Laptop Solaris

A Sun engineer provides a detailed (and occasionally light-hearted) look at how to set up an X4200 server through a series of video guides on YouTube.

• Step 1: Anti-Static Setup
• Step 2: Hard Drive Install
• Step 3: PCI Card Install
• Step 4: DVD Install
• Step 5: Network Connection

I noticed for the first time recently the ATA over Ethernet product from Coraid.

There’s a Solaris driver available (impressively in both SPARC binary, Solaris 7+ (direct download) and source (direct download), under a BSD-like license. The release notes are required reading too.

ATA over Ethernet is an interesting concept, albeit an expensive one at the moment, but I like the idea of remote disks, rather than remote computers. The reason is simple: in many ways it would make much more sense for those situations where you want a lot of storage, but still with direct access to the hardware you want to use it on. Traditionally you’d use NFS for that, but that would require a cheap-ish server, which seems a waste. Move the hard disks away (for noise/heat reasons) and keep the CPU and graphics interface local; video production and even large (but not necessarily fast) databases.

Now marry up ATA over Ethernet with ZFS and you could have a phenomenal ZFS pool, accessibly directly from the desktop, and without the need to keep a unit like Thumper in a cabinet next to your desk.

Shame I probably wont get the chance to try it out.

I love the Advanced Lights Out Management (ALOM) module in the T1000.

The T1000 is kept downstairs, and the noise can be uncomfortable, but the ability to power up and down the T1000 remotely over the network makes using it and testing it so much easier.

ALOM should be standard on all computers!

The Niagara II architecture is on the way, and it promises to double the throughput of the original T1 (Niagara) CPU and provide a host of other benefits.

The Niagara CPU (T1) as provided in the T1000 (read my T1000 in more detail review) and T2000 (read T2000 faster than I need) support 8 cores, with 4 threads per core, and a single, shared, FPU. That single FPU becomes a problem in high volume floating point work, because it can slow down the work of all the other cores and threads.

The multiple threads make use of the slower access to RAM to trigger a context switch, so although they are not executing four threads simultaneously, the potential drop in performance of a single thread as it has to access more data enables another thread to run until the data is available. This enables you to get a lot of execution power out of the single core, based on the fact that it would otherwise be sitting there idle.

With the Niagara II CPU there are four significant improvements, based on the same eight-core approach:

• Doubling of thread support to eight simultaneous threads, and therefore 64 simultaneous threads on the one CPU.
• Each core now has it’s own FPU, improving the rate of floating point calculations.
• Upping of the CPU rate to 1.4GHz.
• Support for dual-CPU systems.

That last item is very interesting, because it means that you’ll be able to support a single system with 128 simultaneous threads. If Sun could squeeze that into a 1U unit like the T1000, you could support an impressive 5,376 simultaneous threads within a standard full-height rack.

Of course, to back that up, there are some additional changes. The replacement for the T1000 is expected to support 64GB RAM (twice the current) and the T2000 128GB (also twice the current), and 10Gb Ethernet will be standard on the motherboard.

The rest of the key features will remain the same, including the ability, through software, to control the individual cores and lower power consumption. I’ve mentioned it before, but I still think there could be potential for a portable version of the T1 - the Intel dual core CPUs show that multi-core technology of this type is something that can be applied in a laptop.

The Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation (read Ultra 3 Review) is not a small unit, although the size of the T1 CPU is such that it would take up a significant portion of the case…

Even a 4 core/4 thread version of the Niagara would be an interesting concept, and would keep the size and power requirements down.

Until then, I’ll just have to keep testing the T1000. I’ve spent 3 days now trying out the Cooltools, and I’ll probably be posting the preliminary results this week.

Judy Chavis has stated that Dell won’t look at supporting, or providing, Solaris on their equipment until Solaris becomes the next industry standard OS - I quote from here:

“Is it the next industry standard around operating systems? That’s what it would take for us to do that,” she said. So far, the answer is a definitive no. “Since the year started, I haven’t had a Solaris x86 customer come into the briefing center,” Chavis said.

Solaris may not be the next industry standard around operating systems, but it’s hardly a small player in the market. I’d very surprised if Dell don’t have to compete head on with Solaris in the datacenter, whether you are comparing Linux on both platforms (and I include Sun’s AMD platforms in that comparison).

Ironically, the article goes on to say:

Dell evaluated Unix years ago, including Solaris, but eventually chose to stick with Linux.

Dell, however, have hardly made their love of Linux hugely public. For months, possibly years, after their decision getting Linux for your Dell was hard. Getting Linux on your desktop on Dell can be even harder.

Still, the real issue is how seriously companies are willing to take Solaris. It’s still popular in the datacenter, albeit on SPARC or dedicated Sun x86/AMD hardware. Although Solaris x86 - almost dumped by Sun - is proving to be very popular, especially with the release of OpenSolaris.

Solaris is obviously not a standard, but as I’ve argued before, Solaris has a lot more standardization, and for a lot longer, than Linux.

Standardization or not, it seems odd that Dell do not wish to support an OS that would enable them to compete on at least similar terms with Sun’s own hardware, although Dell don’t yet like AMD.

The full review of the Sun Ultra3 Mobile Workstation is now available at Free Software Magazine.

Contrary to the sign off at the end of the article, Sun have not yet asked for it back, and I’ve been using it now almost every day for the last six months, mostly for developing Cheffy, but also as my main SPARC-based Solaris 10 machine along with the Vaio running Solaris x86 that I use more regularly (as it has longer battery life, and is just a bit smaller).

You might also want to check my post at Computerworld on the machine.

Laptop Solaris wast originally created to look at the use of Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris on a laptop to see how good an alternative it was to using Windows or Linux.

By a strange convenience thought I’m going to be getting a genuine Sun Ultra 3 Mobile Workstation for review. As well as being a mobile powerhouse, it just happens to run Solaris, so it is going to be an interesting comparison against running Solaris/OpenSolaris on a ‘commodity’ PC-based laptop.

I’ll be doing a full review for Free Software Magazine, but I’ll be posting up my thoughts and experiences up here too.

If you have any questions about the Ultra 3, please feel free to ask.