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By pfuetz, October 2, 2006 17:58

So, after lunch, I went to a couple of sessions.

I started with my Colleague Tim Read, and his session on how to “provision Oracle 10g R2 RAC with N1 SPS”. This was a mixed session, preso plus demo!

Great session, and although he claimed his software (which will become part of the standard N1 SPS plugin collection, and therefore is close to being productized) to be pre-alpha, I have seen worse software, that claims to be at least 1.0…

So, this set of two plugins will enable the user of N1 SPS to install, start, stop, and scale Oracle 10g R2 RAC installation, together with SunCluster, and it is written in a way, that it also will be able to be applicable to already done installations to enhance the overall management possibilities.

GREAT STUFF!

Then I went to Jason Carolan’s and Mikael Lofstrand’s session on “Dynamic Infrastructure: Presentation and Demo”. After Jason’s standard disclaimer, that this is field stuff, and not yet ready for customer usage, they did present on their approach to create a framework for plugging in app-deployment on the third tier together with a set of scripts to enable network components to be managed and configured according to the applications needs.

As it was slightly “hacked”, it did suffer a little bit, compared to Tim’s excellent Oracle PlugIn demo. Still:

Great Stuff!

After that I went in to the two architects on the global Vodafone team, Olaf Schnapauff and Adrian Johns to listen to their presentation on “Successfully re-architecting one of Sun’s largest Customers – Sun’s Vodafone Engagement”.

As this was more around the engagement process, it might have been a little bit boring for the geeks, aka, those, that are only interested in deep dive technical detailed stuff. Still, they presented lots on how to help a big innovation company (and Telcos in the mobile industry need to innovate to keep customers or get new customers!) on being innovative. This is one of Sun’s largest users of T1000 and T2000 servers (more then 500!), and they have achieved large cost savings in doing so. Just check the joined webpage www.sunandvodafone.com for more information. Overall, Sun is not leading in this engagement with technology, but with also innovation.

Rating: great stuff

That’s it for now, more later!

tags: cec2006

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By pfuetz, October 2, 2006 09:14

Again, this is a message from the CEC2006:

I’m sitting backstage, being the transfer agent from the emails coming in to ceclive@sun.com to the on-stage display station, and that works reasonable well… Although there aren’t that many messages coming in… :-)

The sad thing about this is: Sitting backstage, I don’t get that much from front-stage, so I might not be able to comment much on the general sessions at all…

Still: Enjoy the CEC!

tags: cec2006

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By pfuetz, October 1, 2006 18:35

Folks,

CEC2006 just started with the state of the union speaches, and I have already been doing work, because I’m on the staff, and partly responsible for the interactive parts of the general sessions. The rooms at Moscone are nicely setup, network (WiFi: CEC2006) also exists, so hopefully, we will get the “participation age” going. Note: I had problems to use Punchin from Solaris there, and might be forced to use Windows with VPN to dial into SWAN, but stay tuned.

With that: Have a great CEC!

tags: cec2006

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By pfuetz, October 1, 2006 17:18

Aaron did ask in a comment, so here’s the answer:

With blogs.sun.com, and that’s the only one I use currently, it’s fairly simple, as said:

On the right side, you have the “Edit Blog” entry. If you open it, there are a small number of necessary entries:

Name: Your Name to remember on the palm
Type: Select metaWeblog
User Name: Your login into the blogosphere
Password: You should know that… ;-)
Host: blogs.sun.com (for me!)
XML-RPC Path: /roller-services/xmlrpc
Blog ID: Should be the same as your login

Then simply select new Post, write the post (title, and content) and press the 5th image from left at the lower line… ;-)

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By pfuetz, September 29, 2006 20:34

Now, that we have successfully finished the DC-Amb conference, we went for a nice dinner…

Aigle Blanc, Vouvray from 1990, from the Valley of the Loire was the wine that Eric choose as the appetizer.

Nice choice, lets see, what else he will be recommending during the evening…

Sorry, Dave, you missed again…

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By pfuetz, September 29, 2006 17:08

Today we had Hal Stern and Jim Baty present at our DataCenter Ambassador Conference, and I finally got an answer, why Moore’s Law does not need to lead to lower revenue.

My perception during the last years was, that CPUs got faster faster then the need of the software demanded. That led to deminishing revenues, because no-one needed big boxes any more.

But with the advent of all those Web 2.0 services, there again is the need for a.) higher network connections (downloading or uploading of Music, Video and/or pictures) as well as b.) extreme CPU power to handle the services based on top of these elements (for example PhotoShop as a service, send in the picture, describe what you want to have removed (red eye effect) and have some service provider resolve that for you). These services, if successful, do then need way more power in the systems, then are available today in available systems.

As always, there was way more in their presentations, but, that’s why we still invest in research on how to help all these service providers.

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By pfuetz, September 29, 2006 14:40

This is a simple test, I just try to enable myself for online blogging using u*Blog on my Palm Treo 650 so that I can provide fast updates next week during CEC2006.

This is available from: http://www.palmgear.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=software.showsoftware&PartnerREF=&siteid=1&prodID=103568.

The config is obvious, the only tricky part was the usage of the right blogger api (in this case, I do use metaWeblog (produces errors, but works!)) and the XML-RPC Path (/roller-services/xmlrpc) for use with blogs.sun.com.

Stay tuned.

tags: cec2006

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By pfuetz, September 28, 2006 16:10

After a long vacation in Western Canada (will add more to that later), I’m back to the blogosphere.

Currently I’m in the U.S. at our DataCenter Ambassador training, and will be presenting at Sun’s CEC2006 conference next week. I will try to blog about my experiences at the CEC later on, and provide a summary of the findings of the DC-Amb training also later on.

So, this is just a small teaser to prepare you on the things to come.

Meanwhile (between vacation and the trip to the U.S.) I had been involved in re-enabling the so-called ARS (Application Readiness Services) that formerly had been (and again will be) Services to enable our customers to seamlessly get their systems installed up to a stage, where they then can put their application on the systems. Work is well underway, so stay tuned for upcoming global announcements w.r.t. these things (tentativly December 5th).

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By pfuetz, July 10, 2006 12:20

As promised earlier, here’s the HowTo and some images of
Solaris/x86 10 03/05 running on my old Toshiba Libretto 110CT.

The first thing, you need to be aware of, is the small (and somewhat limited) hardware. It has only (and this is the max!) 64MB of main memory, it has a 233 MHz Pentium CPU. It does have a standard laptop harddisk (which I upgraded long ago to 19GB, to have more storage space, and to be able to run multiple OSes (8GB for Win2K, 5GB for Solaris and 5GB for Linux (which I never really used!)). It does NOT have buildin network, nor buildin modem. Instead it has 2 PCMCIA slots. Tt does have a serial and a parallel port. It does NOT have a floppy, nor a CD drive (these are connected via a proprietary PCMCIA connector). The internal screen is 800×480 pixels. It is connected to an NeoMagic graphics adapter. So, you can imagine, that it is a little bit tricky to get it to install and accept Solaris/x86 10 03/05.

With some ideas and tips from Casper Dik and his description of his installation on a small Lifebook I was ready to go.

I did, just as Casper proposed and so, I just made (OK, some small modifications were needed (and are still needed!), so do not take this literally!):

cd /cdrom/cdrom0/Solaris10/Tools
cp d1_image d1_image.pe3
lofiadm -a `pwd`/d1_image.pe3
mount -F pcfs /dev/lofi/X /mnt
cd /mnt
cd solaris/drivers/isa.125
cp …/pe3.bef .
cd ../../devicedb
cat ‘PNP8214 pe net all pe3.bef “Xircom Pocket Ethernet parallel port card”‘ >> master
cd
umount /mnt
lofiadm -d /dev/lofi/X

And then copy the image to the floppy (aka “dd if=d1_image.pe3 of=/vol/rdsk/noname”, or similar)

Then you need to create an installserver, because you need to add stuff to the Solaris 10:

cd /cdrom/cdrom0/Solaris10/Tools
./setup_install_server /path/to/your/place

When that is finished, do:

cd /path/to/your/place/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/boot/solaris/drivers/isa.125
cp …/pe3.bef .
cd ../../devicedb
cat ‘PNP8214 pe net all pe3.bef “Xircom Pocket Ethernet parallel port card”‘ >> master
cd ../../../kernel/drv/
cp …/pe.conf .
cp …/pe .
chmod 644 pe.conf
chgrp sys pe.conf
chmod 755 pe
chgrp sys pe
cd ../misc
cp …/GLD .
chmod 755 GLD
chgrp sys GLD

Then do the

cat “XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX” >> /etc/ethers
cat “YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY HOSTNAME” >> /etc/hosts

./add_install_client -i YYY.YYY.YYY.YYY HOSTNAME i86pc

After that, boot from floppy… ;-)

That’s it! It really is that simple!

And be sure: Don’t reboot automatically, because you need to add some stuff before reboot!

Aka:

cd /cdrom/Solaris_10/Tools/Boot/kernel/drv
cp pe /a/kernel/drv
cp pe.conf /a/kernel/drv
cd ../misc
cp GLD /a/kernel/misc
cd ../../boot/solaris/devicedb
tail -1 master > muell
cat muell >> /a/boot/solaris/devicedb/master
rm muell
cd ..
cd drivers/isa.125
cp pe3.bef /a/boot/solaris/drivers/isa.125
cd /a/kernel/drv
chgrp sys pe
chgrp sys pe.conf
cd ../misc
chgrp sys GLD
cd ../../boot/solaris/drivers/isa.125
chgrp sys pe3.bef
chmod 644 pe3.bef
add_drv -b /a pe

So, here’s an image of the PE3:

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By pfuetz, July 10, 2006 10:08

Last night I finished the reading of Gabriel García Márquez‘ book: Vivir para contarla (I did read the german translation… ;-)). It’s so to say a part of his autobiography. It was 2:15 am, when I put it aside… ;-)

Gabo (or Gabito), as his friends call him, tells us a small piece of his life (so around his being 15 to nearly 30), his growing up in Colombia in the 40th and 50th of the last century. He does that with the same speech and language as his novels, which did earn him the Nobel Prize. Therefore this also makes a whole lot of fun to read it.

Not much more to say: Just read it, you will enjoy it!