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Press Review #7

Julien Gabel — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 18:25:00 +0100

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

Analyzing Interrupt Activity with DTrace

http://blogs.oracle.com/timc/entry/analyzing_interrupt_activity_with_dtrace

Interrupts are events delivered to CPUs, usually by external devices (e.g. FC, SCSI, Ethernet and Infiniband adapters). Interrupts can cause performance and observability problems for applications.

Performance problems are caused when an interrupt "steals" a CPU from an application thread, halting its process while the interrupt is serviced. This is called pinning - the interrupt will pin an application thread if the interrupt was delivered to a CPU on which an application was executing at the time.

ZFSSA/S7000 major update

http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2012/01/zfssas7000-major-update.html

The first major software update of S7000/ZFSSA/Fishwork in over a year is now available. With the original version "2011.Q1" it seems a bit delayed, perhaps due to the departure several key persons behind the software post Oracle acquisition of Sun.

The all-seeing eye of DTrace

http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2012/01/all-seeing-eye-of-dtrace.html

I was recently involved with a problem related to backup software running on Solaris, as part of a general health check of the system I stumbled on something interesting that was not visible using conventional tools.

Windows 8: Getting More ZFS'ish

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2012/01/windows-8-getting-more-zfsish.html

Storage has always been a part of operating systems. Over time, storage capabilities have increasingly became more sophisticated in operating systems, consuming features from 3rd party partners. Occasionally, a vendor will release very sophisticated increments to their operating systems. Windows 8 is projected to receive more ZFS-like features, to make it more competitive with Solaris, when Sun release ZFS over a half-dozen years ago.

Big Data : opportunité Business et (nouveau) défi pour la DSI ?

http://blogs.oracle.com/EricBezille/entry/big_data_opportunité_business_et

Comme le souligne une étude de McKinsey ("Big Data: The next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity"), la maîtrise des données (dans leur diversité) et la capacité à les analyser à un impact fort sur l’apport que l’informatique (la DSI) peut fournir aux métiers, pour trouver de nouveaux axes de compétitivité. Pour ne citer que 2 exemples, ils estiment que l'exploitation du Big Data pourrait permettre d'économiser plus de €250 milliards sur l'ensemble du secteur publique Européens (identification des fraudes, gestion et mesures de l'efficacité des affectations des subventions et des plans d'investissements, ...). Quant au secteur marchand, la simple utilisation des données de géolocalisation pourrait permettre un surplus globale de $600 milliards[...]

Activity of the ZFS ARC

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2012/01/09/activity-of-the-zfs-arc/

Disk I/O is still a common source of performance issues, despite modern cloud environments, modern file systems and huge amounts of main memory serving as file system cache. Understanding how well that cache is working is a key task while investigating disk I/O issues. In this post, I’ll show the activity of the ZFS file system Adaptive Replacement Cache (ARC).

Engineered Systems and Enterprise Architecture (or: How to Sell Dog Food Online)

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2012/01/engineered-systems-and-enterprise-architecture-or-how-sell-dog-food-online

One of the first things that customers and sales teams realize when dealing with Engineered Systems is: They fundamentally change the IT architecture of a business.

Change is good, it means progress. But change is sometimes seen as a bad thing: Change comes with fear.

The truth is that Engineered Systems really empower IT architects to add value to their business, application and data architectures, without worrying about the technology architecture.

New My Oracle Support User Interface to Replace HTML-Based User Interface on January 27, 2012

http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/100042350-wwsu11104830mpp001-oem-1489365.html

On January 27, 2012, we will upgrade My Oracle Support’s current HTML-based user interface (UI) to a new one built using Oracle’s Application Development Framework (ADF). This upgrade is driven by customer feedback, and will help provide our My Oracle Support HTML-based users more streamlined access to support information and services.

NEW CERTIFICATION: Oracle Certified Associate (OCA), Oracle Solaris 11 System Administrator

http://blogs.oracle.com/certification/entry/0684a

Oracle Certification announces the release of the new "Oracle Certified Associate, Oracle Solaris 11 System Administrator" certification. This certification is for Oracle Solaris system administrators who possess a strong foundation in the administration of the Oracle Solaris 11 Operating System and are proficient in essential system administration skills such as managing local disk devices, managing file systems, installing and removing Solaris packages and patches, performing system boot procedures and system processes.

Solaris Tip: How-To Identify Memory Mapped Files

http://blogs.oracle.com/mandalika/entry/solaris_tip_how_to_identify

A memory mapped (mmap'd) file is a shared memory object, or a file with some portion or the whole file was mapped to virtual memory segments in the address space of an OS process. Here is one way to figure out if a given object (file or shared memory object) was memory mapped in a process or not.

New Storage Magazine awards for NAS...

http://blogs.oracle.com/7000tips/entry/new_storage_magazine_awards_for

Storage Magazine just came out with the January 2012 issue, showing Oracle Storage doing quite well (#1) with the Oracle ZFSSA 7420 and 7320 family. Check out pages 37-43 of this month's Storage Magazine. Storage Magazine: http://docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_10x/io_103104/item_494970/StoragemagOnlineJan2012final2.pdf (pages 37-43)

SSDs and the TPC-C top 10

http://storagemojo.com/2012/01/19/ssds-and-the-tpc-c-top-10/

If SSDs are so great, shouldn’t we see the results in TPC-C benchmarks? They are, and we do.

But there are some surprises.

MWAC in Global Zone

http://milek.blogspot.com/2012/01/immutable-global-zone.html

Solaris 11 has a new cool feature called Immutable Zones. [...] Immutable Zones basically allow for read-only or partially read-only Zones to be deployed. You can even combine it with ZFS encryption - see Darren's blog entry for more details. The underlying technology to immutable zones is called Mandatory Write Access Control (MWAC) and is implemented in kernel. So for each open, unlink, etc. syscall a VFS layer checks if MWAC is enabled for a given filesystem and a zone and if it is it will check white and black lists associated with a zone and potentially deny write access to a file (generating EROFS).

IBM Slashes Some Power7 Processor Prices

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh012312-story01.html

The new year is well under way and IBM, as we report elsewhere in this issue of The Four Hundred, has closed out last year and is facing whatever new challenges it has. The big one is that new Opteron 6200 processors from Advanced Micro Devices and Sparc T4 processors from Oracle are out, and the even bigger problem is that the Xeon E5 processors from Intel are shipping under NDA to selected customers and are expected to launch this quarter.

With Power7+ machines expected this year, intense competition from X86 and Sparc iron, and a bunch of Power7 machines probably sitting in the barn at IBM's resellers, there may never be a better time to get a discount on Power7 processors.

How Dell Migrated from SUSE Linux to Oracle Linux

How Dell planned and implemented the migration, including key conversion issues and an overview of their transition process.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/dell-linux-1498654.html

In June of 2010, Dell made the decision to migrate 1,700 systems from SUSE Linux to Oracle Linux, while leaving the hardware and application layers unchanged. Standardization across the Linux platforms helped make this large-scale conversion possible. The majority of the site-specific operating system and application configuration could simply be backed up and restored directly on the new operating system. Configuration changes were minimal and most could be automated, easing the administration effort required and helping achieve a reliable and consistent transition procedure.

ZFS Storage Appliance Calculator

http://www.oracle.com/us/media/calculator/zfs/index.html

Hardware and Systems Upgrade

http://www.oracle.com/oms/hardwareupgrade/index.html

Learn how to upgrade and why refreshing your data center makes good business sense.

Oracle Solaris and Oracle SPARC T4 Servers—Engineered Together for Enterprise Cloud Deployments

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/solaris-and-sparc-t4-497273.pdf

Over the last 25 years, the Oracle Solaris has been developed hand-in-hand with systems built around the SPARC processor. Oracle Solaris is tightly integrated with the many system level capabilities of the SPARC T4 processor, providing scalable, high-performance compute capability coupled with integrated high-speed networking and cryptographic acceleration.

Today, with Oracle Solaris 10 and SPARC T4 systems, existing applications can receive an immediate performance boost and at the same time companies can begin extending their operations into the cloud with Oracle Solaris 11.

Use the OPN Fast Track to move your Application to Oracle Solaris 11

http://blogs.oracle.com/partnertech/entry/use_the_opn_fast_track

The first building block is the Oracle Solaris binary guarantee. It warrants that Oracle Solaris 10 binaries can be executed on Oracle Solaris 11 without recompilation.

Even binary compatible applications rely on all the frame works which have been provided with Oracle Solaris 10. Applications who need this fine grained support of the older Oracle Solaris 10 infrastructure are likely to work smoothly on Oracle Solaris 11systems using an Oracle Solaris 10 branded zone. This will work as long as the applicaton has been supported to run in a Oracle Solaris 10 zone before.

Oracle and the Solaris Brand

http://www.mis-asia.com/tech/operating-systems/oracle-and-the-solaris-brand/

When Oracle Corp. acquired to save some brands of Sun Microsystems April 2009 through January 2010, much was made about the enterprise software giant’s entry to the hardware business. Now, two years on, things are looking up for one of the industry’s better known platforms for performance and stability through the last couple decades—Solaris. Just last month, Markus Flierl, Vice President of Software Development, Oracle, told MIS Asia what Oracle has been doing to breathe new life into Solaris and where he expects the new platform to add value to industry users.

Press Review #6

Julien Gabel — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 18:20:00 +0100

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

Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool 5.3 now available

http://blogs.oracle.com/solariscat/entry/oracle_solaris_crash_analysis_tool

The Oracle Solaris Crash Analysis Tool Team is happy to announce the availability of release 5.3. This release addresses bugs discovered since the release of 5.2 plus enhancements to support Oracle Solaris 11 and updates to Oracle Solaris versions 7 through 10.

Hard Partitioning!

http://blogs.oracle.com/cmt/entry/hard_partitioning1

Since December 2, LDoms count as "Hard Partitioning". This makes it possible to license only those cores of a server with Oracle software that you really need.

Announcing Release of Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0!

Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0 offers the best availability for enterprise applications with instant system failure detection for fastest service recovery. It includes out-of the box support for Oracle database and applications such as Oracle WebLogic Server and is pre-tested with Oracle Sun servers, storage and networking components. It is optimized to leverage the SPARC SuperCluster redundancy and reliability features and delivers the high availability infrastructure for the Oracle Optimized Solutions.

Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 Certified on Solaris 11

http://blogs.oracle.com/stevenChan/entry/oracle_e_business_suite_release1

Oracle Solaris 11 was announced last week, and I'm pleased to also announce that Oracle E-Business Suite Release 12.1 is now certified on Oracle Solaris on SPARC (64-bit).

LDoms networking in Solaris 11

http://blogs.oracle.com/raghuram/entry/ldoms_networking_in_solaris_11

The network stack for Oracle Solaris 11 has been substantially re-architected in an effort known as the project Crossbow. One of the main goals of Crossbow is to virtualize the hard NICs into Virtual NICs (VNICs) to provide more effective sharing of networking resources. The VNIC feature allows dividing a physical NIC into multiple virtual interfaces to provide independent network stacks for applications.

How low can we go ? (Minimised install of Solaris 11)

http://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/how_low_can_we_go

I wondered how little we can actually install as a starting point for building a minimised system. The new IPS package system makes this much easier and makes it work in a supportable way without all the pit falls of patches and packages we had previously.

Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3 Launched!

http://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_studio_12_3

Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3, Oracle's advanced C, C++ and Fortran development tool suite, accelerates application performance up to 300% on Oracle Systems, provides extreme application observability and enhances developer productivity. Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3 is optimized for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Linux, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems.

Disgruntled employee? Oracle doesn't seem to care about Solaris 11 code leak

http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/disgruntled-employee-oracle-doesnt-seem-to-care-about-solaris-11-code-leak.ars

The source code for Oracle's Solaris 11 operating system is now out in the open for anyone to peruse and compile, thanks to a furtive posting of a compressed archive that has been mirrored across scores of bitstreams and filesharing sites. But so far, Oracle hasn't moved to do anything about it, and the question remains whether the code was leaked by a disgruntled Oracle employee, or if this is the strangest open-source code-drop in history.

The Rise of Engineered Systems

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/12/rise-engineered-systems

The point is:
Building IT systems is complicated, time-consuming, error-prone, unpredictable, resource-intensive, expensive and risky.

Or, more shortly:
The way we build IT today is broken.

That's what Oracle’s Engineered Systems are about.

How to Install and Configure a Two-Node Cluster

Using Oracle Solaris Cluster 4.0 on Oracle Solaris 11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/o11-147-install-2node-cluster-1395587.html

How to quickly and easily install and configure Oracle Solaris Cluster software for two nodes, including configuring a quorum device.

The case of the un-unmountable tmpfs

http://dtrace.org/blogs/ahl/2011/12/12/the-case-of-the-unmountable-tmpfs/

Every once in a rare while our development machines encounter an fatal error during boot because we couldn’t unmount tmpfs. This weekend I cracked the case, so I thought I’d share my uses of boot-time DTrace, and the musty corners of the operating systems that I encountered along the way. First I should explain a little bit about what happens during boot and why we were unmounting a tmpfs filesystem.

2000x performance win

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/12/08/2000x-performance-win/

I recently helped analyze a performance issue in an unexpected but common place, where the fix improved performance of a task by around 2000x (two thousand times faster). As this is short, interesting and useful, I’ve reproduced it here in a lab environment to share details and screenshots.

Flame Graphs

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/12/16/flame-graphs/

Determining why CPUs are busy is a routine task for performance analysis, which often involves profiling stack traces. Profiling by sampling at a fixed rate is a coarse but effective way to see which code-paths are hot (busy on-CPU). It usually works by creating a timed interrupt that collects the current program counter, function address, or entire stack back trace, and translates these to something human readable when printing a summary report.

Profiling data can be thousands of lines long, and difficult to comprehend. Flame graphs are a visualization for sampled stack traces, which allows hot code-paths to be identified quickly and accurately.

Visualizing Device Utilization

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/12/18/visualizing-device-utilization/

Device utilization is a key metric for performance analysis and capacity planning. In this post, I’ll illustrate different ways to visualize device utilization across multiple devices, and how that utilization is changing over time.

As a system to study, I’ll examine a production cloud environment that contains over 5,000 virtual CPUs (over 600 physical processors).

Coming Soon: My Oracle Support Next-Generation User Interface

My Oracle Support will receive a new user interface built using Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF). The new interface is designed to deliver faster, more streamlined access to support information and services. The upgrade will bring immediate benefits and also establish a new, state-of-the-art platform for service innovation over time.

More thoughts on ZFS compression and crash dumps

http://blogs.oracle.com/cwb/entry/more_thoughts_on_zfs_compression

Thanks to Darren Moffat for poking holes in my previous post, or more explicitly pointing out that I could add more useful and interesting data. Darren commented that it was a shame I hadn't included the time to take a crash dump along side the size, and space usage. The reason for this is that one reason for using vmdump format compression from savecore is to minimize the time required to get the crash dump off the dump device and on to the file system.

Oracle Solaris 11, Aimed at Cloud Deployments, Enhances Network Virtualization

December 07, 2011 - IDC Link

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/analystreports/idc-solaris-11-1406314.pdf

Although customer updates have been shipping to customer sites for many years, this was the first major release of Solaris in seven years — and the first major release since Oracle acquired Sun Microsystems in January 2010. Following a beta program that began in 2010, there were more than 750 customers with Solaris 11 in production at launch.

Oracle Solaris runs on the Oracle SPARC hardware systems and on x86 server systems (systems based on Intel or AMD x86 microprocessors). Oracle sees this dual-platform approach as a differentiator from the two other major Unix operating systems, IBM AIX and HP-UX 11 v3, which run on POWER and Itanium systems, respectively, but not on x86 architecture. […] This dual-platform support, with SPARC and x86, gave Solaris a bigger footprint in datacenter through the early 2000s and helped sustain the full portfolio of 11,000 Solaris ISV applications.

Oracle has expanded the functionality of Solaris with Oracle Solaris 11 — adding new features related to virtualization and cloud computing. There is a very short list of vendors that show this kind of continued investment in operating systems — including Microsoft (Windows); Red Hat (Linux); and the two leading Unix competitors, IBM and HP.

SPARC T4 Server eBook

http://www.oracle-downloads.com/sparc_t4_server_ebook/

The Oracle ACE Program Newsletter| December 2011

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/oracle-ace/ace-newsletter-nov2011-1391303.pdf

Press Review #5

Julien Gabel — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 16:27:00 +0100

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

Oracle Delivers On SPARC Promises With New T4 Processors And Systems

http://blogs.forrester.com/richard_fichera/11-09-26-oracle_delivers_on_sparc_promises_with_new_t4_processors_and_systems

This is a major milestone for Oracle and its server community. The virtues of the SuperCluster aside, it is the first tangible product of their commitments to a renewed investment in SPARC processor technology, and as such, it looks impressive. It retains the highly threaded throughput-oriented architecture of the T-series, and makes major improvements in single-threaded performance, which was a weakness in previous generations of T-series technology. But most importantly, it is early, laying to rest the ghosts of previous disasters at Sun and Oracle, validating not only Oracle’s intentions but their ability to execute with this new stream of CPU architectures.

CloudSigma invites Solaris to frolic on its cloud

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/02/cloudsigma_solaris_infrastructure_cloud/

CloudSigma, an infrastructure cloud operator based in Zurich, is letting customers run Solaris and the ZFS file system on its cloud, giving it full peer status with Linux and Windows operating systems.

Robert Jenkins, CloudSigma CTO, tells El Reg that the company is not putting servers using either Sparc64 or Sparc T series processors into its clouds. However, the company will let the x86 version of Solaris 10 run around its cloud and play alongside of myriad Linux and Windows distributions.

The System Developer's Edge, by Darryl Gove

Selected Blog Posts and Articles

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/archive/r11-005-sys-edge-archive-495362.pdf

The Developer's Edge was envisioned as an almanac for developers, something that gathered together a set of useful resources that could be dipped into, referred to, or read cover-to-cover. The book was never intended as the only location where the information resided, however some of the content is no longer available elsewhere, making it fortuitous that it has been captured here.

While the main body of text has not been changed, the book has been updated to the Oracle brand. The title has changed to include the word "systems", to target the intended audience more clearly.

Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 12c: Complete, Integrated and Business-Driven Cloud Management

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/oem/cloud-mgmt/cloudmgmt12c-wp-516612.pdf

Everyone is now talking about cloud and most of the IT vendor has latched on to the Cloud promise. Traditional systems management vendors are no exceptions. However, in most cases, Cloud is treated as a technology fashion, the newest buzzword in the ever changing landscape of enterprise technology.

This whitepaper delves into what really makes an enterprise Cloud. It covers the complete cloud life cycle and how Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c offers a complete, integrated and business-driven cloud management.

Engineered and General Purpose Systems

http://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/engineered_and_general_purpose_systems

The virtues of Oracle's engineered systems, news about which came to the fore at Oracle OpenWorld2011, are discussed by Jeff Savit's blog post Engineered and General Purpose Systems, where he stresses the economy to the user of Oracle's integrated approach in saving customers time spent on the "non-revenue generating efforts" involved with designing and configuring enterprise systems. Because Oracle's engineered systems are designed to be optimal for a particular workload class, validated and proven by Oracle to be reliable, simple to purchase, configure and manage, and have dramatically superior performance for their target purpose. Furthermore, Savit notes, these systems are built on industry-standard components rather than rare or exotic chips, in order to take advantage of price/performance advances. So, while there will always be a niche at least for general purpose systems, the advantages of the engineered system will prove compelling in most instances, Savit predicts.

Replacing the Application Packaging Developer’s guide

The guide is a lot shorter than the old book – currently 56 pages, as opposed to the 190 pages in the document it replaces. Some of this is because of the fewer examples we have, but also we don’t have to write about patch creation, complex postinstall or class-action scripting or relocatable packages. IPS is simpler than SVR4 in many ways, though there is a learning curve, which this book aims to help with.

The SPARC T4 servers are here!

http://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/the_sparc_t4_servers_have

The M-Series are designed with Mainframe-class RAS features (Reliability, Availability, Serviceability). They are based on the Sparc64-VII+ CPUs, excelling at single threaded performance.

The T-Series are the CoolThread servers, with the CMT (chipmultithreading) design, they are designed to run heavily parallel workloads, concentrating on throughput, running up to 512 threads actively at the same time, if desired.

The latter category just got a brand new update, let's see, what makes the T4 special.

Here are a few technical blog entries stacked up using new security capabilities of Solaris 11:

Completely disabling root logins on Solaris 11
User home directory encryption with ZFS & PAM
Password caching for Solaris su
Immutable Zones on Encrypted ZFS
OpenSSL Versions in Solaris
HOWTO Turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration

Oracle VM vs. VMware vSphere Cost Calculator

http://www.oracle.com/goto/ServerVirtualizationTCO

This online calculator let you experiment with different scenarios and see the total cost of ownership in real world dollars for various solutions.

Oracle Solaris 11 Engineered for Oracle VM Server Virtualization

http://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/oracle_solaris_11_engineered_for

Oracle Solaris 11 was announced today. Oracle Solaris 11 is engineered for Oracle VM sever virtualization on both x86 and SPARC based systems, providing deployment flexibility and secure live migration.

Solaris 11 DTrace syscall Provider Changes

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/11/09/solaris-11-dtrace-syscall-provider-changes/

Oracle Solaris 11 dropped many commonly used probes from the DTrace syscall provider, a disappointing side-effect of some code refactoring in the system call trap table (PSARC 2010/441 “delete obsolete system call traps”). This breaks a lot of scripts and one liners, including many that are used to teach beginners DTrace. Functionality is still (I think) possible, albeit by learning trap table mappings and tracing those.

What's new on the Solaris 11 Desktop?

http://blogs.oracle.com/calum/entry/what_s_new_on_the

Much has been written today about the enterprise and cloud features of Oracle Solaris 11, which was launched today, but what's new for those of us who just like to have the robustness and security of Solaris on our desktop machines? Here are a few of the Solaris 11 desktop highlights.

UNIX - Dead or alive?

The extinction of UNIX is not going to happen in our lifetimes

http://blogs.computerworlduk.com/infrastructure-and-operations/2011/10/unix---dead-or-alive/index.htm

Looking to the future of UNIX, Fichera predicts vendors will offer improved scalability in both hardware and software; and that there will be improvements in oline maintenance and availability, along with improved partitioning and in systems management tools as well. None of these developments, it hardly need be said, could take place without sufficient marketplace interest in UNIX. Fichera is confident that it exists and will continue. He also expects continued interest in UNIX from Oracle, IBM and HP.

The IPS System Repository

http://timsfoster.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/the-ips-system-repository/

Some packages in the zone always need to be kept in sync with those packages in the global zone. For example, anything which delivers a kernel module and a userland application that interfaces with it must be kept in sync between the global zone and any non-global zones on the system.

Performing a pkg update from the global zone ensures that all zones are kept in sync, and will update all zones automatically (though, as mentioned in the Zones administration guide, pkg update will simply update the global zone, and ensure that during that update only the packages that cross the kernel/userland boundary are updated in each zone.)

SPARC T4 OpenSSL Engine

http://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/sparc_t4_openssl_engine

The SPARC T4 microprocessor has several new instructions available to perform several cryptography functions in hardware. These instructions are used in a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine available in Solaris 11, the t4 engine. These new crypto instructions are different from previous generations of SPARC hardware, which has separate crypto processing units./p>

Solaris X86 AESNI OpenSSL Engine

http://blogs.oracle.com/DanX/entry/solaris_x86_aesni_openssl_engine

The Intel Westmere microprocessor has six new instructions to accelerate AES encryption. They are called "AESNI" for "AES New Instructions". These are unprivileged instructions, so no "root", other elevated access, or context switch is required to execute these instructions. These instructions are used in a new built-in OpenSSL 1.0 engine available in Solaris 11, the aesni engine.

My New Favorite Tool: Oracle VM VirtualBox

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/vmlove-1368887.html

This article explains how I used Oracle VM VirtualBox to save time when testing database installation procedures. Oracle VM VirtualBox proved to be an incredibly useful tool because I could easily create multiple OS installation test cases as well as snapshot my progress at various points along the way.

Virtually the fastest way to try Solaris 11 (and Solaris 10 zones)

http://blogs.oracle.com/dminer/entry/virtually_the_fastest_way_to

If you're looking to try out Solaris 11, there are the standard ISO and USB image downloads on the main page. Those are great if you're looking to install Solaris 11 on hardware, and we hope you will. But if you take the time to look down the page, you'll find a link off to the Oracle Solaris 11 Virtual Machine downloads. There are two downloads there:

A pre-built Solaris 10 zone
A pre-built Solaris 11 VM for use with VirtualBox

Critical Threads Optimization

http://blogs.oracle.com/observatory/en_US/entry/critical_threads_optimization

The hardware is providing mechanisms to dynamically resource threads according to their runtime behavior.

We're very aware of these challenges in Solaris, and have been working to provide the best out of box performance while providing mechanisms to further optimize applications when necessary. The Critical Threads Optimization was introduced in Solaris 10 8/11 and Solaris 11 as one such mechanism that allows customers to both address issues caused by contention over shared hardware resources and explicitly take advantage of features such as T4's dynamic threading.

Solaris 11 : les nouveautés vues par les équipes de développement

http://blogs.oracle.com/EricBezille/entry/solaris_11_les_nouveautés_vues

Pour ceux qui ne sont pas dans la liste de distribution de la communauté des utilisateurs Solaris francophones, voici une petite compilation de liens sur les blogs des développeurs de Solaris 11 et qui couvre en détails les nouveautés dans de multiples domaines.

Sparc M4 chips etched by Oracle, not Fujitsu

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/18/oracle_sparc_m4_not_fujitsu/

In a briefing with El Reg to discuss the Solaris 11 launch, we pointed out that while the logical domain (LDom) partitioning technology on the Sparc T series was good and competitive with anything in the RISC/Unix and x86 server spaces, the dynamic domain hardware partitions used in the Sparc Enterprise M machines were a little bit rigid by comparison and that Oracle had to do something to bring LDoms to the future M4 processors.

Solaris 11 Customer Maintenance Lifecycle

This new blog is all about the Customer Maintenance Lifecycle for Image Packaging System (IPS) based Solaris releases, such as Solaris 11. It'll include policies, best practices, clarifications, and lots of other stuff which the writer hope you'll find useful as you get up to speed with Solaris 11 and IPS.

Let's start with a version of its Solaris 11 Customer Maintenance Lifecycle presentation which he gave at this year's Oracle Open World and at the recent Deutsche Oracle Anwendergruppe (DOAG - German Oracle Users Group) conference in Nürnberg.

Forum Oracle : Transformation du Data Center, l'innovation par l'intégration

Julien Gabel — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 14:26:00 +0100

I had the great opportunity to assist to the french event Forum Oracle : Transformation du Data Center, l'innovation par l'intégration, which took place in Paris last Tuesday, November 8, 2011.

Follow the slides corresponding to this event.

Title: Changing the Game by Simplifying I.T.

Speaker: Olivier Brot, Senior Sales Director Hardware BU Country Leader

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/1-olivier-brot-intro-1368628.pdf (fr) (1,5 MB)

Title: The Oracle Story

Speaker: John Abel, Chief Technology Architect; EMEA Server and Storage

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/2-john-abel-oraclestory-1368637.pdf (en) (5,8 MB)

Title: Datacenter Transformation with Oracle Engineered Systems

Speaker: Dario Wiser, Head of Datacenters & Servers, HW Business Development EMEA

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/3-dct-keynote-1368643.pdf (en) (2,7 MB)

Title: Comment construire votre Cloud avec Oracle ?

Speaker: Eric Bezille, CTO Oracle HW Business Unit France

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/4-eric-bezille-dct-pvt-cloud-key-1368654.pdf (fr) (1,3 MB)

Title: Oracle Exadata Database Machine & Oracle Exalogic

Speaker: Denis Martin, Exadata Business Development Manager; Antonio Ferreira, Architect Software

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/5-denismartin-ant-fer-exa-exalogic-1368666.pdf (en) (3,5 MB)

Title: New Engineered Solutions : BigData et Exalytics pour anticiper l’explosion de nos données

Speaker: Pascal Guy, Architecte groupe EMEA Expert Server

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/6-pascal-guy-new-eng-sol-1368670.pdf (en) (1,5 MB)

Title: Déploiements rapides, performants et sécurisés des applications avec la nouvelle génération des systèmes SPARC

Speaker: Jean-Yves Migeon; EMEA Oracle HW Business Development; Eric Bezille

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/7-ericbezille-jym-supercluster-1368680.pdf (fr) (2,6 MB)

Title: Transformative Oracle Storage Solutions For Datacenter Consolidation, Virtualization and Cloud

Speaker: Jacques Villain, Principal Sales Consultant, EMEA Long Term Storage TEAM

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/8jacques-transformative-storage-1368634.pdf (en) (2,5 MB)

Title: Présentation ALTARES: Optimisation du Datacenter

Speaker: M. Christophe Le Caignec, Directeur Système et Sécurité Informatique, ALTARES

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/9altares-c-lecaignec-1368648.pdf (fr) (0,2 MB)

Title: Realize The Full Potential of Your Application Infrastructure with Oracle’s Virtualized Systems

Speaker: Christophe PAULIAT, Sales Consultant, Hardware BU

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/10-christophe-servervirtualization-1368683.pdf (en) (1,2 MB)

Title: Total Cloud Control with Oracle EM 12c

Speaker: Alain Scazzola, Business Development Manager

URL: http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/11alain-scazzola-em12c-1368695.pdf (en) (4,4 MB)

Oracle Solaris 11 Launch Highlights

Julien Gabel — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:17:00 +0100

Here is a little press review around the launch of Oracle Solaris 11:

Oracle Solaris 11 How to Articles

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/documentation/how-to-517481.html

Installation
System Configuration
Network Management
Software Management
Virtualization
Development

Oracle Solaris : 11 New Things You Need To Know (Flash Video)

http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/tech/OTN_Demos/11_Things/S11-Featurette/S11-Featurette-play.html

Recent Benchmarks Using Oracle Solaris 11

https://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/entry/20111109_solaris_11_benchmark_list

The following is a list of links to recent benchmarks which used Oracle Solaris 11.

SPARC T4-2 Delivers World Record SPECjvm2008 Result with Oracle Solaris 11
SPARC T4-4 Produces World Record Oracle OLAP Capacity
SPARC T4-2 Server Beats Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on ZFS Encryption Tests
SPARC T4 Processor Beats Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on AES Encryption Tests
SPARC T4 Processor Outperforms IBM POWER7 and Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on OpenSSL AES Encryption Test
SPARC T4-1 Server Outperforms Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on IPsec Encryption Tests
SPARC T4-2 Server Beats Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on SSL Network Tests
SPARC T4-2 Server Beats Intel (Westmere AES-NI) on Oracle Database Tablespace Encryption Queries

UNIX 03 Product Standard Conformance

Oracle Solaris 11 is certified on SPARC and X86-based platforms as conforming to the UNIX 03 product standard, effective November 8, 2011, per The Open Group.

Oracle dubs Solaris 11 world's 'first cloud OS'

'Absolutely spanking' IBM and HP

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/09/oracle_solaris_11_unix_os/

More importantly, the delay is the result of Oracle's desire to fully leverage the Sparc processor, the Solaris operating system, and the Oracle stack of database, middleware, and application software as a highly tuned system with a better system for testing and patching software in the entire stack as it changes and thereby allowing Oracle to command a premium for Sparc-based systems because they are easier to operate and support.

This is, of course, the old AS/400 value proposition that IBM has been selling its midrange customers for more than two decades. The difference now is that Oracle actually believes it, and IBM, which makes a lot more money selling services to integrate piece parts and support them than selling its Power Systems running the integrated IBM i software stack, can't afford to.

Fowler opened up his technical review of Solaris 11 by reminding everyone that Solaris had more deployments than HP-UX and AIX combined, and added that "operating systems are something that only improve over time."

Fowler said that Solaris 10, which was launched in January 2005, would be getting its own updates soon and would, in fact, be supported on future Sparc T5 and M4 systems due next year.

On roadmaps for the past year and a half, Fowler has shown that Oracle's long-term goal is to deliver in late 2014 or early 2015 a machine that has 64 sockets with a total of 16,384 threads and supporting 64TB of main memory.

Oracle Solaris 11: The First Cloud OS

https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_11_the_first

Oracle Solaris 11 is the first operating system engineered with cloud computing in mind. We believe you should expect more from your OS -- especially as you start considering public, private and hybrid clouds for enterprise-class workloads.

And what's most important: all of this is integrated, engineered and optimized to work together: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It's the power of this that makes Oracle Solaris unique.

S11 X11: ye olde window system in today's new operating system

https://blogs.oracle.com/alanc/entry/s11_x11

Today's the big release for Oracle Solaris 11, after 7 years of development. For me, the Solaris 11 release comes a little more than 11 years after I joined the X11 engineering team at what was then Sun, and finishes off some projects that were started all the way back then.

In total, we recorded 1512 change request id's during Solaris 11 development, from the time we forked the “Nevada” gate from the Solaris 10 release until the final code freeze for todays release - some were one line bug fixes, some were man page updates, some were minor RFE's and some were major projects, but in the end, the result is both very different (and hopefully much better) than what we started with, and yet, still contains the core X11 code base with 24 years of backwards compatibility in the core protocols and APIs.

The most inviting Solaris 11 features - Part I, Boot Environments

https://blogs.oracle.com/orasysat/entry/the_most_inviting_solaris_111

"Having been involved in various projects around the upcoming Solaris 11 release, we had the possibility to compile a list of features we assume UNIX Engineers will find to be cornerstones of Solaris 11 based platforms. It wasn't easy to keep the list short, due to the sheer amount of innovation and the tight integration of the new- or updated technologies in this Solaris release.

We have planned a series of blog posts with a short preview of each Solaris 11 technologies in the list, in a Question and Answer form."

This is the first post, featuring Boot Environments.

Solaris 11 Released As Cloud Virtualisation OS

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/solaris-11-released-as-cloud-virtualisation-os-45461

The delayed release has been much-anticipated because Solaris still matches the combined user base for HP-UX and AIX, Oracle executive vice president of systems John Fowler claimed. However the transition from Sun to Oracle has hit the server division quite hard and Oracle is no doubt hoping that the new OS release will help turn the tide.

Oracle Solaris Goes to 11

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/243537/oracle_solaris_goes_to_11.html

Solaris, a Unix implementation, was originally developed by Sun Microsystems, which Oracle acquired last year. While not as widely known for its cloud software, Oracle has been marketing Solaris as a cloud-friendly OS. In Oracle's architecture, users can set up different partitions, called Zones, inside a Solaris implementation, which would allow different workloads to run simultaneously, each within their own environment, on a single machine.

First impressions of Solaris 11 11/11

http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2011/11/first-impressions-of-solaris-11-1111.html

I have had a few hours to try the final Solaris 11 release, overall I think it is far more stable and polished than the previous "Early Adaptors" release. Besides the fact that I am unable to use semi-old SPARC gear to test the release since only the latest generations of hardware are supported I have found few real problem so far.

Watch the Oracle Solaris 11 Launch

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/events/solaris11launch/

Watch as Oracle executives Mark Hurd and John Fowler announce the launch of Oracle Solaris 11, which brings proven enterprise capabilities to private, public, and hybrid clouds. Oracle Solaris 11 is the industry's best UNIX operating system with unique features including advanced file system technologies, advanced security, and built-in virtualization in every dimension.

Learn how Oracle Solaris 11 has been engineered, tested, and supported to get the most of SPARC and x86 systems including Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, Oracle Exadata Database Machine, and SPARC SuperCluster engineered systems.

Solaris 11: Oracle Launches Cloud OS

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2011/11/solaris-11-oracle-launches-cloud-os.html

Full highlights of the launch of Oracle Solaris 11.

Press Review #4

Julien Gabel — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 19:21:00 +0100

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

Oracle Solaris 11 Launch Webcast

Build Your Next-Generation Datacenter in the Cloud

http://oracle.com/goto/solaris11event

Watch Oracle executives Mark Hurd and John Fowler live from the Oracle Solaris 11 launch event in New York, and learn how you can build your next-generation datacenter in the cloud.

Accelerate internal, public, and hybrid cloud applications
Optimize application deployment with built-in virtualization
Achieve top performance and cost advantages with Oracle Solaris 11–based engineered systems

Extra, Extra! Show Daily Newspaper Archives Now Available

http://blogs.oracle.com/oracleopenworld/entry/extra_extra_show_daily_newspaper

From opening day through It's a Wrap!, the show daily newspaper covered all the highlights of Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Now, in addition to watching keynote and session replays on YouTube.com/Oracle, and downloading presentations from Content Catalog, you can also download free .pdfs of each issue.

T4 arrives!

http://blogs.oracle.com/jsavit/entry/t4_arrives

A natural question for SPARC and Solaris customers would be "should I use a T4, a T3, or an M-series product?" Now that T-series has a broader range of applicability, there's more choice in platform selection: a T4 can be used in cases where M-series would have been the only answer. There's more overlap.

In general, the M-series will still have the advantage for vertically scaling workloads that need massive CPU, memory, and I/O capacity, that need the higher redundancy and reliability features, and depend on the ability to add capacity to a running system by inserting CPU boards when needed. The T3 product will still find use in pure throughput computing applications because it has the higher core density and lower software license core factor (0.25 instead of 0.5).

The T4 processor and the servers based on it mark a new level of performance for SPARC processors. With record performance it changes the game (and turns over stale assumptions) about SPARC performance. It also illustrates the commitment Oracle has to SPARC and Solaris, and our increased ability to execute on delivering faster system products. By adding single CPU performance to T-series, it extends the ability to leverage Oracle VM Server for SPARC (LDoms) for a broader range of applications. Big news indeed - and Oracle Open World is just starting up, so watch Oracle.com and blogs.oracle.com closely the next few days.

Oracle Takes The Midrange Fight To IBM

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh100311-story01.html

Just like IBM lowered the boom on Sun back in the early 2000s with its AIX on Power ramp--made possible because IBM charged AS/400 shops exorbitant prices for hardware and software so it could discount AIX boxes insanely to win over Sun shops--Oracle is going to lower the boom on IBM and Hewlett-Packard in the portion of the server racket that is devoted to running Oracle, PeopleSoft, Siebel, JDE, and other applications. This time around, Oracle will be making deals on its database, middleware, and application software to help it push its iron. Mark my words. Larry Ellison is not joking around here; he was just waiting for the chip engineers to get the right processor out the door.

Very roughly speaking, I would guess that this Sparc cluster should have roughly the same performance as a Power 770 running database workloads, but it could be higher because of the compression and SQL pre-chewing of the Exadata storage arrays and the flash integrated into the Sparc T4-4 nodes when used in the SuperCluster.

Oracle previews Solaris 11, due in November

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/10/04/oracle_solaris_preview/

Fowler did not give the precise number of cores, threads, or memory capacity that Solaris 11 would span, but said Oracle took the time to rework the Solaris kernel with a new scheduler and a new I/O handler that would allow it to span tens of thousands of CPUs, hundreds of terabytes of main memory, exabytes of storage, and hundreds of gigabits of networking bandwidth. (In past presentations of the Sparc/Solaris roadmap, Fowler showed the design goal of a future Sparc system due in late 2014 or early 2015 as spanning 64 sockets in a single system image with a total of 16,384 threads and supporting 64TB of main memory.)

Solaris 11 has support for the dynamic threading implemented in the new Sparc T4 processors, launched last week, and also sports a latency-aware kernel memory allocator, an optimized shared memory stack, a parallel network stack, adaptable thread and memory placement, and enhancements in NUMA I/O (which will be important in future Sparc T series machines, presumably). The scheduler is aware of the different possible topologies in both x86 and Sparc systems and has NUMA-aware kernel memory fan out.

Fowler also said that 600 customers had Solaris 11 running in production already. Presumably he meant actual Solaris 11, not Solaris 11 Express. And he reminded OpenWorld attendees of Oracle's compatibility guarantee for Solaris applications: "Your applications will run on 11 or it is my problem."

Oracle Has Built A Modern, Cloudy AS/400

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh101011-story05.html

I've been thinking a lot lately about the juxtaposition of Oracle's "engineered systems" and IBM's "workload optimized systems," not just because these things are grabbing headlines, but because all the major system makers are trying to figure out a new way to sell a very old idea: machines designed to do very specific work rather than being general purpose systems. Only this time around, more than a few of them are trying to make these engineered systems out of commodity processors, memory, disk, flash, and networking components. The secret sauce--and the profit--in each one of them is not the hardware, but how a collection of hardware supports a very specific stack of application software.

If I were Larry Ellison, I would start pitching the cloud against on premise entry servers or build some baby clusters--probably both. Either could mean big trouble for Big Blue and its Power Systems business.

Solaris 10 8/11 (Update 10) Patchset now available

http://blogs.oracle.com/patch/entry/solaris_10_8_11_update

As you may know by now, these patchsets will bring all pre-existing packages up to the same software level as the corresponding Solaris Update. For example, all ZFS and Zones functionality is entirely contained in pre-existing packages, so applying the patchset will provide all the ZFS and Zones functionality and bug fixes contained in the corresponding Solaris Update.

When we release the Solaris Update patchset, we try to fix any serious late breaking issues found with the corresponding Solaris Update patchset. A list of additional patches added and the Caveats they address is contained in the patchset README.

Applying the patchset is not the same as upgrading to the Solaris Update release, as the patchset will not include any new packages introduced in the Solaris Update or any obsolete packages deleted in the Update.

Solaris 9 transitioning to Extended Support

http://blogs.oracle.com/patch/entry/solaris_9_transitioning_to_extended

Just a quick heads-up that Solaris 9 will transition to Vintage support (old sun terminology) / Extended support (Oracle terminology) at the end of this month.

Solaris 9 patches released from November 1, 2011, will have Vintage/Extended access entitlement by default, which means that only customers with an Extended Support contract for Solaris will be able to access them.

Oracle Solaris 11 Highlights from Oracle OpenWorld 2011!

http://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/entry/oracle_solaris_11_latest_content

Oracle Solaris 11 had some exciting news at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 this year! If you missed the John Fowler keynote or the Oracle Solaris 11 sessions - you can still catch all the highlights from links below.

What's New in Oracle Solaris 11

http://blogs.oracle.com/JeffV/entry/what_s_new_in_oracle

Oracle Solaris 11 adds new features to the #1 Enterprise OS, Solaris 10. Some of these features were in "preview form" in Solaris 11 Express. The feature sets introduced there have been greatly expanded in order to make Solaris 11 ready for your data center. Also, new features have been added that were not in Solaris 11 Express in any form.

The list of features below is not exhaustive. Complete documentation about changes to Solaris will be made available. To learn more, register for the Solaris 11 launch. You can attend in person, in New York City, or via webcast.

That Perplexing Power7+ Processor

http://www.itjungle.com/tfh/tfh101711-story03.html

What IBM is telling business partners is that the old Power7 machines and the new Power7 machines are essentially the same except for the memory and I/O capacity differences--including essentially the same price. They have the same software editions riding on top of them and for most customers, according to Big Blue, either machine will work fine. Those who have high-bandwidth networking and storage needs will want the newer machines, or those that are doing lots of virtualization or other memory-chewing workloads. At around $200 per GB, that extra memory is not cheap, so not everyone will want to go there anyway. In 2012, IBM told business partners, it will start pushing the fatter Power7 machines and later in the year it will withdraw the older boxes. The key thing, IBM told resellers was DO NOT DISRUPT 4Q11 SALES.

As I point out elsewhere in this issue, if you are buying one of the skinnier Power Systems from last year's catalog, you should demand some kind of compensation. There's no way the older machines are of the same value on the street with smaller potential memory and slower I/O. It probably isn't much of a difference, but there's no way it can be zero.

This newsletter advocates for Power Systems customers and it wants IBM to do more than worry about fourth quarter sales. It wants IBM to start taking a more aggressive technical fight to Intel so all of us in the IBM i ecosystem can do better.

Using SystemTap

http://dtrace.org/blogs/brendan/2011/10/15/using-systemtap/

While using SystemTap, I’ve been keeping notes of what I’ve been doing, including what worked and what didn’t, and how I fixed problems. It’s proven a handy reference.

In some recent threads about DTrace, people have asked how it compares to SystemTap – with some commenting that they haven’t had time to study either. I’ve been encouraged to post about my experiences, which is easy to do from my notes. I could (and probably should) get some of these into the SystemTap bug database, too.

What I’m sharing are various experiences of using SystemTap, including times where I made mistakes because I didn’t know what I was doing. I’ll begin with a narrative about tracing disk I/O, which connects together various experiences. After that it gets a little discontiguous, clipped from various notes. I’ll try to keep this technical, positive, and constructive. Perhaps this will help the SystemTap project itself, to see what a user (with a strong Dynamic Tracing and kernel engineering background) struggles with.

Using Oracle Ksplice to Update Oracle Linux Systems Without Rebooting

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/ksplice-linux-518455.html

Oracle Ksplice is an exciting new addition to the Oracle Linux Premier Support subscription. Oracle Ksplice technology allows you to update systems with new kernel security errata (CVE) without the need to reboot, which enables you to remain current with OS vulnerability patches while minimizing downtime. Oracle Ksplice actively applies updates to the running kernel image, instead of making on-disk changes that would take effect only after a subsequent reboot.

Another requirement for getting Oracle Ksplice updates is the use of the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel from Oracle. The lowest Oracle Linux kernel version at the time of this writing is 2.6.32-100.28.9. This kernel (and newer) can be installed on both Oracle Linux 5 and Oracle Linux 6 distribution versions. Customers with Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5 and 6 can do the simple migration to Oracle Linux and apply the packages on their existing installation of RHEL. Oracle does not offer Oracle Ksplice for Red Hat compatible kernels.

How to Create a Customized Oracle Solaris 11 Image Using the Distribution Constructor

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/o11-087-sol11-dist-const-496819.html

This article describes how to create customized Oracle Solaris 11 images that contain customized software.

A brief overview of the reasons for creating a customized Oracle Solaris 11 image is provided. Relevant concepts are introduced, followed by a real example of using the Distribution Constructor to create custom ("golden") images. The example concludes with an illustration of taking the created image and making it available for consumption by systems as part of the provisioning process.

Focus On Oracle OpenWorld 2011

Julien Gabel — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 23:45:00 +0200

Here is a brief overview of the OOW 2011:

OOW Oracle San Fransisco 2011

OpenWorld Content Catalog

https://oracleus.wingateweb.com/scheduler/eventcatalog/eventCatalog.do

If you missed the show or want to review content you saw during the sessions, you can now download many of the presentations from the OpenWorld site here. This site is open to the public, not just OpenWorld attendees. So even if you weren't able to join us in San Francisco, you can go download PDFs of the content that was presented.

First days of OOW

http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2011/10/first-days-of-oow.html

More news from OOW 2011

http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2011/10/more-news-from-oow-2011.html

A new dawn for SPARC

http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2011/10/new-dawn-for-sparc.html

SPARC presentations from OOW

http://sparcv9.blogspot.com/2011/10/sparc-presentations-from-oow.html

Oracle Previews Oracle Solaris 11 at Oracle OpenWorld

Prepares for Planned Release of Oracle Solaris 11, the #1 Enterprise OS – Built for Clouds, Later This Year

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/512668

Solaris 11 is the operating system for Oracle’s recently announced SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 engineered system and Oracle’s SPARC T4 server line. It also powers the Oracle Exadata Database Machine X2-2 and X2-8 systems, as well as Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud.

Oracle Solaris is developed, tested and supported as an integrated component of Oracle's "applications-to-disk" technology stack, which includes the Oracle Certification Environment, representing over 50,000 test use cases for every Oracle Solaris patch and platform released.

Oracle Solaris provides customers with the most choice in supported enterprise applications with over 11,000 third-party applications on a wide range of SPARC and x86 systems.

Oracle Solaris 11 guarantees binary compatibility with previous Oracle Solaris versions, through the Oracle Solaris Binary Application Guarantee Program and development compatibility between SPARC and x86 platforms, providing customers with a seamless upgrade path and the industry’s best investment protection.

Oracle's Larry Ellison unveils 'Exalytics' in-memory machine

http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/infrastructure/3307668/oracles-larry-ellison-unveils-exalytics-in-memory-machine

"We're determined to deliver best-of-breed in every aspect of our computing architecture," Ellison said. "We're in the business of catching up [with IBM] in the microprocessor business. If we don't pass them we'll be very, very close. If our microprocessor is the same speed and we move data a hundred times faster than they do, I like our chances in the marketplace."

From the beginning, Oracle's design goals for its systems were the highest performance for the lowest cost, Ellison said. "For a given task, it will cost you less on an Exadata than it would on a plain old commodity server."

The main idea was a "parallel everything" architecture, with various set of components working in unison for more power and reliability, he said. "These machines should never, ever fail," he said. "Hardware breaks. Software breaks too. But if you have a parallel architecture you should be tolerant of those failures."

Meanwhile, faster chips aren't the best way to make software run faster, because the real bottleneck is storage, according to Ellison. Database performance is "about moving data, and not doing arithmetic on a microprocessor," he said.

Overall, "we move data around a hundred times faster than anyone else in this business," Ellison claimed. Ellison cited a series of companies such as Proctor & Gamble, BNP Paribas and AFG, which experienced vast performance and cost savings through Exadata. Some 1,000 Exadata machines have been installed and 3,000 more will be sold this year, Ellison said.

Oracle enters BI with Exalytics appliance

http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/enterprise-apps/2011/10/03/oracle-enters-bi-with-exalytics-appliance-40094079/

The Exalytics appliance, revealed by Oracle chief Larry Ellison on Sunday, is designed to run business intelligence analytics at high speeds via a terabyte of DRAM for in-memory computing.

"[Exalytics is] hardware and software engineered together to deliver data analysis at the speed of thought," Ellison said in a keynote speech at Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco. "Everything runs faster if you keep it in DRAM, if you keep it in main memory."

Although storage costs are notably volatile, DRAM costs around $10 (£6.40) a gigabyte, compared with flash at around $1 a gigabyte and hard disk at 4 cents. However, DRAM has the advantage of allowing data to be processed and the results sent to the consumer at speeds that are orders of magnitude faster than data stored in other technologies.

Fast, Safe, Cheap : Pick 3

http://blogs.oracle.com/roch/entry/fast_safe_cheap_pick_3

Today, we're making performance headlines with Oracle's ZFS Storage Appliance:

SPC-1 : Twice the performance of NetApp at the same latency; Half the $/IOPS.
2X the absolute performance, 2.5X cheaper per SPC-1 IOPS, almost 3X lower latency, 30% cheaper per user GB with room to grow... So, If you have a storage decision coming and you need, FAST, SAFE, CHEAP : pick 3, take a fresh look at the ZFS Storage appliance.

We are announcing that Oracle's 7420C cluster acheived 137000 SPC-1 IOPS with an average latency of less than 10 ms. That is double the results of NetApp's 3270A while delivering the same latency. As compared to the NetApp 3270 result, this is a 2.5x improvement in $/SPC-1-IOPS (2.99$/IOPS vs $7.48/IOPS). We're also showing that when the ZFS Storage Appliance runs at the rate posted by the 3270A (68034 SPC-1 IOPS), our latency of 3.26ms is almost 3X lower than theirs (9.16ms). Moreover, our result was obtained with 23700 GB of user level capacity (internally mirrored) for 17.3 $/GB while NetApp's , even using a space saving raid scheme, can only deliver 23.5$/GB. This is the price per GB of application data actually used in the benchmark. On top of that the 7420C still had 40% of space headroom whereas the 3270A was left with only 10% of free blocks.

Focus On The Solaris 11 OS

Julien Gabel — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 18:33:00 +0200

Here is a brief overview on a Oracle OpenWorld 2011presentation on the Solaris 11 operating system:

SPARC Strategy

https://oracleus.wingateweb.com/published/oracleus2011/sessions/15326/S15326_2650100.pdf

Focus On The SPARC Architecture

Julien Gabel — Sat, 15 Oct 2011 17:30:00 +0200

Here is a brief overview on a Oracle OpenWorld 2011presentation on the SPARC architecture:

Next Generation SPARC Processor

An In-Depth Technical Review

https://oracleus.wingateweb.com/published/oracleus2011/sessions/15360/15360_Cho133116.pdf

Some slides about the SPARC T4 performance:

SPARC Strategy

https://oracleus.wingateweb.com/published/oracleus2011/sessions/15326/S15326_2650100.pdf

Public roadmap updated:

About the new SPARC SuperCluster:

Some slides about the T-Series and SuperCluster performance:

Encrypted SWAP Device Just Disappeared In Solaris 11 EA

Julien Gabel — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 11:18:00 +0200

For some months, I used to encrypt the SWAP device (which is a ZFS volume) and thus have an encrypted /tmp. This worked fine with Solaris 11 Express, but I encountered a strange behavior in Solaris 11 EA which leads to have the SWAP device to... well, just disappeared.

Here is what I found after two boots; and on several machines:

# swap -l
No swap devices configured

# zfs list -t volume
NAME         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
rpool/dump  32.8G   240G  31.8G  -

# grep swap /etc/vfstab
swap            -               /tmp            tmpfs   -       yes     -
/dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap        -               -               swap    -       no      encrypted

So, the rpool/swap dataset disappeared. I am sure not to have destroyed it, in particular since this appears on multiple servers. Nevertheless, I found this in the history of the zpool command:

# zpool history | grep destroy
[...]
2011-10-05.10:22:49 zfs destroy rpool/swap

# last reboot | head -2
reboot    system boot                   Wed Oct  5 10:23
reboot    system down                   Wed Oct  5 10:20

So, this problem seems to be related to some actions at boot time. What have the logs of SMF services to say about that?

# find /var/svc/log -print | xargs grep -i swap
/var/svc/log/system-filesystem-usr:default.log:cannot create 'rpool/swap': pool must be upgraded to set this property or value
/var/svc/log/system-filesystem-usr:default.log:cannot open 'rpool/swap': dataset does not exist
/var/svc/log/system-filesystem-usr:default.log:cannot create 'rpool/swap': pool must be upgraded to set this property or value
/var/svc/log/system-filesystem-usr:default.log:cannot open 'rpool/swap': dataset does not exist

# tail -3 /var/svc/log/system-filesystem-usr:default.log
[ Oct  5 12:00:05 Executing start method ("/lib/svc/method/fs-usr"). ]
cannot create 'rpool/swap': pool must be upgraded to set this property or value
[ Oct  5 12:00:13 Method "start" exited with status 0. ]

Ouch, what happened here? The message is interesting, but is a little misleading: it is on fresh Solaris 11 EA installations, and so the pools and datasets are all up to date:

# zpool upgrade && zfs upgrade
This system is currently running ZFS pool version 33.
All pools are formatted using this version.
This system is currently running ZFS filesystem version 5.
All filesystems are formatted with the current version.

So, it seems that the rpool/swap device is re-created at boot time, and for some reason it doesn't work as expected. Here is an attempt to discover where the device is re-created and why it does fail.

# find /lib/svc/method -print | xargs grep -i sbin/swapadd
/lib/svc/method/fs-usr:/usr/sbin/swapadd -1
/lib/svc/method/nfs-client:     /usr/sbin/swapadd
/lib/svc/method/fs-local:/usr/sbin/swapadd >/dev/null 2>&1

# grep "zfs destroy" /usr/sbin/swapadd
                zfs destroy $zvol > /dev/null 2>&1

# sed -n '/zfs create/,/\$zvol/p' /usr/sbin/swapadd
        zfs create -V $volsize -o volblocksize=`/usr/bin/pagesize` \
            -o primarycache=$primarycache -o secondarycache=$secondarycache \
            -o encryption=$encryption -o keysource=raw,file:///dev/random $zvol

So, the re-creation at boot time of the rpool/swap appears only when using an encrypted volume. And after a bit of digging, here what I found. At the first boot, here is the command used to create the encrypted volume:

zfs create -V 4G -o volblocksize=8192 -o primarycache=metadata -o secondarycache=all -o encryption=on -o keysource=raw,file:///dev/random rpool/swap

But on a second boot, here is the slightly different command used this time:

zfs create -V 4G -o volblocksize=8192 -o primarycache=metadata -o secondarycache=all -o encryption=aes-128-ctr -o keysource=raw,file:///dev/random rpool/swap

This is because the arguments passed to the command is backed-up and restored from the settings just before the deletion of the volume. As mentioned in the zfs(1m) manual page, only the following encryption algorithm are supported... and so the one which is sets is not valid (the error message saying that the pool must be upgraded to set this property or value is a little more clear by now).

encryption=off | on | aes-128-ccm | aes-192-ccm | aes-256-ccm | aes-128-gcm | aes-192-gcm | aes-256-gcm

The question is, how can this happen? Where does this algorithm com from? The answer is simple: it seems that this is the swap(1m) command which alters some properties of the rpool/swap volume:

# swap -d /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap
# zfs destroy rpool/swap
# zfs create -V 4G -o volblocksize=8192 -o primarycache=metadata -o secondarycache=all -o encryption=on -o keysource=raw,file:///dev/random rpool/swap
# zfs list -H -o type,volsize,volblocksize,encryption rpool/swap
volume  4G      8K      on
# swap -1 -a /dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap
# zfs list -H -o type,volsize,volblocksize,encryption rpool/swap
volume  4G      1M      aes-128-ctr

Not only is the algorithm changed to something not supported (yet?), but the volblocksize property is touched as well. This was not the case on Solaris 11 Express 2010.11.

Hope someone can help me on this side, and that this is a known bug which is already (or will be quickly) addressed, in particular for the Solaris 11 GA. I already posted a comment on the blog of Darren Moffat, just in case this can help a bit.

Oracle Unveils The World’s Fastest General Purpose Engineered System, The SPARC SuperCluster T4-4

Julien Gabel — Sun, 09 Oct 2011 17:06:00 +0200

Here is a little press review around Oracle technologies:

The world’s fastest general-purpose engineered system

Overview

The Oracle SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 is a general purpose engineered solution for running a wide range of enterprise applications with the highest levels of performance and mission critical reliability. The SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 utilizes high performance software from Oracle Exadata and Oracle Exalogic combined with new SPARC T4-4 servers, Oracle Exadata Storage Servers, ZFS Storage Appliance, and InfiniBand technology, and Oracle Solaris 11. With the addition of the SPARC SuperCluster, Oracle continues to set the standard for engineered systems: maximizing customer value with leading performance in a complete and tested package.

News Facts

In a preview of Oracle OpenWorld 2011, Oracle announced the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4, the first general purpose engineered system that combines the computing power of the new SPARC T4 processor, the performance and scalability of Oracle Solaris 11, the optimized database performance of Oracle Exadata storage, and the accelerated middleware processing of the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud.

SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 server is an integrated apps-to-disk solution that delivers the highest performance, security, and manageability with the lowest TCO. Based on Oracle's next-generation SPARC T4 servers, these systems can deploy multiple databases and applications, and multiple tiers of applications while providing lightning-fast improvements on data compression, queries, OLTP response times, and Java middleware performance. Applications can run on a mix of Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris 11 via Oracle VM Server for SPARC and Oracle Solaris Containers.

Oracle's SPARC SuperCluster is ideal for the consolidation of mission-critical enterprise applications or for the deployment of Oracle Optimized Solutions, which provide fully documented best practices and ongoing full-stack and patch testing. Today Oracle announced two new Oracle Optimized Solutions for the SPARC SuperCluster T4-4 that will support PeopleSoft Human Capital Management and Oracle WebCenter Content. Delivered tested and ready to run, these systems can be deployed in days, not months. Oracle continues to set the standard for engineered systems that deliver record-breaking performance in a complete and tested package.

Oracle rises for Unix server push

SPARC T4 systems: Same skins, new brains

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/27/oracle_sparc_t4_chip_servers/

Oracle is taking the fight to Unix market leader IBM with its eight-core SPARC T4 processor and systems with rack, blade, and clustered systems – a full data center press.

The SPARC T4 processors, with an S3 core, were developed under the code-name "Yosemite Falls" and offer better performance than Oracle expected. They will be included in standalone rack and blade servers as well as in SPARC SuperCluster configurations that mimic the Exadata parallel database and Exalogic parallel application serving system, built on Intel x86 processors and running Linux.

The clock speeds of the processors were not divulged, but Oracle has been able to rev them up to 2.85GHz and 3GHz in the SPARC T4 systems, 73 and 82 per cent faster respectively than the previous 16-core SPARC T3 processors, which ran at a much slower 1.65GHz.

While those SPARC T3 chips had eight threads per core (using the older S2 cores) and did a reasonable amount of work on some applications (like database, Java, and application serving), single-threaded code did not perform particularly well. So with the S3 cores, Oracle's chipheads added dynamic threading (in contrast to the static threading in the S1 and S2 cores) and also added something called the critical thread API. This allows applications to hog all the resources on an S3 core to boost the performance of a single-threaded application. The SPARC T4 can switch between the thread-hog and normal modes on the fly.

Ellison rides SPARC T4 SuperCluster into data centers

Four star general purpose, sir!

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/27/oracle_sparc_supercluster_t4/

Oracle resells Fujitsu's SPARC64-VII+ machines, badged the SPARC Enterprise M machines, for customers who have big jobs that require a shared memory system. But over the past two decades, Oracle co-founder and CEO Larry Ellison has made no secret of the fact that he believes that computing in future will be parallel, spreading data and database crunching across multiple compute nodes, instead of trying to create ever-larger shared memory systems to hold databases.

Ellison lectured considerably on the benefits of parallelism and data compression for database processing, and talked quite a bit about the Exadata machines, of which Oracle has sold 1,000 machines thus far – Oracle's "most successful product ever," he claimed – and plans to sell an additional 3,000 machines before the end of the year. (It is not clear if Oracle meant calendar or fiscal year there.)

"We're a lot faster than IBM's biggest pSeries machine," Ellison proclaimed, comparing a cluster of x86 servers running the 11g database and the Exadata storage software on an InfiniBand backbone to a wonking 256-core Power 795 SMP server. Here's how he stacked the two machines up, fully loaded:

Eight Exadata X2-2 racks versus one IBM Power 795 and four DS8700 arrays

This is the "engineered systems" game that Oracle will be playing. Ellison said that two racks of Exadata could do queries anywhere from 10 to 50 times faster than the Power 795/DS8700 combo, with 4 to 10 times the OLTP throughput and with 10 times the amount of storage (with compression turned on) – and do so for a cost of $3.3m, compared to $18.86m for the IBM hardware. "The Exadata system costs way less than a memory upgrade on the IBM pSeries, and you have to be willing to run a lot faster," Ellison quipped. "The P795 is one big, expensive single point of failure," he added, pointing out that Oracle RAC was inherently fault-tolerant.

IBM opens Power8 kimono (a little bit more)

Wafer baked in 22 nanometers

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/31/ibm_power_chip_roadmap_update/

Data was a little thin, and intentionally so on the part of Big Blue. But with Oracle kicking up a big fuss over Intel's Itanium processor roadmap - which the software giant says is a dead end - it looks like IBM has decided it was time to be more specific.

Only a little bit more specific, mind you. Server makers and chip makers don't like to make promises because business conditions change and issues crop up in reality that can cause a processor or server design and its schedule to diverge from the roadmap.

A case in point is one of the earlier schedules for the Power processor lineup, which had Power6 coming out in 2006, Power6+ in 2007, Power7 in 2008, and Power7+ in 2009. That was a two-year cadence for a new processor design and a two-year cadence for a chip manufacturing process shrink interwoven.

For reasons that IBM never explained, and which no doubt had to do with its wafer baking plant in East Fishkill, New York, and maybe its 65 nanometer processes as well as reduced competition from Intel and Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle) in the high-end server racket, Big Blue lengthened the cadence by 50 per cent ahead of the Power6 launch. Also the Power6+ was not whatever it was supposed to be.

Quick Notes About Oracle Solaris 11 Early Adopter

Julien Gabel — Wed, 05 Oct 2011 12:17:00 +0200

The Oracle Solaris 11 Early Adopter release is available for some days by now. This EA release provides access to the final (complete) functionality which will be delivered in Oracle Solaris 11 GA. Although I only played with it for a few days, here are my very, very first notes about things I found interesting to mention, in no particular order.

I noticed that the Oracle Solaris 11/11 release (and not EA) was mentioned in one of the subsections of the provided draft for the documentation. Was this inadvertently forgotten... on purpose? ;)
The support for Flash Archives seems to have finally disappeared. I know about the Distribution Constructor argument, but a flar(1M) (as an mksysb(1) for AIX) definitely has a special place in the Solaris ecosystem (particularly for crash recovery scenario).
The -x option has been removed from the vi(1) command (among others), and is now replaced by the use of the encrypt(1) command. I know a place where she will be missed: you know who you are :)
It seems that the network-boot-arguments command is now supported to be able to set IP configuration directly from the OBP, just in case a DHCP server is not an option to get this information at installation time (as we can do on IBM AIX using the IPL configuration from the SMS menu).
Automated Installer is now able to install Zones along with the main system.
New utilities are provided to help migrating JumpStart configuration files to AI manifests (I did not use them yet though).
RBAC things have changed a little, for example the provided profiles are now defined under different files under the /etc/security/prof_attr.d directory instead of a single file (/etc/security/prof_attr) before that (even in Solaris 11 Express). More, there is no Primary Administrator profile anymore, but a new System Administrator profile which doesn't have some security privileges the old profile has (can not read the /etc/shadow file for example).
The useradd(1m) command has well evolved. This utility is now able to automatically create a dedicated ZFS dataset as the home directory (which is not a directory anymore :)) if the -d flag is given, to populate the /etc/auto_home file, and to enable to autofs service to serve the /home content automatically as needed.
Although the default shell is now bash(1) (why not the newly integrated ksh93(1)?), the default PATH seen in OpenSolaris releases and Solaris 11 Express, which used to set GNU tools in front of SYSV commands, is reverted back to a more classical and fully functional paths: /usr/bin:/usr/sbin. At least the ls -v is OK again by default. Nonetheless, the path /usr/gnu/bin is here for whoever is interested.
An interesting change is the motivation to put out some old and well known configuration file. For better or for worse, the /etc/nodename is dead in Solaris 11. It is replaced by a property of a new SMF. So in order to change the nodename of a host, you must now do:
```
# svccfg -s node setprop config/nodename = "mynewnodename"
# svcadm refresh node
```
In the same vein, the /etc/default/init is replaced by a SMF too. The SMF is named system/environment:init, and the corresponding environment properties are environment/LANG, environment/LC_*, and environment/TZ.
If you want to be able to manually configure the network, you have to disable NWAM, to change the active Network Configuration Profiles (NCP) and enable traditional configuration:
```
# netadm enable -p ncp DefaultFixed
```
The old sys-unconfig(1m) command is now replaced by a more powerful sysconfig(1m) utility which can unconfigure or reconfigure a Solaris instance, and generate a configuration profile which can be used to configure a system, or a Zone (exit the sysidcfg file).
Shares (NFS, SMB) are now supported inside a non-global zone.
The default networking mode is switched to exclusive-IP.
Similarly as can be found for SRM and privileges configuration settings with automatic Resources Pools, a VNIC can now be automatically instantiated for the time the Zone is booted, and automatically removed when she shuts down.
A new mode for the Zone known as Read-Only permits to create some instance which may be more or less writable, i.e. some parts may not be changed (configuration, file systems, etc.).
The IPS packages are now automagically updated in each Zones using Boot Environments.
Last point in this quick entry, the default locale positioned is en_US.UTF-8, and not just the old C. Well, not a big deal, but I found some tools which have issued some warnings against this locale such as expect for example.

So, I think that Solaris 11 is getting better, even from a Solaris 11 Express experience standpoint. Some choices are surprising, but the overall seems coherent and works as expected. A more longer experience in real user cases will be necessary to judge of this (very big) release, but I am mostly pleased with the direction taken by Solaris, and I am exited to put all of this new stuff in production!

Oracle Launches Next Generation SPARC T4 Servers

Julien Gabel — Sat, 01 Oct 2011 17:05:00 +0200

Here is a little press review around Oracle technologies:

New SPARC T4 Servers Deliver World Record Performance, Trump the Competition on Multiple Business-Critical Workloads

Overview

The SPARC T4-4 is a high performing two or four-socket server based on the SPARC T4 processor and optimized for data-intensive and enterprise workloads. The SPARC T4-4 is the most powerful server in the T-Series product family delivering unsurpassed single and multi-thread throughput performance. With several world record benchmarks, the SPARC T4-4 has set yet another milestone for the SPARC based industry leading server platforms. The SPARC T4-4 server boasts speed, security, and unmatched availability to data in a modular and compact 5 RU design. It is an optimal server platform for Oracle database with enterprise reliability, availability and security along with outstanding single thread performance. SPARC T4-4 server nodes are the high performance system building blocks for fault tolerant SPARC Supercluster servers supporting business critical and performance sensitive workloads on Oracle Solaris.

News Facts

Oracle today announced its new SPARC T4 server line, delivering the biggest generational performance increase in the history of Oracle’s SPARC processors. Oracle’s SPARC T4 servers with Oracle Solaris deliver unparalleled performance with impressive economics and are designed for every tier in the enterprise. Oracle’s new SPARC systems excel on mission-critical single threaded and highly concurrent workloads, and enable customers to consolidate multiple application tiers onto a single server, reducing system complexity and improving utilization. Oracle’s SPARC T4 servers are engineered to provide both Oracle and third- party applications with high performance, security, availability and scalability, and are the foundation for Oracle’s SPARC SuperCluster T4-4, also announced today. Additional information on Oracle’s SPARC T4 servers will be available during Oracle OpenWorld 2011. Oracle’s SPARC T4 Servers Offer Built-In Virtualization, Security and Dynamic Threads.

Key features in Oracle’s SPARC T4 servers include

Built-in Virtualization with Live Migration – With both Oracle VM for SPARC and Solaris Zones, Oracle’s SPARC T4 servers provide the industry’s most robust framework for virtualizing both instances of Oracle Solaris, as well as lightweight virtualization for applications. The servers provision in seconds, and now come with live, secure migration. On-chip Cryptographic Acceleration – New crypto units support over a dozen industry standard ciphers, enabling security conscious organizations in industries including telecommunications, healthcare, financial services and the public sector to keep their data safe with up to 44 percent faster secure queries than the latest generation of x86 systems when encrypted with Oracle's Advanced Security Products(4), 3x faster Oracle Solaris ZFS file system encryption than the latest generation of x86 systems(5), and 4x faster single-thread OpenSSL security than IBM POWER7(6).

Dynamic Threads – The SPARC T4 processor includes automatic continuous adjustment of core resources to balance between per thread and many thread workloads. Integrated with Oracle Database 11g, Oracle WebLogic Server 11g, and Java, the SPARC T4 processor presents no performance compromise against any customer workload, in real time.

SPARC T4 Deep Dive With Rick Hetherington

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/innovation/deep-dive-hetherington-489126.html

Rick Hetherington, Oracle’s vice president of hardware development, manages a team of architects and performance analysts who design Oracle’s M- and T-series processors. In this interview, Hetherington describes the technical details of the new SPARC T4 processor and explains why he thinks it is going to be an eye-opener for the industry.

Oracle's SPARC T4-1, SPARC T4-2, SPARC T4-4, and SPARC T4-1B Server Architecture

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sun-sparc-enterprise/documentation/o11-090-sparc-t4-arch-496245.pdf

Oracle Solaris and Oracle SPARC T4 Servers—Engineered Together for Enterprise Cloud Deployments

http://www.oracle.com/us/dm/h2fy11/s11-t4-final-497414.pdf

Press Review #3

Julien Gabel — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 17:53:00 +0200

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

Sun ZFS 7000 Storage Appliance 2010.Q3.4.0 Release

http://blogs.oracle.com/fishworks/entry/sun_zfs_7000_storage_appliance

A new minor update to the 2010.Q3 software has been posted. Note that the release has over 80 bug fixes and includes a Disk Shelf SIM firmware upgrade, ZFS resilvering performance improvements and Update Healthchecks.

What's New in Oracle Solaris 11: Oracle University session at Oracle Open World for System administrators and Developers New

http://www.oracle.com/openworld/learn/other/oracle-university/index.html#solaris

Course Description: This 1-day seminar provides a detailed look at the newest key features of Oracle Solaris 11 and how to use these features within your deployments. You will learn how to implement the new packaging system, how using the default file system, ZFS, will improve your data management capabilities, how to deliver fully virtualized networking, and how to use the advanced user, application, and device security.

Developing Enterprise Applications for Oracle Solaris

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/technologies/developer-isv-422892.html

Oracle Solaris delivers a highly robust, scalable and secure platform for developing and delivering mission-critical enterprise and ISV applications:
. Run Oracle Solaris 10 applications unmodified in Oracle Solaris 10 Zones on Oracle Solaris 11
. Protect your investment with the industry's first and most extensive binary compatibility and source code guarantees
. Leverage Oracle Solaris 11 cloud-ready application deployment technologies such as IPS, SMF and Zones
. Maximize application performance, increase application observability and enhance developer productivity with Oracle Solaris Studio
. [...]

IBM POWER Roadmap... 7+ now late and only an almost 3 years projection for 8?

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2011/08/ibm-power-roadmap-now-late-and-almost-3.html

Thank you for the IBM August 2011 POWER Roadmap tha the public marketplace has been begging for... did we miss the POWER7+ release??? A POWER 7 February 2010 launch would have POWER 7+ August 2011 launch (and today is August 31, so unless there is a launch in the next 23 hours, it looks late to me.) Sketchy details on something possibly 3 years out??? No commitment beyond (almost) 3 years for POWER???

Solaris 10 Update 10 Eminent and Imminent

http://netmgt.blogspot.com/2011/08/solaris-10-update-10-eminent.html

Oracle's Solaris and SPARC public road map is pretty clear - Solaris 10 Update 10 release is expected 2H 2011 with Solaris 10 Update 11 scheduled for 2H 2012.

In a little more than 1 month away, Oracle OpenWorld 2011 is scheduled (October 2-6, 2011) to occur, which means significant announcements!

Disable Large Segment Offload (LSO) in Solaris 10

http://nilesh-joshi.blogspot.com/2011/08/disable-large-segment-offload-lso-in.html

LSO saves valuable CPU cycles by allowing the network protocol stack to handle large segments instead of the traditional model of MSS (TCP Maximum Segment Size) sized segments. In the traditional network stack, the TCP layer segments the outgoing data into the MSS sized segments and passes them down to the driver. This becomes computationally expensive with 10 GigE networking because of the large number of kernel functional calls required for every MSS segment. With LSO, a large segment is passed by TCP to the driver, and the driver or NIC hardware does the job of TCP segmentation (LSO offload the segmentation job on Layer 4 to the NIC driver). An LSO segment may be as large as 64 KByte. The larger the LSO segment, better the CPU efficiency since the network stack has to work with smaller number of segments for the same throughput.

So in simple words, use LSO for better network performance while reducing processor (CPU) utilization.

100% of Solaris users use RBAC

http://blogs.oracle.com/darren/entry/100_of_solaris_users_use

Some of us in the Solaris Security Engineering group been asked a few times recently questions like "so how many customers actually use Solaris RBAC ?" The answer we give is usually variant of "For Solaris 10 onwards 100% of users use RBAC". Surely that is wrong and we can't guarantee 100% of users of Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 are or will be using RBAC can we ? We don't have data to back that up because we don't even know who all the users of Solaris actually are. It actually is correct we don't need data on usage to back it up. The reason being you can't turn RBAC off in Solaris 10 onwards it is always in use in parts of the system that 100% of users of Solaris always use.

The kernel always checks Solaris's fine grained privileges (82 distinct privileges in Solaris 11 Express), even if the process is running "as root". So 100% of Solaris systems make RBAC privilege checks.

Oracle Unveils Oracle VM 3.0

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/459406

News Facts:
. Today at an event for customers, partners and industry experts, Oracle announced Oracle VM 3.0, the latest release of Oracle’s server virtualization and management solution.
. Oracle VM 3.0 is suitable for all datacenter workloads and features new policy-based management capabilities, advanced storage management via the Oracle VM Storage Connect plug-in API; centralized network configuration management, improved ease-of-use and Open Virtualization Format (OVF) support.
. With the centralization of storage management alongside of logical network configuration and management, Oracle VM 3.0 allows administrators to streamline and automate end-to-end virtual machine provisioning for a significant reduction in time and overhead, simplifying IT processes and helping to reduce costs.
. Oracle VM 3.0 helps customers deploy enterprise software in a rapid, repeatable and error-free manner with immediate availability of over 90 Oracle VM Templates for Oracle applications, middleware and databases.
. Oracle VM 3.0 is four times more scalable than the latest VMware offering, supporting up to 128 virtual CPUs per virtual machine, at a fraction of the cost. Oracle VM 3.0 demonstrated support for up to 160 physical CPUs and 2TB memory using Oracle’s Sun Fire X4800 M2 servers.
. When compared to VMware vSphere5 running Red Hat Enterprise Linux guest VMs, Oracle VM 3.0 running Oracle Linux guest VMs is four times less expensive.
Oracle VM is free to download, has zero license cost, and affordable, enterprise-quality support is offered through a simple subscription model per server. Terms, conditions and restrictions apply.
[...]

Using smpatch to apply Solaris Cluster patches and other enhancements

http://blogs.oracle.com/patch/entry/using_smpatch_to_apply_solaris

It is now possible again to use the in-built Solaris 10 patch automation utility, 'smpatch' / Update Manager, to download patches for products such as Oracle Solaris Cluster and Oracle Solaris Studio, as well as Oracle Solaris Operating System patches. It is now also possible again to use 'smpatch' / Update Manager on 3rd party hardware.

These steps effectively switch 'smpatch' / Update Manager from using hardware serial number based access entitlement to User based access entitlement, similar to the access entitlement mechanism used when downloading patches via 'wget' or manually via My Oracle Support (MOS).

Oracle Solaris 11 Express Available on Oracle Exadata Database Machines

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/454114

News Facts:
. Oracle Solaris 11 Express is available on Oracle Exadata Database Machines X2-2 and X2-8, Oracle today announced.
. Customers can take advantage of the mission-critical reliability, scalability, and security of Oracle Solaris to run their online transaction processing (OLTP), data warehousing and consolidated workloads on the x86-based Oracle Exadata systems.
. With Oracle Exadata, Oracle Solaris customers can rapidly deploy an engineered system to manage the largest and most critical database applications, enabling them to run up to 10x faster with the rock solid stability that Oracle Solaris consistently delivers.

Oracle's SPARC T4 chip: Will you pay Larry's premium?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/22/oracle_sparc_t4_hot_chips/

The SPARC T4 chips are presumably timed to hit the market with the impending Solaris 11, which has been in the making for more than six years and which presumably has been tuned to take every advantage of the SPARC T4 chips. The original Sun roadmap had a eight-core, eight-threaded SPARC T series chip coming out in the second half of 2011 for machines with one to four sockets implemented in a 40 nanometer process from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. This Yosemite Falls processor was supposed to run at 2.5GHz and be based on a new SPARC T core code-named "VT," presumably short for "Virtual Threads" but neither Sun or Oracle have said what VT is short for (probably not Vermont).

Oracle has been hinting that this new VT core, which is now being called S3 we learn from the Hot Chips presentation, has a feature called the critical thread API. This feature allows a high priority application to grab one thread on a core and hog all of the resources on that core to significantly boost performance of that single thread; the other seven threads on the chip get told to sit tight. In the prior S1 and S2 cores, used in the prior SPARC T1, T2, T2+, and T3 processors, the threads were hard coded and their sharing algorithms were set in stone--etched in silicon, to be more precise.

Nyt om næste generation SPARC T-series

http://blogs.oracle.com/hwpartner/entry/nyt_om_n%C3%A6ste_generations_sparc

Excerpts from the article:
"The new T4 processor, running at 3GHz or more, has features that will also allow T4-based systems to take on some workloads that today are going to Intel Xeon processors, which today perform faster on single-thread workloads than do the T3- series of SPARC processors."

"At the Hot Chips 2011 conference, an IEEE technical conference held at Stanford University from August 17-19, 2011, Oracle systems engineers described the top features of the new T4 processors, including a 16-stage integer instruction pipeline and enhanced cryptographic performance. Among the business benefits associated with the new design will be: double the amount of per-thread throughput performance, compared to T3 – and a range of 2 to 7 times more single-thread performance for business workloads than T3 processors. Given the binary-compatibility of T3 and T4, this means that the same Oracle Solaris applications that have been running on T3 will see considerable speedup on T4, without recompilation."

Why and How to Use Cluster Check in Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 5/11

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/o11-068-cluster-check-solaris-485278.html

The latest set of enhancements to cluster check is focused on validating clusters during installation and initial configuration. The intent of these enhancements is to enable administrators to perform the most important of the Enterprise Installation Services (EIS) checks themselves. If EIS personnel are involved, they, too, will benefit from using cluster check, as described here. As a matter of fact, the EIS team as well as the Oracle Support Services team played a vital part in defining and implementing these enhancements.

In addition to a new focus on installation-time and configuration-time checking, a seemingly small but quite important change was made to the checks themselves: the way the results are titled. I always recommend that cluster check be run with the -v (verbose) flag to turn on verbose progress reporting. In the past, the checks were titled with "problem statements" that described a problem. Many people would miss the fact that most or all the checks were passing, so they were alarmed by the titles and thought lots of problems were being discovered on their cluster. Now, all existing checks are titled with "check titles" instead of "problem statements." Most of the titles are actually a question and, typically, a "yes" answer means the cluster passed the check.

Now for the big stuff: There are over forty new checks, many of which apply both before clustering is installed (recall that scinstall(1M) runs cluster check before configuring a node) and right after the initial configuration of services. And even though the focus is on initial installation and configuration, these checks are still useful over the entire life of the cluster.

Core Factor for T4 published

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

Oracle has published an update to the Processor Core Factor Table that lists the (yet to be released) T4 CPU with a factor of 0.5. This leaves the license cost per socket the same compared to T3 and puts T4 in the same league as SPARC64 VII+ and all current x86 CPUs. We will have to wait for the announcement of the CPU until we can actually speak about performance. But this core factor (which is by no means a measure of CPU performance!) seems to confirm what the few other available bits of information seem to be hinting at: T4 will deliver on Oracle's performance claims.

Installing Oracle Solaris 10 Using JumpStart on an Oracle Solaris 11 Express Server

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/installjumpstartons11ex-219229.html

If you are familiar with using JumpStart to install the Oracle Solaris 10 operating system on networked SPARC and x86 platforms, then you probably know that JumpStart can be used to install only the Oracle Solaris 10 OS, not the Oracle Solaris 11 Express OS. However, the JumpStart install server can be an Oracle Solaris 11 Express system.

Your Oracle Solaris 11 Express server can do two different jobs:
. Serve Oracle Solaris 11 Express OS installations using Automated Installer. For more information, see Oracle Solaris 11 Express Automated Installer Guide.
. Serve Oracle Solaris 10 OS installations using JumpStart. This article describes how to set up a JumpStart install server on an Oracle Solaris 11 Express system.

Press Review #2

Julien Gabel — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 17:52:00 +0200

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

New OTN Demo - New fast reboot process for x86 systems and how it compares to standard reboot

http://download.oracle.com/otndocs/tech/OTN_Demos/x86/x86-OTN-Demo/x86-OTN-Demo.html

The Fast Reboot feature enables you to reboot an x86 based system, bypassing the firmware and boot loader processes. Fast Reboot implements an in-kernel boot loader that loads the kernel into memory and then switches to that kernel, so that the reboot process occurs within seconds. This feature is implemented on both 32-bit and 64-bit kernels.

If you are running Oracle Solaris 11 Express, Fast Reboot is enabled by default on the x86 platform, without the need to use the -f option with the reboot command. The Fast Reboot feature of Oracle Solaris, previously introduced on the x86 platform, is now supported on the SPARC platform. The integration of Fast Reboot on the SPARC platform enables the -f option to be used with the reboot command to accelerate the boot process by skipping certain POST tests.

On both the x86 and SPARC platforms, Fast Reboot is managed through SMF and implemented through a boot configuration service, svc:/system/boot-config. The boot-config service provides a means for setting or changing the default boot configuration parameters. When the config/fastreboot_default property is set to true, the system performs a fast reboot automatically, without the need to use the reboot -f command. By default, this property value is set to true on the x86 platform and to false on the SPARC platform.

Oracle Buys Ksplice to Become Only Enterprise Linux Provider with Zero Downtime Updates

With its acquisition of Ksplice, Oracle is now in the position of being the only enterprise Linux provider that can offer zero downtime updates. In its customer letter Oracle announces that it plans to make the Ksplice technology a standard feature of Oracle Linux Premier Support. The letter also mentions that Oracle does not plan to support the use of Ksplice technology with Red Hat Enterprise Linux or SUSE Enterprise Linux. Rather, the Oracle Linux Premier Support subscription applies to Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel.

Oracle x86 Infrastructure TCO Study

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/servers/x86/edison-x86-infrastructure-tco-wp-431547.pdf

The Edison Group's white paper, "Oracle x86 Infrastructure: The Optimized Stack: Reducing Total Cost of Ownership through Vertical Integration" examines the cost structures across a range of system sizes and deployments for the core x86 system stack by comparing Oracle's integrated complete infrastructure with alternatives from HP and HP, all deployed with Red Hat Enterprise Linux and VMware vSphere, both together and separately. Among the findings is that TCO with an Oracle solution is as much as 57 percent lower than comparable deployments. Edison evaluated two, four and eight socket systems over three and five year periods using the Oracle Sun Fire X4170 M2 server for the two socket study and the Sun Fire X4470 M2 for the four socket system. For the eight socket study, Edison Group used the Sun Fire X4800 M2, and for a ten two socket study of blades with networking Edison used the Sun Blade X6270 M2 server module in a Sun Blade 6000 chassis with Sun Blade 6000 10 gigabyte (GB) switched NEM 24p. Equipment from IBM and HP was comparable in every case.

The white paper concludes that, "By engineering the entire infrastructure with service and support in mind, Oracle can deliver lower TCO in the design and operation of its system, in the ease of deployment enabled by VM Templates and Validated Configurations ... and in the efficiency and effectiveness of its ... Premier Support package."

Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3 Beta Program

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solarisstudio/downloads/beta-program-408129.html

Feature highlights in the Oracle Solaris Studio 12.3 Beta Release include:
Application Performance
- Compiler and library optimizations for the newest SPARC and x86 Oracle Sun Enterprise servers
Application Observability
- New application quality tool, Code Analyzer, to identify application vulnerabilities,
including memory, code coverage and other errors
- Improved performance analysis tooling for multi-core applications
Developer Productivity
- Compile time performance enhancements
- Updated support for key open source runtime libraries, including BOOST and Apache C++
- Feature enhancements throughout toolchain to simplify multi-core development
- New support for Oracle Database development with Pro*C support within IDE
Platform support for Oracle Solaris and Oracle Linux
- Includes Oracle Solaris 11 Express and Oracle Linux
- New IDE support on Windows enables remote development

Best Way to Update Software With IPS in Oracle Solaris 11

Best Way to Automate ZFS Snapshots and Track Software Updates

Best Way to Update Software in Zones

This is the third article in a series highlighting best practices for software updates in Oracle Solaris 11 Express. The first article introduced the IPS software packaging model and highlighted best practices for creating a new Boot Environment (BE) before performing an update. The second article discussed the Time Slider and auto-snapshot services, describing how to initialize and use these services to periodically snapshot BEs and other ZFS volumes.

This third article dives more deeply into the topic of software updates, exploring the process of updating an Oracle Solaris 11 Express system configured with zones. This topic is especially pertinent since zones in this release differ somewhat from those in Oracle Solaris 10, as does the software upgrade process for zoned systems.

ZFS: To Dedupe or not to Dedupe...

http://constantin.glez.de/blog/2011/07/zfs-dedupe-or-not-dedupe

...that is the question.

Ever since the introduction of deduplication into ZFS, users have been divided into two camps: One side enthusiastically adopted deduplication as a way to save storage space, while the other remained skeptical, pointing out that dedupe has a cost, and that it may not be always the best option.

Let's look a little deeper into the benefits of ZFS deduplication as well as the cost, because ultimately it boils down to running a cost/benefit analysis of ZFS deduplication. It's that simple.

First Steps with Oracle Solaris 11 Express

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-dev/gettingstarteds11ex-405412.html

Oracle Solaris 11 Express is distributed in several formats: a hands-free server based format that's used for automatic installation, an interactive installer format that only has console access, and an interactive graphical installer that includes a full desktop environment.

This article focuses on the third format with the full desktop environment, although most of the concepts discussed in this article will apply to any of the Oracle Solaris 11 Express formats. The graphical format is officially known as the LiveCD. This means that Oracle Solaris can be booted into RAM, causing zero impact on your existing operating system. Once it is loaded, you are then free to experiment with Oracle Solaris to determine whether it is something that you would like to install.

The LiveCD is not intended for long-term use. For example, any changes that you make to the system will be lost when the system is shut down. Therefore, the next logical step is to install Oracle Solaris on the system, which the LiveCD makes easy by placing an Install Oracle Solaris icon right on the desktop. But before we head down that road, let's step back a bit and consider the installation options.

Solaris 11 Express Network Tunables

http://blogs.oracle.com/stw/entry/solaris_11_express_network_tunables

For years I, and many others, have been tuning TCP, UDP, IP, and other aspects of the Solaris network stack with ndd(1M). The ndd command is documented, however, most of the tunables were really private interface implementations, subject to change, and lacked documentation in many cases. Also, ndd does not show the default values, nor the possible values or ranges.

That is changing with Solaris 11 Express. A new command ipadm(1M) allows persistent and temporary (with the -t option) setting of key tunable values. This is a major improvement over ndd, where it is customary to create an /etc/rc2.d/S69ndd or similar script to set the parameter on every reboot. Another benefit is that ipadm shows the default value and the values that the property can be set to.

The ipadm has many features to configure the IP settings of interfaces. This blog entry focuses on how ipadm replaces ndd. Note that ipadm only supports the IP, TCP, UDP, SCTP, and ICMP protocols. Other protocols such as ipsecah and keysock still required the use of ndd.

VirtualBox 4.1.2 released!

http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Changelog

Oracle made a maintenance release of Oracle VM VirtualBox version 4.1.2.

This release fixes lots of stuff including a significant problem on AMD Fusion CPUs, and also adds Linked Clone support to the VirtualBox Manager (GUI) which we couldn't get done in time for 4.1.0.

The Compiler Detective - What Compiler and Options Were Used to Build This Application?

http://blogs.oracle.com/timc/entry/the_compiler_detective_what_compiler

Performance engineers often look at improving application performance by getting the compiler to produce more efficient binaries from the same source. This is done by changing what compiler options are used. In this modern era of Open Source Software, you can often get your hands on a number of binary distributions of an application, but if you really want to roll your sleeves up, the source is there, just waiting to be compiled with the latest compiler and optimizations.

Now, it might be useful to have as a reference the compiler version and flags that were originally used on the binary distribution you tried out, or you just might be interested to know. Read on for details on the forensic tools.

Interview Published In The Oracle Magazine

Julien Gabel — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 10:42:00 +0200

Some months ago, I had the great opportunity to be profiled for the Peer-to-Peer column of the Oracle Magazine, which is an international publication published by Oracle on a monthly basis.

Although the interview is now available in the September/October 2011 issue of the Oracle Magazine, it has also been truncated because of some space concerns, and other things related to the format of the publication. Nonetheless, and for those who are interested, here is the complete interview.

Basic information

Brief description of your responsibilities

Multi-platform UNIX systems consultant and administrator in mutualized and virtualized environments. Architecture and expertise building Solaris and UNIX experience in large enterprise such as banking and financial services, IT services, Telecommunication and multimedia companies.

Length of time using Oracle products

For over eleven years I worked with Solaris as a system administrator, but it was Sun Microsystems at this time, not yet Oracle.

Published author?

I am not a published author, but I participated in writing an article in GLMF, and blogging publicly on the Internet for many years.

If so, title/publication/year

. Title: GNU Solaris : Introduction
Publication: GNU/Linux Magazine France (GLMF)
Year: June 2008
Authors: Yves Mettier, Julien Gabel
Participation in the writing of an article on OpenSolaris: brief history, major distributions, use with a concrete case, and evolutions to come.

. I blogged for more than six years at blog'o thnet: http://blog.thilelli.net/

Which version and release of the Oracle database [or for Applications ACEs, which systems] do you currently use?

I work on Solaris systems for more than ten years, from Solaris 2.6 on SPARC systems to Solaris 11 on both x86 and SPARC platforms.

Interview questions

How did you get started in IT?

I had the chance to discover IT and UNIX system administration when I was yet at school preparing a Master's degree in Engineering, but this was very very late in fact, since I was twenty years old at this time! Since then I always found myself passionate by sysadmin on UNIX platforms without interruption, greatly helped by the always evolving technologies, such as virtualization for example.

What is your favorite tool or technique on the job?

In general, I tend to encourage work on topics around virtualization, in particular when based on Zones and ZFS which both completely revolutionized and extends the possibilities of such configurations.

Secondly, I am interested by performance and pinpointing the root cause of a performance penalty problem, or observation. If DTrace is definitely a invaluable new tool introduced in Solaris 10, better understand how things works at the operating system level will help better understand the metric reported by more classical (historical) tools which can always gives us useful information if we are able to interpret them properly.

If you are exploring the new features in Oracle Database or Oracle Fusion Middleware, please tell us which features you're finding valuable, and why. If you are exploring any new features in an Oracle application, please tell use which features you're finding valuable, and why.

Since Solaris 10, the integration of Zones, Solaris Resource Manager and ZFS opened new opportunities with very light overhead, and interesting capabilities for virtualization: dynamic resource capping for CPU and memory at the non-global zone level, and very flexible use for data management through the use of ZFS.

With the upcoming release of Solaris 11, virtual networks will greatly extends the Zones experience, while some other new features will help us at least just as much: for example the new IPS packaging technology in conjunction with boot environments which will make old patching paths a thing of the past, and automates some new capability such as instantly cloning an environment when a package require a reboot (a sort of intelligent automated Live Upgrade).

What advice do you have about how to get into Web, database, and/or application development or software architecture?

Well, some essential points came in mind here: be voluntary, be passionate and interested by what you are doing, educate yourself (helped by appropriate trainings, experienced co-workers, etc.), and keep up-to-date as much as possible!

What would you like to see Oracle, as a company or as a technology, do differently, better, or more of?

Well, good question. Two points here.

As a company, I really liked Oracle to better integrate and co-operate with OpenSolaris, Solaris and OpenSource projects and communities. In fact, I particularly regrets the fact that Oracle will not deliver more regularly development releases of the operating system and its ecosystems (such as Sun did in the past since early 2005) because it gave the interested system administrators and specialists some insight of what will arrive next, and is a good opportunity to test new functionality before they arrived as a finalized product. I miss this opportunity where it was possible to test, to report and to follow next system technologies beforehand, followed by a large community of enthusiasts participating in the Solaris evolution. I am convinced this will greatly help to improve Solaris as a target enterprise OS for Oracle, and get a new and vibrant community as can be found in the Linux world.

As a technology, I think Solaris miss a tool such as nmon on IBM AIX. This nifty tool has the ability to provide lots of interesting and important information live on the systems from one single tool (such as sar but with much more information) but, more interestingly, it has the capability to collect these information to be used by different tools to generate graphs afterward. We can always do this ourselves (self made solutions) or let some expensive enterprise tools do this job, but I really think this may be a very valuable add-on to Oracle Solaris.

What's your favorite Oracle reference book and why? (Put another way, if you were going to the International Space Station for six months and could only take one Oracle reference book, what would it be?)

Without hesitation, my answer is the second book of the latest edition of Solaris Internals "Solaris Performance and Tools, DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris". This book is a must have since it is really complete, covering both tools and methodologies for performance observability and debugging. It provides a better understanding and metrics interpretation of the output of some already known tools up to the latest utilities found in Solaris 10 and Solaris 11.

What's your favorite thing to do that doesn't involve work?

Although I am involved in system administration and IT communities even when I am not at work, I really like driving my motorcycle... at least when the weather permit ;)

Do you have a favorite vacation spot?

Not a favorite vacation spot in itself, but I like winter sports, especially snowboarding.

Interesting Use Case Of Solaris Swap Space

Julien Gabel — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:46:00 +0200

As you probably know, the Solaris operating system uses the (badly worded) swap space to designate the virtual swap space of a UNIX process, which is to differentiate from the physical swap space which represents the disk or file swap device.

The swap space allocation goes through three different stages. The first stage, reserved , represents the virtual swap space corresponding to the virtual size of all segments of a process which are reserved at creation time. The second stage, allocated, represents the physical (real) pages which are allocated (touched) in the virtual swap space. The last stage, swapped-out, represents the memory pages which are swapped out on the disk or file swap device.

Some operating systems does lazy memory allocations, such as IBM AIX or the Linux distros. This radically differs from Solaris which try to reserve virtual swap space, in order to assign memory, at request time rather than at the time it was needed. This means than the program can be informed synchronously of an out of swap space error. This is far more safe for the data than to lie to the running program (and suppose it will not use all memory pages it has initially reserved) which can then fail during normal execution.

Although this means some different things for Solaris, I will concentrate on one particular point in this post: the implementation of the disk swap device on a system which boots on ZFS. In this case, the disk swap device is a ZFS dataset which type is volume, a logical volume exported as a raw or block device. The ZFS datasets are generally thin provisioned in that they do not have a hard capped limit positioned (they can all compete against the available pool size), and they do not have space reserved for them by default. For a volume, things a are a little different since a refreservation is set at the size of the volume (a little bit more for ZFS metadata in fact). This behavior is mandatory because of the different consumers of a volume, be it used as a raw device, as a block device layered under an other file system, or as a special device such as a dump or as a swap device. In all these cases, the refreservation is here to prevent unexpected behavior of these different consumers.

Back to our ZFS volume as a swap device, here is a typical configuration:

$ zfs list rpool rpool/swap
NAME         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
rpool       9.94G  23.3G    76K  /rpool
rpool/swap     4G  27.3G    16K  -

$ zfs get referenced,volsize,refreservation,usedbyrefreservation rpool/swap
NAME        PROPERTY              VALUE          SOURCE
rpool/swap  referenced            16K            -
rpool/swap  volsize               4G             local
rpool/swap  refreservation        4G             local
rpool/swap  usedbyrefreservation  4.00G          -

$ swap -lh
swapfile             dev    swaplo   blocks     free
/dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap 161,2        8K     4.0G     4.0G

As expected, in order to have a real backing storage for the physical swap device and being able to honor the fact that Solaris does not do lazy memory allocation, a refreservation is set to the swap volume to ensure valid swapping out in case paging occurred.

The problem arises when the processes reserves a lots of memory, but only allocates a little portion of those memory pages. Why? Simply because the system need to have lots of virtual swap space, which will not even be used, but which must be available for the system to operate properly. On large systems hosting large databases or Java workloads this can be problematic as the swap volume will consume lots of space in the ZFS Root Pool. The growing size of the Root Pool may have some side effects such as: less space available for the snapshots or the other Boot Environment, larger size for the backup of the operating system (recursive snapshosts of the pool), or a high consumption which can cause some concerns with internal disks of small size.

As stated in the manual page for zfs(1M):

Though not recommended, a "sparse volume" (also known as "thin provisioning") can be created by specifying the -s option to the zfs create -V command, or by changing the reservation after the volume has been created. A “sparse volume” is a volume where the reservation is less then the volume size. Consequently, writes to a sparse volume can fail with ENOSPC when the pool is low on space. For a sparse volume, changes to volsize are not reflected in the reservation.

So, as test case only and on a non-production system, I will totally wipe out the refreservation on the ZFS volume which represents the swap device, and see how the freed space will return to its parent dataset:

$ pfexec zfs set refreservation=none rpool/swap

$ zfs list rpool rpool/swap
NAME         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
rpool       5.94G  27.3G    76K  /rpool
rpool/swap    16K  27.3G    16K  -

$ zfs get referenced,volsize,refreservation,usedbyrefreservation rpool/swap
NAME        PROPERTY              VALUE          SOURCE
rpool/swap  referenced            16K            -
rpool/swap  volsize               4G             local
rpool/swap  refreservation        none           local
rpool/swap  usedbyrefreservation  0              -

$ swap -lh
swapfile             dev    swaplo   blocks     free
/dev/zvol/dsk/rpool/swap 161,2        8K     4.0G     4.0G

Clearly, the ZFS volume corresponding to the swap device does not consume space anymore (since there was no memory page paged out on the swap device beforehand) and its size is not artificially sets up to the volume size: the property usedbyrefreservation now shows that there is no refreservation anymore. Note that the available space from the parent dataset increased from 23.3GB to 27.3GB, while the used space decreased from 9.94GB to 5.94GB.

So, assuming there is plenty of free space in the parent dataset, the swap device will be able to grow up to its size, 4GB. But if the pool will be low on space for some reason, the swap device (now a sparse volume) will fail with a not enough space error, which will surely be badly handled by the system or the processes who believed to have the reserved space initially. Because of that, be sure to revert back the configuration to the original settings:

$ pfexec zfs set refreservation=4G rpool/swap

$ zfs list rpool rpool/swap
NAME         USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
rpool       9.94G  23.3G    76K  /rpool
rpool/swap     4G  27.3G    16K  -

$ zfs get referenced,volsize,refreservation,usedbyrefreservation rpool/swap
NAME        PROPERTY              VALUE          SOURCE
rpool/swap  referenced            16K            -
rpool/swap  volsize               4G             local
rpool/swap  refreservation        4G             local
rpool/swap  usedbyrefreservation  4.00G          -

Please consult the official Oracle documentation on Managing Your ZFS Swap and Dump Devices for more information.

Press Review #1

Julien Gabel — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 17:41:00 +0200

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

SPARC64 VIIIfx: New HPC #1

The 37th edition of the closely watched list was released Monday, June 20, at the 2011 International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg. The ranking of all systems is based on how fast they run Linpack, a benchmark application developed to solve a dense system of linear equations.

For the first time, all of the top 10 systems achieved petaflop/s performance – and those are also the only petaflop/s systems on the list. The U.S. is tops in petaflop/s with five systems performing at that level; Japan and China have two each, and France has one.

The K Computer, built by Fujitsu, currently combines 68544 SPARC64 VIIIfx CPUs, each with eight cores, for a total of 548,352 cores—almost twice as many as any other system in the TOP500. The K Computer is also more powerful than the next five systems on the list combined.

Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 5/11 announced

http://blogs.oracle.com/SC/en_US/entry/oracle_solaris_cluster_3_31

Oracle announces Oracle Solaris Cluster 3.3 5/11, delivering unrivaled High Availability (HA) on the Oracle Solaris OS for the largest selection of enterprise applications and databases. Oracle Solaris Cluster unique HA solution for Oracle Solaris' virtual environments lowers the inherent risk of consolidated infrastructures by leveraging redundancy to protect from outages. Oracle Solaris Cluster Disaster Recovery (DR) option extends these benefits to multi-site, multi-cluster architectures to protect against planned and unplanned downtime, in physical and virtual environments.

Oracle Solaris Virtual Machine (VM) Templates

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris/solaris-vm-405695.html

This page offers a variety of links to Oracle Solaris Virtual Machine Templates. These Oracle VM Templates speed the creation of Proof of Concept environments and other evaluation/development tasks by dramatically simplifying the installation process. Oracle Solaris VM Templates are available for both SPARC and x86-based systems.

Pre-Built Developer VMs (for Oracle VM VirtualBox)

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/community/developer-vm/index.html

Learning your way around a new software stack is challenging enough without having to spend multiple cycles on the install process. Instead, we have packaged such stacks into pre-built Oracle VM VirtualBox appliances that you can download, install, and experience as a single unit. Just assemble the downloaded files (if needed), import into VirtualBox (available for free), import, and go!

A Solaris Recommended Patchset to bind them all

http://blogs.oracle.com/patch/entry/a_solaris_recommended_patchset_to

A collaborative effort between the Software Patch Services, Enterprise Installation Standards (EIS), Sun Risk Analysis System (SRAS) - now renamed Oracle Risk Analysis Services (ORAS) - and the Explominer team in the Oracle Solaris Technical Center (TSC), has achieved this goal with the creation of the Recommended Patchset for Solaris.

Up until now, while the Solaris OS Recommended Patch Cluster was the core basis for Solaris patch recommendations, various teams tended to recommend their own favorite patches on top of this core set. This wasn't just by whim. Each team was looking at patching from a slightly different angle - for example various angles of proactive patching (issue prevention) versus reactive patching (issue correction).

The Recommended Patchset for Solaris is the result of the combined wisdom of the various teams. It is designed for proactive patching (issue prevention). The contents are generic and should be suitable for most customer configurations.

Accelerating SPARC Solaris Servers

Integrated Load Balancer

http://blogs.oracle.com/observatory/en_US/entry/integrated_load_balancer

I'm not sure how well known it is that Solaris 11 contains a load balancer. The official documentation, starting with the Integrated Load Balancer Overview, does a great job of explaining this feature. In this blog entry my goal is to provide an implementation example.

For starters, I will be using the HALF-NAT operation mode. Basically, HALF-NAT means that the client's IP address is not mapped so that the servers know the real client address. This is usually preferred for server logging (see ILB Operation Modes for more).

Effective Resource Management Using Oracle Solaris Resource Manager

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/o11-055-solaris-rm-419384.pdf

Oracle Solaris Resource Manager provides specific software components and utilities that are used to manage hardware resources. It is integrated into the operating system, and it is available on SPARC and x86/x64 platforms running Solaris 9 or later.

Oracle Solaris Resource Manager is a key enabler for server and workload consolidation and increased resource utilization. It provides the ability to allocate and control major system resources, such as CPU, virtual memory, physical memory, I/O bandwidth, and number of processes. It also implements administrative policies that govern which resources different users can access and, more specifically, how much of a particular resource each user is permitted to use. Based on the implemented policies, all users can receive resources commensurate with their service levels and the relative importance of their work.

About The Oracle Solaris 11 Express Support Repository Updates

Julien Gabel — Sat, 16 Jul 2011 13:21:00 +0200

With the last update of the Oracle Solaris 11 Express 2010.11 SRU released last week (5 July 2011), Oracle introduced the number of the repository update in the output of the uname command.

For Solaris up to version 10, the uname command just displayed the kernel revision number which is nothing but explicit, unless you are a intimate with the kernel PatchID.

If you wanted to be confident about the Update of the OS you are running, a better way was to look at the /etc/release file which is more accurate in term of operating system baseline information, because it was updated by a system update or by applying the Oracle Solaris Patch Update Bundle for a given Update.

It seems that things are now evolving, certainly because of the way IPS works. The uname now shows the exact update of the SRU, reflecting very precisely the update the system is running, but the /etc/release file is currently stuck at the build of the Solaris release, say snv_151a in the case of Oracle Solaris 11 Express 2010.11:

$ pkg search -p entire
PACKAGE                        PUBLISHER
pkg:/entire@0.5.11-0.151.0.1.8 solaris
$ uname -v
151.0.1.8
$ cat /etc/release
                      Oracle Solaris 11 Express snv_151a X86
     Copyright (c) 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates.  All rights reserved.
                           Assembled 04 November 2010

Switching From RDAC To MPIO For DSXX00 SAN Array

Julien Gabel — Sun, 01 May 2011 16:22:00 +0200

Here is a simple procedure switching from a RDAC/fcparray management mode to a MPIO multipath mode for SAN disks presented from an IBM DSXX00 array.

Verification of the current monopath configuration:

# manage_disk_drivers
1: DS4100: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO
2: DS4300: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO
3: DS4500: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO
4: DS4700/DS4200: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO
5: DS4800: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO

Listing of the disks from the array:

# fget_config -vA
---dar0---

User array name = 'CUSTOMERSOFT'
dac0 ACTIVE dac5 ACTIVE

Disk     DAC   LUN Logical Drive
utm            127
hdisk7   dac5    6 beastie1_oracle
hdisk14  dac5   13 beastie2_datavg
hdisk15  dac0   14 beastie3_datavg
hdisk2   dac0    1 beastie3_rootvg
hdisk3   dac0    2 beastie4_rootvg
hdisk4   dac5    3 beastie5_rootvg
hdisk5   dac5    4 beastie2_rootvg
hdisk6   dac0    5 bakup
hdisk8   dac0    7 customer1
hdisk9   dac0    8 customer3
hdisk10  dac5    9 customer6
hdisk11  dac0   10 customer14
hdisk12  dac5   11 beastie2_db2
hdisk13  dac0   12 beastie3_scheduler
hdisk16  dac0   15 customer9
hdisk17  dac0   16 customer8

Listing of the disks as seen from the operating system:

# lsdev -Cc disk | grep DS
hdisk2  Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk3  Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk4  Available 02-00-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk5  Available 02-00-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk6  Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk7  Available 02-00-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk8  Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk9  Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk10 Available 02-00-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk11 Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk12 Available 02-00-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk13 Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk14 Available 02-00-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk15 Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk16 Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device
hdisk17 Available 00-08-02 1814     DS4700 Disk Array Device

Switch to a multipath management for the SAN volumes presented from the DS4700/DS4200 arrays:

# manage_disk_drivers -c 4
DS4700/DS4200 currently RDAC/fcparray
Change to alternate driver? [Y/N] Y
DS4700/DS4200 now managed by MPIO

It is necessary to perform a bosboot before rebooting the system in
order to incorporate this change into the boot image.

In order to change to the new driver, either a reboot or a full
unconfigure and reconfigure of all devices of the type changed
must be performed.

Reboot the system:

# bosboot –a
bosboot: Boot image is 39636 512 byte blocks.

# shutdown –Fr
[...]

Verification of the new multipath configuration:

# manage_disk_drivers
1: DS4100: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO
2: DS4300: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO
3: DS4500: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO
4: DS4700/DS4200: currently MPIO; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO
5: DS4800: currently RDAC; supported: RDAC/fcparray, MPIO

Listing of the disks from the array:

# mpio_get_config -vA
Frame id 0:
    Storage Subsystem worldwide name: 60ab80016253400009786efca
    Controller count: 2
    Partition count: 1
    Partition 0:
    Storage Subsystem Name = 'CUSTOMERSOFT'
        hdisk      LUN #   Ownership          User Label
        hdisk0         1   A (preferred)      beastie3_rootvg
        hdisk1         2   A (preferred)      beastie4_rootvg
        hdisk2         3   B (preferred)      beastie5_rootvg
        hdisk3         4   B (preferred)      beastie2_rootvg
        hdisk4         5   A (preferred)      bakup
        hdisk5         6   B (preferred)      beastie1_oracle
        hdisk6        16   A (preferred)      customer8
        hdisk7         7   A (preferred)      customer1
        hdisk8         8   A (preferred)      customer3
        hdisk9         9   B (preferred)      customer6
        hdisk10       10   A (preferred)      customer14
        hdisk11       11   B (preferred)      beastie2_db2
        hdisk12       12   A (preferred)      beastie3_scheduler
        hdisk13       13   B (preferred)      beastie2_datavg
        hdisk14       14   A (preferred)      beastie3_datavg
        hdisk15       15   A (preferred)      customer9

Listing of the disks as seen from the operating system:

# lsdev -Cc disk | grep DS
hdisk0  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk1  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk2  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk3  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk4  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk5  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk6  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk7  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk8  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk9  Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk10 Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk11 Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk12 Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk13 Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk14 Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk15 Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk
hdisk16 Available 06-08-02 MPIO Other DS4K Array Disk

That's it.

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