上個禮拜, Sun 終於拿出殺手級的 processor : UltraSPARC T2 (Niagara 2)!

除了把從 T1 的 32 threads per processor (8 cores, 4 threads/core), 加到 64 threads per processor (8 cores, 8 threads/core) 之外, 最令人在意的是 “Zero Cost” Security 這個 feature.

一般大家不作一些 security 保護的理由不外乎是速度慢, 尤其是在 web server 的 implementation, 作了之後對 throughput 影響非常明顯, 所以在 T2 中, 他們加了一個 cryptographic unit, 也就是說可以利用這個硬體來完成一些費時的 security function.

本來以為作了 DES, 3DES, AES, MD5, SHA-1 就了不起了, 但是在 2007/07/08 的新聞中, 聽到 Sun Staff Engineer Dr. Lawrence Spracklen 的 talk, T2 support 的有:

Public-key
• RSA
• DSA

Bulk Cipher
• RC4
• DES
• 3DES
• AES-128
• AES-192
• AES-256

Secure Hash
• MD5
• SHA-1
• SHA-256

後來在他的 blog (Lawrence Spracklen’s Blog) 中, 看到他寫的這篇 UltraSPARC T2 Crypto performance. 看起來還蠻不賴的啊~

接著我猜會有強者利用這些硬體作出 T2 的 SSL. 好期待測出來的數字啊~

PS: 這裡是用 UltraSPARC T1 CPU 的 T1000 和 T2000 的價錢, 不知道搭配 T2 的 Server 會賣多少錢 XD

Google testing Sun’s OpenSolaris, sources say, from digg.

Google is experimenting with the open-source version of Sun Microsystems Inc.’s Solaris operating system as a possible long-term prelude to replacing its massive global network of Linux servers, according to sources.

With dozens of data centers worldwide estimated to house hundreds of thousands of Intel servers, this would be huge for Solaris.

Google runs a stripped-down version of Red Hat Linux specially modified by its engineers. But another source, a Solaris systems administrator who recently interviewed for a job at Google, said he was told the company plans to create and test its own modified version of OpenSolaris.

Google officials declined to comment.

Dtrace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DTrace
Zones http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_Containers
ZFS http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

Thanks, Jenkins!

Apt-get is just so unreasonably fucking great. Why aren’t we using it for Solaris updates?

I can’t agree more ;-)

By the way, Zawodny is currently leaning toward Python.

I’ve been programming (when I do program) mainly in Perl for the last 10 years or so. But I’ve been itching to learn a new language for a while now, and the two near the top of the list are Ruby and Python.

I figure that Ruby would be easy to learn because of its similarity to Perl (I’m told). But I also figure that Python would be easy to learn because of its simplicity. And when it comes to webby stuff, I can use Rails with Ruby and Django with Python.

Yahoo! has Python Developer Center on the Yahoo! Developer Network as well.

Sun 的 David Killian 向 Gentoo 贊助了 Niagara 工作站一台, 用於 Gentoo Linux 的開發, 移植, 和測試. 根據 bootlog, 這台就是具有 UltraSPARC T1 processor (1.2GHz 8 core, 也就是會看到 32 顆虛擬 CPU) 和 Main Memory 32GB 的 T2000.

星期天和 Vivia, tjs, Airken, zmx 吃飯時, 聽到巴哈姆特也正在測試 T2000, 號稱一台抵的上 4 台 Pentium4 2.4GHz/1GB記憶體, 甚至還有一半的餘裕, 而且耗電量與機架空間都僅需現有架構的一半.

雖然說 Sun 可能會放棄 SPARC 市場 (找不到新聞了 @_@), 不過 T2000 還真的希望可以借回來玩啊 :p

• Sun Fire T1000 Server 價格 (Memory/8GB $6,445, Memory/16GB $14,445)
• Sun Fire T2000 Server 價格 (Memory/8GB $9,045, Memory/32GB $29,445)

It, however, is very strange that I cannot feel such considerable performance improvement in Solaris 10. My summary is as followings.

There are several often overlooks positive features of Solaris as an alternative to Linux in lage enterprize environment:

• Solaris is more stable, especially in network intensive tasks.
• New T1 CPUs make Solaris on SPARC more attractive and provide a clean migration path from older UltraSparc models that fall behind in price/performance ratio.
• Due to the architecture of Solaris kernel and I/O subsystem there are several open source applications that can run on Solaris better then on Linux. Among them are all multithreading applications and open source databases. Solaris also significantly improves the security of open source applicators due to built-in protection from stack overflows.
• The recent test conducted by Sun [MySQL2006] had show that optimized for Solaris MySQL (UFS?) beats MySQL on RED HAT ES 4 (ext3?) by a considerable margin.
• It is unclear how it goes against ZFS in Solaris. Newer ZFS is still in too early stage for comparisons.
• For tracking system calls Solaris has an excellent truss utility. For Linux, the strace utility provides a similar but weaker function. For more complex situations Solaris has Dtrace. Currently Linux has no analogs for Dtrace.

There are also several disadvantages of Solaris:

• Linux has larger “knowledge space” especially noticeable in the number of published books. While Solaris has much better OS level security, Linux has better “open source knowledge infrastructure” including the information about securing open source applications, especially those implementing key application level TCP/IP protocols (HTTP, DNS, SMTP, ssh, Kerberos, etc)

這裡還有一些利用 LD preload 的技巧.

Solaris 的 corefiles 改良成可以包含 process 所有資訊 (library text 和 type information), 而 MDB (and KMDB) 被設計用來作 post-mortem analysis 和 live kernel analysis[1][2].

Coredump debugging 可能是上班以後必備的技巧之一吧 :p

[1] libumem & libutil in Solaris, from zmx.
[2] libuutil and designing for debuggability, from me.

Solaris 10 上用 nVidia 的新 driver 的 screenshot, 有雙螢幕以及 Looking Glass.

如果不知道甚麼是 Looking Glass 的話, 可以參考 screenshot 或是 Demo.