Oracle, MySQL, Sun - Moving Ahead

Oracle, MySQL, Sun - Moving Ahead

One might browse a short article, looking past the sarcasm and skepticism, looking for information.

Oracle acquired and enhanced a database core engine for MySQL a number of years ago:

Oracle has been working on InnoDB since the acquisition five years ago

Perhaps, the most important parts of the article was:

Oracle's man had slightly more luck highlighting what he called "one of the most significant changes" in up-coming MySQL 5.5, which is in beta. The InnoDB storage engine bought by Oracle in 2005 will become MySQL's default storage engine. Also, InnoDB will be included for free with MySQL Enterprise Edition, which is charged under a support contract.

Significant work that Sun began is being released under Oracle:

Oracle announced the release of MySQL Cluster 7.1 as finished product, with improved administration, Java, and OpenJPA connectors to clusters, sub-second fail over and self healing. Even though this was work begun under Sun Microsystems, which Oracle finally acquired in January, Screven said it proved Oracle's commitment to improve the database is happening now, "not some abstract point in the future".

Impact on Network Management

Performance Management with Network Management is increasing dependent upon databases to hold large quantities of data in mid to large deployments. Databases like Oracle are great options for internal facing deployments. External facing deployments require lower cost licensing options in order to be sufficiently competitive. This is where MySQL fits well.

Itanium: The Death of Microsoft Windows Support

Itanium: The Death of Microsoft Windows Support

Announcement:

In December of 2009, it was reported that Red Hat Linux started the process of ceasing support for Intel Itanium processors. Now, it appears that Microsoft is starting it's process of discontinuing support for Intel Itanium.

History:

See former blog entry when Red Hat Linux discontinued their Itanium support.

Network Management Implications:

None. There were no serious Network Management products using Microsoft Windows on Itanium. There are really only HP operating systems left on this CPU platform, a single isolated software vendor on a single isolated chip supplier.

Why Few Implications:

Single vendor processors (IBM POWER and Intel Itanium) are somewhat more risky, when there is a gap in the development cycle due to human error. Specialized software vendors looking for longevity often look for multiple suppliers when producing a product, to ensure that a single vendor glitch does not damage their product marketing.

In the areas of server processors, there really only seems to be two multi-vendor CPU vendors left: SPARC (Oracle/Sun and Fujitsu) and x64 (Intel and AMD.)

Who Will Be Affected?

Probably, the people who will be most affected by this move will be businesses who depended on Microsoft SQL Server on Itanium.

Had those vendors chosen another database vendor, who supports multiple architectures (i.e. Oracle RDBMS) - a migration to another Operating System (i.e. an HP Operating System) on the same hardware could have been done, to extend the life of the asset, and any desired hardware architecture could have been chosen to migrate to later (i.e. SPARC, POWER, Intel x64, AMD x64.)

Solaris and VNC

A simple way to crank up VNC on demand.

ZFS: Snapshot Differences

ZFS: Snapshot Differences

Abtract:

ZFS, the first modern Open Source file system, was released years ago. The Copy on Write (CoW) capability of the file system offers distinct capabilities, such as inherent capability to understand the state of the file system over time. The ability to provide nearly unlimited snapshots to the file system is an example of the features capable with CoW. The ability to offer the user differences between snapshots was recently introduced into OpenSolaris.

Functionality:

Recently introduced into OpenSolaris, PSARC/2010/105 provides the ability "to describe what has changed between the snapshots of a dataset" based upon ZFS.

The syntax looks similar to the following:

zfs diff [snapshot] [snapshot|filesystem]

The output describes the changes noted between the ZFS datasets.

The type of change is described with a single character:
+   Indicates the file/directory was added in the later dataset
-   Indicates the file/directory was removed in the later dataset
M   Indicates the file/directory was modified in the later dataset
R   Indicates the file/directory was renamed in the later dataset

If the modification involved a change in the link count of a
file, the change will be expressed as a delta within
parentheses on the modification line.  Example outputs are
below:

M       /myfiles/
M       /myfiles/link_to_me (+1)
R       /myfiles/rename_me -> /myfiles/renamed
-       /myfiles/delete_me
+       /myfiles/new_file

Usage:

An example of usage is as follows:

# echo 'tim was here' > file
# zfs snapshot toad/timh@before
# touch file
# zfs snapshot toad/timh@after
# zfs diff toad/timh@before toad/timh@after
M       /toad/timh/file

Benefits to Network Management:

The benefits to adding such capabilities to Solaris include:

• Multiple revisions of code can be tracked through a regularly scheduled cron to snapshot the ZFS file system, today.
  
• Developers, with minimal work, can roll back to old code, when applying snapshots to filesystes on a regular basis, today.
• The addition of the "diff" gives developers the ability to understand the other dependencies, if multiple changes happened to multiple files at the same time.
• Capabilities are provided in a transparent way where no additional time must be consumed by developers, making the more efficient, driving a fiscal reason to move to ZFS under Solaris.
• If a production environment starts experiencing problems, the snapshot diff can be used to find out what seemingly unrelated changes could have affected the production environment, driving an availability reason to move to ZFS under Solaris.
• This is a simple way to audit production systems, guaranteeing the integrity of production platforms against virus infestation, driving legal reasons to move to ZFS under Solaris.
• Virus scanning of media can be significantly quickened if seeding the scanner with the diff between snapshots, reducing overall load on disk subsystems as well as CPU capacity, extending the life of existing infrastructure while meeting existing security requirements.
• Snapshots can be taken while applications are in "hot backup" mode, or during a nightly restart of an application. Differences can be backed up using the diff, instead of the less efficient checking every file handle for changes, allowing for more efficient backups to be done against an application in production, better meeting business continuity requirements.
  

There are numerous benefits to ZFS Snapshot differences that can change the way businesses do computing today - if the businesses decide to leverage them to meet their development, fiscal, legal, security requirements, and business continuity requirements.

Administer Interfaces Under Solaris

Administer Interfaces Under Solaris

Abstract:

Under Solaris, users could configure some flat files and reboot a system in order to bring up their machine on an IP network. The startup scripts under Solaris traditionally leveraged the straight "ifconfig" command to add the network interfaces for the IP layer. The command for managing interfaces as the data link layer had been "dladm". Sun also bundled "IPFilter" into Solaris 10 for firewalling and NAT'ing. Configuring the various IP interfaces has been somewhat complex, so a new user friendly command has recently landed in OpenSolaris to help: "ipadm".

Configuration File Method:

The configuration files which are normally leveraged to configure a simple system before restart include:

• /etc/inet/hosts
  Holds the IP Address & hostname of the machine. Can also be used for the default router. Example entries include:
  192.168.3.250 Ultra60 loghost
  192.168.3.1 WRT600 defaultrouter
  
  
• /etc/inet/ipnodes
  Holds the IP Address & hostname of the machine. Can also be used for the default router. Example entries include:
  192.168.3.250 Ultra60 loghost
  192.168.3.1 WRT600 defaultrouter
  
  
• /etc/netmasks
  Hosts the address of the network that the machine is sitting on. Example entry includes: 192.168.3.0 255.255.255.0
  
  
• /etc/defaultrouter
  Holds the IP Address or host name of the default router. Example entry includes:
  defaultrouter
  
  
• /etc/hostname.[interface]
  Holds the hostname for the physical[:logical] IP interface. Example for "ce0" includes:
  Ultra60
  

The "files" method is persistent across reboots, but of course requires a reboot. If a reboot is not possible, then follow the instructions below to perform the On-Line Method of configuration.

On-Line Method:

For people who can not afford to perform reboots of a system, interfaces can be added while the operating system remains on-line using the "ifconfig" command.

• ifconfig [interface] plumb
  Puts the "plumbing" in place to configure an IP interface. Example command:
  ifconfig ce0 plumb
  
  
• ifconfig [interface] addif [ipaddress/netmask]
  
  Assigns an address to a plumbed interface.
  ifconfig ce0 addif 192.168.3.2/24
  

In order for on-line changes to be persistent across reboots, it is important that the Configuration File Method has already been followed.



The New Method

With the PSARC/2010/080, OpenSolaris includes a unified interface to build interfaces on-line, which can also be made persistent.

For some examples on how to use the new OpenSolaris "ipadm" command are here.

We are all looking forward to this making it into Solaris!

What's my MAC address? OpenBoot PROM edition

Discovering MAC addresses in OpenBoot PROM:

Enter OpenBoot Prom

Method 1: simple result

ok .enet-addr
0:3:ba:xx:xx:xx

Method 2: slightly more information

ok .idprom
Format/Type: ... Ethernet: 0 3 ba xx xx xx Date: ... Serial: ... Checksum: ...

Method 3: in-depth result

ok show-devs

Look through results for 'ethernet', 'network' or similar words. There will probably be multiple network devices.

ok cd /pci@1f,0/ethernet@5
ok .properties

You will receive an output of device properties, look for:

local-mac-address 00 03 ba xx xx xx

Repeat as necessary.

photo: courtesy of rudolph_schuba

Connecting SMARTBoard to a SunRay

Connecting SMARTBoard to a SunRay

Introduction:
Have you spoken to teachers who complain about getting their work done in the classroom when the school provided computer breaks down and there is no simple way for the teacher to fix it within the time allotted when attendance has to be taken in home room and submitted before 1st period? How about trying to do a lesson and having the smart board or computer break down?

A SunRay UltraThin Client is the way to go in these demanding environments where 100% uptime is really needed in these rigid time-demanding environments.

Watching it Work:

No need for a teacher to have to worry about anything, just plug it in and watch it work. If the SMARTBoard breaks, plug in a another one. If the SunRay breaks, just plug in another one. OK - this is really awesome... Thanks WerkPlek!

YouTube Video

"Video shows how we installed and configured a Sun Ray DTU with a SMARTboard in a classroom. A digital blackboard (this one is white :-) is very popular today at schools."

The Sun VDI is a flexible architecture with many possible options to plug in.


Sun VDI:

• http://wikis.sun.com/display/VDI3/About+VDI

SMARTboard:

• http://smarttech.com/