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Jeff Victor's Blog

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Threads, as fas the eye can see...

Recently, I contributed to a new white paper thataddresses the question "ok... now I have a computer with over 1,000 hardware threads... what do I do with all...

Recently, I contributed to a new white paper thataddresses the question "ok... now I have a computer with over 1,000 hardware threads... what do I do with all of those threads?" The topics include details of the newest SPARC S3core, workload consolidation and server virtualization, multi-threaded programming,and more.Oracle published the paper, which you can find here:http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/sun-sparc-enterprise/documentation/index.html. My personal...

Oracle Virtualization Launch

On August 23, Oracle will host a virtualization launch.You can attend in person, in Redwood Shores, CA, or via webcast:Webcast registrationIn-person...

On August 23, Oracle will host a virtualization launch.You can attend in person, in Redwood Shores, CA, or via webcast:Webcast registrationIn-person registration

SPARC and Solaris Webcast

Today Oracle will webcast several announcements and roadmaps, including:New SPARC cluster - including world record database performanceOracle Exalogic Elastic...

Today Oracle will webcast several announcements and roadmaps, including:New SPARC cluster - including world record database performanceOracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud powered by the SPARC T3Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers, M-series, with SPARC64 VII+ processorsOracle Solaris 11For details and webcast registration, see: http://eventreg.oracle.com/webapps/events/ns/EventsDetail.jsp?p_eventId=126450

AMD Names Fab Unit

The newest major chip manufacturing corporation finally has a name:GlobalFoundries. The next step is to build its new fab.AMD has been slowly spinning off its...

The newest major chip manufacturing corporation finally has a name:GlobalFoundries. The next step is to build its new fab.AMD has been slowly spinning off its chip fab business for the pastfew years, and in the process is building a new US$4.2 billion fab in thenortheast USA - near Albany, New York. Cash-strapped AMD was onlyable to do this via a joint venture with an investment fundheadquartered in Abu Dhabi.More details are available ateWeek,PCWorld,and the major newspaper...

got (enough) memory?

DBAs are in for a rude awakening.A database runs most efficiently when all of the data is held in RAM. Insufficient RAMcauses some data to be sent to a disk...

DBAs are in for a rude awakening.A database runs most efficiently when all of the data is held in RAM. Insufficient RAMcauses some data to be sent to a disk drive for later retrieval.This process, called 'paging' can have a huge performance impact.This can be shown numerically by comparing the time to retrieve data fromdisk (about 10,000,000 nanoseconds) to the access time for RAM (about 20 ns).Databases are the backbone of most Internet services. If a databasedoes not...

Virtual Eggs, One Basket

One of the hottest computer industry trends is virtualization. If you skimoff the hype, there is still a great deal to be excited about. Who doesn'tlike...

One of the hottest computer industry trends is virtualization. If you skimoff the hype, there is still a great deal to be excited about. Who doesn'tlike reducing the number of servers to manage, and reducing the electric power consumed by servers and by the machines that move the heat theycreate (though I supposed that the power utilities and the coal and natural gas companies aren't too thrilled by virtualization...)But there are some critical factors which limit the...

Spawning 0.5kZ/hr (Part 2)

As I said last time,zone-clone/ZFS-clone is time- and space-efficient. Andthat entry looked briefly at cloning zones. Now let's lookat the integration of...

As I said last time,zone-clone/ZFS-clone is time- and space-efficient. Andthat entry looked briefly at cloning zones. Now let's lookat the integration of zone-clones and ZFS-clones.Enter Z\^2 ClonesInstead of copying every file from the original zone to thenew zone, a clone of a zone that 'lives' in a ZFS file systemis actually a clone of a snapshot of the original zone's file system.As you might imagine, this is fast and small. When you use zone-clone toinstall a zone, most...

Spawning 0.5kZ/hr (Part 1)

I hate computers. No, that's not true. They hate me.Probably because I derive pleasure from pushing themto the hirsute edge of their design specifications.They...

I hate computers. No, that's not true. They hate me.Probably because I derive pleasure from pushing themto the hirsute edge of their design specifications.They interpret this as sadistic behavior, andthinkthat I am mean for no reason. But that's not true. I havea reason. Actually, I have two reasons:I am curious, and enjoy measuring thingsI want to help you understand the limits of Solaris so youcan safely maximize the benefits you obtain from using it,without performing all...

Zones and Configurable Privileges

Part 2 of ManyAnother network feature that won't work in a non-global zone in Solaris 10 3/05,1/06, or 6/06 is the service "dhcp-server".I wondered if...

Part 2 of ManyAnother network feature that won't work in a non-global zone in Solaris 10 3/05,1/06, or 6/06 is the service "dhcp-server".I wondered if appropriate privileges could be assigned to a zone,using Solaris 10 11/06, in order to enable that service to work properly in a non-global zone.But how do you know which privilege(s) are needed? Although atool to analyze an executable (and the libraries that it uses) fornecessary privileges would be very useful, I am not aware...