente deux exemples rapides de migration d'environnements Solaris 10 physique (P2V) et Solaris 10 zone (V2V) sur un serveur Solaris 11.

Virtualization Performance: Zones, KVM, Xen

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2013/01/11/virtualization-performance-zones-kvm-xen/

At Joyent we run a high-performance public cloud based on two different virtualization technologies: Zones and KVM. We have historically run Xen as well, but have phased it out for KVM on SmartOS. My job is to make things go fast, which often means using DTrace to analyze the kernel, applications, and those virtualization technologies. In this post I’ll summarize their performance in four ways: characteristics, block diagrams, internals, and results.

TPM Key Migration in Solaris

https://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/tpm_key_migration_in_solaris

"TPM" stands for "Trusted Platform Module," a hardware device that provides many security functions, including storage of encryption keys. [...] In Solaris 11.1, Wyllys Ingersoll added the ability to migrate keys from one TPM to another TPM. TPM migration is is especially useful when upgrading hardware, migrating a system to a new platform, or after reinitializing the TPM. The following describes this new feature.

What's new in User Rights Management

https://blogs.oracle.com/gfaden/entry/what_s_new_in_user

Way back in Solaris 8 we introduced an extensible database, user_attr(4), where we could maintain the security attributes of each user. Originally the database included just three properties: roles, auths, and profiles. [...] Since then we have been adding new properties in each Solaris release, while preserving backward compatibility in both the file /etc/user_attr and the corresponding LDAP schema. To avoid dealing with an alphabet full of new options, we standardized on the -K option, which can be used to set the values of any property.

LDoms IO Best Practices

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/resource/downloads/ldoms.io.best.practices.pdf

Stefan Hinker discuss different IO options for both disk and networking and give some recommends on how you to choose the right ones for your environment. A couple hints about performance are also included.

T4 & the Red Crypto Stack

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/resource/downloads/t4.red.crypto.stack-en.pdf

Heinz-Wilhelm Fabry and Stefan Hinker show how to use encryption and other security mechanisms throughout the red stack to deploy a quite well secured database.

Why Oracle CEO Larry Ellison Is So Bullish on Sun Hardware

http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2013/01/11/why-oracle-ceo-larry-ellison-is-so-bullish-on-sun-hardware/

In the past decade, Oracle has acquired about 90 companies. And out of all of those deals, Larry Ellison recently cited the 2009 acquisition of Sun Microsystems as “the most strategic and profitable acquisition Oracle has ever made.”

ZFS Compression Enhancements in illumos

http://gdamore.blogspot.com/2013/01/zfs-compression-enhancements-in-illumos.html

The ZFS code in illumos has gained another differentiator thanks to the hard work of Saso, who integrated LZ4 improved compression into our code base.

Solaris 11 IPS Concepts, Issues, and Workarounds

https://blogs.oracle.com/Solaris11Life/entry/solaris_11_and_ips_potential

Image Packaging System (IPS) is a single tier packaging architecture which in Oracle Solaris 11, and other Oracle Sun products such as Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.x, replaces the previous SVR4-based dual tier packaging and patching architecture.

Oracle Delivers On SPARC Promises

http://blogs.forrester.com/richard_fichera/13-01-13-oracle_delivers_on_sparc_promises

In a nutshell, SPARC/Solaris customers are looking at a predictable long-term future of improved and very competitive performance and price-performance scaling for Oracle hardware, especially when coupled with Oracle software in its “engineered systems.” Oracle and IBM will remain in a strong competition for performance and price-performance across a variety of workloads, and competitive pressures will ensure a decade of strong systems platforms for high-end UNIX workloads regardless of the eventual fate of HP’s Itanium platforms.

How to Configure a Failover Guest Domain in an Oracle Solaris Cluster

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/howto-configure-failover-guest-1890750.html

The configuration described in this article enables the protection of guest domains from planned and unplanned downtime by automating the failover of a guest domain through restart on an alternate cluster node. Automated failover provides protection in case there is a component outage or the guest domain needs to be migrated for preventive maintenance.

Compliance reporting with SCAP

https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/compliance_reporting_with_scap

In Solaris 11.1 we added the early stages of our (security) Compliance framework. We have (like some other OS vendors) selected to use the SCAP (Security Content Automation Protocol) standard from NIST. There are a number of different parts to SCAP but for Compliance reporting one of the important parts is the OVAL (Open Vulnerability Assesment Language) standard. This is what allows us to write a checkable security policy and verify it against running systems.

Fujitsu launches 'Athena' Sparc64-X servers in Japan

Japanese IT giant and long-time Sparc partner with Sun Microsystems and now Oracle has let slip the details on its "Athena" line servers based on its own sixteen-core Sparc64-X processors, which bear the same code-name inside Fujitsu. And it looks like Oracle is going to be reselling them, too.

Evaluating Oracle Solaris 11 from Inside Oracle VM VirtualBox

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/evaluating-s11-inside-vmv-1900902.html

This article describes how to evaluate Oracle Solaris 11—without having to install it on the bare metal—by importing it into Oracle VM VirtualBox, configuring it, exploring basic administrative tasks, and connecting to the network.

grub2 : configuration de la console série

http://www.gloumps.org/article-grub2-configuration-de-la-console-serie-114899043.html

Depuis Solaris 11 update 1, le chain loader utilisé pour les plateforme x86 est GRUB2. Le fichier de configuration présent dans GRUB (menu.lst) est remplacé par un nouveau fichier nommé grub.cfg. L'édition de ce fichier est normallement déconseillé, du coup la mise à jour s'effectue via la commande bootadm.

How to Use Signed Kernel Modules

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/signed-kernel-modules-1891111.html

Loadable kernel modules allow you to add code to a running Linux kernel. Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel provides signed kernel modules to further protect the kernel. This article explains how to use this feature.

Création pas-à-pas des repos sous Solaris 11

http://www.gloumps.org/article-creation-pas-a-pas-des-repos-sous-solaris-11-114928364.html

Ci-joint la procédure de création pas-à-pas des principales repo pour Solaris 11. Rien de plus simple... vous allez voir !

Deep Inside Every Sysadmin Is...

https://blogs.oracle.com/OTNGarage/entry/deep_inside_every_sysadmin_is

... an Oracle ACE! The thrills. The glory. The fame. Who can resist? Turns out sysadmins can.

Updating and patching Oracle Linux using yum and Ksplice

https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/updating_and_patching_oracle_linux

Oracle Linux provides two complimentary technologies for patching and updating the operating system. [...] This is where Ksplice enters the picture. It is a technology that allows you to apply critical fixes to the Linux kernel at run time, without the need to reboot your system. This is a feature that is unique to Oracle Linux.

Press Review #18

Julien Gabel — Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:21:00 +0100

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/host-server-mgmt/hghlyavailldomserverpoolsemoc12cv09-1845483.pdf

This best practices guide provides a solution for a SPARC virtualized environment that hosts general computing workloads.

The Role of Oracle Solaris Zones and Linux Containers in a Virtualization Strategy

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/zones-containers-virtualization-1880908.html

In the previous two articles of this series, we covered Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle VM Server for x86, which provide hypervisor-based hardware virtualization. Now, we will cover the operating system level of virtualization, which is one type of software virtualization, by looking at Oracle Solaris Zones and Linux Containers.

Using rrdtool to graph vmstat output - a worked example

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/using_rrdtool_to_graph_vmstat_output_a_worked_example

rrdtool is a fantastically brilliant command to have in your toolbox. Up there with awk, grep, sed, Apache, ksh, and nmon (of course). It is used to save data in a fixed size "database", does cascade summation of older data to keep the data volume down, it can extract the data across any period and then it can quickly generate impressive .gif file graphs from the data - which are perfect for displaying on a webserver.

Compiling for T4

https://blogs.oracle.com/d/entry/compiling_for_t4

I've recently had quite a few queries about compiling for T4 based systems. So it's probably a good time to review what I consider to be the best practices.

Solaris 11 pkg fix is my new friend

https://blogs.oracle.com/bobn/entry/solaris11_pkg_fix_is_my

While putting together some examples of the Solaris 11 Automated Installer (AI), I managed to really mess up my system, to the point where AI was completely unusable. This was my fault as a combination of unfortunate incidents left some remnants that were causing problems, so I tried to clean things up. Unsuccessfully. Perhaps that was a bad idea (OK, it was a terrible idea), but this is Solaris 11 and there are a few more tricks in the sysadmin toolbox.

ZFS fundamentals: transaction groups

http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2012/12/13/zfs-fundamentals-transaction-groups/

I’ve continued to explore ZFS as I try to understand performance pathologies, and improve performance. A particular point of interest has been the ZFS write throttle, the mechanism ZFS uses to avoid filling all of system memory with modified data.

Local, Near, Far part 12 - I have a 10 core POWER7 chip, eh!

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/local_near_far_part_12_i_have_a_10_core_power7_chip_eh68

Previously I said the POWER Hypervisor decides where to put a Virtual Machine (VM/LPAR) based on the Virtual Processor number (spreading factor). Well, apart from it nearly being right ... I was actually wrong! I got talking to one of these very impressive Hypervisor developers in Germany and he put me right.

USENIX LISA 2012: Performance Analysis Methodology

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2012/12/13/usenix-lisa-2012-performance-analysis-methodology/

At USENIX LISA 2012, I gave a talk titled Performance Analysis Methodology. This covered ten performance analysis anti-methodologies and methodologies, including the USE Method. I wrote about these in the ACMQ article Thinking Methodically about Performance, which is worth reading for more detail. I’ve also posted USE Method-derived checklists for Solaris- and Linux-based systems.

Shared Storage Pools 3 and Systems Director 6.3.2

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/shared_storage_pools_3_and_systems_director_6_3_297

The new VIOS Shared Storage Pools 3 (SSP3) arrived a month ago and I have all my VIOS updated now to VIOS 2.2.2.1 plus fixes. This brings with it the regular VIOS improvements but also new features for SSP3 including...

Oracle affiche de forts bénéfices et loue l'apport de Sun Microsystems

http://www.pcinpact.com/news/76196-oracle-affiche-forts-benefices-et-loue-apport-sun-microsystems.htm

Concernant Sun Microsystems, racheté par Oracle il y a trois ans pour 7,4 milliards de dollars, Larry Ellison, le PDG d'Oracle, estime que « Sun s'est avéré être l'une des acquisitions les plus stratégiques et rentables que nous n'ayons jamais fait ». Une affirmation basée sur la forte rentabilité d'Oracle sur les systèmes d'ingénierie et sur l'impact de Sun sur la croissance de ses activités matérielles, qui perdent pourtant en chiffre d'affaires.

Ops Center Solaris 11 IPS Repository Management: Using ISO Images

https://blogs.oracle.com/oem/entry/using_an_iso_image_to

With Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, you can provision, patch, monitor and manage Oracle Solaris 11 instances. To do this, Ops Center creates and maintains a Solaris 11 Image Packaging System (IPS) repository on the Enterprise Controller. During the Enterprise Controller configuration, you can load repository content directly from Oracle's Support Web site and subsequently synchronize the repository as new content becomes available.

Of course, you can also use Solaris 11 ISO images to create and update your Ops Center repository.

Using Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center to Update Solaris via Live Upgrade

https://blogs.oracle.com/oem/entry/using_ops_center_to_update

This Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center blog entry provides tips for using Ops Center to update Solaris using Live Upgrade on Solaris 10 and Boot Environments on Solaris 11.

Locating WWPNs on Linux servers

http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2012/12/19/locating-wwpns-on-linux-servers/

I do a lot of storage-related work, and often times need to grab WWPNs to zone hosts and to mask storage. To gather the WWPNs I would often times use the following script on my RHEL and CentOS servers...

The USE Method: SmartOS Performance Checklist

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2012/12/19/the-use-method-smartos-performance-checklist/

The USE Method provides a strategy for performing a complete check of system health, identifying common bottlenecks and errors. For each system resource, metrics for utilization, saturation and errors are identified and checked. Any issues discovered are then investigated using further strategies.

In this post, I’ll provide an example of a USE-based metric list for use within a SmartOS SmartMachine (Zone), such as those provided by the Joyent Public Cloud.

Resolving Duplicate disk/device entries in “vxdisk list” or vxdisksetup

http://nilesh-joshi.blogspot.com/2012/09/resolving-duplicate-diskdevice-entries.html

One fine morning I had a undertaking to replace the disk which was part of VxVM. Easy enough – just another routine stuff [...] Everything you do or don’t do has an inherent risk !!!

Weird issue with VERITAS after replacing the disk

http://nilesh-joshi.blogspot.com/2012/10/weird-issue-with-veritas-after.html

When performing a disk replacement in VxVM 4.1 and VxVM 5.0, the disk being replaced does not show up in the output of a "vxdisk list" command. Instead a "NONAMEs2" entry is seen...

Announcement: DTrace for Oracle Linux General Availability

https://blogs.oracle.com/linux/entry/announcement_dtrace_for_oracle_linux

Today we are announcing the general availability of DTrace for Oracle Linux. It is available to download from ULN for Oracle Linux Support customers.

"getent hosts" on IPv4/IPv6. Linux vs. Solaris

https://blogs.oracle.com/LetTheSunShineIn/entry/getent_hosts_on_ipv4_ipv6

"getent hosts (server name)" is typically run when one wants to check whether /etc/nsswitch.conf is correctly set up. I recently found differences between Linux and Solaris when it tries to find IPv4/IPv6 addresses.

What's up with LDoms: Part 6 - Sizing the IO Domain

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/what_s_up_with_ldoms6

By now, we've seen how to create the basic setup, create a simple domain and configure networking and disk IO. We know that for typical virtual IO, we use vswitches and virtual disk services to provide virtual network and disk services to the guests. The question to address here is: How much CPU and memory is required in the Control and IO-domain (or in any additional IO domain) to provide these services without being a bottleneck?

zfsday: ZFS Performance Analysis and Tools

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2012/12/29/zfsday-zfs-performance-analysis-and-tools/

At zfsday 2012, I gave a talk on ZFS performance analysis and tools, discussing the role of old and new observability tools for investigating ZFS, including many based on DTrace. This was a fun talk – probably my best so far – spanning performance analysis from the application level down through the kernel and to the storage device level.

My background with ZFS includes leading various performance work for the world’s first ZFS-based storage appliance at Sun Microsystems and later Oracle, and now further analysis and tuning as Joyent’s lead performance engineer where we run a public cloud on ZFS. Given the risk of other tenants (noisy neighbors) interfering with your performance, I can’t imagine running a cloud on anything else. This talk includes the tools and tuning we use to make sure ZFS runs smoothly.

Press Review #17

Julien Gabel — Fri, 30 Nov 2012 10:34:00 +0100

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

OS Analytics - Deep Dive Into Your OS

https://blogs.oracle.com/oem/entry/enterprise_manager_ops_center_using

Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center provides a feature called "OS Analytics". This feature allows you to get a better understanding of how the Operating System is being utilized. You can research the historical usage as well as real time data. This post will show how you can benefit from OS Analytics and how it works behind the scenes.

Solaris 11.1: Changes to included FOSS packages

https://blogs.oracle.com/alanc/entry/solaris_11_1_changes_to

Solaris 11 can update more readily than Solaris 10
Core OS Functionality
Developer Stack
Desktop Stack
Detailed list of changes

debugging IO calls in Solaris 11 with kstat

http://portrix-systems.de/blog/brost/debugging-io-calls-in-solaris-11-with-kstat/

Solaris 11 update 1 was released just a few days ago and I have been curious to find out about new features. One of the things mentioned in the What’s-New guide that caught my attention were “File System Statistics for Oracle Solaris Zones”. Until now, there was no way to tell which zone was responsible for how much IO. [...] This is where these new kstat statistics for each filesystem type in each zone come in handy.

My splitvg Went Splat (updated)

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/AIXDownUnder/entry/splitting_a_mirror_can_bring_bad_luck7

A couple of years ago I wrote about the splitvg command. This takes a volume group (VG) that has been mirrored using mirrorvg, and effectively breaks off one copy of the mirror, turning it into a point-in-time snapshot. The snapshot can then be used for reports, backups or for building a new database. I'm not sure how much this is used in the real world these days, but if you are still doing your backups this way, perhaps it's time to revisit the strategy.

Can Oracle REALLY Increase Throughput by 6x?

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2012/11/can-oracle-really-increase-throughput.html

During some SPARC road map discussions, a particular anonymous IBM POWER enthusiast inquires:

"How... are 192 S3 cores going to provide x6 throughput of 128 SPARC64-VII+ cores?"

Unexpected advantage of Engineered Systems

https://blogs.oracle.com/Solaris11Life/entry/unexpected_advantage_of_engineered_systems

It's not surprising that Engineered Systems accelerate the debugging and resolution of customer issues. But what has surprised me is just how much faster issue resolution is with Engineered Systems such as SPARC SuperCluster. These are powerful, complex, systems used by customers wanting extreme database performance, app performance, and cost saving server consolidation.

What's up with LDoms: Part 5 - A few Words about Consoles

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/what_s_up_with_ldoms5

Back again to look at a detail of LDom configuration that is often forgotten - the virtual console server.

25 Years of SPARC, 20 Years of Solaris

Faster Memory Allocation Using vmtasks

https://blogs.oracle.com/sistare/entry/faster_memory_allocation_using_vmtasks

What is vmtasks, and why should you care? In a nutshell, vmtasks accelerates creation, locking, and destruction of pages in shared memory segments.

Introducing RedPatch

https://blogs.oracle.com/ksplice/entry/introducing_redpatch

The Ksplice team is happy to announce the public availability of one of our git repositories, RedPatch. RedPatch contains the source for all of the changes Red Hat makes to their kernel, one commit per fix and we've published it on oss.oracle.com/git.

Patching a miniroot image (astuce)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-patching-a-miniroot-image-astuce-112419363.html

Petite astuce pour la mise à jour kernel d'un miniroot Solaris 10. Mais avant de commencer, parlons un peu du contexte. Lors d'une migration p2v d'un serveur Sparc vers une Ldom, j'ai rencontré l'erreur suivante lors de l'extraction de l'archive flar.

Oracle Solaris: Zones on Shared Storage

https://blogs.oracle.com/JeffV/entry/oracle_solaris_zones_on_shared

One of the significant new features, and the most significant new feature related to Oracle Solaris Zones, is casually called "Zones on Shared Storage" or simply ZOSS (rhymes with "moss"). ZOSS offers much more flexibility because you can store Solaris Zones on shared storage (surprise!) so that you can perform quick and easy migration of a zone from one system to another. This blog entry describes and demonstrates the use of ZOSS.

IBM POWER 7+ Better Late than Never?

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2012/11/ibm-power-roadmap-power-7-better-late.html

Just announced, via TPM at The Register, is the ability to provision an IBM p260 with new POWER 7+ processors!

Automatic Storage Tiering

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2012/11/automatic-storage-tiering.html

Automatic Storage Tiering or Hierarchical Storage Management is the process of placing the most data onto storage which is most cost effective, while meeting basic accessibility and efficient requirements. There has been much movement over the past half-decade in storage management.

Looking "Under the Hood" at Networking in Oracle VM Server for x86

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/networking-ovm-x86-1873548.html

Normally, you configure Oracle VM Server for x86 networking with the Oracle VM Manager GUI. The GUI simplifies administration, speeds deployment, and reduces the chance of configuration errors. Hiding the implementation details using the GUI has its benefits, but here on the Oracle Technology Network, we like to expose the heart of the machine; it's not only interesting, but it can help you troubleshoot problems that might arise.

Oh my god, it's full of threads ... and out of memory

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7515-Oh-my-god,-its-full-of-threads-...-and-out-of-memory.html

This is for the people with the really large systems (however thread wise a T4-2 or T4-1 can be really large systems). Imagine you have dozens to hundreds of zones. All with thousands of threads. Or you have an extreme number of ZFS pools ... with all their zpool processes and a lot of zones with a lot of processes.

Solaris x86 sur serveur Dell (gamme PowerEdge Rxx0)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-solaris-x86-sur-serveur-dell-gamme-poweredge-rxx0-112522509.html

Petit article sur la configuration du déport Console Série et des interruptions NMI sur les serveurs Dell (gamme PowerEdge Rxx0).

VIOS SEA Failover flapping on backup SEA

http://unixadmin.free.fr/?p=389

Why is the backup SEA adapter of my SEA failover flapping from Primary to Backup repeatedly?

Consommation CPU & Gestion mémoire (1er partie)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-consommation-cpu-gestion-memoire-1er-partie-112661908.html

Première partie d'une analyse effectuée sur un système Solaris 10 exécutant plusieurs bases de données Oracle. Les symptômes remontés par l'équipe DBA sont les suivants : temps de réponse long sur plusieurs bases.

Logical Domains Manager (v 3.0.0.0.28)

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26502_01/

Oracle have release Oracle VM for SPARC 3.0 (LDOM).

Press Review #16

Julien Gabel — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 16:47:00 +0100

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

What's up with LDoms: Part 4 - Virtual Networking Explained

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/what_s_up_with_ldoms4

In this article, we'll have a closer look at virtual networking. Basic connectivity as we've seen it in the first, simple example, is easy enough. But there are numerous options for the virtual switches and virtual network ports, which we will discuss in more detail now. In this section, we will concentrate on virtual networking - the capabilities of virtual switches and virtual network ports - only. Other options involving hardware assignment or redundancy will be covered in separate sections later on.

Best Practices - which domain types should be used to run applications

https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/best_practices_which_domain_types

One question that frequently comes up is "which types of domain should I use to run applications?" There used to be a simple answer in most cases: "only run applications in guest domains", but enhancements to T-series servers, Oracle VM Server for SPARC and the advent of SPARC SuperCluster have made this question more interesting and worth qualifying differently. This article reviews the relevant concepts and provides suggestions on where to deploy applications in a logical domains environment.

Power Champions! POWER7+ is here!

http://www.rootvg.net/content/view/521/114/

Finally, I got the invite to join the Power Champions. Three days of news and information before today's announcements . It has been quite an experience - finally hearing the news directly from the developers, project managers, etc. rather than only reading several stack of slides.

Oracle Announces Oracle Solaris 11.1 at Oracle OpenWorld

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1859224

Adds Unique Oracle Database Support, Extends Cloud Infrastructure Capabilities and Delivers New Security and Compliance Features for Highly Available Enterprise Application Deployments.

Announcing Oracle Solaris 11.1

This document highlights some of the many changes that have occurred since the introduction of Oracle Solaris 11 11/11. It should be read in conjunction with the release notes and documentation for the product.

IPS changes in Solaris 11.1, brought to you by the letter ‘P’

http://timsfoster.wordpress.com/2012/10/04/ips-changes-in-solaris-11-1-brought-to-you-by-the-letter-p/

I thought it might be a good idea to put together a post about some of the IPS changes that appear in Solaris 11.1. To make it more of a challenge, everything I’m going to talk about here, begins with the letter ‘P‘.

Measurement artifact

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7494-Measurement-artifact.html

The application was throughoutly instrumented by means of something i will call "middleware" and so the customer thought he was able to see how long a job on the system took and how much CPU was used.

However the numbers were strange: High throughput, short time to complete the job, however the CPU time used for a job looked strange. Something in there was something wrong with the CPU times. Just a guess. A feeling. Not really knowing.

Doubled memory capacity on T4-4

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7496-Doubled-memory-capacity-on-T4-4.html

There is only one thing that's better than a lot of memory in a system: More memory! So it's quite nice that there is a new memory options with the T4-4 system. You can now plug 32 GB DIMMS into the systems. The T4-4 can now hold 2 TB of main memory.

SPARC Processor Roadmap Updated

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/public-sparc-roadmap-421264.pdf

The updated SPARC Processor Roadmap is now available here. The roadmap provides data on the M-series,l the T-series and the T-4 series from 2011 through 2016. During that period the M-series is scheduled to add up to 10x throughput; and the T-series an additional 4.5x throughput. Thread strength is also set to increase in both series through that period. Dates are also outlined for expectd updates to Solaris 10 OS and Solaris 11 OS.

Disks lie. And the controllers that run them are partners in crime.

http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=2367378

Most applications do not deal with disks directly, instead storing their data in files in a file system, which protects us from those scoundrel disks. After all, a key task of the file system is to ensure that the file system can always be recovered to a consistent state after an unplanned system crash (for example, a power failure). While a good file system will be able to beat the disks into submission, the required effort can be great and the reduced performance annoying. This article examines the shortcuts that disks take and the hoops that file systems must jump through to get the desired reliability.

Solaris 11.1 announced

http://sparcv9.blogspot.fr/2012/10/solaris-111-announced.html

Solaris 11.1 have been announced and will be released later this month. It is the first update of Solaris 11 since it release november last year. It contains a few interesting features, I've only list a few, over 200 projects have integrated into this release.

SPARC T5, M4 and SPARC64-X

http://sparcv9.blogspot.fr/2012/10/sparc-t5-m4-and-sparc64-x.html

Short summary of SPARC processor information that was disclosed at Oracle world, in the near future Oracle will release two different SPARC processors and Fujitsu will release a new SPARC64 processor with support for LDOM.

nicstat update - version 1.92

https://blogs.oracle.com/timc/entry/nicstat_update_version_1_92

Another minor nicstat release is now available.

Solaris 11 SRU / Update relationship explained, and blackout period on delivery of new bug fixes eliminated

https://blogs.oracle.com/Solaris11Life/entry/solaris_11_process_enhancement_no

Relationship between SRUs and Update releases
Changes to SRU and Update Naming Conventions
No Blackout Periods on Bug Fix Releases

Active Benchmarking

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2012/10/23/active-benchmarking/

Benchmarking is often done badly: tools are run ad-hoc, without understanding what they are testing or checking that the results are valid. This can lead to poor architectural choices that haunt you later on. I previously summarized this situation as: casual benchmarking: you benchmark A, but actually measure B, and conclude you’ve measured C.

How to Update to Oracle Solaris 11.1 Using the Image Packaging System

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/howto-update-11dot1-ips-1866781.html

This article details the steps required to update your Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 systems to Oracle Solaris 11.1 using the Image Packaging System (IPS).

Morgan Stanley chooses Solaris 11 to run cloud file services

I came across this blog entry and the accompanying presentation by Robert Milkowski about his experience switching from Linux to Oracle Solaris 11 for a distributed OpenAFS file serving environment at Morgan Stanley.

IDC Recommends Oracle Solaris 11

https://blogs.oracle.com/jimlaurent/entry/idc_recommends_oracle_solaris_11

IDC published a research report this week on Oracle Solaris 11 and described it as "Delivering unique value." The report emphasizes the ability of Oracle Solaris to scale up and provide a mission critical platform for a wide variety of computing. Solaris built-in server and network virtualization helps to lower costs and enable consolidation while reducing administration costs and risks.

How to Migrate Your Data to Oracle Solaris 11 Using Shadow Migration

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/howto-migrate-s11-data-shadow-1866521.html

Data migration is a fundamental building block of an Oracle Solaris 11 adoption strategy. This article describes shadow migration, which is a technology for moving large amounts of data from one file system to another while the data remains online and accessible to users.

Oracle rolls up and rolls out Solaris 11.1 update

Tweaked Solaris Cluster 4.1 system lasher tags along

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/10/25/oracle_solaris_11_update_1/

Solaris 11, which debuted a year ago, was the first major release of the Unix operating system that spans Sparc, Sparc64, and x86 iron to come out since the former Sun Microsystems launched Solaris 10 in January 2005. Oracle had previewed some of the features in Solaris 11.1 and today it put the code into the field and gave some more details on the nips and tuck and tweaks in the update.

Using svcbundle to Create SMF Manifests and Profiles in Oracle Solaris 11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/howto-svcbundle-manifest-profile-1866525.html

This articles covers a new utility introduced in Oracle Solaris 11.1, svcbundle, and shows how developers and administrators can use it to integrate their applications with SMF more quickly.

How to Migrate Oracle Database from Oracle Solaris 8 to Oracle Solaris 11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/migrate-s8db-to-s11-1867397.html

How to use the Oracle Solaris 8 P2V (physical to virtual) Archiver tool, which comes with Oracle Solaris Legacy Containers, to migrate a physical Oracle Solaris 8 system with Oracle Database 10.2 and an Oracle Automatic Storage Management file system into an Oracle Solaris 8 branded zone inside an Oracle Solaris 10 guest domain on top of an Oracle Solaris 11 control domain.

Announcing Release of Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1!

https://blogs.oracle.com/SC/entry/announcing_release_of_oracle_solaris1

We are very happy to announce the release of Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.1, providing High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) capabilities for Oracle Solaris 11.1. This is yet another proof of Oracle's continued investment in Oracle Solaris technologies such as Oracle Solaris Cluster.

Solaris 11.1: Encrypted Immutable Zones on (ZFS) Shared Storage

https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/encrypted_immutable_zones_on_shared

Solaris 11 brought both ZFS encryption and the Immutable Zones feature and I've talked about the combination in the past. Solaris 11.1 adds a fully supported method of storing zones in their own ZFS using shared storage so lets update things a little and put all three parts together.

Press Review #15

Julien Gabel — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 09:30:00 +0200

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

Pre-rentrée Oracle Open World 2012 : à vos agendas

https://blogs.oracle.com/EricBezille/entry/pre_rentrée_oracle_open_world

A maintenant moins d'un mois de l’événement majeur d'Oracle, qui se tient comme chaque année à San Francisco, fin septembre, début octobre, les spéculations vont bon train sur les annonces qui vont y être dévoilées... Et sans lever le voile, je vous engage à prendre connaissance des sujets des "Key Notes" qui seront tenues par Larry Ellison, Mark Hurd, Thomas Kurian (responsable des développements logiciels) et John Fowler (responsable des développements systèmes) afin de vous donner un avant goût.

UPDATED: Volume Group Missing After AIX Migration

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/AIXDownUnder/entry/volume_group_missing_after_aix_migration12

A customer did a migration from AIX 5.3 to 6.1 and then called me to report a strange set of symptoms. Some file systems didn't mount following a reboot. When the file systems in the volume group (let's call it datavg) went to mount, they returned the error that there was no such device. If the customer ran an exportvg and an importvg, all the datavg file systems became available. But then another reboot was done and the datavg file systems didn't mount.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure — Implementation Guide for SPARC

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/hardware-solutions/o12-069-oos-cloud-sparc-1739930.pdf

This white paper describes the implementation details for an Oracle Solaris Could build around SPARC T4 and ZFS SA, with all the latest development of Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c. It covers both Zones (Branded, S10, S11), and LDOMs (OVM for SPARC) directly managed through Ops Center.

Systems Director - What Licences should I have?

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/systems_director_what_licences_should_i_have238

I have long thought it is rather silly that IBM Systems Director can't give you a list the licenses that you should have! It does, after all, know what machines it is controlling and the data is in the database. Perhaps, that will come in the future. What can we do in the short term?

Oracle SPARC SuperCluster and US DoD Security guidelines

https://blogs.oracle.com/jimlaurent/entry/oracle_sparc_supercluster_and_us

I've worked in the past to help our government customers understand how best to secure Solaris. For my customer base that means complying with Security Technical Implementation Guides (STIGs) from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). I recently worked with a team to apply both the Solaris and Oracle 11gR2 database STIGs to a SPARC SuperCluster. The results have been published in an Oracle White paper.

Best Practices - Dynamic Reconfiguration

This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly named Logical Domains)

https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/best_practices_removing_devices_from

Oracle VM Server for SPARC supports Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR), making it possible to add or remove resources to or from a domain (virtual machine) while it is running. This is extremely useful because resources can be shifted to or from virtual machines in response to load conditions without having to reboot or interrupt running applications. For example, if an application requires more CPU capacity, you can add CPUs to improve performance, and remove them when they are no longer needed. You can use even use Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) policies that automatically add and remove CPUs to domains based on load.

Secure Deployment of Oracle VM Server for SPARC - updated

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/secure_deployment_of_oracle_vm

Quite a while ago, I published a paper with recommendations for a secure deployment of LDoms. Many things happend in the mean time, and an update to that paper was due. [...] In a very short few words: With the success especially of the T4-4, many deployments make use of the hardware partitioning capabilities of that platform, assigning full PCIe root complexes to domains, mimicking dynamic system domains if you will.

Get Unique Access to SPARC Product Strategy and Best Practices at Oracle OpenWorld 2012

http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/sparcatopenworld-1713476.html

Product strategy, real-world best practices, and customer panels devoted to Oracle’s SPARC servers and related technology are among the highlights of the upcoming Oracle OpenWorld 2012, taking place from September 30 to October 4 in San Francisco.

The first Oracle Solaris 11 book is now available

https://blogs.oracle.com/drcloud/entry/the_first_oracle_solaris_11

The first Oracle Solaris 11 book is now available: "Oracle Solaris 11 System Administration - The Complete Reference", by Michael Jang, Harry Foxwell, Christine Tran, and Alan Formy-Duval.

Introducing Oracle System Assistant

https://blogs.oracle.com/hardware/entry/introducing_oracle_system_assistant

One of the challenges with today's servers is getting the server up and running and understanding what all of the steps are once you plug the server in for the first time. So many different pieces come into play: installing drivers, updating firmware, configuring RAID, and provisioning the operating system. All of these steps must be done before you can even start using the server.

ZFS Articles @nexenta

http://www.nexenta.com/corp/products/what-is-openstorage/zfs-info-center

This category contains articles that describe the various aspects of ZFS, the Zettabyte file system. ZFS was originally developed by Sun Microsystems, and open sourced thru the OpenSolaris project, and now maintained at Illumos.org.

DTrace Guide @illumos

http://dtrace.org/guide/preface.html

DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework for the illumos™ Operating System. DTrace provides a powerful infrastructure to permit administrators, developers, and service personnel to concisely answer arbitrary questions about the behavior of the operating system and user programs. The illumos Dynamic Tracing Guide describes how to use DTrace to observe, debug, and tune system behavior. This book also includes a complete reference for bundled DTrace observability tools and the D programming language.

By 2015, engineered systems would account for over 30% of physical hardware shipments

http://www.expresscomputeronline.com/interviews/967-by-2015-engineered-systems-would-account-for-over-30-of-physical-hardware-shipments

Upbeat over Exalogic's global uptake, Andrew Lau, Senior Director, Oracle Exalogic - Asia Pacific, discussed the organization’s strategy to leverage the acquired hardware expertise and extend the Exa family.

Le Sparc64 X : prochain moteur des serveurs d'entreprises d'Oracle ?

A Hot Chips, Fujitsu a dévoilé les spécification de sa puce Sparc64 X, une puce aux performances détonnantes qui pourrait bien être le fameux processeur M4 mentionné par Oracle dans ses roadmap. Un processeur censé motoriser une nouvelle ligne de serveurs Unix haut de gamme à la fin 2012...

Oracle hurls Sparc T5 gladiators into big-iron arena

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/04/oracle_sparc_t5_processor/

Oracle's Sparc processor server biz may be bleeding revenue, but the company is still working on very innovative chips. Its Sparc T series, and the Sparc T5 systems that will launch later this year (very likely at the OpenWorld trade show at the end of September) suggest the company is growing its multithreaded processors in terms of cores and sockets and pushing up into the big iron space.

Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2 narrows gap with VMware, Parallels

http://www.infoworld.com/d/virtualization/oracle-vm-virtualbox-42-narrows-gap-vmware-parallels-202489

Many people feared that Oracle would kill off VirtualBox after it acquired Sun Microsystems, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, it's been a little over a year since the last major release was announced, and Oracle is once again pushing the virtual ball forward with a major release of Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2.

VirtualBox Finds the Meaning of Open Source Life with Version 4.2

http://www.internetnews.com/blog/skerner/virtual-box-finds-the-meaning-of-open-source-life-with-version-4.2.html

Oracle over the last two years has expanded VirtualBox to make it the easiest solution for anyone on Linux, Window, Mac or Solaris to get a baseline level of guest operating system virtualization up and running quickly.

What's New in Oracle VM VirtualBox 4.2?

https://blogs.oracle.com/fatbloke/entry/what_s_new_in_oracle

A year is a long time in the IT industry. Since the last VirtualBox feature release, which was a little over a year ago, we've seen:

new releases of cool new operating systems, such as Windows 8, ChromeOS, and Mountain Lion;
we've seen a myriad of new Linux releases from big Enterprise class distributions like Oracle 6.3 and Solaris 11, to accessible desktop distros like Ubuntu 12.04 and Fedora 17;
and we've also seen the spec of a typical PC or laptop double in power.

All of these events have influenced our new VirtualBox version which we're releasing today. Here's how...

So You Want To Build a SPARC Cloud

Did you ever wish you could get the industrial strength power of UNIX/RISC with the flexibility of cloud computing? Well, now you can! With recent advances from Oracle it's possible to build an incredibly high-performance, flexible, available virtualized infrastructure based on Solaris and SPARC. Here's the recipe!

POWER Double Stuff vs SPARC Critical-Thread

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2012/09/power-double-stuff-vs-sparc-critical.html

Computing processor models differ in architecture from one company to another, each trying to gain an edge in the market over their competitors. Often, chip foundries will attempt radical approaches to conquer a problem, but incremental improvement will often bring radical ideas back to similar conclusions in the end. A comparison between SPARC and POWER architectures is no different.

Oracle forces wesunsolve to close

http://sparcv9.blogspot.fr/2012/09/oracle-forces-wesunsolve-to-close.html

In another blow against the community and the people who work with or/and have interest in their products Oracle now has forced wesunsolve.net to close.

Current SPARC Architectures

https://blogs.oracle.com/d/entry/current_sparc_architectures

If an application targets a recent architecture, then the compiler gets to play with all the instructions that the new architecture provides. The downside is that the application won't work on older processors that don't have the new instructions. So for developer's there is a trade-off between performance and portability.

A Return to Linux on the Workstation

http://cuddletech.com/blog/?p=770

Up until about 30 days ago my primary workstation ran some variety of Solaris for nearly 10 years, starting with Solaris 9 when X86 became viable on X86, then OpenSolaris and the various Solaris Express releases and finally Solaris 11 Beta. It was one month ago today that I finally re-installed it with Ubuntu, returning me to Linux officially.

Press Review #14

Julien Gabel — Fri, 31 Aug 2012 14:22:00 +0200

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

SPARC Servers: An Effective Choice for Efficiency in the Datacenter

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/idc-dce-2012-1612359.pdf

Agility can also be added to their IT operations through more rapid application rollout and an easy means to move services around in a highly available, secure, and scalable environment. A new generation of SPARC servers, based on SPARC T-Series processors, provides a wider portfolio of hardware and software features that can be leveraged to dramatically improve efficiency and agility.

Migrate to Oracle’s SPARC Systems

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/migration/index.html

Keeping up with changing market conditions can be a challenge. Enterprises are looking for ways to cut costs and streamline their business operations. So when it's time to migrate off your aging servers, consider how Oracle's SPARC systems, software, and solutions can protect your legacy application investment, improve IT efficiency and services.

It's good when it goes wrong and I am on holiday (nmon question peaks)

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/it_s_good_when_it_goes_wrong_and_i_am_on_holiday_nmon_question_peaks291

I have never really understood why I get peaks and troughs in nmon questions and urgent situations but July seems to be a peak and fortunately I was not at work for a large part of it. Performance and nmon Questions trend to come in three flavours: really dumb, genuine and mega-urgent critical lets blame the hardware. Let me give you a flavour of each type of question from the last month. Perhaps, reading these will let you avoid the same problem or at least let you learn "you are not alone".

Enabling 2 GB Large Pages on Solaris 10

https://blogs.oracle.com/mandalika/entry/enabling_2_gb_large_pages

Giri Mandalika wrote an article how to use the 2 gigabyte page size offered by T4 systems on Solaris 10: "Enabling 2 GB Large Pages on Solaris 10". This can be really useful if you have an application allocating really large amounts of memory. The more memory a single page covers, the smaller the the translation tables from virtual to physical memory gets, the higher the hit rate of the translation lookaside buffer. However check out your application if it behaves well with such large pages.

CIS Solaris 11 Benchmark v1.0.0

This document is intended to address the recommended security settings for the Solaris 11 operating system (Solaris 11 OS) running on x86 or SPARC platforms.

Coming from RHEL to Oracle Solaris? Need help?

https://blogs.oracle.com/gman/entry/coming_from_rhel_to_oracle

With Oracle Solaris 11 development, one of the primary goals was to greatly modernize the operating system and make it easier to use, remove some of the uneccessary differences between the two operating systems, and remove some of the frustrations that people have had. I believe we've done exactly that with the introduction of Oracle Solaris ZFS as the default root file system, the Image Packaging System (IPS) and much more familiar installation experiences with the LiveCD and interactive text installer. It's now even easier to approach Oracle Solaris, install it into a virtual machine and give it a spin!

Best Practices for Securely Deploying the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/supercluster-security-1723872.html

Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 is a high performance, multipurpose engineered system designed, tested, and integrated to run a wide array of enterprise applications. It is well suited to many different tasks including database and application consolidation, running multitier enterprise applications, and multitenant application delivery. To realize secure architectures such as these, the SPARC SuperCluster platform offers a level of security synergy not often found in today's IT architectures. Its engineering innovation and high degree of integration provide a security potential that is truly greater than the sum of its individual components.

Oracle Solaris 11 Developer Webinar Series

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/webinar-series-1563626.html

Who should attend? Application developers and administrators who want to learn how they can deploy Oracle Solaris 11 in their application environment.

Introducing the Basics of Service Management Facility (SMF) on Oracle Solaris 11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/intro-smf-basics-s11-1729181.html

The Service Management Facility (SMF), first introduced in Oracle Solaris 10, is a feature of the operating system for managing system and application services, replacing the legacy init scripting start-up mechanism common to prior releases of Oracle Solaris and other UNIX operating systems. SMF improves the availability of a system by ensuring that essential system and application services run continuously even in the event of hardware or software failures. SMF is one of the components of the wider Oracle Solaris Predictive Self Healing capability.

Advanced Administration with the Service Management Facility (SMF) on Oracle Solaris 11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/adv-smf-admin-s11-1729196.html

This article covers some more-advanced administrative tasks with SMF, including an introduction to service manifests, understanding layering within the SMF configuration repository, and how best to apply configuration to a system. To learn more about SMF, check out a variety of content at the SMF technology page on Oracle Technology Network.

Are you entitled to the latest AIX 5.3 Service Pack?

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/AIXDownUnder/entry/are_you_entitled_to_the_aix_5_3_service_pack10

There are a lot of organisations out there that are still running AIX 5.3. As you must know, AIX 5.3 is out of support. That doesn't stop you updating to the latest Technology Level (TL 12). But you may not be entitled to the latest Service Pack (SP 6). If you're staying with AIX 5.3, then you have a choice of being supported; unsupported (but legal), or unsupported and illegal!

How I Use the Advanced Capabilities of Btrfs

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/advanced-btrfs-1734952.html

This article continues an exploration of Btrfs, looking into the more interesting—and sometimes less obvious—features of Btrfs, such as redundant configurations, data integrity options, compression, snapshots, and performance enhancements.

nmon Analyser Version 3.4 = Just Released, Get Your Copy Today

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/nmon_analyser_version_3_4_just_released_get_your_copy_today11

Stephen Atkins (the Guru behind the nmon Analyser) has released a new version - two days ago. This includes loads of improvements and some new features. Best of all - less problems running on newer Excel releases (it works around inconsistencies with the Microsoft API).

How to Create Oracle Solaris 11 Zones with Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/howto-create-zones-ops-center-1737990.html

Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c manages Oracle hardware, virtualization technologies, and operating systems that are deployed in traditional, virtualized, and cloud environments. This article describes how you can use it to create and configure Oracle Solaris 11 zones.

Upcoming SPARC CPUs

http://sparcv9.blogspot.fr/2012/08/upcoming-sparc-cpus.html

The upcoming Hot Chips symposiums "Big iron" session will feature two future SPARC processors...

The Role of Oracle VM Server for SPARC In a Virtualization Strategy

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/ovm-sparc-virtualization-fit-1835325.html

Overview of hardware and software virtualization basics, and the role that Oracle VM Server for SPARC plays in a virtualization strategy.

Press Review #13

Julien Gabel — Tue, 31 Jul 2012 19:07:00 +0200

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a little lot more:

future of AIX is my future too?

http://www.wmduszyk.com/?p=8717

Maybe all what is required is to have HMC “gui” designers to download a copy of “virtual box” or VMWare in order to get some inspiration? Maybe it is time to stop repeating how great AIX is and to return to the drafting board to make AIX and its components match the times (2012) we live in? It is not 1990 any more. I am with AIX since 3.2.5 and I have not seen any improvement in its access and control methods. Why? Are we perfect already?

Delegation of Solaris Zone Administration

https://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/delegation_of_solaris_zone_administration

In Solaris 11 'Zone Delegation' is a built in feature. The Zones system now uses finegrained RBAC authorisations to allow delegation of management of distinct zones, rather than all zones which is what the 'Zone Management' RBAC profile did in Solaris 10.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Oracle Solaris Porting Guide

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/documentation/o12-026-linux2solaris-guide-1686620.pdf

The purpose of this document is to enable developers to resolve issues faced during the migration of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) applications to Oracle Solaris 11. The document describes similarities and differences between the two environments in terms of architecture, system calls, tools, utilities, development environments, and operating system features. Wherever possible, it also provides pointed solutions and workarounds to address the specific porting issues that commonly arise due to implementation differences on these two platforms.

Which Tool Should I Use to Manage Which Virtualization Technology?

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/1688512

A summary of the interfaces and tools that sysadmins can use to set up and manage virtual server, operating system, network, and storage resources from Oracle. This article surveys the interfaces and tools that sysadmins can use to set up and manage virtual compute, memory, operating system, network, and storage resources from Oracle.

Some Insight Into Those Future Power7+ Processors

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh070912-story01.html

A few weeks ago, I told you that IBM was getting ready to start talking about its future Power7+ and System zNext processors at the Hot Chips conference at the end of August.

What's up with LDoms: Part 3 - A closer look at Disk Backend Choices

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/en/entry/what_s_up_with_ldoms3

In this section, we'll have a closer look at virtual disk backends and the various choices available here. As a little reminder, a disk backend, in LDoms speak, is the physical storage used when creating a virtual disk for a guest system. In other virtualization solutions, these are sometimes called virtual disk images, a term that doesn't really fit for all possible options available in LDoms.

Solaris11AutomatedInstaller

http://wiki.wesunsolve.net/Solaris11AutomatedInstaller

This documentation is intented to any Solaris sysadmin who wish to install from scratch an Automated Installer Server.

This document covers the installation of a SPARC client using AI from start to finish, including post-install configuration and os-specific basic configuration.

As the oracle documentation is spreaded accross a lot of different documents, I decided to write my own HOWTO to setup an AI server...

How I Got Started with the Btrfs File System for Oracle Linux

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/gettingstarted-btrfs-1695246.html

This article describes the basic capabilities that I discovered while becoming familiar with the Btrfs file system in Oracle Linux, plus the instructions I used to create a file system, verify its size, create subdirectories, and perform other basic administrative tasks.

One More Power Systems Roadmap For The Road

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh071612-story05.html

In last week's issue of The Four Hundred, I walked you through some Power processor and systems roadmaps that I was able to find out there on the Intertubes, as well as some specifics about the forthcoming Power7+ processors, which are due to come to market between now and the end of the year. I accidentally left one of the roadmaps I stumbled upon out of last week's story.

Tips for Hardening an Oracle Linux Server

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/tips-harden-oracle-linux-1695888.html

Oracle Linux provides a complete security stack, from network firewall control to access control security policies. While Oracle Linux is designed "secure by default," this article explores a variety of those defaults and administrative approaches that help to minimize vulnerabilities.

ASMLib

https://blogs.oracle.com/wim/entry/asmlib

Oracle ASMlib on Linux has been a topic of discussion a number of times since it was released way back when in 2004. There is a lot of confusion around it and certainly a lot of misinformation out there for no good reason. Let me try to give a bit of history around Oracle ASMLib.

The post-RAID era begins

http://storagemojo.com/2012/07/23/the-post-raid-era-has-begun/

The post-RAID (noRAID) era has begun. While RAID arrays aren’t going away, the growth is elsewhere, and corporate investment follows growth.

How to Manage ZFS Data Encryption

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/manage-zfs-encryption-1715034.html

Oracle Solaris 11 adds transparent data encryption functionality to ZFS. All data and file system metadata (such as ownership, access control lists, quota information, and so on) are encrypted when stored persistently in the ZFS pool.

Update the HBA firmware on Oracle-branded HBAs

Julien Gabel — Wed, 18 Jul 2012 11:00:00 +0200

Updating the emlxs driver will no longer automatically update the HBA firmware on Oracle-branded HBAs. If an HBA firmware update is required on an Oracle-branded HBA, a WARNING message will be placed in the /var/adm/messages file, such as this one:

# grep emlx /var/adm/messages
[...]
Jul 18 02:37:11 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 1.0340]emlxs0:WARNING:1540: Firmware update required. (A manual HBA reset or link reset (using luxadm or fcadm) is required.)
Jul 18 02:37:15 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 1.0340]emlxs1:WARNING:1540: Firmware update required. (A manual HBA reset or link reset (using luxadm or fcadm) is required.)
[...]

If found, this message is stating that the emlxs driver has determined that the firmware kernel component needs to be updated. To perform this update, execute luxadm -e forcelip on Solaris 10 (or a fcadm force-lip on Solaris 11) against each emlxs instance that reports the message. As stated in the documentation:

This procedure, while disruptive, will ensure that both driver and firmware are current. The force lip will temporarily disrupt I/O on the port. The disruption and firmware upgrade takes approximately 30-60 seconds to complete as seen from the example messages below. The example shows an update is needed for emlxs instance 0 (emlxs0) and emlxs instance 1 (emlxs1), which happens to correlate to the c1 and c2 controllers in this case.

# fcinfo hba-port
HBA Port WWN: 10000000c9e43860
        OS Device Name: /dev/cfg/c1
        Manufacturer: Emulex
        Model: LPe12000-S
        Firmware Version: 1.00a12 (U3D1.00A12)
        FCode/BIOS Version: Boot:5.03a0 Fcode:3.01a1
        Serial Number: 0999BT0-1136000725
        Driver Name: emlxs
        Driver Version: 2.60k (2011.03.24.16.45)
        Type: N-port
        State: online
        Supported Speeds: 2Gb 4Gb 8Gb
        Current Speed: 8Gb
        Node WWN: 20000000c9e43860
HBA Port WWN: 10000000c9e435fe
        OS Device Name: /dev/cfg/c2
        Manufacturer: Emulex
        Model: LPe12000-S
        Firmware Version: 1.00a12 (U3D1.00A12)
        FCode/BIOS Version: Boot:5.03a0 Fcode:3.01a1
        Serial Number: 0999BT0-1136000724
        Driver Name: emlxs
        Driver Version: 2.60k (2011.03.24.16.45)
        Type: N-port
        State: online
        Supported Speeds: 2Gb 4Gb 8Gb
        Current Speed: 8Gb
        Node WWN: 20000000c9e435fe

In order not to interrupt the service, and because MPxIO (native multipathing I/O) is in use, each emlxs instance will be update one after each other.

# date
Wed Jul 18 09:34:11 CEST 2012

# luxadm -e forcelip /dev/cfg/c1

# grep emlx /var/adm/messages
[...]
Jul 18 09:35:48 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 5.0334]emlxs0: NOTICE: 710: Link down.
Jul 18 09:35:53 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [13.02C0]emlxs0: NOTICE: 200: Adapter initialization. (Firmware update needed. Updating. id=67 fw=6)
Jul 18 09:35:53 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0ECB]emlxs0: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (AWC file: KERN: old=1.00a11  new=1.10a8  Update.)
Jul 18 09:35:53 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0EEB]emlxs0: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (DWC file: TEST:             new=1.00a4  Update.)
Jul 18 09:35:53 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0EFF]emlxs0: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (DWC file: STUB: old=1.00a12  new=2.00a3  Update.)
Jul 18 09:35:53 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0F1D]emlxs0: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (DWC file: SLI2: old=1.00a12  new=2.00a3  Update.)
Jul 18 09:35:53 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0F2C]emlxs0: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (DWC file: SLI3: old=1.00a12  new=2.00a3  Update.)
Jul 18 09:36:01 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0143]emlxs0: NOTICE:1521: Firmware download complete. (Status good.)
Jul 18 09:36:06 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 5.055E]emlxs0: NOTICE: 720: Link up. (8Gb, fabric, initiator)

# date
Wed Jul 18 09:39:51 CEST 2012

# luxadm -e forcelip /dev/cfg/c2

# grep emlx /var/adm/messages
[...]
Jul 18 09:41:35 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 5.0334]emlxs1: NOTICE: 710: Link down.
Jul 18 09:41:40 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [13.02C0]emlxs1: NOTICE: 200: Adapter initialization. (Firmware update needed. Updating. id=67 fw=6)
Jul 18 09:41:40 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0ECB]emlxs1: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (AWC file: KERN: old=1.00a11  new=1.10a8  Update.)
Jul 18 09:41:40 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0EEB]emlxs1: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (DWC file: TEST:             new=1.00a4  Update.)
Jul 18 09:41:40 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0EFF]emlxs1: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (DWC file: STUB: old=1.00a12  new=2.00a3  Update.)
Jul 18 09:41:40 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0F1D]emlxs1: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (DWC file: SLI2: old=1.00a12  new=2.00a3  Update.)
Jul 18 09:41:40 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0F2C]emlxs1: NOTICE:1520: Firmware download. (DWC file: SLI3: old=1.00a12  new=2.00a3  Update.)
Jul 18 09:41:48 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 3.0143]emlxs1: NOTICE:1521: Firmware download complete. (Status good.)
Jul 18 09:41:53 beastie emlxs: [ID 349649 kern.info] [ 5.055E]emlxs1: NOTICE: 720: Link up. (8Gb, fabric, initiator)

That's it. Lastly, the documentation says:

At this point, the firmware upgrade is complete as indicated by the Status good message above. A reboot is not strictly necessary to begin using the new firmware. But the fcinfo hba-port command may still report the old firmware version. This is only a reporting defect that does not affect firmware operation and will be corrected in a later version of fcinfo. To correct the version shown by fcinfo, a second reboot is necessary. On systems capable of DR, you can perform dynamic reconfiguration on the HBA (via cfgadm unconfigure/configure) instead of rebooting.

For my part, I tried to unconfigure/configure each emlxs instance using cfgadm without a reboot, but this didn't work as expected on Solaris 10. The fcinfo utility still report the old firmware version, seems until the next reboot.

Press Review #12

Julien Gabel — Sat, 30 Jun 2012 18:07:00 +0200

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a lot more:

How to Set Up a Load-Balanced Application Across Two Oracle Solaris Zones

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/loadbalancedapp-1653020.html

This article describes how to combine the built-in Integrated Load Balancer (ILB) with Oracle Solaris Zones and the new network virtualization capabilities of Oracle Solaris 11 to set up a virtual server on a single system. This article starts with a brief overview of ILB and follows with an example of setting up a virtual Apache Tomcat server instance. You will need a basic knowledge of Oracle Solaris Zones and networking administration.

How to Use Oracle VM Templates

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/configure-vm-templates-1656261.html

This article describes how to prepare an Oracle VM environment to use Oracle VM Templates, how to obtain a template, and how to deploy the template to your Oracle VM environment. It also describes how to create a virtual machine based on that template and how you can clone the template and change the clone's configuration. As an example, the article uses a template for Oracle Database that contains two disk images: an Oracle Linux system image and an Oracle Database image.

NUM_PARALLEL_LPS for AIX and for PowerHA

http://www.wmduszyk.com/?p=8556

This logical volume has stale partitions, so sync it. Doing 4 stale partitions at a time seems to be a win most of the time. However, we will honor the NUM_PARALLEL_LPS value in /etc/environment, if set.

DTrace in the zone

http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2012/06/07/dtrace-in-the-zone/

So with these three changes, I am relieved to report that DTrace is now completely usable in the non-global zone — and all without sacrificing the security model of zones! If you are a Joyent cloud customer, we will be rolling out a platform with this modification across the cloud (it necessitates a reboot, so don’t expect it before your next scheduled maintenance window); if you are a SmartOS user, look for this in our next SmartOS release; and if you are using another illumos-based distro (e.g., OpenIndiana or OmniOS) look for it in an upcoming release — we will be integrating these changes into illumos, so you can expect them to be in downstream distros soon. And here’s to DTrace in the zone!

What happened to the MAUs on T4?

https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/no_mau_required_on_a

Besides being much faster than its predecessors, the T4 also integrates hardware crypto acceleration so its seamlessly available to applications, whether domains are being used or not. Administrators no longer have to control how they are allocated - it is available to all CPUs and virtual environments without any administrative effort.

FOSS Support In Oracle Solaris

https://blogs.oracle.com/solarisfoss/entry/foss_support_in_oracle_solaris

Support of Free and Open Source Software in Oracle Solaris is described inside a knowledge article [ID 1400676.1], which can be found inside My Oracle Support (MOS). This knowledge article is the most definitive source of information concerning FOSS support in Oracle Solaris and shall be used by Oracle Solaris customers.

Virtualise Storage with Style: Shared Storage Pools

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/AIXDownUnder/entry/virtualise_with_style_powervm_webinars20

The team from IBM's Advanced Technology Support, Europe have done it again! Their free Webinar Series on Power Systems Virtualisation from IBM has another contribution from Nigel Griffiths, (a.k.a. Mr NMon). This presentation is on Shared Storage Pools from Experience - a kind of walk through of where the rubber hits the road. On the PowerVM Virtualisation Webinar Series Wiki, scroll down to Session 13: Shared Storage Pools ... from Experience.

Best Practices - Core allocation

https://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/best_practices_core_allocation

SPARC T-series servers currently have up to 4 CPU sockets, each of which has up to 8 or (on SPARC T3) 16 CPU cores, while each CPU core has 8 threads, for a maximum of 512 dispatchable CPUs. The defining feature of Oracle VM Server for SPARC is that each domain is assigned CPU threads or cores for its exclusive use. This avoids the overhead of software-based time-slicing and emulation (or binary rewriting) of system state-changing privileged instructions used in traditional hypervisors.

Oracle Solaris Zones Physical to virtual (P2V)

https://blogs.oracle.com/vreality/entry/oracle_solaris_zones_physical_to

This document describes the process of creating and installing a Solaris 10 image build from physical system and migrate it into a virtualized operating system environment using the Oracle Solaris 10 Zones Physical-to-Virtual (P2V) capability.

Networking in VirtualBox

https://blogs.oracle.com/fatbloke/entry/networking_in_virtualbox1

Networking in VirtualBox is extremely powerful, but can also be a bit daunting, so here's a quick overview of the different ways you can setup networking in VirtualBox, with a few pointers as to which configurations should be used and when.

Vendors, Systems, Processors, and Vendors Update

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2012/06/vendors-systems-processors-and-vendors.html

Hot Chips 24: A Symposium on High Performance Chips is right around the corner, and the agenda looks pretty exciting.

Upgrading a very, very, very old VIOS

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/AIXDownUnder/entry/upgrading_a_very_very_very_old_vios

This is the epic of the upgrade for the Virtual I/O server (VIOS) from version 1.4 to version 2.2.

Fragmentation de l'Intimate Shared Memnory (ISM)

http://www.gloumps.org/article-fragmentation-de-l-intimate-shared-memory-ism-106867569.html

Petit compte rendu sur un problème de performance que je viens de rencontrer sur un serveur Solaris Sparc avec une base de donnée Oracle. Le contexte étant le suivant : temps de réponse dégradés suite au reboot du serveur. Bien entendu, aucun changement entre les deux reboot et pourtant l'application fonctionne moins bien qu'avant.

Workload Partition (WPAR) - Answers

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/workload_partition_wpar_answers305

This week I spent 4 hours with a customer covering many advanced WPAR topics and took way a bunch of questions that I had to check the answers and ask the WPAR developers themselves to be sure I had the right answers. If the questions were not clear to my customers and I did know initially know the answers then there may be others with similar issues so I thought I would share the answers with everyone.

Workload Partition (WPAR) - Sharing filesystem Global AIX to WPAR

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/workload_partition_wpar_sharing_filesystem_global_aix_to_wpar73

From the Global AIX, I can add a filesystem to /wpars/WPARname/directory so the WPAR has access but what if I don't want to have the filesystem mounted there in the Global AIX?

POWER System Firmware Warnings & Red Lights on the Dashboard

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/power_system_firmware_warnings_red_lights_on_the_dashboard10

Earlier today I received email from a customer reporting their large POWER7 based machines where on firmware 720_64 to 720_90 and their reluctance to take the outage to upgrade it. They were asking for fine details of newer firmware levels and what advantages this would bring to "justify the outage to their user departments".

Breaking the telnet addiction with netcat

http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2012/06/26/breaking-the-telnet-addiction-with-netcat/

After many years of use it’s become almost second nature to type ‘telnet ’ when I need to see if a system has TCP port open. Newer systems no longer install telnet by default.

To extreme micro-partition or to Workload-Parttion, that is the question?

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/aixpert/entry/to_extreme_micro_partition_or_to_workload_parttion_that_is_the_question137

So I got asked, just as an example configuration which forces lots of workload per CPU:
Given a 16 CPU POWER machine and a need to run 100 workloads, would I recommend 100 LPARs or 100 WPARs?

Oracle VM Server for SPARC on YouTube

http://www.youtube.com/user/OVMSPARC

What's up with LDoms: Part 1 - Introduction & Basic Concepts

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/en/entry/what_s_up_with_ldoms

LDoms - the correct name is Oracle VM Server for SPARC - have been around for quite a while now. But to my surprise, I get more and more requests to explain how they work or to give advise on how to make good use of them. This made me think that writing up a few articles discussing the different features would be a good idea.

What's up with LDoms: Part 2 - Creating a first, simple guest

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/en/entry/what_s_up_with_ldoms1

In the first part, we discussed the basic concepts of LDoms and how to configure a simple control domain. We saw how resources were put aside for guest systems and what infrastructure we need for them. With that, we are now ready to create a first, very simple guest domain. In this first example, we'll keep things very simple. Later on, we'll have a detailed look at things like sizing, IO redundancy, other types of IO as well as security.

Magic Quadrant for x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure

http://www.gartner.com/technology/reprints.do?id=1-1AVRXJL&ct=120612

Oracle VM moves into Challenger Position in Gartner x86 Server Virtualization Infrastructure Magic Quadrant Report.

Présentation Automated Installer, TechDay Solaris 11, Guses, par Bruno Philippe

http://www.gloumps.org/photo-2085386-001_jpg.html

Press Review #11

Julien Gabel — Fri, 01 Jun 2012 08:51:00 +0200

Here is a little press review mostly around Oracle technologies and Solaris in particular, and a lot more:

Step-by-step instructions for using Oracle VM 3 to set up a cluster of highly available Sun x86 servers.

How to Set Up Automated Installation Services for Oracle Solaris 11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/howto-autoinstall-s11-1624122.html

How to get started creating, customizing, and configuring systems using Automated Installer in Oracle Solaris 11.

Independent Analyst Documents Significant ROI for Oracle Support Option

http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/60155-wwmk11055824mpp015c002-se-1558971.html

Organizations can see a 43 percent positive ROI over three years with Oracle Premier Support for Systems, Oracle’s comprehensive support program for server and storage hardware, according to a new study conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by Oracle.

Oracle Launches Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/events/cloudcontrolforsystems/

Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, which is now included with Oracle Premier Support on SPARC servers, allows you to accelerate mission-critical cloud deployment; unleash the power of Oracle Solaris 11, the first cloud operating system; and simplify Oracle engineered systems management.

Optimize Your Data Center with Oracle’s SPARC Servers and Oracle Solaris 11 Operating System

http://www.oracle.com/goto/newsletters/qtr/sparc/0512/vshow_2485.html?msgid=3-6385309861

See how Oracle’s SPARC servers and Oracle Solaris 11 operating system can provide the highest reliability, scalability, virtualization, and security, along with the greatest choice of applications.

White paper: A Technical Overview of Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster T4-4

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/sparc-enterprise/supercluster-t4-4-arch-wp-1537679.pdf

Linux Cost Calculator

Oracle Linux vs. Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Free 30-Day Trial of Ksplice Zero Downtime Uptime for Red Hat Enterprise Linux Customers

http://www.ksplice.com/rhel-signup

Take back your weekend and say goodbye to lengthy maintenance windows for kernel updates. With Ksplice, you can install kernel updates while the system is running.

Capacity Planning and Performance Management on IBM PowerVM Virtualized Environment

http://neerajbhatia.wordpress.com/2011/10/07/capacity-planning-and-performance-management-on-ibm-powervm-virtualized-environment/

As a capacity planner, I have to be proficient in virtualization techniques and latest happening in this space. Last year I got an opportunity to work on IBM’s power systems. Being from Solaris/Linux background it was quite difficult in the beginning to grasp the terminologies as they are different from Oracle VM, Solaris logical domains. So I decided to learn it and get comfortable with it. My paper is a result of my efforts in that direction.

So, what makes ZFS so cool? (Part I: high level overview)

https://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/so_what_makes_zfs_so

Don't get me wrong, ZFS is really cool. But it isn't exactly new technology, it's been around for a while now, the first implementations in 2003, included in Solaris 10 since S10 Update 2 in 2006. Everyone has heard about it being awesome, but every now and then I get the question for details: So tell me, what really makes ZFS so cool?

Tips for Maintaining Oracle Solaris 11 Systems with Support Repository Updates

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/tips-maintain-s11-sru-1627108.html

The Oracle Support Repository contains a number of bug fixes and critical security fixes that can be applied to existing Oracle Solaris 11 installations helping to ensure that systems run without a hitch in the data center. The Support Repository is updated on a monthly basis, and these updates are called Support Repository Updates (SRU). Unlike Oracle Solaris Update releases, which include a wide range of new operating system features, the Oracle Support Repository is available only to systems under a support contract and includes a smaller set of critical changes.

building an appliance? physical ? virtual? production quality? use Oracle Linux

https://blogs.oracle.com/wim/entry/building_an_appliance_physical_virtual

One Enterprise Linux distribution, for all of the above. We make it easy for you. Grab the code, binaries and source, use it, distribute it, build your environments with it, freely, no contracts needed. Need our help, get a support subscription. Choice, open. Virtual, physical, cloud. Not just obfuscated tar balls. No license or activation key, good consistent SLAs for releasing security updates, well tested,... Run Oracle Linux in-house in test and development environments, run it in production environments, use it for customer systems, distribute it, any or all of the above. One distribution that you can manage across all the use cases. No need to manage different versions even if they're similar, no need to make different distribution choices based on your use case and pay/not pay.

How to Deploy Oracle RAC On Zone Clusters

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/rac-zone-cluster-1631291.html

How to create an Oracle Solaris Zone cluster, install and configure Oracle Grid Infrastructure 11.2.0.2 and Oracle Real Application Clusters 11.2.0.2 in the zone cluster, and create an Oracle Solaris Cluster resource for Oracle RAC.

Translations

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7466-Translations.html

Whenever you use some virtual memory, there has to be some mapping from the virtual addresses to the real addresses. However to prevent the CPU to look again and again in - from CPU cycles perspective - distant memory areas, there are little caches in modern processors called translation lookaside buffer or short TLB. This TLBs are rather small, a T4 core has 128 entries. While sounding small, the TLB with such a number of entries has an astonishing high hit rate.

How to Upgrade to Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/upgrade-cluster4-0-1635866.html

This multi-part article provides a step-by-step example of how a single-instance cold-failover Oracle database can be upgraded from an Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 5/11 cluster to a new Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0 cluster. Note: There is no "in place" upgrade path (that is, no direct path using the same hardware) to Oracle Solaris 11 and Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0.

Summary: What's new with Solaris 11 since the launch?

https://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/what_s_new_with_solaris

There was a great online forum titled: Solaris 11: What's new since the launch? last week, and it has brought quite an amount of update and information about what indeed is going on on the Solaris 11 roadmap and how Solaris interacts and extends other products. I recommend you to watch it (just register, or if you have registered, after providing the registered mailaddress you can re-watch the recorded session.). For the ones lacking the time to watch the videos, allow me to attempt a summary.

Announcing Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.2 Release

https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/announcing_oracle_vm_server_for1

The new release delivers significant enhancements that improve workload agility and performance, maximize the availability of business-critical applications, and increase flexibility in provisioning and deployment. Oracle VM Server for SPARC takes advantage of the massive thread scale offered by SPARC T-Series servers and the Oracle Solaris operating system.

How to Get Started Configuring Your Network in Oracle Solaris 11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/s11-network-config-1632927.html

The Oracle Solaris 11 network architecture is significantly different from previous releases of Oracle Solaris. Not only has the implementation changed, but so have the names of network interfaces and the commands and methods for administering and configuring them.

These changes were introduced to bring a more consistent and integrated experience to network administration, particularly as administrators add more-complex configurations including link aggregation, bridging, load balancing, or virtual networks. In addition to the traditional fixed networking configuration, Oracle Solaris 11 introduced automatic network configuration through network profiles.

How to Create Multiple Internal Repositories for Oracle Solaris 11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/int-s11-repositories-1632678.html

Some customers connect directly to hosted Oracle Solaris package repositories to get the latest fixes, but most customers set up a local repository due to network restrictions or the desire to control which updates their systems have access to. This article provides best practices for managing local repositories through the complete software lifecycle from development and testing to production deployment.

Benefits of using Ops Center to deploy and manage Solaris 11

https://blogs.oracle.com/oem/entry/benefits_of_using_ops_center

One of the more significant new features in Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c is the ability to install Ops Center on Oracle Solaris 11, and to deploy and manage systems running Solaris 11. The Solaris 11 capabilities are in addition to the analogous features for Solaris 10 and Linux, which can all be handled from the same Ops Center infrastructure.

Press Review #10

Julien Gabel — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:33:00 +0200

Here is a little press review around Oracle technologies, and Solaris in particular:

IOPS and latency are not related - HDD performance explored

http://blog.richardelling.com/2012/03/iops-and-latency-are-not-related-hdd.html

Today, we routinely hear people carrying on about IOPS-this and IOPS-that. Mostly this seems to come from marketing people: 1.5 million IOPS-this, billion IOPS-that. Right off the bat, a billion IOPS is not hard to do, the metric lends itself rather well to parallelization...

How to Use the Power Management Controls on SPARC Servers

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/pwr-mgmt-sparc-cmt-1563618.html

SPARC T-Series systems have power-saving features designed into the hardware and software. These features allow you to reduce server power consumption, which leads to a cost reduction for environmental cooling and reduced power usage by other infrastructure components. The SPARC T-Series power management (PM) interfaces make it easy to manage these PM features.

Solaris: What comes next?

https://blogs.oracle.com/alanc/entry/solaris_what_comes_next

As you probably know by now, a few months ago, we released Solaris 11 after years of development. That of course means we now need to figure out what comes next - if Solaris 11 is “The First Cloud OS”, then what do we need to make future releases of Solaris be, to be modern and competitive when they're released? So we've been having planning and brainstorming meetings, and I've captured some notes here from just one of those we held a couple weeks ago with a number of the Silicon Valley based engineers.

Solaris 11 features: nscfg

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7452-Solaris-11-features-nscfg.html

As you may have noticed many configuration tasks around name services have moved into the SMF in Solaris 11. However you don't have to use the svccfg command in order to configure them, you could still use the old files. However you can't just edit them, you have to import the data into the SMF repository. There are many reasons for this need but the ultimate one is in the start method. I will explain that later. In this article i want to explain, how nscfg can help you with with the naming service configuration of your system.

New Oracle VM Hardware Certifications

https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/new_oracle_vm_hardware_certifications

We've received inquiries from the community on certification of Oracle VM 3.0 on HP Proliant systems. We're pleased to update that we've recently completed certification of the HP Proliant systems for Oracle VM 3.0.

Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster is now Supported by SAP

http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/sap/infrastructure/sparc-supercluster-for-sap-1559291.pdf

Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster now runs the Oracle Database, the SAP central instance, application or web server, and Oracle Enterprise Manager management software along with all your SAP applications.

POWER, AMD, Itanium, and SPARC

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2012/04/power-amd-itanium-and-sparc.html

The addition of compression engines (in the T5), in addition to the well-know crypto engines in the SPARC T Series will be a welcome capability addition for general purpose computing. Fewer proprietary crypto cards, proprietary network devices with crypto engines, and proprietary disk arrays (sporting compression, encryption, and dedup) will be needed - to achieve outstanding performance of general purpose applications running under SPARC.

How the SPARC T4 Processor Optimizes Throughput Capacity: A Case Study

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/t-series-latency-1579242.pdf

Latency is the time delay between when a request is sent and the moment the result of the request is delivered. Such delays can be found between many components within a computer system and can have a significant impact on performance.

In this paper, the focus is on instruction-level latencies, which are usually expressed in processor cycles. Many instructions have a fixed latency, but there are also instructions with a latency that depends on the runtime conditions or data type format.

AIX to Oracle Solaris 11 Evaluation

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/aix-mapping-guide-1566108.html

The following guide gives an overview of some of the technologies included in Oracle Solaris 11 and the direct benefit you can get by using some of these features. This guide also provides a similar technology mapping, where possible, between IBM AIX and Oracle Solaris 11, so that administrators with knowledge in the former can kick start their learning experience if planning deploy the latter.

dtrace.conf(12) wrap-up

http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2012/04/09/dtrace-conf12-wrap-up/

For the second time in as many quadrennial dtrace.confs, I was impressed at how well the unconference format worked out. Sharing coffee with the DTrace community, it was great to see some of the oldest friends of DTrace — Jarod Jenson, Stephen O’Grady, Jonathan Adams to name a few — and to put faces to names — Scott Fritchie, Dustin Sallings, Blake Irvin, etc — of the many new additions to the DTrace community. You can see all the slides and videos; these are my thoughts and notes on the day.

Ksplice: Kernal Update Without Reboot

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2012/04/ksplice-kernal-update-without-reboot.html

Operating Systems normally comprise two distinct layers: the kernel and the user space. Normally, updating the kernel would require a reboot, so the OS can apply a new kernel module. Operating Systems like Solaris created a mechanism called "live update" to update OS Kernel, OS User Space, or even third-party applications (not to mention provide rollback) with merely a reboot. Oracle Solaris 11 facilitates virtually unlimited patch/rollback cycles leveraging ZFS. The new Ksplice tool from Oracle allows for Linux to get closer to Solaris uptime requirements by providing for kernel updates without reboot, leaving OS User Space and Applications to normal reboot or application restart cycles.

How to Avoid Your Next 12-Month Science Project

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/04/how-avoid-your-next-12-month-science-project

Could it be there's more going on behind the scenes than merely putting together a bunch of servers, a storage array and an InfiniBand network into a rack? Let's explore some of the special sauce that makes Exalogic unique and un-copyable, so you can save yourself from your next 6- to 12-month science project that distracts you from doing real work that adds value to your company.

How to Update Oracle Solaris 11 Systems Using Support Repository Updates

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/o11-018-howto-update-s11-1572261.html

Oracle Solaris 11 includes a new package management system that greatly simplifies the process of managing system software helping to reduce the risk of operating system maintenance, including planned and unplanned system downtime. Image Packaging System (IPS) takes much of the complexity out of software administration with its ability to automatically calculate dependencies, and it merges both the package and patch management into a single administrative interface.

This article steps through updating an Oracle Solaris 11 system with software packages that are provided with an active Oracle support agreement. In the process, it covers some of the basics that you should know to ensure an update goes successfully and safely.

IBM Launches Hybrid, Flexible Systems Into The Data Center

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh041612-story01.html

It takes a little time and a lot of money to roll out a new server architecture, and even a company as large as IBM can't do it very often. The System/360 in 1964. The System/38 in 1979 and its follow-on, the AS/400, in 1988. The RS/6000 in 1990. The BladeCenter in 2002, and the Sequent-inspired clustered server nodes in the xSeries and pSeries in the mid-2000s. iDataplex in 2008. And now the PureSystem converged infrastructure launched last week, in 2012.

OmniOS builds on Illumos to make a complete operating system

http://omnios.omniti.com/

"OmniOS is our vision of what OpenSolaris could have been had it remained in the open. It runs better, faster and has more innovations," continued Schlossnagle. "OmniTI did not want to lose the benefits that OpenSolaris technologies brought to customers, so we decided to pursue the continuation of the OS on our own. [...]"

Latency and I/O Size: Cars vs Trains

http://blog.richardelling.com/2012/04/latency-and-io-size-cars-vs-trains.html

A legacy view of system performance is that bigger I/O is better than smaller I/O. This has led many to worry about things like "jumbo" frames for Ethernet or setting the maximum I/O size for SANs. Is this worry justified? Let's take a look...

PureSystems Giving You Job Jitters? The Doctor is In!

https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/mydeveloperworks/blogs/AIXDownUnder/entry/puresystems_job_jitters_the_doctor_is_in25

Will these IBM PureSystems put me out of a job?

After all, you've had a successful career configuring systems, tuning them, rebuilding them, finding performance bottlenecks, writing scripts, and juggling high user expectations with a budget that would starve a mouse. Now there are these new systems that are configured in the blink of an eye, tune themselves and (you may be thinking), don't need you.

Well, before you sign the extinction certificate and set up the world's first museum for experienced AIX sys admins, have a think about the number of reasons your career is not doomed as of 11 April 2012, the day the new IBM PureSystems were launched.

How I Decide Which Virtualization Technology to Use

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/which-virt-1592222.html

When the time comes to update your hardware, some workloads that were comfortably ensconced in their own hardware need to be consolidated onto systems with virtual environments. But how do you choose between the various methods of virtualization? For instance, Oracle Solaris lets you create a virtual network. And virtual storage. You can allocate memory and CPUs to workloads in interesting ways. Oracle Solaris Zones (previously called Oracle Solaris Containers) lets you virtualize entire systems. You also have different hypervisors to choose from. And what about the hardware virtualization options in SPARC and x86 platforms -- how do they add to your options, and when should you use them?

Performability Analysis

http://blog.richardelling.com/2012/04/performability-analysis.html

Modern systems are continuing to evolve and become more tolerant to failures. For many systems today, a simple performance or availability analysis does not reveal how well a system will operate when in a degraded mode. A performability analysis can help answer these questions for complex systems. In this blog, an updated version of an old blog post on performability, I'll show one of the methods we use for performability analysis.

How to Live Install from Oracle Solaris 10 to Oracle Solaris 11 11/11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/howto-solaris-live-install-1599365.html

First, you create a set of ZFS send archives—golden image—on an Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 system that is the same model as your Oracle Solaris 10 system. Then you install this golden image on an unused disk of the system running Oracle Solaris 10 to enable it to be rebooted into Oracle Solaris 11 11/11. The basic system configuration parameters from the Oracle Solaris 10 image are stored and applied to the Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 image.

Get Ready to Change your Job

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/04/get-ready-change-your-job

As new IT concepts like virtualization, Engineered Systems, Cloud Computing, DevOps, new services, patterns and languages emerge, they force IT organizations to re-think and adapt roles, responsibilities and jobs to the new reality. Change is a constant in IT, and the current times are likely to see a lot more change than we have seen before.

Enable DTrace hooks in GENERIC

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/svn-src-all/2012-April/052347.html

This commit enables DTrace in FreeBSD-10 GENERIC kernel!

Séminaire Oracle SPARC SuperCluster

Julien Gabel — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 08:56:00 +0200

I had the great opportunity to assist to the french event Séminaire Oracle SPARC SuperCluster: Le premier système intégré Oracle multi-fonctions, which took place in Paris last Tuesday, April 5, 2012.

Follow the slides corresponding to this event.

Title: Introduction Harry Zarrouk

Speaker: Harry Zarrouk, Managing Director, Oracle Systems France

URL: http://www.ndclients.com/oracle/downloads/00_intro_ssc_harry_zarrouk.pdf (fr) (1.4 MB)

Title: Présentation Oracle SPARC SuperCluster

Speaker: Jean-Yves Migeon, Business Development Manager

URL: http://www.ndclients.com/oracle/downloads/01_ssc_overview.pdf (fr) (1.5 MB)

Title: Solutions optimisées Oracle sur SPARC SuperCluster

Speaker: Eric Bezille, CTO Oracle Hardware France

URL: http://www.ndclients.com/oracle/downloads/02_rapid_appli_reduced_risk_oos.pdf (fr) (1.4 MB)

Title: Illustration avec Oracle PeopleSoft HCM/Scenarii d'intégration

Speaker: Nathalie Sabatte, Principal Sales Consultant Applications

Speaker: Eric Bezille, CTO Oracle Hardware France

URL: http://www.ndclients.com/oracle/downloads/03_peoplesoft_on_ssc.pdf (fr) (1.2 MB)

Title: SPARC SuperCluster, un système "Production Ready"

Speaker: Pascal Guy, Solution Architect, EMEA Expert Server Group

URL: http://www.ndclients.com/oracle/downloads/04_ssc_production_ready.pdf (fr) (2.4 MB)

Title: SPARC SuperCluster: retour d'expérience clients

Speaker: Dario Wiser, Sr.Manager, SuperCluster Business Development

URL: http://www.ndclients.com/oracle/downloads/05_supercluster_ref_usecases.pdf (fr) (0.4 MB)

Press Review #9

Julien Gabel — Mon, 02 Apr 2012 18:13:00 +0200

Here is a little press review around Oracle technologies, and Solaris in particular:

Are SSD-based arrays a bad idea?

http://storagemojo.com/2012/03/05/are-ssd-based-arrays-a-bad-idea/

Think: if NAND flash storage arrays were being developed today, what is the chance that we’d put the flash into little bricks and then plug a bunch of them into a backplane? So why do it now?

Shall I use Zones or LDOMs?

https://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/shall_i_use_zones_or

Of course one can't answer this question without talking about the platform requirements and the reasons to pick the right technologies, but before we'd go into details, let me get the most important statement straight: Zones and LDOMs are not rivalling, but complementary technologies. If you need kernelspace separation, use ldoms. But run your applications in zones within those ldoms anyway!

Zones? Clusters? Clustering zones? Zoneclusters?

https://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/zones_clusters_clustering_zones_zoneclusters

Everyone values zones, Solaris' builtin OS-virtualization. They are near-footprintless. Their administration is delegable. They have their own bootenvironments. Easily cloneable with ZFS snapshots, etc. They are also cleanly integratable with Solaris Cluster in different ways - this post should shed some light on the different options, and provide an example of zoneclusters.

POWER: Loss of Sony Playstation Platform

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2012/03/power-loss-of-sony-playstation-platform.html

Apple abandoned PowerPC for Intel in 2006, leaving IBM POWER without a desktop partner. Sony is rumored to discontinue use of IBM POWER for their gaming consoles in the PlayStation 4, starting the decline of POWER in the gaming market. POWER7+ from IBM is now nearly a half-year late and IBM has still not delivered as of March 2012.

Cheatsheet for configuring...

There are quite a number of changes in the procedures to configure some of the networking parameters. Many things have changed, that were just editing of a file in the past, have now command-line based tools in order to change their parameters. Before you ask: The reason for this steps are quite simple.

Solaris Fingerprint Database - How it's done in Solaris 11

https://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/solaris_fingerprint_database_how_it

Many remember the Solaris Fingerprint Database. It was a great tool to verify the integrity of a solaris binary. Unfortunately, it went away with the rest of sunsolve, and was not revived in the replacement, "My Oracle Support". Here's the good news: It's back for Solaris 11, and it's better than ever!

Sun ZFS Storage Appliance : can do blocks, can do files too!

https://blogs.oracle.com/roch/entry/sun_zfs_storage_appliance_can

As a benchmark SPC-1's profile is close to what a fixed block size DB would actually be doing. See Fast Safe Cheap : Pick 3 for more details on that result. Here, for an encore, we're showing today how the ZFS Storage appliance can perform in a totally different environment : generic NFS file serving.

The USE Method...

A serious performance issue arises, and you suspect it’s caused by the server. What do you check first? Back when I was teaching operating system performance, I wanted a methodology my students could follow to find common issues quickly, without overlooking important areas. Like an emergency checklist in a flight manual, it would be something simple, straightforward, complete and fast. I eventually came up with the “USE” method (short for “Utilization Saturation and Errors”), which I’ve used many times successfully in enterprise environments, and more recently in cloud computing environments.

Getting Started with Oracle Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/uek-rel2-getting-started-1555632.html

This article describes how you can update your Oracle Linux systems to the latest version of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel. By switching to the latest Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel, you can get the latest innovations in mainline Linux. Switching is easy—applications and the operating system remain unchanged. There is no need to perform a full re-install; only the relevant RPM packages are replaced. You can obtain future updates easily from the Unbreakable Linux Network to keep your systems fully patched and secured.

Oracle Solaris 11 Cheatsheet

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7442-Oracle-Solaris-11-Cheatsheet.html

In the last few days i created a cheat sheet for Solaris 11 ... while it's still a work in progress (it will be surely longer in the future).

Performance impact of the new mtmalloc memory allocator

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7443-Performance-impact-of-the-new-mtmalloc-memory-allocator.html

I didn't wrote about this as it was in my phase of silence but there was some change in the allocator area, Solaris 10 got a revamped mtmalloc allocator in version Solaris 10 08/11 (as described in "libmtmalloc Improvements"). The new memory allocator was introduced to Solaris development by the PSARC case 2010/212.

Linux Kernel Performance: Flame Graphs

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2012/03/17/linux-kernel-performance-flame-graphs/

To get the most out of your systems, you want detailed insight into what the operating system kernel is doing. A typical approach is to sample stack traces; however, the data collected can be time consuming to read or navigate. Flame Graphs are a new way to visualize sampled stack traces, and can be applied to the Linux kernel for some useful (and stunning!) visualizations.

'Cheap' Oracle box bashes NetApp benchmark

Save one MILLION dollars, get 32% more speed

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/03/15/oracle_zfs_spec_result/

The Sun ZFS 7320 scored 134,140 SPECsfs2008 IOPS with an overall response time of 1.51msecs and cost $179,602.

Oracle quotes a price of $1,215,290 for NetApp's FAS3270 which scored 101,183 IOPS with a 1.66msec response time.

The Oracle-NetApp pricing difference is huge and, on the face of it, paying $1,035,698 more for 32 per cent less performance is not an attractive idea for a basic NFS file-serving box.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux to Oracle Solaris 11 Evaluation

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/redhat-mapping-guide-1555721.html

The following guide gives an overview of some of the technologies included in Oracle Solaris 11 and the direct benefit you can get by using some of these features. This guide also provides a similar technology mapping, where possible, between Red Hat Enteprise Linux and Oracle Solaris 11, so that administrators with knowledge in the former can kick start their learning experience if planning deploy the latter.

How To install Solaris 11 automated install server

https://blogs.oracle.com/unixman/entry/how_to_install_solaris_11

This a quick blog entry designed to outline the commands that can aid in the process of setting up a Solaris 11 Automated Install server. More details and an overview of what's changed, are of course available at the Simplified Installation section of the Oracle Solaris 11 Spotlight pages.

Great Solaris 10 features paving the way to Solaris 11

https://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/great_solaris_10_features

Again: the main message is: Go for Solaris 11 if you can. If you need to run Solaris 10, we recommend deploying the mentioned technologies, they can and will improve your daily system engineering business and prepare your platform for the move to Solaris 11.

How to Find Out What's in an Oracle Solaris Binary File

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/o11-160-binary-1451031.html

How to determine the contents of Oracle Solaris binaries and what tools you can use to read, extract, and delete sections. Plus, the effect of compiler flags on binary file size and how to reduce the size of the executable.

SPARC: Life in the Fast Lane - 10 Months Later

http://netmgt.blogspot.fr/2012/03/sparc-life-in-fast-lane-10-months-later.html

Both Oracle and Fujitsu are independently pursuing SPARC in disjoint, non-overlapping, markets. They are not the only vendors creating new production quality SPARC processors (as noted by the former #1 HPC system from China.) SPARC appears to have a long road ahead, being implemented by multiple vendors, and each implementation performing best in it's class.

Problem with the beadm utility inside a Zone

Julien Gabel — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 14:06:00 +0100

Although beadm utility is now supported inside a non-global zone, I find a case where its behavior seems not works as expected. So, connected inside a Zone (say, myzone), I can create a new BE (say, solaris-1), activate it, and reboot on it.

ZG# zoneadm list -vc
  ID NAME             STATUS     PATH                           BRAND    IP
   0 global           running    /                              solaris  shared
   4 myzone           running    /zones/myzone                  solaris  excl

ZG# zlogin myZone
[Connected to zone 'myzone' pts/7]
Oracle Corporation      SunOS 5.11      11.0    February 2012

ZNG# beadm list
BE      Active Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
--      ------ ---------- -----   ------ -------
solaris NR     /          917.06M static 2012-03-21 14:04

ZNG# beadm create solaris-1

ZNG# beadm activate solaris-1

ZNG# beadm list
BE        Active Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
--        ------ ---------- -----   ------ -------
solaris   N      /          43.0K   static 2012-03-21 14:04
solaris-1 R      -          917.19M static 2012-03-21 16:48

ZNG# init 6
[Connection to zone 'myzone' pts/9 closed]

ZG# zlogin myzone
[Connected to zone 'myzone' pts/7]
Oracle Corporation      SunOS 5.11      11.0    February 2012

ZNG# beadm list
BE        Active Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
--        ------ ---------- -----   ------ -------
solaris   -      -          3.06M   static 2012-03-21 14:04
solaris-1 NR     /          979.46M static 2012-03-21 17:56

All works very well, I didnt get any problem and can do whatever I want after that: fallback on the other BE, go on with this one installing new packages, create more new BE, etc.

But if I tried to automagically create a new BE from the pkg utility, the created BE seems not have all the good stuff it must had.

ZNG# pkg install --require-new-be site/application/testpkg
           Packages to install:   1
       Create boot environment: Yes
Create backup boot environment:  No

DOWNLOAD                                  PKGS       FILES    XFER (MB)
Completed                                  1/1       20/20      0.0/0.0

PHASE                                        ACTIONS
Install Phase                                  73/73

PHASE                                          ITEMS
Package State Update Phase                       1/1
Image State Update Phase                         2/2
pkg: '/sbin/bootadm update-archive -R /tmp/tmpCqUVIT' failed.
with a return code of 1.

A clone of solaris exists and has been updated and activated.
On the next boot the Boot Environment solaris-1 will be
mounted on '/'.  Reboot when ready to switch to this updated BE.

ZNG# beadm list
BE        Active Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
--        ------ ---------- -----   ------ -------
solaris   N      /          102.0K  static 2012-03-21 14:04
solaris-1 R      -          950.52M static 2012-03-21 17:39

So a new BE was created, but this time there is something wrong. Try to see what's missing:

ZNG# beadm list
beadm mount newsolaBE         Active Mountpoint Space   Policy Created
--         ------ ---------- -----   ------ -------
newsolaris R      -          864.50M static 2012-03-21 17:52
solaris    N      /          80.84M  static 2012-03-21 14:04
ZNG# beadm mount newsolaris /mnt

ZNG# bootadm  update-archive -vn -R /mnt
file not found: /mnt//boot/solaris/bin/create_ramdisk
/mnt/: not a boot archive based Solaris instance

ZNG# ls -l /mnt/boot/solaris/bin/create_ramdisk
/mnt/boot/solaris/bin/create_ramdisk: No such file or directory

ZNG# ls -l /mnt/boot
/mnt/boot: No such file or directory

ZNG# ls -l /mnt
total 72
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root           9 Mar 21 14:17 bin -> ./usr/bin
drwxr-xr-x  17 root     sys           18 Mar 21 17:18 dev
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root           2 Mar 21 14:26 dpool
drwxr-xr-x  48 root     sys          114 Mar 21 17:52 etc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     sys            2 Mar 21 14:11 export
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root     root           2 Mar 21 14:11 home
drwxr-xr-x  12 root     bin          185 Mar 21 14:17 lib
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     sys            2 Mar 21 14:11 mnt
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root     root           2 Mar 21 14:26 net
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root     root           2 Mar 21 14:26 nfs4
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     sys            2 Mar 21 14:11 opt
dr-xr-xr-x   2 root     root           2 Mar 21 14:11 proc
drwx------   2 root     root           5 Mar 21 16:50 root
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root           2 Mar 21 14:26 rpool
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root     root          10 Mar 21 14:17 sbin -> ./usr/sbin
drwxr-xr-x   5 root     root           5 Mar 21 14:11 system
drwxrwxrwt   2 root     sys            2 Mar 21 17:19 tmp
drwxr-xr-x   2 root     root           2 Mar 21 14:26 tools
drwxr-xr-x  22 root     sys           32 Mar 21 14:26 usr
drwxr-xr-x  28 root     sys           29 Mar 21 14:17 var

Well, I don't why there is a difference between those two BE, but the differences are significant enough to be a problem.

Comments welcome!

Press Review #8

Julien Gabel — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 19:14:00 +0100

Here is a little press review around Oracle technologies, and Solaris in particular:

How I Used CGroups to Manage System Resources In Oracle Linux 6

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/resource-controllers-linux-1506602.html

Having worked with resource controls in Oracle Solaris, I was anxious to learn how to do the same thing in Oracle Linux 6 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK). Resource management using control groups (cgroups) is just one of many new features in Oracle Linux 6. Cgroups give administrators fine-grained control over resource allocations, helping to make sure that applications get what they need to deliver consistent response times and adequate performance.

ZFS: Apple Enters Storage Arena

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2012/02/zfs-apple-enters-storage-arena.html

With the creation of ZFS, Apple MacOSX has finally made it into the realm of being a very viable platform for server applications. No longer will people need to use MacOSX as a client and buy a SPARC or Intel Solaris platform as a server to gain the benefits of ZFS. Common designers, video publishers, and media collectors can now just add the occasional multi-terabyte hard drive and just keep on building their data collection with limited concern for failure - it will all be protected with parity and old deletions can be easily rolled back.

Intimate Shared Memory (ISM) et Solaris x86

Suite à une migration d'une base de données Oracle d'une architecture Solaris Sparc à une architecture Solaris x86, l'équipe DBA a décidé d'utiliser pleinement la mémoire disponible sur cette nouvelle infrastructure. Disposant d'un serveur avec 512 Go de mémoire, la SGA de la base Oracle a été positionnée à 290 Go (afin de diminuer les lectures physiques et d'éviter les locks R/W). L'augmentation de cette SGA a eu un bénéfice important sur les opérations de lectures (plus d'activité sur les disques SAN concernant les lectures) par contre le système Solaris saturait...

Standard Locations (why?)

http://blogs.oracle.com/SolarisSMF/entry/standard_locations_why

The manifest-import service manages importing of manifests that are delivered as part of a package for an application. This instantiates the service and its instances on the system. The manifest-import service will then manage re-importing those manifests if they are modified/upgraded in some way.

Changes to svccfg import and delete

http://blogs.oracle.com/SolarisSMF/entry/changes_to_svccfg_import_and

The behavior of svccfg import and svccfg delete fmri has changed in S11 if the manifests are in SMF's standard locations.

Oracle’s SPARC T4 Server Momentum Expands Demand for SPARC Systems

https://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/Press-Releases/Oracle-s-SPARC-T4-Server-Momentum-Expands-Demand-for-SPARC-Systems-2806.aspx

SPARC T4 Servers Adopted By Customers Across All Industries, Regions

Oracle Beats NetApp and EMC in Storage Magazine Quality Awards for NAS

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/1505421

Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliances Earn Highest Ratings for Enterprise and Midrange NAS Systems

Solaris and SPARC virtualization management features of Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center including "Live Migration"

http://blogs.oracle.com/oem/entry/virtualization_features_of_oem_ops

Virtualization is not a new concept; however, there have been numerous advances in recent years that are helping businesses to be more effective at managing their virtualized environments. The easier it is to manage assets reliably, with reduced risk of downtime, the better the ability to focus on optimizing asset utilization in balance with required Service Level Objectives.

Fujian Mobile Replacing its Existing Teradata System with Oracle Exadata

http://blogs.oracle.com/databaseinsider/entry/fujian_mobile_replacing_its_existing

China Mobile (Fujian) (Fujian Mobile) is a rapidly expanding subsidiary of China Mobile (HK) Group. Fujian Mobile’s customer base has expanded rapidly with subscribers growing from 2 million to more than 22 million in the past few years. To meet this increasing demand, Fujian Mobile is replacing its current Teradata system with a full-rack Oracle Exadata system for its next-generation high performance BASS.

SPARC: Road Map Updated!

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2012/02/sparc-road-map-updated.html

The SPARC Road Map has been experiencing updates at a tremendous pace over the past few years, with new SPARC releases either happening early, with higher performance, or with a combination of the two. It is quite exciting to see SPARC back in the processor game again!

Less known Solaris 11 features: Shadow Migration

http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7432-Less-known-Solaris-11-features-Shadow-Migration.html

In the ZFS Storage Appliance we have little nice feature enabling you to do migrations of data in the background. It's called Shadow Migration. It's a really useful feature. Imagine you have a RAIDZ. After a time you recognize that RAIDZ wasn't a good decision for your workload and RAID10 would be much better choice. But how to transform it into a RAID10 and how to do it with minimal interruption? You can do this with the Shadow Migration feature. With the Shadow Migration feature, you can migrate the data from one local or remote filesystem to another, while you are already accessing the new one to get the data on the old ZFS filesystem. This feature is available in Solaris 11 as well.

Installing ZFS on a CentOS 6 Linux server

http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2012/02/13/installing-zfs-on-a-centos-6-linux-server/

As most of my long term readers know I am a huge Solaris fan. How can’t you love an Operating System that comes with ZFS, DTrace, Zones, FMA and Network Virtualization amongst other things? I use Linux during my day job, and I’ve been hoping for quite some time that Oracle would port one or more of these technologies to Linux. Well the first salvo has been fired, though it wasn’t from Oracle. It comes by way of the ZFS on Linux project, which is an in-kernel implementation of ZFS (this project is different from the FUSE ZFS port).

Increasing Application Availability by Using the Oracle VM Server for SPARC Live Migration Feature: An Oracle Database Example

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/ovm-sparc-livemigration-1522412.pdf

One of the most significant business challenges is to create and preserve value in a highly competitive environment, while keeping business applications available and reducing costs. It is important to maximize the business application availability during planned or unplanned outages. This document provides information about increasing application availability by using the Oracle VM Server for SPARC software (previously called Sun Logical Domains).

By using an example and presenting various scenarios, this paper describes how to take advantage of the Live Migration capability in the Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.1 software to increase the availability of an Oracle Database 11g Release 2 single-instance database.

Oracle Security Evaluations

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/security/security-evaluations-099357.html

Oracle Security Evaluations are an integral part of the Oracle Software Security Assurance program. Go to Security Evaluations for more information on the evaluations and validations that Oracle undertake.

CIFS Sharing on Solaris 11

https://blogs.oracle.com/paulie/entry/cifs_sharing_on_solaris_11

Things have changed since Solaris 10 (and Solaris 11 Express too!) on how to properly set up a CIFS server on your Solaris 11 machine so that Windows clients can access files. There's some documentation on the changes here, but let me share the full instructions from beginning to end.

The Difference Between a Standard and a Preferred Vendor

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/02/difference-between-standard-and-preferred-vendor

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?

Three Enterprise Architecture Principles for Building Clouds

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/02/three-enterprise-architecture-principles-building-clouds

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.

Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3 has now been packaged for IPS

http://pkg-register.oracle.com/

Go to http://pkg-register.oracle.com/ for details of adding your cert, key and publisher info!

Oracle OpenWorld Live / Oracle on Youtube / Oracle Solaris TechCasts

Julien Gabel — Fri, 17 Feb 2012 18:57:00 +0100

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