Leaving Sun Microsystems!

In Nov 2002, I entered into Sun through the acquisition of Terraspring. The goal? the Lights out Datacentre, System Provisioning, Automation and Infrastructure Agility. I was a Network Engineer joining a "Unix" company they said. I really thought it would only last 6-months, but 6-months turned into 6-years and it's been a roller coaster for sure.

During my time here I've had the privilege to meet and work with the most exceptional and outstanding group of engineers, architects, and sales provisionals I could have imagined. I've learned so much about the business and myself through so many challenging years.

It's been an extraordinary journey, with extraordinary people.

Thank You!
-InsomniacsAnonymous

Blog moving to http://vmhill.blogspot.com





























Posted by 142258 [Sun] ( April 29, 2009 10:46 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

U.S. Debt

U.S. NATIONAL DEBT CLOCK

The Outstanding Public Debt as of 06 Apr 2009 at 04:57:51 AM GMT is:

$11,137,182,866,850.84

The estimated population of the United States is 305,949,454 so each citizen's share of this debt is $36,401.88.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $3.83 billion per day since September 28, 2007! debt_clock

-InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Sun] ( April 05, 2009 10:37 PM ) Permalink | Comments[1]

In a Nutshell: Nehalem-EP -Part1

Our Partner Intel launched www.intel.com/pressroom/ it's eagerly awaited new architecture yesterday including Intel's Xeon processors 5500 series.





The 1-2 socket Nehalem-EP (Efficient Performance) aka Tylersburg-EP comes with some nice capability on top of the integrated memory controller, DDR3, and increased memory bandwidth. Added features include but not limited to QPI (formerly CSI), Turbo Mode, and Hyper-Threading.



www.sun.com/x64/intel/

So a little on one or two of these new technologies without writing a book. Intel® QuickPath technology (QPI) is the next generation point-to-point interconnect for CPUs and chipsets. It's used to connect socket-to-socket, socket-to-IO, and carries upto 6.4 GigaTransfers per second per link each direction.





Hyper-Threading Technology provides the ability for each core to run simultaneous multiple software threads and supports 2 threads per core. Turbo Boost technology will increase the speed of the processor on demand (from OS) if the CPU is operating below power /thermal specifications. So by quiescing unused cores, it's possible to over clock the busy core(s) a max of 3 speed bins remaining within the thermal envelope.




The processors come in three flavors Value, Volume and Performance www.intel.com/5500/:

Value offers 2-4 cores, 4MB L3 Cache, 4.8GT/s QPI, 800MHz Max Memory speed and doesn't support Turbo Mode or HyperThreading. Volume (or Standard) delivers 4 cores, 8MB L3 Cache, 5.86GT/s QPI, 1066MHz Max Memory speed and supports Turbo Mode (upto 2 bins) and HyperThreading. Performance delivers 4 cores, 8MB L3 Cache, 6.4GT/s QPI, 1333MHz Max Memory speed and supports Turbo Mode (upto 3 bins) and HyperThreading.

It's important to note that Hyper-Threading and Turbo Mode are configured in the BIOS along with many other performance effecting settings like NUMA, Pre-fetchers, and RTID allocation. For performance optimization make sure the required memory modules are selected at the correct speed to match your CPUs.

Each socket has 6 or 9 DIMMs (3 channels, 2 or 3 DIMM slots per channel) and memory placement is critical. Each slot is color coded with Blue for slot 0 in the channel, White is slot 1 in the channel, and Black is slot 2 in the channel. Populate first each slot FURTHEST from the CPU socket in each channel (Blue slots). More on Memory Population Rules to follow.

And finally, with any new architecture check for OS certifications as not all versions will be supported regardless of your chosen flavor.

More to follow on April 14th......http://www.sun.com/launch April 14th/

-InsomniacsAnonymous
www.sun.com/x64/intel/

Posted by 142258 [x64 Systems] ( March 31, 2009 09:55 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Terry Konich

Today, I received the sad news of the passing of our dear colleague and team member Terry Konich.

It was sudden and certainly not expected. I've known Terry a few years and found him to be a quiet, hard working, unassuming, and a smart field engineer with a passion for technology.

Terry was always willing to help a colleague or a customer in distress and will be deeply missed.

Our thoughts and prays go out to his family.

Rest in Peace....

















Posted by 142258 [Sun] ( February 26, 2009 03:04 PM ) Permalink | Comments[1]

Power Shopper Larry

Chaos in the markets, panic in the boardrooms, fat wallets and embarrassingly large war chests. But if you are a seller, you are over a barrel. VCs are loath to sell their best companies now, because they know it's a buyer's market.

Check out "Big tech goes bargain hunting" -by Michael Copeland



Wait a minute... and I'm not a finance guy either, but up until last quarter I thought Sun's cash balance was approximately $3.3 Billion?
- InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Sun] ( October 30, 2008 10:22 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Datacenter talk

If there is was still any doubt that Datacenter costs are going to exceed the acquisition of the commodity server, then check out this article by Kenneth G. Brill at the Uptime Institute

http://www.forbes.com/

“Annual facility costs will exceed the cost of a "cheap" server in two years in the best case scenario, or 14 months in the worst.”

and

“Spending $2,500 on a server really means spending between $8,300 and $15,400 in facility capital to provide the necessary space for housing the server and powering it.“
- InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Sun] ( August 18, 2008 10:52 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Hyper-V: A New World Order!

I can't help thinking this will be the first real year of the x86 Virtualization war. With the hypervisor already commoditised and the eight hundred pound gorilla in Redmond crashing the party soon, 2008 will be an intriguing year. It's still all down to the management tools. Secret source hypervisors from Vmware and Microsoft or Xen from the OpenSource?. Place your bets! The big question “is Hyper-V ready for the Data Centre?”.
- InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Virtualization] ( January 21, 2008 07:58 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

SC07

At SC07 last week the 6048 Sun Blade Modular System was launched along with the Magnum 3,456 Port IB Switch and a preview of the 4-Socket Quad-Core AMD Blade. That's 768 Cores in a rack.

Hmmm... What would you do with that kind of compute power?

























Magnum 3,456 Port IB Switch














Sun Blade 6048 Modular System















- InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Blades] ( November 20, 2007 04:24 PM ) Permalink | Comments[1]

Tucani at the Intel Developer Forum (photos)

After the Intel launch of Caneland last week it was great to see the Sun 4-Socket Xeon system at IDF. Checkout the Pat Gelsinger webcast and John Fowler on stage. Nice job John! Lookout for the launch very soon.


http://www.intel.com/idf/l

Check the website for the pod casts: webcasts

- InsomniacsAnonymous

































Posted by 142258 [x64 Systems] ( September 23, 2007 09:20 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

May the force be with us!

An incredible few weeks of announcements, launches, and product previews. Where to start? Sun announces Microsoft OEM, Sun acquiring Lustre, Citrix acquiring Xen, HP acquiring Opsware, Intel launches Caneland, VMWare announces ESXLite, AMD launches Native Quad-Core, Sun launches Niagara2? Phew! I'll take a deep breath and defer the acquisition spree for another day.


From the X64 Systems side of the house, the two that standout are of course the Microsoft OEM and AMD's Quad-Core. Both on the x64 front are arguably the most eagerly awaited, and both probably have the potential of having the biggest impact on our ever advancing x64 landscape. Intel's Caneland/Tigerton 4-socket Quad-Core is extremely exciting too.

So a big thanks to AMD for the invite to the Quad-Core launch at Lucas Films and the wonderful photo opportunity Tuesday night. My kids think I'm the coolest Dad (for one day anyway), and yes they're young.

May the force be with us!

- InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Sun] ( September 12, 2007 11:35 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Battle of the Blades -cont'd

To Blades or not to Blades, that is the question?

Industry data tells us that only ~15% of current x64 systems are in the blade
form factor. Trade offs including i/o limitations, smaller memory footprint,
reduced CPU options, expensive vendor specific management tools, heat density
issues, and reduce serviceability have all contributed to poor adoption in the
enterprise data centre. Not to mention over selling Blades for Virtualization
by some of the other bad boys in the industry. Phew!

So finally the wait is over, yesterday Sun announced it's Dual Socket AMD,
Intel, and CMT Blades in a 10RU form factor. The only viable alternative to
rack servers in the industry today.



So congratulations to Andy and the team producing a no compromise blade
chassis for Xeon, Opteron and CMT technology. No specific tools required and
no vendor extra costs for management and a much welcomed increase in RAS and
serviceability against the incumbents.



If we are going to see blades increase verses the rack servers in the Data
Centre, then the next 12-months will be an intriguing period of time.

-InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Blades] ( June 07, 2007 10:32 PM ) Permalink | Comments[1]

A Technologist in a Technology Company.... what could be better?

When I was acquired into Sun in 2002 via Terraspring, I was told Scott McNealy had 1Q left on the job, Solaris was dead, Sun was about to be acquired, the stock was $2, oh! plus there was a ton of restructuring....

So after 5-years on the job, and a lot of ups and downs, the previous 12-months have been the most incredible and interesting in my tenure. As a Field Engineer and Architect focused on Opteron, Blades, Virtualization, and Andy Bechtolsheim's product line:

- Sun hits number #3 for Server revenue
- Niagara CMT continues to surprise the skeptics
- Solaris hits over 7M in downloads
- Sun has a successful Opteron x64 line and adding Xeon
- Scott is today Chairman of the Board
- Sun is making money

Who would have thought?

I'm a technologist working for a technology company. What could be better than this? Q.E.D.
- InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Sun] ( May 07, 2007 10:50 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

...update...update...update

I started out in the late 1980s working with DEC VAX/VMS technology and sometimes life today doesn't seem any easier. Although, I'm not wire wrapping the pins to configure the hardware anymore, my job today seems just as complex as it was then.

BIOS updates, OS updates, driver updates, application updates..

Some days it feels the industry hasn't come very far ...update...update...update.

So it was nice to see a graphic showing Moore's Law and Chip Multi Threading. Not because it's Sun, but as a Technologist it's easy to forget the advancement being made by the computer industry.

Happy 25th Birthday Sun!
-InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Sun] ( February 28, 2007 12:35 AM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

5 Unknown Facts

I'm currently a x64 Product Specialist,Vmware VCP, and Architect for the Systems Practice serving in the US Western Region. Previously, I was the first SE for startup Terraspring, a Utility Computing Software company funded in part by HP and EMC, and was acquired by Sun Microsystems in 2002. I was also part of the team that built over 30 Internet Data Centers for Exodus Communications serving as a Senior Network Engineer. Other tenures include Senior Engineer for Lucent, Sniffer Technologies, and Network Manager at Lloyds Bank. I began at a Digital Equipment Corp. OEM including system design and integration of first generation Ethernet and VAX/VMS clusters. I hold a BS degree in Electronic Engineering and I'm a member of Santa Clara Valley IEEE.

Here are five things you probably don't know about me:


In 1998, whilst walking to the Church of Nativity, Bethlehem on a visit to Jerusalem, I very carelessly walked into a car and broke it's side mirror off. Not recommended while visiting Palestine.










In 2001, I was in the World Trade Towers in New York just days before 911.










My first job involved installing first generation Thin/Thickwire Ethernet backbones. I still have wonderful memories of British Steel, Port Talbot (nice place).








While on my first day on the job in London 1990, I was sent down to the Transport Center to execute a DEC VAX/VMS upgrade on the system that controlled ALL the City of London's Traffic Light Systems. Think I aged ten years that day!








I was one of 100,000 people that attended the Genenis outside concert at Knebworth in 1992. The parking attendants did a runner with the money before the concert ended leaving chaos and car park grid lock. It took more than 6-hours (5am) for the traffic to clear.








- InsomniacsAnonymous

Posted by 142258 [Personal] ( February 02, 2007 08:16 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]

Hardware Assisted Virtualization - The Promised Land?

Intel and AMD marketing departments have been busy these past 12-months or so using Virtualization to differentiate their processors, but when will the enterprise benefit from x86 Hardware Assisted Virtualization? In a nutshell, Hardware Assisted Virtualization means the processors removing some of the architectural inefficiencies the hypervisor had to provide in software. AMD-V (aka Pacifica) combined with direct attached memory and on-chip memory controller looks the most interesting technology with extensions, Tagged TLBs, DEV (Device Exclusion Vectors) in the current shipping of Rev-F Opteron processors. Yet it's the Nested Page Tables expected with AMD's Quad core which provides the most interesting development. Now ask when the hypervisor vendors will enable this new capability and life gets a little more complicated. Microsoft and Xen tout they are AMD-V aware and support Intel's VT, but all I hear from Vmware is next year??? See you at VMworld, I know the answers I'm looking for!
- InsomniacsAnonymous

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(N.B. As an employee of Sun Microsystems, the opinions expressed here are purely my own and not necessarily that of Sun or any other party).
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Posted by 142258 [Virtualization] ( November 02, 2006 10:59 PM ) Permalink | Comments[0]