Sun Trunking for free

Thanks to SunHelp for pointing out that SunTrunking is free now. I guess this probably due to fact that link trunking and aggregation is already part of Solaris Express and is going to be integrated into Solaris 10.

Key features

• Full IEEE 802.3ad compliance with support for the Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP).
• Dynamically add and remove trunk members for on-demand bandwidth.
• Bundled Gigabit Ethernet and Fast Ethernet links.
• Load Balancing.
• Automatic link level failover.

SunTrunking download page.
SunTrunking page.
SunTrunking documentation.

DTrace origins

How it all started. Really interesting reading.

3GB free email account

We've just updated our email system at http://poczta.wp.pl. We provide 3GB free email account and 6GB for paid customers. I believe this is largest(1) free email account you can get worldwide so far. We are also #1 in Poland with over 3mln active email accounts!

Additionally we've launched thumbnail pictures - so if you got an email with graphics attachments you can see small versions of these pictures under your mail. You can also switch given folder from normal view with list of emails to view with thumbnail pictures from all emails inside that folder.

There are also many smaller enhancements like saving selected attachments in one zip archive, showing all selected pictures on one page, etc.

More new features are coming! :))

Unfortunately we do not offer English interface (yet).

Below some screnshots.







(1) at least when you consider big email providers like Yahoo, GMAIL and other

We're going to terminate you

SX b23 is out

Solaris Express - Community Edition build 23 is ready to download.

update: changelog

Opteron vs. Xeon

We did some tests benchmarking Opteron box and Xeon box on our MTA system.
Servers: Sun v20z with 2x 270 (dual-core 2.0GHz), IBM x345 with 2x Xeon 2.8GHz with HT.

We switched off second cores in v20z, so we were benchmarking 2x 2GHZ Opteron vs. 2x 2.8GHz Xeon. Both systems were equipped with 2GB RAM. Opteron box had 2x300GB 10K internal disks in mirror, Xeon box had 6x33GB 15K internal disk in raid 10.

System: on both servers Solaris 10 was used. Applications were compiled on Xeon and the same binaries were used on Opteron so no special Opteron optimizations were used. Application is an MTA system with antivirus software, spam filters, and many more modules. As Opteron box has slower disks we anticipated it could be slower, but on the other hand all these applications really need lot of CPU power. We used slamd for benchmarking from several clients.

Result: Opteron server is 1.6x faster then Xeon server. Turning additional cores on and Opteron server is 2.62x faster then Xeon server.

Well, we're going to test our web servers next - I wonder about results.

btw: with all cores turned on we couldn't saturate all CPUs on Opteron server - more client servers were needed and at that time I couldn't spent more (10 client servers were used). Xeon server CPU was saturated all the time. Additionally Opteron had much slower disks, so probably we could get even better results with Opteron.

Using NAT with Zones

Sometimes it would be useful to make NAT for local zones. Here is a description on hot to do it using Solaris 10 Zones and IPFilter (which is part of Solaris 10).

DTrace on FreeBSD

Looks like DTrace port to FreeBSD is progressing well.

SX 9/05

Solaris Express 9/05 is available. As usual thanks to Dan for his What's New. This release is base on build 21. If you want to stay on the edge of the edge then go and download Solaris Express - Coummunity Edition based on build 22.

UltraSparc IV+

Finally, new SPARCs are available. Looks like you get can get the same server with new CPUs for the same price.

And official announcement.

X4100 & x4200 architecture

If you want to find out more about x4100 & x4200 server architectures - here is right document.

LSI MegaRAID

Here you can download "Driver ITU floppy image for Solaris 10GA. It contains lsimega driver which will support LSI MegaRAID 320-2x, LSI MegaRAID 320-2e, Dell PERC 4e/si(ROMB controller in Dell PE1850) and Dell PERC 4e/di(ROMB controller in Dell PE2850) RAID controllers".

Censored Sun Ads

Top business publications refused to run our bold ad concepts because the headlines were thought too controversial. At Sun, we're the radical engineers that build "ass-whoopin" technology - we're not Miss Manners and we never want to be.

Censored Ads

Flying Ads

ZFS is coming

Eric Schrock has posted:

We're currently in the "end game" for ZFS development - pushing full
speed towards integration (I won't make claims about an exact time
frame). We considered a more accessible beta program (as well as
opensolaris.org hosting), but it was not an efficient use of team
resources at this point in time, and would likely delay the eventual
integration into Nevada. We promise we're doing everything possible to
get ZFS putback ASAP.

So it looks like it's not that far in a future when ZFS will be publicly available. I can only add that you will really love its simplicity and features.

New x64 servers from Sun

Three new x64 servers from Sun: x2100 x4100 x4200.


There's already review about x2100 server.

My article about Open Solaris

I wrote an article about Open Solaris for a polish Linux+ magazine and it looks like it was translated to Germany and has been made online. As there wasn't enough time it got published after editorial corrections without my final approval - as a result there's at least on mistake(1). I hope that translation hasn't introduced any more mistakes...

(1) - LAE is not part of Open Solaris, at least not right now.

ps. some things have already changed as article was written in June.

Future Networking in Solaris

If you are intertested in what's going on with Networking in Solaris check this post. You can also download interesting document which explains some of the plans - IPMP Rearchitecture: High-Level Design Specification. Below is a quote from the post:

As some of you may be aware, the Solaris Approachability team has a project underway called "Clearview", whose charter is to rationalize, unify, and enhance the way network interfaces are handled in Solaris at the programmatic and administrative levels. Under the Clearview umbrella, there are currently four components under development:

IPMP Rearchitecture
IP Tunnel Device
Vanity Naming and Nemo Unification
IP-Level Observability Devices

New cluster

I've just installed and set up new nfs cluster using Sun Cluster 3.1 8/05 on Solaris 10. All with IPMP and MPxIO. The installation was easy, configuration identical like in older releases. It just works :)

3D Desktop

I've just tried Project Looking Glass on my new workstation. It's a 3D desktop running on Solaris or Linux (I did on Solaris). Well it's definitely eye-catching!
You can find video demo here.

Profile Feedback

Interesting article to read for developers.

DTrace awarded

Bryan Cantrill has got Technology Review's Top 35 Innovators award. Another info here.

Congratulations!

SX b21 is out

Although b22 is available internally to Sun, b21 is available to download.

Solaris 9 9/05 is out

You can get it here.

Oracle in Zones

if you are going to run Oracle in a zone then look at Running Oracle Database in Solaris 10 Containers - Best Practices

Disk sets in SVM

Using SVM disk sets even with single host (non-clustered) does makes sense for external connected storage. If you for some reason want to reinstall system or install new one but want to preserve all SVM made raids then disk sets make it really easy for you. Disk sets are really usefull if you want to move your external storage from one system to another. Below example what I did today - system was reinstalled but I wanted to preserve all SVM volumes on external JBOD. And if there's only one host using these disks then you probably want to set auto-take on.

bash-3.00# metaimport -r
Drives in regular diskset including disk c4t0d0:
  c4t0d0
  c4t1d0
  c4t2d0
  c4t3d0
  c4t4d0
  c4t5d0
  c4t6d0
  c4t7d0
  c4t8d0
  c4t9d0
  c4t10d0
  c2t16d0
  c2t17d0
  c2t18d0
  c2t19d0
  c2t20d0
  c2t21d0
  c2t22d0
  c2t23d0
  c2t24d0
  c2t25d0
  c2t26d0
More info:
  metaimport -r -v c4t0d0
Import:
  metaimport -s  c4t0d0

bash-3.00# metaimport -s E3-0 c4t0d0
Drives in regular diskset including disk c4t0d0:
  c4t0d0
  c4t1d0
  c4t2d0
  c4t3d0
  c4t4d0
  c4t5d0
  c4t6d0
  c4t7d0
  c4t8d0
  c4t9d0
  c4t10d0
  c2t16d0
  c2t17d0
  c2t18d0
  c2t19d0
  c2t20d0
  c2t21d0
  c2t22d0
  c2t23d0
  c2t24d0
  c2t25d0
  c2t26d0
More info:
  metaimport -r -v c4t0d0

Disk movement detected
Updating device names in Solaris Volume Manager
bash-3.00#
bash-3.00# metaset -s E3-0 -A enable
bash-3.00# metaset |head -5

Set name = E3-0, Set number = 1

Host                Owner
  bolek.db.srv       Yes (auto)
bash-3.00#

New patches

If you want to have a clean zones installation after applaying all patches to S10 GA make sure that you apply these patches: 119255-06 (x86/x64) 119254-06 (SPARC), preferably as first patches in a system. With these patches after doing 'smpatch update' zones installation should be clear - no single warning.

Zones FAQ

Zones FAQ is available at OpenSolaris site.