Wednesday February 27, 2008
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Wednesday February 27, 2008 The UltraSPARC T2 Processor and Security
A couple of weeks ago, the Sun Partner University saw 250 technical people from Sun's german partner community gathering in Fulda, Germany. Besides showing videos, talking about Sun Visualization Software, the Sun Grid Engine and Sun Studio Compilers and evangelizing Web 2.0, I had the honor of recording an interview with Alec Muffett, one of our Principal Engineers, based in the UK.
Alec came to Fulda to talk about the Sun UltraSPARC T2 (aka Niagara 2) Processor (here are some systems to try out) and Security. You can listen to the interview he gave at the current episode #11 of the HELDENFunk podcast (if you don't understand german, start listening after the 2nd minute or so). Now, he also published a video he recorded of himself while he gave his presentation. A very worthwhile and fun 16 minutes to watch!
Notice the fun and refreshing style of his presentation and slides A true master of the Zen Arts of Presentation!
"The UltraSPARC T2 Processor and Security" has been brought to you by Constantin's Blooog.
This entry was created on 2008-02-27 08:05:14.0 PST and is associated with the following tags:
cryptography
niagara
niagara2
security
solaris
sparc
t1
t2
ultrasparc
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Monday February 25, 2008 Meet Me Next Week at CeBIT 2008
CeBIT is the world's largest IT trade show. Whenever we mention this to our colleagues in the US, they say "sure". Only when they actually come over to our booth and experience the CeBIT feeling, they realize how really big it is. Most US trade shows use a really big exhibition hall. CeBIT has 21 (twenty-one) of them. Plus the space in between. Bring some good shoes.
CeBIT 2008 will take place next week, March 4-9 in Hannover, Germany. If you go there, visit the Sun booth. We'll have systems, storage, software and service exhibits, a Blackbox, even an installation of Project Wonderland.
I'll be at the Solaris part of the booth, talking to customers about Niagara 2 and other CPU and System Technologies, Solaris, OpenSolaris and ZFS, HPC and Grid Computing, Web 2.0 and what not. If you read this blog, stop by and say hi. Let me know what you like and what you don't like about this blog, about Sun or whatever else goes through your mind. I'll bring my voice recorder and a camera and we can talk about your own cool projects in a podcast interview that we can then publish through the HELDENFunk podcast. Join the System Heroes (or the german Systemhelden) and get a T-Shirt or I'll try to organize one of those champagne VIP passes for you. Just ask for me at the info counter.
See you at CeBIT!
"Meet Me Next Week at CeBIT 2008" has been brought to you by Constantin's Blooog.
This entry was created on 2008-02-25 13:48:28.0 PST and is associated with the following tags:
cebit
meet
open
opensolaris
show
solaris
sparc
trade
ultrasparc
vertical
workstations
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Tuesday February 19, 2008 VirtualBox and ZFS: The Perfect Team
I've never installed Windows in my whole life. My computer history includes systems like the Dragon 32, the Commodore 128, then the Amiga, Apple PowerBook (68k and PPC) etc. plus the occasional Sun system at work. Even the laptop my company provided me with only runs Solaris Nevada, nothing else. Today, this has changed.
A while ago, Sun announced the acquisition of Innotek, the makers of the open-source virtualization software VirtualBox. After having played a bit with it for a while, I'm convinced that this is one of the coolest innovations I've seen in a long time. And I'm proud to see that this is another innovative german company that joins the Sun family, Welcome Innotek!
Here's why this is so cool.
After having upgraded my laptop to Nevada build 82, I had VirtualBox up and running in a matter of minutes. OpenSolaris Developer Preview 2 (Project Indiana) runs fine on VirtualBox, so does any recent Linux (I tried Ubuntu). But Windows just makes for a much cooler VirtualBox demo, so I did it:
After 36 years of Windows freedom, I ended up installing it on my laptop, albeit on top of VirtualBox. Safer XP if you will. To the top, you see my VirtualBox running Windows XP in all its Tele-Tubby-ish glory.
As you can see, this is a plain vanilla install, I just took the liberty of installing a virus scanner on top. Well, you never know...
So far, so good. Now let's do something others can't. First of all, this virtual machine uses a .vdi disk image to provide hard disk space to Windows XP. On my system, the disk image sits on top of a ZFS filesystem:
# zfs list -r poolchen/export/vm/winxp
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
poolchen/export/vm/winxp 1.22G 37.0G 20K /export/vm/winxp
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 1.22G 37.0G 1.05G /export/vm/winxp/winxp0
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0@200802190836_WinXPInstalled 173M - 909M -
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0@200802192038_VirusFree 0 - 1.05G -
Cool thing #1: You can do snapshots. In fact I have two snapshots here. The first is from this morning, right after the Windows XP installer went through, the second has been created just now, after installing the virus scanner. Yes, there has been some time between the two snapshots, with lots of testing, day job and the occasional rollback. But hey, that's why snapshots exist in the first place.
Cool thing #2: This is a compressed filesystem:
# zfs get all poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 type filesystem -
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 creation Mon Feb 18 21:31 2008 -
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 used 1.22G -
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 available 37.0G -
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 referenced 1.05G -
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 compressratio 1.53x -
...
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 compression on inherited from poolchen
ZFS has already saved me more than half a gigabyte of precious storage capacity already!
Next, we'll try out Cool thing #3: Clones. Let's clone the virus free snapshot and try to create a second instance of Win XP from it:
# zfs clone poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0@200802192038_VirusFree poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp1
# ls -al /export/vm/winxp
total 12
drwxr-xr-x 5 constant staff 4 Feb 19 20:42 .
drwxr-xr-x 6 constant staff 5 Feb 19 08:44 ..
drwxr-xr-x 3 constant staff 3 Feb 19 18:47 winxp0
drwxr-xr-x 3 constant staff 3 Feb 19 18:47 winxp1
dr-xr-xr-x 3 root root 3 Feb 19 08:39 .zfs
# mv /export/vm/winxp/winxp1/WindowsXP_0.vdi /export/vm/winxp/winxp1/WindowsXP_1.vdi
The clone has inherited the mountpoint from the upper level ZFS filesystem (the winxp one) and so we have everything set up for VirtualBox to create a second Win XP instance from. I just renamed the new container file for clarity. But hey, what's this?
Damn! VirtualBox didn't fall for my sneaky little clone trick. Hmm, where is this UUID stored in the first place?
# od -A d -x WindowsXP_1.vdi | more
0000000 3c3c 203c 6e69 6f6e 6574 206b 6956 7472
0000016 6175 426c 786f 4420 7369 206b 6d49 6761
0000032 2065 3e3e 0a3e 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000048 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000064 107f beda 0001 0001 0190 0000 0001 0000
0000080 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
*
0000336 0000 0000 0200 0000 f200 0000 0000 0000
0000352 0000 0000 0000 0000 0200 0000 0000 0000
0000368 0000 c000 0003 0000 0000 0010 0000 0000
0000384 3c00 0000 0628 0000 06c5 fa07 0248 4eb6
0000400 b2d3 5c84 0e3a 8d1c 8225 aae4 76b5 44f5
0000416 aa8f 6796 283f db93 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000432 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000448 0000 0000 0000 0000 0400 0000 00ff 0000
0000464 003f 0000 0200 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000480 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
*
0000512 0000 0000 ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff
0000528 ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff
*
0012544 0001 0000 0002 0000 0003 0000 0004 0000
Ahh, it seems to be stored at byte 392, with varying degrees of byte and word-swapping. Some further research reveals that you better leave the first part of the UUID alone (I spare you the details...), instead, the last 6 bytes: 845c3a0e1c8d, sitting at byte 402-407 look like a great candidate for an arbitrary serial number. Let's try changing them (This is a hack for demo purposes only. Don't do this in production, please):
# dd if=/dev/random of=WindowsXP_1.vdi bs=1 count=6 seek=402 conv=notrunc
6+0 records in
6+0 records out
# od -A d -x WindowsXP_1.vdi | more
0000000 3c3c 203c 6e69 6f6e 6574 206b 6956 7472
0000016 6175 426c 786f 4420 7369 206b 6d49 6761
0000032 2065 3e3e 0a3e 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000048 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000064 107f beda 0001 0001 0190 0000 0001 0000
0000080 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
*
0000336 0000 0000 0200 0000 f200 0000 0000 0000
0000352 0000 0000 0000 0000 0200 0000 0000 0000
0000368 0000 c000 0003 0000 0000 0010 0000 0000
0000384 3c00 0000 0628 0000 06c5 fa07 0248 4eb6
0000400 b2d3 2666 6fbb c1ca 8225 aae4 76b5 44f5
0000416 aa8f 6796 283f db93 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000432 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000448 0000 0000 0000 0000 0400 0000 00ff 0000
0000464 003f 0000 0200 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
0000480 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000 0000
*
0000512 0000 0000 ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff
0000528 ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff ffff
*
0012544 0001 0000 0002 0000 0003 0000 0004 0000
Who needs a hex editor if you have good old friends od and dd on board? The trick is in the "conv=notruc" part. It tells dd to leave the rest of the file as is and not truncate it after doing it's patching job. Let's see if it works:
Heureka, it works! Notice that the second instance is running with the freshly patched harddisk image as shown in the window above.
Windows XP booted without any problem from the ZFS-cloned disk image. There was just the occasional popup message from Windows saying that it found a new harddisk (well observed, buddy!).
Thanks to ZFS clones we can now create new virtual machine clones in just seconds without having to wait a long time for disk images to be copied. Great stuff. Now let's do what everybody should be doing to Windows once a virus scanner is installed: Install Firefox:
I must say that the performance of VirtualBox is stunning. It sure feels like the real thing, you just need to make sure to have enough memory in your real computer to support both OSes at once, otherwise you'll run into swapping hell...
BTW: You can also use ZFS volumes (called ZVOLs) to provide storage space to virtual machines. You can snapshot and clone them just like regular file systems, plus you can export them as iSCSI devices, giving you the flexibility of a SAN for all your virtualized storage needs. The reason I chose files over ZVOLs was just so I can swap pre-installed disk images with colleagues. On second thought, you can dump/restore ZVOL snapshots with zfs send/receive just as easily...
Anyway, let's see how we're doing storage-wise:
# zfs list -rt filesystem poolchen/export/vm/winxp
NAME USED AVAIL REFER MOUNTPOINT
poolchen/export/vm/winxp 1.36G 36.9G 21K /export/vm/winxp
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp0 1.22G 36.9G 1.05G /export/vm/winxp/winxp0
poolchen/export/vm/winxp/winxp1 138M 36.9G 1.06G /export/vm/winxp/winxp1
Watch the "USED" column for the winxp1 clone. That's right: Our second instance of Windows XP only cost us a meager 138 MB on top of the first instance's 1.22 GB! Both filesystems (and their .vdi containers with Windows XP installed) represent roughly a Gigabyte of storage each (the REFER column), but the actual physical space our clone consumes is just 138MB.
Cool thing #4: ZFS clones save even more space, big time!
How does this work? Well, when ZFS creates a snapshot, it only creates a new reference to the existing on-disk tree-like block structure, indicating where the entry point for the snapshot is. If the live filesystem changes, only the changed blocks need to be written to disk, the unchanged ones remain the same and are used for both the live filesystem and the snapshot.
A clone is a snapshot that has been marked writable. Again, only the changed (or new) blocks consume additional disk space (in this case Firefox and some WinXP temporary data), everything that is unchanged (in this case nearly all of the WinXP installation) is shared between the clone and the original filesystem. This is de-duplication done right: Don't create redundant data in the first place!
That was only one example of the tremenduous benefits Solaris can bring to the virtualization game. Imagine the power of ZFS, FMA, DTrace, Crossbow and whatnot for providing the best infrastructure possible to your virtualized guest operating systems, be they Windows, Linux, or Solaris. It works in the SPARC world (through LDOMs), and in the x86/x64 world through xVM server (based on the work of the Xen community) and now joined by VirtualBox. Oh, and it's free and open source, too.
So with all that: Happy virtualizing, everyone. Especially to everybody near Stuttgart.
"VirtualBox and ZFS: The Perfect Team" has been brought to you by Constantin's Blooog.
This entry was created on 2008-02-19 13:18:18.0 PST and is associated with the following tags:
cool
hack
howto
innotek
open
opensolaris
opensource
solaris
virtualbox
virtualization
windows
zfs
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Thursday February 14, 2008 Be a System Hero
If you read this blog regularly, you might have noticed that I like spending time participating in podcasts for the german website Systemhelden.com (For instance, see here, here and of course here). The podcast and the Systemhelden.com community is in german language, so if your native tongue isn't, the times of envy are over. Welcome to Systemheroes.co.uk!
What is it?
It's a community website for those that are the "up" in "uptime", the unsung heroes of data centers, the people that never get a "Thank you for delivering all of my 1526 emails today!" call: The system heroes. If you like tinkering with computer systems, it's probably something for you.
What's in it for me?
First of all: A lot of fun, including some comics. A place to plug your blog (and who doesn't want the occasional extra spike in hitrates...). A place to meet other system heroes and chat about those pesky little lusers and their latest PEBKAC incidents while exchanging LART maintenance tips. And they have the coolest system hero game around: Caffeine Crazy. As seen, er, heard on HELDENFunk #9 and #10. Try it out!
Yeah, there's some Sun marketing, too, I admit. Mainly references to cool technology from Sun and the ability to test it 60 days for free (if it's hardware) or just use it eternally for free (if it's software), but someone has to pay the hosting bills and I assure you: It's for the good of system herokind.
Oh, and you gotta love these great ads at the bottom of each page (my favourite is above).
Cool, what do I do?
Do as Yoda would say: "Hrrm, a system hero you want to be? Sign up you need!" Well, being a system hero has never been so much fun...
"Be a System Hero" has been brought to you by Constantin's Blooog.
This entry was created on 2008-02-14 14:04:01.0 PST and is associated with the following tags:
community
hero
solaris
sun
system
systemhelden
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Wednesday February 13, 2008 Great Web 2.0 Videos to Show to Customers, Partners, Colleagues, Friends & Family
The past few weeks were very busy ones for me. I was preparing a lot of stuff for the Sun Germany Partner University 2008 in Fulda, which took place this Monday and Tuesday. The bad news is that I hardly had any time to blog. The good news is that I now have many things to blog about over the next couple of entries.
Web 2.0 was one of the main themes that permeated the agenda. There were presentations about tools for web 2.0 developers (Check out NetBeans and its wonderful JMaki plugin for instance), discussions on web scalability using CMT servers and I also had the honor of presenting a Web 2.0 overview talk.
During the general session, as an introduction to Sun's vision, we found this video to be quite breathtaking:
This video called "Did You Know 2.0" was developed by teachers in the USA who are concerned with the education of today's kids and how to prepare them for an exponentially changing, globalized and networked future. It's great to see so many concepts in this video that are at the heart of what Sun is doing, combined with a forward-looking, heads-up attitude, designed to shake us up and tell us "Wait a minute: There's significant change going on right now. Prepare for it". A lot of people asked me where to get this video after the general session (I was in charge of A/V support during general sessions), so now you know: Visit the Shift Happens website for high quality versions of the video as well as some background.
Many thanks to Danilo for pointing me to this video (and unconsciously influencing this year's partner university agenda)!
Here's another Web 2.0 related video that I like to use during presentations: "Web 2.0 ... The Machine is Us/ing Us" by Michael Wesch from Kansas State University:
A great summary of the history of the web: From HTML to XML to RSS syndication, blogging, video sharing, user-generated content to today's way of networking communities. Never has Web 2.0 been explained in an easier to understand way. The best thing about this video is that it has been created by non-techies: Michael Wesch and his team are actually anthropologists.
This is what I always repeat to customers: Web 2.0 is not about technology. It's about humanity.
"Great Web 2.0 Videos to Show to Customers, Partners, Colleagues, Friends & Family" has been brought to you by Constantin's Blooog.
This entry was created on 2008-02-13 13:29:50.0 PST and is associated with the following tags:
blogging
education
globalization
video
web
web2.0
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Tuesday February 05, 2008 Faster Email Deletion
A while ago I wrote about email efficiency, which turned out to be a fairly popular article. During the recent holidays, I had about 4 weeks of vacation. The pile of email that accumulated during this period was humongous! Hundreds of emails in my Inbox, after server-side filtering (Which means that I need to pay real attention to all of them) and over 7000 emails in my "To read" folder (Which means finding a few needles in a large haystack).
It became apparent, that the speed at which one can delete emails is a survival factor in the information age.
During "normal" days, I would scan my Inbox (usually 20-30 mails a day, after server-side filtering) in the right order (My emails are sorted by priority thanks to the Thunderbird mail client). Then file away the good ones (into a single folder, since Thunderbird's search capabilities are real good) and delete the rest. After that, I would scan the "To read" folder for anything interesting and only occasionally file away something. Most of the time, I would just hit the delete key.
Thunderbird's threading ability is a great help: I can view email discussions on popular aliases with dozens of emails each as a single thread, then delete the whole thread (Shift-Ctrl-A to select, then Del) at once. Two keystrokes, dozens of emails gone. But this doesn't help with 7000 emails in your "To read" list while scanning them for a few dozen that might be interesting.
The numbers add up: While I'm pretty good at scanning email subjects and senders for keep/delete decisions, every "delete" action takes about a second or two for the transaction to complete with the email server. I simply didn't have 7000-14000 seconds (That's 2-4 hours!) for deleting only.
Then it struck me: Why not just scan, file away the good ones, and at the end select all that's left and do one huge delete action. Most of the 7000 emails gone in just 2 seconds, after scanning them for about an hour or so.
I didn't bother thinking about this earlier, because deleting 200-300 emails a day in smaller batches doesn't feel like much. Only after they added up over the holiday, it became apparent to me what a huge time-sink the simple act of deleting emails can be. Now, I'm always doing it this way: Scan first, file away the good ones, then hit Ctrl-A, then DEL and everything else is gone. This gives me about half a day of time back per month. Half. A. Day. Per. Month.
Sometimes, it's just those little things that can make a huge difference.
P.S.: If you want me to read your email, don't put me on BCC only.
"Faster Email Deletion" has been brought to you by Constantin's Blooog.
This entry was created on 2008-02-05 01:35:03.0 PST and is associated with the following tags:
delete
efficiency
email
gtd
howto
overload
spam
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