NexentaOS Alpha 2

NexentaOS alpha 2 is released. Some New Features:

• New user-friendly Installer
• Two new desktop managers in addition to GNOME (KDE, ...?)
• Wi-Fi support
• Support for removable devices
• Complete Mono platform with popular mono applications
• JRE provided
• More audio drivers
• 84 bugs fixed and features added since alpha 1
• 829 new packages, total 3419
  
• based on Open Solaris build 30 non-debug
  

"NexentaOS is a complete GNU-based open source operating system built on top of the OpenSolaris kernel and runtime." - And it is based on Debian.

T2000 just arrived

I've just got T2000!

First command after server booted:

# psrinfo
0       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:25
1       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
2       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
3       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
4       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
5       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
6       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
7       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
8       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
9       on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
10      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
11      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
12      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
13      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
14      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
15      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
16      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
17      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
18      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
19      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
20      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
21      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
22      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
23      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
24      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
25      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
26      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
27      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
28      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
29      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
30      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
31      on-line   since 01/27/2006 16:46:26
#

Virtualization with UltraSparc T1

Several OS instances on T1000/T2000.

Solaris 10 update1 & bge

If you have a problem with bge interfaces under S10U1 adding set bge:bge_enable_msi=0 to /etc/system can help.

btw: looks like -28 kernel update solves this problem

Solaris 10 supported by HP

The Inquirer:

ALL HP BLADES now support Sun Solaris 10 in 32/64 bit but that's only the beginning.

HP's Opteron DL145-G2 is now certified for Solaris 10 32/64 bit too, and sources suggest there's a lot more to come.

ProLiant server support matrix for Solaris x86.

Opteron vs. Xeon

We put x2100 server with 1x Opteron 175 (2.2GHz) into production as an web server. Other servers in that service are running on IBM's x335 servers with 2x Intel Xeon 2.8GHz. Both server have 2GB of RAM. We were changing load balancer configuration to see how much given server can do in a production. The result is that x2100 is 30% faster here (30% more requests per second) than x335 server in a production serving real traffic (mostly dynamic web pages). Both servers are running Solaris 10.

Another test this time on IBM x336 with 2x Intel Xeon 2.8GHz, 8GB RAM and Sun X4100 2x Opteron 280 2.4GHz, 8GB RAM with MySQL 5. Just single query is issued (so one core is utilized). All data are cached so during query no IOs to disks are issued. The result is: 2.58s on IBM and 1.41s on Sun - this means that Xeon 2.8GHz is about 82% slower that single core of Opteron 280 in this test. Now Sun server has 2 times more cores than IBM. This is just simple test (however on real data) and it doesn't mean that such a difference will be on full production but it clearly shows potential in Opteron.

Linux on Solaris - BrandZ

"BrandZ is a framework that extends the Solaris Zones infrastructure to create Branded Zones, which are zones that contain non-native operating environments."

Right now only CentOS/RedHat EL are supported but some guy managed to install: Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, Suse SLES, Suse Personal, SchilliX in a Solaris Zone!

New Workstations - Ultra 40 & Ultra 45

Looks like Sun is going to release new workstations - Sun Ultra 40 and Sun ultra 45. Manual for Ultra 40 can be found here. According to the document Ultra 40 will be:

• 2x Opteron (single-core or dual-core)
• 8x PC3200 DIMMs
• DVD-RW
• 4x SATA Drives
• 2x on-board GbE
• 2x PCI-E x16, 2x PCI-E x4, 2x PCI 33MHz/33bit
• 8x USB 2.0 (2x in-front)
• 2x IEEE 1394a (FireWire)
• Solaris 10 Pre-Installed (Linux/Windows supported)

Ultra 45 seems to be SPARC workstation. More info from SystemNews.

According to this link Ultra 40 and Ultra 45 will cost 1,395$ for base configuration. Other configurations:

• Ultra 40 - 246, 1GB, NVS285 - 2,295$
• Ultra 40 - 254, 4GB, FX1400 - 5,395$
• Ultra 40 - 280, 8GB, FX3450 - 7,795$
• Ultra45,1x1.6GHz,XVR100,1GB - 3,436$
• Ultra45,1x1.6GHz,XVR2500,1GB - 4,273$
• Ultra45,2x1.6GHz,2*XVR100,2GB - 6,319$

ps. I found this thanks to James.

update: official announcement

UltraSparc T1 details

Anandtech has a nice review of T2000 with some more details of T1 which helps to understand why T2000 is so good in many workloads (and why it's poor in other).

RealPlayer integrated

RealPlayer 10 is integrated in Solaris Nevada b31 - both on x86/x64 and SPARC. This is good news.

How fast are SAS disks?

I started to play with x4100 server. Its internal disks are SAS (Serial Attached SCSI). I've just made some simple test and... well, this disks can handle over 6000 IO/s while writing! It also looks like issuing large IOs is actually hurting performance - I'm not sure why.

tunefs -a 32 /opt
dd if=/dev/zero of=/opt/q1 bs=1024k

iostat -xnz 5 2
                extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.0   82.1    0.0 18789.1  1.0 41.0   11.9  499.1  68  99 d10
0.0   83.3    0.0 19095.9  0.0 35.3    0.0  424.2   0  95 d11
0.0   81.5    0.0 18685.2  0.0 35.8    0.0  439.0   0  95 d12
0.0   84.9    0.0 19096.7  0.0 35.9    0.2  423.3   2  96 c0t0d0
0.0   82.9    0.0 18685.9  0.0 36.4    0.2  439.0   2  96 c0t1d0


tunefs -a 16 /opt
                extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.0  428.1    0.0 53325.8  0.6 61.5    1.4  143.8  59  98 d10
0.0  428.1    0.0 53325.8  0.0 61.1    0.0  142.8   0  97 d11
0.0  429.1    0.0 53453.8  0.0 58.8    0.0  137.1   0  96 d12
0.0  430.7    0.0 53327.2  0.0 61.7    0.0  143.3   0 100 c0t0d0
0.0  431.7    0.0 53455.2  0.0 59.4    0.0  137.6   0  99 c0t1d0


tunefs -a 8 /opt
                extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.0  835.5    0.0 52868.0  0.6 120.1    0.7  143.8  57  96 d10
0.0  835.5    0.0 52868.0  0.0 119.2    0.0  142.7   0  96 d11
0.0  835.3    0.0 52855.2  0.0 116.6    0.0  139.6   0  94 d12
0.0  838.1    0.0 52869.4  0.1 119.7    0.1  142.8   2  99 c0t0d0
0.0  837.9    0.0 52856.6  0.0 117.2    0.0  139.8   1  97 c0t1d0


tunefs -a 1 /opt
                extended device statistics
r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
0.0 6019.8    0.0 48202.4  0.8 857.9    0.1  142.5  63  97 d10
0.0 6024.8    0.0 48242.4  0.0 840.3    0.0  139.5   0  96 d11
0.0 6004.2    0.0 48077.8  0.0 844.9    0.0  140.7   0  97 d12
0.0 6028.7    0.0 48244.4 127.0 222.2   21.1   36.9  80  98 c0t0d0
0.0 6008.2    0.0 48079.8 128.7 223.5   21.4   37.2  80  99 c0t1d0



update: actual testing on a production shows that SAS 10K disks comparing to SCSI 10K disks are 10-25% faster (mostyl writes, random IO).

Free Oracle license

Looks like Sun and Oracle are going to offer a bundle - license for Oracle Database EE for free if you buy one year contract from Oracle and server based on UltraSparc IV/IV+ from Sun. Still no official announcements - so we have to wait for exact details. Looks interesting.

update: however there's a 'catch' - in a following years you have to pay full (no discounted) price for support - so if you need a support layer you should carefully count all prices to see if this promotion is right for you.

News.com.com:

Sun Microsystems said Tuesday it will bundle Oracle's database with higher-end Unix servers and partially subsidize the fees customers would otherwise have to pay to use the software.

Oracle's Enterprise Edition database software will be an option when customers buy the four-processor Sun Fire V490 or higher-end servers using the UltraSparc IV or IV+ processors. Sun will pay the Oracle license fee, but customers will be responsible for paying Oracle's annual support and maintenance fees, said Larry Singer, Sun's strategic insight officer.

The Register:

Most importantly, Sun has teamed with Oracle to create server/database bundles meant to undercut the pricing of rivals IBM and HP. No matter how many processors your Sun UltraSPARC system has, you get the Oracle enterprise edition database for free. It comes installed on the Sun server. Customers will have to pay for a one-year service contract from Oracle, which will then try and sell you on two, three and four more years of service.

8-core Xeon vs. 8-core Niagara

Nice benchmark LDAP performance on Dell 6850 with 4x Xeon 3.2GHz dual-core with Sun T2000 with UltraSparc T1 (8 cores 1GHz). Both systems with 32GB DDR2 RAM. Both servers were running Solaris. Well, Niagara was faster about 55-65% in this test. This is impressive! I can't wait until I will get one of these!

Open Solaris on PPC

Looks like Open Solaris is ported to PowerPC platform. It's been only about 6 months since Open Solaris was released and we've got port to other platform - great job!

From Blastwave:

Ladies and Gentlemen, The OpenSolaris kernel for PowerPC has been built. Its only a matter of a little time and we will put GRUB2 together with PowerPC genunix and we will be running on the Genesi ODW. All the software at Blastwave will be ported in parallel and we will work with the SchilliX distribution to ensure that we have a framework for AMD64 and UltraSparc as well as PowerPC for community based open source software in general.

NFS Provider for DTrace

New NFS DTrace Provider is under development. If you want to participate please look at nfs-discuss and dtrace-discuss lists at Open Solaris.

Compression in ZFS

During Christmas I did manage to register another compression method into zfs. All in all it was quite simple - few simple modifications. It did compile and it did worked on my laptop. Actually it wasn't new compression I used lzjb (copy&paste) and registered different name. So basically now I can change algorithm to whatever I want - and this is much hard to accomplish (mostly due to lack of free time). I did play a little bit with zlib.
Now I have to find some time and try to implement zlib or any other algorithm - well, not to implement but rather adopt something from OSS and make some changes (so it will work in-kernel). Ideally I would like to get some compression functions written in C ready to use in-kernel and it would be best if they were memory bounded. Do you know any? Urls?

ps. looks like zlib will be implemented in-kernel by Sun soon and adopted by ZFS.

Hardware SSL for LDAP - or not?

If you do use LDAP over SSL and you think about using hardware acceleration here is quite informative blog entry.

Encrytpion kit

If you have installed Solaris 10 Update 1 and want strong encryption with PKCS/OpenSSL then finally 118563-04 is available on x86/x64 platform. Sparc patch 118562-05 should probably be available shortly.

ps. first you have to download & install Encryption KIT.