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:
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.
I’m in the process of doing some testing on the T1000 which I currently have on test at the moment. Some of these tests will be entirely focused on the performance of Cheffy, which uses a combination of Apache, MySQL and Perl.
I’ve also been thinking about testing some key elements in terms of where you might use a T1000 - in a web serving farm where you want high performance out your SAMP stack, say for blogging of Wikis, where you have a lot of small, simple, queries that you want executed as quickly as possible. Most variants of this are based around Apache/MySQL/PHP.
Getting everything set up and organized for that isn’t trivial, so it’s great to see a package like the Cool Tools CoolThreads Optimized Open Source Software Stack (Cool Stack)
The package includes Niagara optimized versions of:
This includes a bundled configuration of Apache with MPM pre-fork and PHP, SSL and Perl modules.
It should go without saying that I’ll be testing this stack against my own configurations and builds as part of the tests.
I much prefer to use bash as my main shell, but in Solaris, you are much better off using the default shell, particularly for root, just in case there is a problem and you cannot mount the /usr directory during a boot.
OK, it may not happen often (and in fact, the default install is now to have only one partition for the Solaris OS, one for user files and swap), but I figure it is best to err on the side of caution.
The best way to do this is to configure your .profile to exec /usr/bin/bash if it is available, but do nothing otherwise, like this:
if [ -x /usr/bin/bash ]
then
exec /usr/bin/bash
fi
Using exec means that the Bourne shell (sh) will be replaced by bash, so when you logout, you don’t have to logout from two shells.
Obviously you can continue to put whatever you like into the standard .profile according to your needs, while using the .bash* init scripts to do your custom bash operations.
I have a few tips on getting Solaris 10 running in a virtual machine within Parallels on an Intel-based Mac OS X box, available through Getting Solaris 10 working in Parallels.
I haven’t yet tried it on the MacBook Pro, but then that’s only made it as far as the Netherlands on its journey from Shanghai…
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.
There’s a good step-by-step guide at Sun’s BigAdmin site on how to configure your Solaris box for SAMP - the Solaris equivalent of the LAMP stack.
The short, but sweet, article can be found here.
I use SAMP on the Ultra3 as my development platform for Cheffy. Although we don’t use PHP, I use Perl, but the acronyum is the same.
I also don’t use the ready to roll SFW packages, but compile my own, purely because I have some special settings I like to make use of in all of the different packages. But the fundamentals are the same.