I'd like to share with you guys what I have heard and what I have seen
in CEC(Customer Engineering 2006) held on Moscone West, San Francisco,
CA, From Oct 1st to Oct 4th, 2006.
Oct 1st is registration day, Oct 2nd is really beginning. When I stepped
into the main conference hall, I was shocked. It is so big and well
prepared for this magnificent event. I select a seat in very front, I
will share your some pictures later. According the statistics, there is
3000+ attendances, 200+ breakouts, 50+ demos, everything shows that this
would be a very successful event, I'll get lots of information here.
First general session, Don Grantham, the EVP of GSS(Global Sales &
Services), he delivered an important information by data that Sun goes
better and will goes much better than we thought, our stock is now over
$5.00, which was 3.9 three months ago. Next general session is given by
Greg Papadopoulos, the EVP R&D and CTO give sun Strategy and goal of
each Practice (System, Storage, Software), I'm full of confidence that
Sun goes the right way. And last session is from John Fowler, EVP of
system, shows lots of new server, I do not much, but really attractive.
Afternoon is breakout session, which I like best, each one will be 1
hour. You know it is not easy to choose 5 out of 200+.
Session 1
Title : Windows Kernel Crash Dump Analysis
Speakes: Dimitri de Wild EMEA Systems /TSC Kernel Technology
Feri Chua APAC Systems /TSC Kernel Technology
For me, they addresses a new area that Windows can generate Dump file
and can be debug. The main reason they need do that is some customers
want to run windows on our opteron servers, and windows dump mostly
because driver issue. They introduced how to get start and lots of tools
to achieve this goal. I was so exciting that I'm brave to offer two
questions. One is Dtrace is going to be ported into Mac OS, will that
happened on Windows? Answer is No plan. Second one is how does Feri
think Windows dump analysis comparing with Solaris, answer is Sparc is
quite good, while x86 is samiliar with Windows. I do not know how he get
this result, I have no time, need to catch next session.
Session 2
Title : Solaris 10 trusted extensions
Speakes: Bruno Gillet
I choose this session because desktop team develop trusted JDS, I'm
willing to hear what the status of whole trusted extension including
JDS. But I do not get what I really need in this session, the speaker
introduced too much about how security is important, maybe he thought
his audiences are mostly sales and customers. He mentioned the key
technology is Labeled systems, which I do not get the key points. I am
more clear after Niall Power give the introduction about trusted JDS.
Also he ran out his time, I wen to next session.
Session 3
Title : Sun's New x64 Data Server
Speakes: Trungchau Ngo
I know little on hardware, maybe this session can give me some
knowledge. Sun Fire x4500 Server is very cool, which has 2 Dual opteron
CPUs, totally support 40T SATA II disks. As my understanding it is kind
of storage server. Then he introduced server Architecture and Storage
Architecture and some more details, and I started know nothing what I am
listening. :)
Session 4
Title : Packaging and Patching: What's new in Solaris 10?
Speakes: Shivani Khosa Member Tchnical Staff, India Engineering Center
Vineeth Pillai Member Tchnical Staff, India Engineering Center
This topic attracts me in my first sight, it is mainly because I was a
Release Engineer, and what I'm now doing is porting some community tools
into Solaris, still need to do some release works. I was late because I
go around on the demo areas and forgot the time. Bad thing is I can not
understand India tone English, I need focus what is written on the
presentation. And good thing is Shivani first introduce SVR4 package
knowledge, which I know well, I'm getting understand India english
during the basic introduction. The speakers, introduce packaging and
patching system in Solaris 10, but that is not their purpose. As we all
know, Zone is shipped in Solaris10, that introduce complex packaging and
patching requirements compared with single zone. They re-design package
and patch structure, and implement new package and patch management
tools(pkgadd, patchadd, etc).
Zone upgrade is tough thing, for Solaris 10 update, they have developed
a project called Ashanti which support zone upgrade, it was integrated
in s10u1, but only support s10 to s10ux upgrade. There is another
project called Zulu, it is permanent solution for zone upgrade.
After meeting, I talked with them and showed my interest on what they
are doing, they give a important information that, if our JDS packages
want to support Zone upgrade, we must do some changes. I've gotten their
presentation and contact info. It seems we need do some work on that.
Actually, I hope this topic will also cover online update just like
apt-get in Debian, but it does not, and I forgot asking them because
next session is already started. I may contact them through emails later.
Session 5
Title : The Dynamics of ZFS
Speakes: Roch Bourbonnais, Neelakanth Nadgir, PAE
PAE is Performance, Availability and Architecture. Roch introduced some
basic knowledge of ZFS, and difference with UFS, the key point is huge
performance enhanced. Neelakanth gave detail informations and more
testing data. Here is a table I remembered.
Test TPS
S10U2 UFS Buffered 358
S10U2 ZFS 408
S10U2 ZFS Tuned 878
S11_43 ZFS Tuned 1204
Also, I spent some time on the demo area, very impressed. SotrageTec
Data Center Compute Engine, lots of thing I just never heard before.
There is also a tool help migarate from linux HP-UX and all kinds of
Unix/Linux porting to Solaris, I forget the name, it is developed by
Java in India, may get more information tomorrow.