Jason Schroeder's Blog

How cool is this?

/jason

I have been working on a deployment of what has to date been generically termed 'Concept Center.'  Modeled after Sun's hugely successful iForce Centers, the idea is to provide an environment that can supplement a customer's existing development, proof of concept and testing compute resources in a self sustaining, flexible and build repeatable fashion all the while targeting increased overall utilization of some of the most sorely underused equipment out there in corporate customer land ... the development and lab equipment.

This has really been interesting for me.  It has given me the chance to build out something new and try out some previously unfamiliar (to me) software.  Good learning experience and a chance to put it all together in my own 'editorial view' of how it could be done. 

So, I put this together.  The idea is pretty simple.  Take a hodgepodge of gear, put some tools and processes in place to automate the 'checkout', 'provisioning', 'access' and 'reclaim' steps to offer this previously underutilized equipment to a greater audience for things like:

    -Short to medium term development
    -Proof of concept incubation
    -Scalability testing
    -Application certification
    -Test to function
    -Code porting

So, a sample workflow example:

    -Browse the Concept Center Portal
    -Check the Calendar for available resources
    -Select resource profiles (OS version, application stack, identities requiring access)
    -Map the requested profile to the requested target resource and provision the system from available pool
    -Add requested Identities and grant access
    -Provision application stack
    -Use to hearts content
    -Rinse
    -Repeat

All through a browser, sitting anywhere on the network.  As add ons, this environment enables access to desktop services, load generation services, flash archive store and retrieval, etc, etc.  Working on providing a grid and some expanded storage capabilties.  Fun project.

/jason

With my current role at Sun, I spend most of my days with two specific Sun customers in my city.  However, as is often the case in this industry - I have many IT friends, previous customers, etc who find themselves moving cross companies to other positions.

So, being a Sun employee, I often get quite a few requests from all over the place on quick hit questions / how to / feature / etc, etc, etc....  It really struck me this morning when I was digging up some quick hit info for a previous customer->new company customer/friend of mine how much I have now come to depend on http://blogs.sun.com.  My entire email in response to his questions was constructed _completely_ of reference links to specific Sun Blog entries.

It is clear that I have become a very big fan of _reading_ Blogs ... have to work a bit on updating my own content!

/jason

I have been keeping an eye out for the SunRay Server 3.0 beta release for a couple of months now for several projects that I am working on.  I didn't see this well publicized, so here we are....  The link will take you to the Sun Download Center where a login / free registration will be required as should be familiar to those downloading any other piece of software from Sun {ok <mostly> - and don't ask me why this is not released/marketed under the Software Express program}. 

As you will note from the above link, there are several new key features
    -Linux and Solaris versions
    -Low client - server bandwidth requirements {300kb/s}
       *this enables some interesting things... 
    -Regional Hot Desking

Of course, you need to have access to some Sun thin client devices to play around...  and looks like the link to the docs has not been updated yet.

Now I need to go borrow some hardware....

/jason

Working with quite a few external customers, I am surprised how many sys admins don't know about the Sun System Handbook website.  For those who have been with us for some time may remember those old tree eating dictionary handbooks with all the part numbers, descriptions, pricing, etc, etc.  Welcome to the online version.

Well, this site has been around for over three years and has over 100 fully documented systems.

• All angle color pictures of systems
  
• Full component lists and part numbers
• Links to component diagrams and pricing
• Full specs
• Links to documentation
• Minimum OS requirements, etc

For example, the full component view of our V20z server.

Check it out.  Great reference site.

/jason