Monday October 08, 2007

Parallel trends in hardware, software, and services

There is *A LOT* of content here at CEC 2007. There are hardware groups presenting on trends in processor technology like CMT (Chip Multi-Threading) like the Niagara Processors. In some ways Sun's Niagara processors consolidate entire systems onto a chip. They certainly consolidate multiple processors into a single chip. There are Software groups presenting on a variety of consolidation and virtualization techniques like Logical Domains, Containers (Zones), and Virtual Machines (VMware and Xen xVM). This would allow you, for instance, to consolidate 10 single purpose servers that spend most of their time less than 10% utilized into a single multi-processor (CMT) system, with ten zones (or more), that would allow for one server that's closer to 100% utilized, to replace those other ten older systems. Then we have Services groups presenting on new services like Data Transport Services that will allow us to modernize old services and develop new services, on a common framework that would provide value-add services like consolidated registration services, consolidated authentication and authorizations services, and the previously mentioned data transport services, out of the box.

It seems that the whole premise of these 3 parallel trends in hardware, software, and services is all to abstract each layer from the others. It's all part of Redshifting and Blueshifting. Abstracting the hardware layer from the application layer (through the OS layer and virtualization) we can expand our support for Redshift applications. Those applications that are growing faster than single purpose servers can continue to support them. We can make many systems appear as a single consolidated system to the OS and application, allowing for horizontal scalability for redshift applications. Those same developments in hardware and software (particularly the OS) allow us to support Blueshift applications just as well, by leveraging a different perspective of the same stack. Instead of making multiple systems appear as one, we can make one system appear as many, though the use of virtual machines, logical domains, and containers. Then we can take applications and systems that typically underuse systems, and combine them, onto a common platform, without them even knowing it.

It's an exciting time to be in IT, if you're the sort that enjoys always being challenged, and always feeling like you can never keep up with enough of the developments out there.