Remember when you first heard that humans only use 5-10% of our brains? I always asked, who figured that out, another human using only 5-10% of his brain? It never went over well.
Turns out that servers also only use about 5-10% of their processing capacity. Ain't that a coinkidink! Or maybe it's because they were designed by us humans, LOL.
Never ones to leave well enough alone, some folks at Sun (and elsewhere, to be fair) have figured out clever ways to put the other 90-95% of a server's capacity to good use. During the sysadmin tracks at Sun Tech Days in Boston earlier this month, Scott Dickson gave a information-packed presentation on Sun's virtualization direction. (The room had about 35 people in it. Not a bad turnout for the first sysadmin tracks at Sun's Tech Days.)
One of the reasons servers only use 10% of their brains is that we humans continue to think in terms of one server - one OS. And since we tend to buy OS's and therefore, servers, because of the applications we want to run on them, we wind up with one server running a Windows application, another running a Linux application, and another running a Solaris application. Personally, I understand this dilemma. I have four motorcycles in my garage. Although I can only ride one at a time, I'm loathe to part with any of them.
Motorcycle manufacturers have been trying for decades, now, to build the one motorcycle that will do it all: your basic hill-climbin' street-cruisin' autobahn-burnin' long-distance tourin' knee draggin' chick magnet. They have not succeeded. Neither have server manufacturers, from what I can tell.
So what's the sysadmin who's gotta have it all to do? Scott thinks the answer is virtualization. Divide your own server into different partitions and run different OS's (and your favorite application) on each one. Right there you've just trippled your server utilization.
How does Solaris do virtualization? With zones. Well, that's what we called them in Solaris 9. In Solaris 10 we call them containers. Why? Well, because containers have extra features. Apparently that warrants a new term. Remember when you were shy, but your kids now have social adaptation disorder? And when you used to say "shaddup," but now you have to say, "thank you for your input." Remember? OK, I think it's part of that trend. The point is, if you want to do virtualization in Solaris 10, use containers.
Next week I'll write more about containers and how they're better than zones, but for now here are some useful resources.
Turns out that servers also only use about 5-10% of their processing capacity. Ain't that a coinkidink! Or maybe it's because they were designed by us humans, LOL.
Never ones to leave well enough alone, some folks at Sun (and elsewhere, to be fair) have figured out clever ways to put the other 90-95% of a server's capacity to good use. During the sysadmin tracks at Sun Tech Days in Boston earlier this month, Scott Dickson gave a information-packed presentation on Sun's virtualization direction. (The room had about 35 people in it. Not a bad turnout for the first sysadmin tracks at Sun's Tech Days.)
One of the reasons servers only use 10% of their brains is that we humans continue to think in terms of one server - one OS. And since we tend to buy OS's and therefore, servers, because of the applications we want to run on them, we wind up with one server running a Windows application, another running a Linux application, and another running a Solaris application. Personally, I understand this dilemma. I have four motorcycles in my garage. Although I can only ride one at a time, I'm loathe to part with any of them.
Motorcycle manufacturers have been trying for decades, now, to build the one motorcycle that will do it all: your basic hill-climbin' street-cruisin' autobahn-burnin' long-distance tourin' knee draggin' chick magnet. They have not succeeded. Neither have server manufacturers, from what I can tell.
So what's the sysadmin who's gotta have it all to do? Scott thinks the answer is virtualization. Divide your own server into different partitions and run different OS's (and your favorite application) on each one. Right there you've just trippled your server utilization.
How does Solaris do virtualization? With zones. Well, that's what we called them in Solaris 9. In Solaris 10 we call them containers. Why? Well, because containers have extra features. Apparently that warrants a new term. Remember when you were shy, but your kids now have social adaptation disorder? And when you used to say "shaddup," but now you have to say, "thank you for your input." Remember? OK, I think it's part of that trend. The point is, if you want to do virtualization in Solaris 10, use containers.
Next week I'll write more about containers and how they're better than zones, but for now here are some useful resources.
- Zones Info Center on BigAdmin
- Sun's Main Virtualization Page
- Solaris Container section of Sun System Administration Documentation
