Sun and Microsoft: Interoperability Now

Like mythical creatures that populate legends of folklore, large datacenters and enterprise IT environments that rely on a single operating system are rumored to exist — but there is little conclusive evidence to back up these claims. The reality is that most corporate IT environments run a mix of operating systems including the Solaris Operating System, Linux, and Windows.

Three years ago, Sun and Microsoft accepted this reality and decided that a pragmatic approach would best serve the customers of both companies. Customers, Sun and Microsoft concluded, use Sun hardware systems and Java technology-based applications and tools throughout the enterprise — as well as Microsoft products such as Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft SQL Server, and the .NET programming environment.

The result is a 10-year collaborative agreement by which the two tech vendors are making interoperability a reality in Web services and on the desktop — as well as ensuring that Windows is supported on x64 Sun systems and providing storage and systems management interoperability. Making the agreement work has required hammering out intellectual property details, and now customers of both companies are reaping the benefits of what once seemed to be the most unlikely of alliances.

Running Windows on Sun Protects IT Investments
Sun servers are, of course, a crucial element in interoperability with Microsoft products, and most IT organizations need to make the most of their Microsoft IT investments. For these enterprises, Sun x64 systems can provide greater reliability, scalability, and energy efficiency for Windows and other Microsoft software. Sun provides full support for Microsoft Windows running on its x64 systems to assist organizations in optimizing their datacenter environments.

It's a compelling value proposition for companies deploying Windows on Sun systems. Count leading global IT services company CSC and entertainment media titan IMG Media among the latest enterprises opting to run Windows on Sun Fire X4100 and X4200 servers. Reliability, as these companies know, is a Sun hallmark earned from years of proven work in the datacenter for mission-critical, robust applications environments.

Sun's experience in the datacenter has also resulted in unprecedented hardware energy savings that can now be extended to Windows. For example, a Sun Fire X4200 server delivers up to 52 percent lower power and cooling costs over Intel Xeon-based servers¹. Similarly, a Sun Fire X4100 server delivers up to 56 percent lower cooling and power costs over Intel Xeon-based servers².

As for scalability, Sun x64 servers are ideal for running Windows applications like Microsoft SQL Server deep in the datacenter. For example, the eight-socket Sun Fire X4600 server with 8 sockets offers more room for expansion than daisy-chained solutions from other Tier 1 server vendors — and Sun's x64 systems provide unique virtualization capabilities for datacenter consolidation.

Interoperable Systems and Storage Streamline Enterprise IT
To help customers manage their heterogeneous environments, Sun recently introduced Sun Installation Assistant (SIA) for Windows on select Sun x64 systems, including the new Sun Blade X6220 Server Module. SIA allows enterprise users to easily load and preconfigure Windows on Sun hardware. It also runs diagnostics and recognizes different devices within systems. This is an important development to maximize customer efficiency when evaluating and deploying Windows on Sun x64 systems. SIA for Windows will be introduced for additional Sun x64 systems this summer.

Enterprise IT departments can manage the Windows operating system running on Sun with the help of tools and attributes found in the Sun Fire x64 Servers Management Pack 2.0 for Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. Other Sun tools that ensure Microsoft system interoperability include the Integrated Lights Out Manager (ILOM), which is built into Sun x64 platforms and supports key industry standards and interfaces used in the Windows ecosystem.

Additionally, Sun has announced collaboration with key Windows system management technologies such as BMC Patrol, CA Unicenter, IBM Tivoli, and HP Systems Insight Manager. Deeper in the recesses of the enterprise IT infrastructure, Sun's certification for Microsoft Cluster goes a long way in ensuring reliable platforms to run applications such as Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange.

Sun also provides full support for Windows-attached storage — an area critical to datacenter and enterprise IT operations. Sun's comprehensive storage portfolio covers everything from software and backup devices for single servers, to datacenter-class storage that runs storage files and serves data for very large enterprises. All of the tape and disk members of the portfolio are fully certified and interoperable with Microsoft Windows, which allows Sun customers to use storage management tools in Windows for advanced backup, advanced environment management, volume snapshots, multi-path I/O support, and failover.

Web Services Dance Between Platforms with Project Tango
For systems to communicate with each other, today's enterprises require more than just the ability to run an operating system on Sun's hardware. Business applications and service development must be interoperable. For this reason, Sun is particularly pleased with progress made in the Web Services Interoperability Technology (WSIT), an initiative Sun has code-named Project Tango, which demonstrates the continued collaboration between Sun and Microsoft.

Project Tango aims to provide interoperability between Web services written on the Sun's GlassFish v2 Java Enterprise Edition Application Server platform and Web services written with Microsoft Windows Communication Foundation, an important component within Microsoft .NET 3.0 platform.

"Project Tango is the result of Sun engineers working directly with Microsoft engineers," notes Harold Carr, technical lead for Project Tango. "This ensures that our customers can have advanced Web service interoperability with the .NET environment."

Project Tango leverages Web services specifications known as WS-* for delivery and creation in either Java EE or .the NET Windows Communication Foundation. These features allow Web services created in Java EE to interoperate with .NET-based systems and fall into three main categories:

• Metadata Support: Annotation of the Web Service Description Language (WSDL) sets metadata policy statements for letting a client know what the Web service requires in terms of security and quality of service.
• Security: Project Tango addresses security issues critical to enterprise Web services by supplying components such as WS-Security and WS-Trust, which provide end-to-end security at the message level rather than relying on transport level security, such as HTTPS, which terminates at load-balancers. And to ensure support for identity across platforms, Sun engineers have built Project Tango into Sun Java System Access Manager (AM) to enable AM support for the WS-Trust protocol. This makes it possible for a Microsoft client (that only uses WS-Trust to get security tokens) to use AM as an identity provider.
• Quality of Service: The asynchronous model of computing used by Web services and service-oriented architecture (SOA) projects does not ensure reliability. In that model, a sender sends a message and does not wait for a reply. Typically, developers have had to program reliability into their applications. But Project Tango includes an implementation of WS-Reliable Messaging that ensures that all messages arrive at their destination, thereby saving developers time.

 

The technology meets interoperability objectives by eliminating barriers between Java and Windows Communication Foundation technology and ensures that the creation of Web services and SOA projects can be distributed throughout the enterprise. Prior to the introduction of this technology, interoperability — which is essential to Web services and SOA projects — had been difficult to achieve between computers running disparate operating systems.

Project Tango Steps Up Web Services Development Speed
Project Tango allows faster and more efficient development of Atomic Transactions, Reliable Messaging, and Security on the Java EE platform — all critical steps in developing Web services for the entire enterprise. Project Tango provides Web services developers with a choice: They can work in the Java programming language and NetBeans, or they can work in .NET and Visual Studio. In either case, these features are all interoperable and allow the mixing of J2EE and .NET components into SOA projects for true cross-platform business process applications.

Ease of use helps to accelerate the creation of Web services and SOA projects across platforms. There are no new APIs, so developers are not required to learn another set of classes to set up security and transactions. In fact, Project Tango has been built as an extension to Sun's JAX-WS implementation. It is designed so that developers familiar with writing Web services using the JAX-WS specification can start writing Java Web services that interoperate with .NET platforms immediately.

This "under the sheets" approach can be found in the rapidity in which developers can create Web services. A NetBeans module allows developers to simply click on a contextual menu that reads "Edit Web Services Attributes" once a Web service is created, followed by a message that asks, "You want reliable messaging?" One more click and reliable messaging is complete. A similarly easy checklist approach is used for setting transactions and security parameters of Web services.

While many developers worry about needing to learn WS specifications, the opposite is actually true: There is no requirement to learn any of these specifications with Project Tango. All a developer needs to know is what WS element is required, and then click on that particular menu item.

Meeting Real-World Enterprise Needs
Innovations such as Project Tango — as well as developments in storage, management, and hardware compatibility — are all part of the way Sun meets the real-world needs of large datacenters and enterprise IT infrastructures.

Sun and Microsoft joint initiatives are part of this focus on enterprise requirements, which often revolve around the need to run industry-standard environments on industry-leading systems. Spanning architectures simply provides more choices and flexibility for increased productivity and investment protection.

¹ One rack of Sun Fire X4200 servers populated with AMD Opteron dual-core processors can use as much as 52 percent less power on average than the Intel Xeon MP processor-based solution required to provide a similar amount of CPU cores.

² One rack of Sun Fire X4100 servers populated with AMD Opteron dual-core processors can use as much as 56 percent less power on average than the Intel Xeon MP-processor based solution required to provide a similar amount of CPU cores.