New Sun-Fujitsu SPARC Enterprise Systems
Read the links above for all the technical details. Here is my story on what went on to get us to today.
This was quite a project. We have been working on these servers for almost 3 years since the Sun-Fujitsu deal was announced. Big enterprise class servers like these are very expensive, very complex and take a lot time to get developed to the point where they can be released to customers. This is a little bit later than the hoped for mid-2006 release date, but these predictions are always optimistic.
I had three full time Release Engineers working on this project, a dedicated team from the SPARC Hardware Partners group, and several others providing lots of support as needed.
Lots of challenges were overcome just to get the development started. First of all it is challenging to work with a partner half way around the world, with a different language and culture. We had to set up ways to share all of the development source code between the US and Japan. We had to transfer lots of data each way, every day (thanks SHWP!).
We spent considerable amounts of time just deciding how to review each others changes.
Figuring out how to share bug reports filed in English and Japanese to track SW quality.
Legal agreements (enough said).
We had a completely new system controller software (XSCF) based on open source. New source code management and tools. New open source OS build servers used in compiling and building test images of the software.
We had to insert a new set of sun4u/SPARC64 processor architecture packages to Solaris 10 in an update release (Solaris 10 11/06) and OpenSolaris. Lots of new Solaris enhancements for performance and reliability.
A new I/O expansion box.
A never ending need for Gigabytes of disk space for this project.
Sun Management Center additions and Fault Management enhancements.
I could probably go on. Needless to say the list of work that my team covered was very, very long and it seemed like all of the critical deadlines happened on holidays. There were lots of long days, nights and weekends sacrificed.
So let me just give everyone my huge thanks and say what a great job everyone did especially on your selfless teamwork and perseverance! I hope everyone enjoyed the launch parties today. Wish I could have been there.
