Open-Sourcing of Solaris Cluster

 

Great to see Solaris Cluster starting down the open-source road.

Solaris Cluster is something that used to be used by many high-end big-metal solutions and is now being used across the board. High-end solutions have typically used Sun Cluster in the datacenter(s) to make sure that they don't lose a single banking transaction or stock-market trade even if there is a network outage. It's typically deployed not only to manage  HA for high-end database like Oracle, but also with all the application services (directories, application servers, SAP, etc) necessary to ensure that not only zero elements of data are lost but also that the whole service continues to operate across software or hardware failure. I'm told that even Oracle, with its distributed database solutions, runs their internal databases on Solaris Cluster because it gives the best reliability.

More and more, Solaris Cluster is being deployed into much smaller configurations, including horizontally scaled applications, not just for big iron. Check out their blog. It can even run on a single machine using Solaris zones as containment zones, no hardware redundancy, but an excellent development platform.

In smaller configurations it still offers a rock-solid environment where the administrator can configure a sliding scale in the triangle between the three corners - where avoiding data-loss is paramount (banks etc), where avoiding any service-outages is paramount (even if you must drop data on the floor to continue offering service from another location within seconds of a major outage somewhere), and where keeping hardware costs (minimizing redundant servers) is paramount.

I spent quite a few years working in the telco and then Solaris Cluster space, where availability is so important - in Solaris Cluster I was involved in the rearchitecture and implementation of the browser-based administrative interface - from the Browser-User-Interface (BUI) experience down to the JMX-based management data model underneath that it leverages.

The work that came out of this, that I'm involved in now, is based upon the JMX-based underlying management data model and its infrastructure. It has grown from being the underpinnings for Solaris Cluster's user-interface, to be used as the control infrastructure of Solaris Cluster geo-edition which is almost all written in Java, to be used for the monitoring and mangement of the entire Sun Java Enterprise System stack, and is now used in many products all across Sun from service processors to Solaris to JES to connecting the customer back to Sun for patching and support.

... but back to Solaris Cluster, it's their day after all, great to see Solaris Cluster come out into the open... we expect be joining you soon!

 

 

( Jun 29 2007, 01:02:39 PM CEST ) Permalink