Sun Grid Takes Shape
eWeek, 3/1/04; Francis Chu
Handling application complexity is a growing challenge for today's
enterprise data centers. Large corporations' core business services run on
multitiered server farms comprising Web servers, application servers and
databases. Many of these farms support heterogeneous platforms and a wide
variety of applications. Further complicating things are custom in-house
applications that employ standards running the gamut from Java to ASP, JSP,
COM/COM+ and .Net.
Systems management vendors are therefore seeking technologies that will add
application provisioning to their portfolios. For example, IBM acquired
Opsware Inc.'s application management platform last year, and
Hewlett-Packard Co. recently acquired Novadigm Inc.
Likewise, Sun Microsystems Inc.'s recently released N1 Grid SPS (Service
Provisioning System) 4.1 is built on technology obtained from CenterRun Inc.
The N1 Grid SPS is designed to automate application configuration and
deployment chores in enterprise data centers.
At an exclusive demonstration at Sun's Executive Briefing Center in Menlo
Park, Calif., last month, eWeek Labs got an early look at the N1 Grid SPS
4.1's impressive core capabilities. Although the system is in its infancy,
we believe the N1 grid framework will be a solid choice that IT managers at
large enterprises can harness to effectively tackle application automation
and configuration tasks.
The N1 Grid SPS package includes features for comprehensive application
management, including automated provisioning, predeployment modeling,
configuration comparison analysis, version control, and concise logging and
reporting (see chart, right). The N1 Grid SPS was released last month.
Pricing starts at $1,800 per managed server.
The acquisition of CenterRun last summer enabled Sun to add application
provisioning capabilities to its N1 portfolio by leveraging Sun's
server-provisioning platform, the N1 Provisioning Server. Specifically, Sun
taps CenterRun technology to automate deployment and configuration of
applications, patches and updates in network environments.
The N1 Grid SPS 4.1 uses a distributed architecture where a master server
stores the component models (application specific information stores) and
workflow engines in a secure database. A master server can be a Solaris,
Windows or Linux system using remote agents to control a variety of host
systems. Current hosts supported include Solaris, Windows, Linux and AIX
systems. A centralized console (either a Web-based user interface or a
command-line interface) is used by administrators to run operation commands
and configuration analysis.
Application awareness is important to a robust application provisioning
system. Accordingly, the N1 Grid SPS 4.1 treats each application as a
component rather than a group of files and directories. The component models
store characteristics and information about the applications, which enables
the N1 Grid SPS 4.1 to install and remove applications, configure
application settings, control components through administration interfaces,
and analyze and compare components with other applications.
Once the proper components have been created and configured for deployment,
the N1 Grid SPS performs a predeployment check for configuration errors,
then simulates a real deployment. These simulations can consume time,
depending on the scale of the application deployment, but such preliminary
checks save time in the long run.
The N1 Grid SPS 4.1 manages application life cycles by keeping a reference
database of application configurations. IT managers can perform file-by-file
comparison analysis of their application infrastructure to check for
modifications and changes.
The N1 Grid SPS cannot detect "out-of-band" changes (changes made to the
application infrastructure manually or outside the scope of the N1 system).
Instead, a comparison analysis feature ensures that a host server's
application settings conform to the reference model on the master server.
To automate application provisioning in heterogeneous environments, the N1
Grid SPS 4.1 supports a wide range of applications.
* INFOBOX:
Sun's N1 portfolio covers enterprise application management
- N1 Grid SPS 4.1 Provides automated application deployment, configuration
and updates, as well as increasing application life cycles by reducing
configuration errors; reduces complexity and repetitive tasks; released last
month; priced at $1,800 per managed server
- N1 Grid Provisioning Server 3.1 Blades Edition Server provisioning tool
for blade systems; Web-based design provides drag-and-drop server
provisioning without changing physical configurations; released last month;
priced at $3,136 to manage a single Sun Fire B1600 chassis with up to 16
blade servers
- N1 Grid Engine 5.3 A distributed software/hardware resource management
solution that is available for free download; Version 5.3 gains support for
Solaris x86 and Linux x86 platforms (it supported only SPARC platforms
before) and additional languages in documentation and localized message
catalogs; released last month; free download
- N1 Data Platform Components manage and virtualize storage pools and allow
flexible, on-demand allocation of storage assets without the need to
reconfigure storage systems; various release dates and prices
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