This is the final part of our delivery on all the details that surround cloud computing, another storage alternative.by Osvaldo Callegari
Virtualization is a widely expanding concept. SUN™, a company with a transcendent role in its development, has been a pillar in the promotion of this new technology, and its main contribution lies in the cloud architecture and its components.
Its primary objective is to combine systems and software to build a cloud, the possibility of maximizing technical and technological capabilities takes cloud computing to its highest level.
The idea proposed by SUN™ is to deliver all the necessary components so that companies, developers and end users can build cloud-based environments.
Open source
Currently some clouds are closed platforms and their provider is captive to it. SUN's™ open source philosophy and JAVA principles consolidate the basis of the strategy namely:
- Provide interoperability for large-scale computing resources.
- Distribute applications across multiple cloud infrastructure components.
Today we can say that most clouds are proprietary, but their components are open source, and that they give connection to common services. The operators of these clouds use padlocks through their fundamental services, such as databases and storages.
Companies that create private clouds have a certain advantage in offering and requiring standards, the desire of them is that clouds reach or approach the possibilities offered by public clouds through open standards. This trend is aimed at achieving a new concept of the Internet at a higher level called Internube.
Internube
It essentially consists of a global cloud of clouds that are linked together by a set of software and protocols. Some are currently segmented by security in clusters.
SUN™ is working hard towards that particular vision of the Internube by expanding ID (research and development) efforts in four key open source areas:
Software
- Provide the tools based on open standards that developers and architects need to build agile services that can be deployed in the cloud.
- Deliver storage, computing and network systems that interoperate with each one to integrate it in turn with systems from other providers.
- Its basis lies in promoting Multithreading technology and multicore computing.
- Increase the density of the highest computation within the cloud.
Services
- Expand development efforts through a wide range of professional services, network and value-added offerings through its channel partners and integrators.
Extensive product portfolio
SUN™ is strategically positioned to bring cloud computing to reality with an end-to-end solution.
Considering the operating load
- Workloads can be unpredictable and their main requirement involves clouds structured at extremely high levels of efficiency, availability in service, scalability, management and security.
Low-cost development applications
Introduction of innovations by SUN™
Efficiency and economy
- Pioneers of Green Computing with efficient technology in energy saving.
- Use of printed circuits designed with elements less dangerous to the environment.
- Use of CoolThreads
- Low cost of data center design, hardware, operating systems and software in particular.
- Enables efficiency in the number of servers to save less energy.
Reliability and availability
- Reliability through service on Solaris and Open Solaris ™ ™ operating systems with hardware availability.
- Redundant sites and recovery in case of failures.
Density
- Large number of cores per rack.
Scalability
- Nodes in the form of a cloud for dynamic reconfiguration.
Agility
- Multiple hardware architectures to customize workloads.
Security in the cloud concept
Innovations in Security processes:
The Solaris 10™ OS includes the following:
- Processes and management of user rights
- Reliable extensions for representative access control (MAC)
- Cryptographic framework
- Secure network (default)
- Data protection in Mission Critical
- Metadirectory
- Java Caps™ Java Composite Application Platform
* Allows SOA, fully integrated to business processes (BPM), industrial messaging and connector distribution.
New technologies related to the cloud
- SUN xVM ™ Server Hypervisor™
- Crossbow™ Network
- Comstar ZFS storage
- Glassfish™ Applications
- JAVA Caps™
- NFS Network File Systems
- Dynamic domain systems
- Multithreading CMT Chip
- Solaris ™ containers
Modular systems
Large-scale data centers are increasingly using modular approaches to provide and manage reservations of standard servers, storage systems, and network resources.
Delivery points (PODs), for example, provide environments that are optimized for specific workloads, such as HTTP or HPC, or specific capabilities, such as numerous users or transactions. They encapsulate storage, network, administrator, and servers.
The POD hardware platform layer consists of compute, networking, and storage hardware. The availability and scalability requirements and service layer that the hardware tries to support often drives the specifications of the servers.
Applications can scale independently. As applications need more resources than are available in a POD, additional PODs can be added, providing more capacity.
Both horizontal and vertical scaling can be used as appropriate for each application. An example of a POD is the Sun Customer Ready HPC Cluster, a platform that allows IT organizations to deploy a standard set of pre-integrated servers, switches , and storage devices with granularity per rack. These HPC clusters can be built directly from rackmount servers, such as the X4150 Sun Fire™ server or Sun Constellation Systems built with Sun Blade X6000 blade series modules.
Sun Constellation C48 racks (four Sun Blade X6000 systems) offer 7 TFLOPS of 768 cores, but with 17% improvement in power efficiency.
Systems like this, while providing unprecedented power efficiency, are typical of an extreme power density associated with cloud computing data centers. Therefore, most cloud data centers reject traditional underfloor cooling, opting for more efficient services and hot island/cold island presentations.
Another well-known example of pod design is the Sun Modular Datacenter S20, a complete data center that is delivered in a shipping container. The upgraded 20-foot container can be loaded into almost any transportation system and delivered to the customer's address, ready to be installed by Sun or an authorized Sun partner. Inside is an integrated system of power, cooling and racks that can be configured with any equipment, with front-to-back cooling that can be put into 19-inch racks , which fits the specific computing needs of the client.
Sun's Modular Data Center has proven to be ten times faster to deploy compared to a conventional data center. In addition, it reduces capital expenditures with improved expansion capabilities, provides four times higher density per rack compared to a typical data center with 40% reduction in cooling costs in one-eighth of space.
Open storage
Open Storage enables cloud computing to be made at a lower cost and on a larger scale than traditional proprietary storage.
Open Storage seeks to use standard industrial components, including x64/x86 servers such as storage controllers and flash memory, to accelerate low-cost, high-capacity disk drives with enterprise-class open source software to economically deliver highly scalable architectures.
In addition, Sun's storage servers are at the forefront of refactoring systems within general-purpose server devices. These combine a server with disk, networking skills, and native metadata skills and requirements.
Specialized software enables these general-purpose systems to provide high-performance data services, enabling compute-in-storage strategies to avoid the high-latency movement of extremely scale data for data-intensive clouds.
To start working on the cloud you can enter http://sun.com/cloud
Benefits according to Wikipedia™
Proven integration of Web services. By its nature, Cloud Computing technology can be integrated much more easily and quickly with the rest of your business applications (both traditional software and infrastructure-based Cloud Computing), whether developed internally or externally.
World-class service delivery. Cloud computing infrastructures provide greater adaptability, complete disaster recovery, and minimization of downtime.
You do not need to install any type of hardware or software: a 100% Cloud Computing infrastructure. The beauty of Cloud Computing technology is its simplicity... and the fact that it requires much less investment to start working.
Faster deployment with less risk. You can get started very quickly thanks to a Cloud Computing infrastructure. You won't have to wait months or years again and invest millions of dollars before a user logs into your new solution. Your applications in Cloud Computing technology will be available in a matter of weeks or months, even with a considerable level of customization or integration.
Final concepts
Over the last decades the human being has proposed different models of data management and administration, when computers were outside the network, the equipment was single-user and the applications to be developed were individual and there were no communications with the outside or with other people.
Later, a model called Client-Server emerged that underwent different modifications in terms of its way of working. The philosophy of it was changing until the global arrival of the Internet, which was slow at first when BBS was used to communicate between users with extremely slow speeds. This also hindered a generation of new models.
With the arrival of Web 2.0 new applications emerge, new concepts of seeing things, cloud computing is a result of companies that think about medium and long-term projects such as SUN™, this forecast positions them at the forefront of technology, defines processes and ways of working.
The concepts, procedures and marks poured into the item are the property of Sun Microsystems Inc., Additional marks are the property of Sparc International INC.
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