While GlassFish is written in Java and shipping on Windows, Solaris, Linux, MacOS, and more recently AIX, choosing the right operating system is often orthogonal to the choice of your application server. This article on GlassFish and Solaris Containers by Sonny Hastomo shows how to combine the zone virtualization technology with GlassFish. It uses a non-global zone for glassfish and documents how to partition the CPU resource.

When it comes to clustering in an application server, defining the vocabulary is the first thing that needs to be done. This new article does this and much more. It defines key concepts for GlassFish such as Domain Administration Server (DAS), Node Agents, server instances, discusses deployment topologies, and explains how the Shoal and JXTA technologies are used to set up the cluster and replicate data in-memory. It also provides instructions on how to get the GlassFish "Cluster" profile running.

The second article explains how the application server can take advantage of the Zones technology built in Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris. It has a quick intro on what are Solaris zones and how they provide isolated environments for application instances. Propagation among zones can complicate installations and updates, so the article going into the details of installing and using the GlassFish application server in a global or a sparse zone. It also covers upgrading from previous versions of the software that may have come bundled with Solaris.

Virtualization is really hot now. We recently mentioned about Using LDOMs to partition a T2-based system. This week's annoncement of Solaris 10 8/07 includes New Zones Features including BrandZ Zones. The first BrandZ (lX) allows Running Linux Apps on Solaris (see earlier news). A new announcement is Project Etude which enables Solaris 8 Apps running as guests on a Solaris 10 host; see Marc's Business Overview and Dan's Technical Overview. Also see these reviews at Dr. Dobb's, The Register and EnterpriseLinux.

Added: Also see the announcement about Windows and Solaris virtualization.