USDT provider

Another PDF explaining SDT providers in DTrace.

Putting an application in a zone

Nice article.

Understanding storage bottlenecks

Here is really nice whit paper which helps to understand performance problems of storage. Definitely worth reading.

AppCrash

AppCrash is a interesting way of collecting information on processes which got SIGBUS or SIGSEGV. It uses DTrace and lets you decide what information is going to be extracted and send to support from a just crashed application. Basically you can do the same with core files - the advantage here is automation. If you are more advanced sys admin then in most cases you don't need AppCrash. If you are not and sending core file is a problem then it's a way to go. Maybe it's a good framework on desktops to provide something similar as in Windows.

Open Solaris - new build

I've just compiled Open Solaris based on Nevada build 14. It took 58 minutes on 2-way x86 system - I have to try build Open Solaris on a faster hardware :) One among many new features introduced in build 14 is Solaris New Boot architecture on x86/x64 platform based on GRUB.


Here is a grab of a boot screen



And here is a console login - notice how clean console is after Solaris booted! (actually it's been that way in S10 since SMF was integrated), and now by default background is black (some people prefer that way).


Notice that now there is no more Configuration Assistant or that ugly boot manager on Solaris x86/x64! It's now more clean and boots faster, much faster.

When Solaris SX will be based on build 14 or newer then it will of course include this new boot architecture - so look closely at it.

And the day when Open Solaris will be available to the rest of the world is coming! :) So saying in Sun style: stay tuned! :)

Oracle 10g and Solaris Containers

Oracle considers Solaris 10 Zones as Hard Partitioning which means:

"So long as your Solaris 10 Container is tied to a resource pool limited to a number of CPUs which is less than the total number in the server, you only have to license for the number of CPUs which can be in the resource pool, not the whole server."

This is really great for consolidation on Solaris.

Original post you can find here.
And Oracle document on partitioning here.

iSCSI on Solaris

Well, over 500 MB/s using 10GbE and Solaris SX... sounds interesting. You can find some info here. Looks like Solaris will have full iSCSI implementation.

Solaris hints for beginners

James Dickens has posted nice link to a document for a new Solaris users - looking at the table of contents looks like it's worth reading. So if you are new to Solaris just - try it. You can find it here.

ps. as the document is dated June, 2004 you won't probably find Solaris 10 specific issues.

Solaris on x86/x64 reinvented

Interesting post on Solaris x64 re-birth.

UPDATE: part II is here

UPDATE: part III is here.

Xen on Solaris x86

Looks like some people from Sun are looking into Xen on Solaris x86. Cool!

RAID-1 vs. RAID-5 on 3510

Here you can find nice benchmark for 3510.

IBM x336

I installed Solaris 10 on IBM x336 server with Nacoona CPUs using Jump Start over a network. Generally it just works.
In order to install the server over a network I had to add to devicedb/master on a install server the following line: pci14e4,1659 pci14e4,1659 net pci none "Broadcom milek Gigabit Ethernet" as on-board Broadcom GbE's aren't recognized by default. After that installation went smoothly. Installation took less than 5 minutes :) BGE driver won't work so I had to download BCME driver from Broadcom. It does work in 64bit and Solaris 10 does boot with 64bit kernel/environment just out of the box :)

ps. I've just submitted the server to HCL.

bash-3.00# prtconf |head -2
System Configuration:  Sun Microsystems  i86pc
Memory size: 2048 Megabytes
bash-3.00# psrinfo -pv
The physical processor has 2 virtual processors (0, 2)
  x86 (chipid 0x0 GenuineIntel family 15 model 4 step 1 clock 2800 MHz)
        Intel(r) Xeon(tm) CPU 2.80GHz
The physical processor has 2 virtual processors (1, 3)
  x86 (chipid 0x3 GenuineIntel family 15 model 4 step 1 clock 2800 MHz)
        Intel(r) Xeon(tm) CPU 2.80GHz
bash-3.00# isainfo -v
64-bit amd64 applications
        mon sse3 pause sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu
32-bit i386 applications
        mon sse3 pause sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov sep cx8 tsc fpu
bash-3.00#