Sun Rolls Out Galaxy 2
As I'm sure most of you have seen by now, Sun has introduced 2 new systems to the X86 lineup: the X4150 and X4450. These systems are exciting for 3 very big reasons: These systems represent the first in the second generation of Galaxy. Remember, the M2 versions of the first Galaxy lineup were "product refreshes". These are all new. These systems represent the first fruits of the Intel partnership. The fact that Sun's systems archit...
Xen Support Now In Nevada
Yesterday it was announced that Xen support has been putback ("committed" in CVS/SVN speak) to Nevada. The source is available now and the SX:CE release of Build 75 will be coming soon. While we're talking about Xen, this is being released as "xVM", for the following reason: The xVM hypervisor is based on the work of the Xen community. The name 'Xen' is a trademark with some restrictions, so we have chosen to use a separate name to ...
Conference Updates
The Intel Developer Forum is now over, which closes out the years big Bay Area conferences for me. My only regret this year was that there was no OpenSolaris presence at LinuxWorld because I was on vacation during the event. For those who were planning on seeing me at CEC in Las Vegas, I'm disappointed to say that the organizers rejected my "iSCSI & The Future of Storage" talk and then today canceled the presentation that I was going ...
Talk Like A Pirate Day: Sept 19th
Talk Like A Pirate Day is coming on Wed, the 19th. Be prepared to either: A) Have fun annoying your coworkers, or B) Bring your boxing gloves to beat the sh*t out of your annoying coworkers.
Ian Murdock World Tour Comes to Santa Clara Tonight!
There is a interactive Tech Talk with Ian Murdock & Marc Hamilton TONIGHT in Santa Clara (SCA03). Register now and be there! If you see me, stop by and say hello. Here's the address info: When: Monday, September 17th Time: 6:00pm Location: Sun Microsystems Bldg: SCA03 - Auditorium 4030 George Sellon Circle Santa Clara, CA 95054
Hate to say it, but thats hard!
When we understand to our satisfaction how something works and we can do it quickly we say "Thats easy." It may or not be easy for anyone else, but in your mind it is. The converse is true, when something just doesn't make sense or seems to take more work than you think it should we say "Thats hard." As SysAdmin's we are eager to say the the former and embarrassed to say the latter. General this embarrassement gives way to frustration and ...
Solaris iSNS Server (v2) Beta Released
Solaris storage enthusiasts will be excited to know that the OpenSolaris iSNS Server Project has released the first usable iSNS Server implementation. I personally refer to this release as "v2" because some of you may recall Sept '06 iSNS Server Release which was completely unusable, after which the iSNS Server Project went dark for some time. But, all that is behind us now! This release completes the iSCSI trio officially now that we have ...
Sun and NetApp Lock Horns and Head for Court
I'm was greatly saddened to read this: NetApp Sues Sun for ZFS Patent Infringement. I've been a big consumer of NetApp and Sun equipment for years. Readers of this blog have read numberous articles discussing the use of iSCSI and ZFS on NetApp in a Solaris environment. On a business level, I get the reality of this. Sun's lawers foolishly walked into a bear cave and the bear woke up. -1 to Sun's lawers. They have no real recourse ...
Solaris 10 8/07 Released
Delayed but released... Update 4 is ready for immediate deployment. For a complete list of improvements please see the What's New in the Solaris 10 8/07 Release document. Here are the highlights, imho: iSCSI Target Support A list of ZFS improvements too long ot list raidctl for hardware RAID (including Galaxy root mirrored configurations using MPT) SATA Tagged Queuing (BEWARE BEWARE BEWARE!) nge JumboFrame support lx Branded ...