Jyri Virkki

Web Server and Niagara (UltraSPARC-T1)

As most of you probably already know, the UltraSPARC-T1 (better known as Niagara)-based systems are an ideal platform for deploying our JES Web Server.

In addition to the general performance benefits there are specific benefits in terms of SSL performance as well: the Niagara processors have built-in modular arithmetic units (MAUs) in each core. These are essentially built-in crypto accelerators suitable for RSA operations such as those in SSL handshakes.

There have been a few articles on this topic recently, I thought I'd summarize here:

• My article on Web Server 7.0 and Niagara
• Pallab and Ning have a blueprint on Web Server 6.1 and Niagara
• While not specific to Niagara, Meena has a blog entry on using Web Server with the Solaris 10 libpkcs11 PKCS#11 provider, which is the same interface used on Niagara hardware for this purpose.

If you have not had an opportunity to test the Niagara servers yet, take some time to try them out. It is one of those truly innovative products which make me proud to be part of Sun!

Posted at 08:04AM Oct 19, 2006 by jyri in WebServer  |  Comments[2]

CEC 2006

It's been two weeks but I had not had a chance to comment on my CEC (Customer Engineering Conference) talk until today. Much has been blogged about CEC 2006 already so I will not say much more.

I presented a session (twice, as all sessions) on the new security features of the upcoming JES Web Server 7.0. Thanks to all of you who made a point to attend, ask some questions and give suggestions and additional ideas! There is much that is new in 7.0 in the security space, so it is definitely an exciting new release. If you have not tried it yet, download the technology preview bits today (see link above) and check it out!

Posted at 03:44PM Oct 18, 2006 by jyri in WebServer  |