Other Resources for Sun's CoolThreads Servers

by Karen Perkins, last updated on 2009-08-26

Here are additional resources for Sun Chip Multithreading (CMT) servers with CoolThreads technology:

• CoolThreads Servers Training Course List, which provides info about Sun training courses for installing, tuning, troubleshooting, and administering CoolThreads servers

• CoolThreads product documentation at docs.sun.com

• Upgrade to Sun CoolThreads Servers and Solaris 10 web page, which provides info about the advantages of upgrading to CoolThreads servers and the Solaris 10 OS, legacy application support and binary compatibility, trade-in allowances, and more

• Sun's GNU/Linux Offerings web page, which provides info about running Linux on Sun servers

• Sun BluePrints papers (registration required) and other CMT info at the Sun BluePrints CMT wiki

• White papers:

  • Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120, T5220, T5140, and T5240 Server Architecture (54-pp. pdf), which explains how employing the UltraSPARC T2 and UltraSPARC T2 Plus processors, the industry's first massively threaded Systems on a Chip (SoC), enables the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120/T5220 and T5140/T5240 servers to offer better performance and energy efficiency to drive Web 2.0 infrastructure and address other data center challenges
  • Virtualizing Enterprise Application Infrastructure with Sun Chip Multithreading (CMT) Technology (registration required), which describes how to use Sun's built-in, no-cost virtualization technologies to increase ROI
  • An IT Director's Guide to Reducing Costs Through Better Server Utilization (registration required), which describes how Sun customers are slashing costs by refreshing their aging server infrastructure with Sun SPARC Enterprise systems

• Blogs:

  • World Record Performance of Sun CMT Servers
  • Cryptography Acceleration on UltraSPARC T2 Systems, by Ning Sun
  • Improved Crypto Scaling on T2+, by Lawrence Spracklen
  • Scaling Solaris on Large CMT Systems, by Steve Sistare
  • CPU to Core Mapping, by Steve Sistare
  • How UltraSPARC-T2/T2+ Beats Power6+ and Itanium* on the Sparks and White Noise blog, by Octave Orgeron
  • System Management: All things System Management

• Sun forums:

  • Sun Hardware
  • CMT Servers - General Discussion
  • Logical Domains for CoolThreads Servers
  • OpenSPARC - Cool Tools

• Articles on BigAdmin and the Sun Developer Network (SDN):

  • LOFS Mounted Platform-Specific Routine Libraries With CMT UltraSPARC Processor-Based Systems
  • CPU Power Management Features for SPARC CMT Systems With the Solaris 10 10/08 OS
  • Console Operations for the Solaris OS and OpenBoot Firmware on Sun CMT SPARC Platforms
  • Using busstat to Monitor Performance Counters for UltraSPARC T2 Plus External Coherency Hub Architecture
  • Application Scaling on CMT and Multicore Systems
  • Calculating Processor Utilisation From the UltraSPARC T1 and UltraSPARC T2 Performance Counters

• Resources on BigAdmin (including community submissions):

  • Hardware Resource Collection
  • Performance Resource Collection
  • SPARC Resource Collection

• Logical Domains (LDoms) and Solaris Containers:

  LDoms technology allows you to allocate a system's resources, such as CPU, memory, and I/O, into logical groupings or domains. This enables you to create multiple discrete systems, each with their own operating system, resources, and identity within a single physical computer system.

  Solaris Containers enable you to upgrade to the Solaris 10 OS from the Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 OS even if you are running applications that cannot be ported to the Solaris 10 OS. The software allows you to run most Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 applications, unchanged, on the latest SPARC systems and the Solaris 10 OS. An existing Solaris 8 system can be directly upgraded into a Solaris 8 container. An existing Solaris 9 system can be directly upgraded into a Solaris 9 container. The original host is not modified during this process.

  Here are some LDoms and Solaris Containers resources:

  • LDoms web site, which provides links to videos, webcasts, and more
  • LDoms Community Cookbook, which is a living wiki document that provides basic and advanced procedures for Logical Domains
  • LDoms for Dummies, a blog by Pierre Reynes
  • Using LDoms and CMT to Improve Scalability and System Utilization, a blog by Ning Sun
  • Logical Domains Quick Start Guide, a Sun BluePrints paper (registration required) that describes the process of setting up a system to run Logical Domains--Sun's built-in, no-cost hardware virtualization technology for servers and blade systems powered by UltraSPARC T1, T2, and T2 Plus processors--and creating guest domains on the system
  • OpenSolaris LDoms Community*, which provides links to documentation, technical papers, getting started info, downloads, and more
  • OpenSolaris LDoms forum*
  • The Sun Resources/Solaris Virtualization Technologies tab of the BigAdmin Virtualization Resource Center, which provides links to documentation, how-to guides, blogs, demos, BigAdmin XPert sessions, and more for LDoms, Solaris Containers, and other virtualization technologies
  • The Legacy Apps tab of the BigAdmin Solaris 10 Upgrade Resource Center, which provides links to documentation, learning centers, Sun BluePrints papers, blogs, videos, and more for Solaris Containers
  • Solaris Containers web site

• Other resources:

  • Video: The Integrated Design of Sun's CMT Systems - Chip MultiThreading
  • Configuring Sun Java System Messaging Server and UltraSPARC T1/T2 Hardware SSL Acceleration wiki
  • Sun Optimized Web Stack for the Solaris OS, which provides a LAMP and SAMP stack for building and deploying Web services and applications and, when deployed on Sun's CoolThreads servers, takes full advantage of the world-record performance of these servers and the Solaris OS to deliver virtually unmatched performance, scalability, power and space efficiency, and security
  • BigAdmin Servers wiki page
  • OpenSPARC web site*