Table of Contents. Introduction...1

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Chapter 1 Introduction

Chief Information Officers (CIOs) and their organizations are increasingly expected to help contribute to the bottom line and gain competitive advantage with support for dynamic business processes, while operating within constantly constricting budgets. However, they are faced with a slew of challenges that make this goal exceedingly difficult, including the global economy, open networks, limited or shrinking budgets, and complexity.

• Global economy — While the global economy extends the promise of more customers, it also increases competition, driving the need to do more with less, as well as the mandate to do it all more quickly. Round-the-clock access to application services to support customers around the world means more stringent service level agreements (SLAs) in terms of both performance, availability, and flexibility. • Open networks — Users are accessing systems not only from internally within the

company, but also over the Internet, propelling a need for highly secure systems. • Limited or shrinking budgets — The mandate to provide more security, more

performance, and more flexibility with shrinking budgets is a constant challenge to CIOs, emphasizing the importance of effectively utilizing datacenter resources, as well as reducing datacenter and carbon footprints.

• Complexity — In order to address the demands of the global economy, the datacenter must be flexible, which is extremely difficult in a complex environment. SAP addresses these challenges with SAP NetWeaver and enterprise service-oriented architecture (SOA). SAP NetWeaver is a composition platform that enables new business solutions to be composed quickly. It is also the foundation for an enterprise SOA that can deliver greater flexibility and cost efficiencies. SAP NetWeaver is built on open standards and Java™ technology from Sun, making it an open integration and application platform that enables change. SAP addresses challenges from an

application and services point of view, however, in order to take full advantage of the benefits of SAP NetWeaver and enterprise SOA, a scalable, reliable, secure, and flexible, and open computing infrastructure is required.

Sun and SAP have worked together since 1993 to provide such an infrastructure. One of the tasks the two companies tackled together in the beginning of the relationship was parallelizing SAP applications in an era when most of the applications were built for single processors. Sun helped SAP to develop and change its applications to take advantage of multiprocessing features. Over time, the joint efforts have paid off, helping Sun to consistently achieve many SAP Sales and Distribution standard application benchmark world records.

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In 1998, Sun opened the SAP Competency Center in Walldorf and opened a SunSM_Joint

Support Center for SAP applications in 2001, which was instrumental in developing the SAP NetWeaver platform. Sun and SAP continuously work together to engineer specific solutions for SAP environments, such as SAP NetWeaver BW Accelerator on Sun, consolidation and virtualization solutions, security and compliance solutions, and solutions that meet the specific needs of small and mid-sized businesses.

The Solaris™ 10 Operating System (OS) on x64 platforms is supported on SAP

NetWeaver. Whether the Solaris 10 OS is run on SPARC® processor-based systems or on x64/x86 processor-based systems, it provides the same features and functionality. From the day of its official release and on subsequent releases, the Solaris 10 OS provides support for all of its key features, including Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), Solaris Containers, an optimized TCP/IP stack, and the Solaris ZFS™ file system on both platforms without delay.

Running SAP NetWeaver solutions on Solaris 10 on x64 platforms helps enterprises address the challenges of flexibility, price/performance, reliability, and security. • Flexibility — The Solaris 10 OS is an enterprise operating system that runs on

commodity x64 hardware. A big benefit over other operating systems is Solaris binary compatibility, which Sun has guaranteed since 1996. Binary compatibility means that Solaris binaries run on the Solaris OS today and tomorrow — providing the flexibility to scale across architectures. In addition, Solaris Containers (for Solaris 8, 9, and 10) enable consolidation and virtualization and help increase the utilization of system resources by up to 80%. The ZFS file system enables file systems to grow dynamically to virtually any size. And, for the ultimate in flexibility, Sun virtualization solutions such as Sun™ xVM Ops Center virtualize and manage SAP instances and other applications running on top of the Solaris OS, enabling the applications to run on a pool of dynamically managed heterogeneous resources.

• Price/performance — Solaris for x64 platforms is ideal for applications that require x86 compatibility or the economies of scale of x86 systems, as well as the large memory addressing capabilities of 64-bit computing, which are needed for Unicode and newer versions SAP applications.

• Reliability — Sun x64 servers running the Solaris 10 OS feature hot swap, redundant components, Solaris Predictive Self Healing, Solaris Fault Manager, and DTrace.  In addition, downtime for SAP upgrades can be minimized utilizing a combination of Solaris Containers and ZFS file systems. High availability and disaster recovery are possible with Solaris Cluster software and Solaris Cluster Geographic Edition software.

• Security — As more people (employees, customers, suppliers, and partners) access the very collaborative environment enabled by SAP NetWeaver, the need for security increases, especially considering the slew of governmental regulations concerning data integrity. Sun intrinsically understands this and continues its 20-year plus

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commitment to building security into the operating system with features such as Solaris User and Process Rights Management, secure execution, and an integrated firewall. Sun also works with SAP to deliver an integrated solution for SAP GRC Access Control and Sun Identity Manager software.

The collaboration of Sun and Intel and the joint work of engineering teams from both companies provides a very innovative, and eco-efficient developer platform, the Solaris OS on Xeon. This alliance of technology giants combines the world's most advanced OS onto the world's most prolific chip architecture. The new generation of Sun servers powered by intelligent server processors from Intel adapt to application behavior by automatically adjusting processing power to deliver optimum performance, scaling energy usage to the workload, and offer best-in-class virtualization.

Intel and Sun believe that the combination of Sun's open source operating system, the Solaris OS, and Java environments running on Intel's Xeon architecture provide a solid platform to deliver applications that provide outstanding differentiated value and energy savings to enterprises.

With a full line of SPARC®, UltraSPARC, and x64 systems and blades powered by Intel Xeon processors, all running the Solaris OS, Sun can help enterprises leverage the best technology to handle multitier enterprise SAP workloads. And, Sun’s binary

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Chapter 2 Solaris™ 10 OS Features and Other Offerings

With more than 600 innovative features such as DTrace, Solaris Predictive Self Healing, Solaris Containers, and the ZFS file system, and more coming every day through OpenSolaris™ development, the open source Solaris Operating System is the most advanced operating system available. These technologies supply the foundation for building, deploying, and managing efficient, secure, and reliable enterprise-class SOAs for today’s demanding SAP solution’s business processes. In addition to providing a world-class platform for deploying SAP applications, the Solaris Operating System includes sophisticated services to improve manageability and resource utilization. Sun strongly believes that open source drives innovation and in support of this tenet Sun contributes to the open source community. In fact, Gartner reports that “no other major IT platform vendor has committed so much of its core assets to the open-source software model than Sun Microsystems”.1

The Solaris 10 OS is fully supported on more than 1000 SPARC and x64 based systems from Dell (support for SAP on Solaris 10 on Dell is coming, check saponsolaris.com), HP, IBM, Engenera, Fujitsu, etc., enabling IT to run and support a single OS in their SAP environments. The Solaris 10 OS also bundles over 180 open source applications tools to make it easier to implement solutions. Finally, the Solaris OS has more applications available than any other open operating system, so one OS can span the entire enterprise.

Solaris support for Intel® Xeon® features

Intel and Sun have deeply collaborated on hardware and software since January 2007. The two companies work together to ensure that the Solaris OS is optimized to unleash the power and capabilities of current and future Intel Xeon processors at the time of launch. Furthermore, Solaris 10 update 6 was the first commercial OS release optimized for the Intel Core Microarchtecture (formerly Nehalem). Java technology is also optimized, resulting in a 68% performance boost. Joint work by the two companies touches the most significant areas of the OS, including:

• Performance enhancements • CPU performance tools

• Compiler vectorization and tools • Power management

• Driver support

• I/O acceleration technology • Virtualization technology

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• Solaris Predictive Self healing

As of Solaris 10 update 6 (10/08), the Solaris OS is optimized for the following features: • Intel Xeon CPU/Memory fault management — reduces cost of fault diagnosis and

repair.

• Intel NUMA support driven by ACPI.

• Intel SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2 support — the kernel now detects the presence of existing Intel SSSE3, SSE4.1, and SSE4.2 instruction sets. This feature enables loading and executing programs that require these hardware capabilities.

• RDTSCP instruction support — serialized time stamp count.

• Intel CPUID support, scheduler/cache tuning — discovers information about the cache hierarchy. Tuning for Core2 and new Intel Core Microarchtecture, 4.5% SPECint performance improvement on Core2.

• Intel MONITOR/MWAIT support — replaced HLT instruction, provides better power management and 1.2x performance in certain workloads.

• Intel Hyperthreading support.

• Intel SSE/SSE2 instruction optimizations — libc optimizations result in large increases in speed to accelerate memory operations.

• Intel 64 Power Management — Enhanced Speedstep support enables Solaris platform users to manage the power consumption of their Intel processors by lowering the processor frequency during idle periods. These systems can lower the voltage and frequency in steps without affecting overall throughput, and provide considerable energy savings at the same time.

• Support for PowerTOP (implemented using DTrace) — designed to track down issues that prevent an otherwise idle system from going into a lower power state.

• Support for up to 256 CPUs on the x64 platform.

Support for Intel Core Microarchitecture

In addition, there are significant areas where the Solaris OS can provide an

environment for maximum application performance by taking advantage of the new Intel Core Microarchitecture features.

• Turbo mode converts any available power headroom into higher frequencies.  In those situations where the Solaris OS determines that maximum processing power is required, the new Intel Core Microarchitecture processor increases the frequency in the active core when conditions such as load, power consumption, and

temperature permit. By utilizing thermal and power headroom as a performance boost, the Solaris OS and the Intel Core Microarchitecture can deliver more work with less overall heat and power consumption.

• Solaris and OpenSolaris support enhancements to Intel Demand-Based Switching (DBS) and other power saving features on the new Intel Core Microarchitecture. With the integration of a CPU frequency scaling module in the Solaris OS, it is one of the

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first operating systems enabled for Intel DBS, enabling very high performance while also meeting the power-conservation needs of the datacenter. Sun and Intel are working to enhance power management capabilities in the Solaris OS, including: – Adjusting processor power requirements in response to utilization, and enabling

the system to go into the deepest power saving state possible when a processor is idle.

– Allowing the clock speed of the processor to be dynamically changed by software, providing increased performance for frequently blocked workloads and enabling the processor to wake up from idle state immediately to do necessary work without wasting CPU time and power.

– Working to make the Solaris kernel tickless, which means it will not periodically wake up to process a clock tick, but rather stay idle until an event of interest occurs. This can save considerable energy.

• The new Intel Core Microarchitecture has two hardware threads per core, or up to eight threads per quad-core processor. Intel Hyper-threading Technology provides two threads per core, enabling a more energy efficient means of increasing performance for multithreaded workloads. Solaris has an outstanding threading model, outperforming the competition on enterprise applications such as SAP, as well as industry-standard benchmarks. With specific optimizations for the new Intel Core Microarchitecture, the Solaris OS enables new levels of performance as applications incorporate multithreaded design, increasing throughput, responsiveness, efficiency, scalability, and overall performance.

• The Solaris OS will leverage the capabilities of the new Intel QuickPath Interconnect (Intel QPI) architecture with capabilities such as an optimized scheduler and memory placement optimization (MPO) capability. Intel QPI connects processors and other components with a new speed point-to-point interconnect and includes a high-performance interconnect and integrated memory controller (IMC). The IMC is coupled with large high-performance caches. This relieves pressure on the memory subsystem and lowers overall latency, resulting in dramatically improved

throughput.

• Intel Smart Cache adds up to 8 MB of shared L3 (last-level) memory, improving speed, and throughput in multithreaded solutions. Sun is working to optimize the Solaris OS take advantage of this capability in the new Intel Core Microarchitecture.

• The new Intel QuickPath Interconnect provides tightly integrated reliability features to improve uptime and maintain high performance levels. Sun and Intel are working together to leverage status information throughout the Intel Core Microarchitecture to help the Solaris fault management system diagnose a hardware fault correctly. This verification helps to ensure that users running the Solaris OS on Intel Xeon processor-based systems receive a correct diagnosis and recovery should a hardware fault occur.

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• The new Intel Core Microarchitecture includes next generation Intel Virtualization Technology that delivers even more efficient virtual machine operation with optimizations that enable a higher level of performance and reliability. These new features enable improved software performance, security, and reliability in virtualized environments. Sun xVM Ops Center uses OpenSolaris OS technologies to take advantage of the new Intel Core Microarchitecture virtualization capabilities. For example, para-virtualized drivers are expected to be available at launch, allowing non Intel Virtualization Technology-aware operating systems—such as Windows XP, Windows 2003, and older Solaris releases — to run on top of the Intel Virtualization Technology-enabled chip sets.

The Solaris OS offers additional performance advantages that help improve overall throughput. For example, a turbocharged TCP/IP stack can leverage the high-performance I/O acceleration features available in the new Intel Core

Microarchitecture. Sun development tools will be integrated to take advantage of specific features in the new Intel Core Microarchitecture, such as internal counters and a new instruction set. The Solaris OS also includes a highly integrated facility for troubleshooting and tuning applications in real time. DTrace technology provides very detailed tracing and observability, making it possible to detect performance

bottlenecks in remarkably short periods of time.

Free software

The Solaris OS, and a majority of Sun’s software products — including Solaris Cluster and Sun developer tools — are available for download free of charge. Sun also offers the Sun Optimized Web Stack for the Solaris 10 OS, a collection of some of the most commonly used open source applications (Apache, MySQL™ software, and PHP/Perl/ Python) optimized for the robust Solaris OS. The binaries are optimized for the best levels of system performance — anywhere from 30 to 200% performance improvement over standard binaries, depending on the application and workload. Sun has also added DTrace probes for better observability.

Sun offers aggressively priced support programs for the Solaris 10 OS that scale to meet unique needs. A wide range of support offerings, at up to 50% less than equivalent offerings from Red Hat, make it easier for developers and companies of all sizes to take advantage of the freely available and open source Solaris 10 OS platform. Subscriptions provide one-stop shop for product and services, immediate Web access to software support, updates and upgrades to the latest technologies, training, and Sun expert support. In addition, unlike Linux, the Solaris OS, Sun applications, and Sun developer tools are all integrated and fully supported by Sun, enabling a more reliable

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Solaris Containers

Solaris Containers are a unique feature in the Solaris 10 OS that enable consolidation and better asset utilization, which leads to reduced complexity in the datacenter, particularly for SAP environments affected by server sprawl. A Solaris Container is a complete runtime environment for Solaris 8, 9, 10, or Linux (using Solaris Containers for Linux Applications, or Brand Z) applications that creates very little administrative overhead and has miniscule impact on system performance, unlike other virtualization technologies. One instance of the Solaris OS enables nearly limitless partitioning, with a theoretical limit of 8000 containers per instance.

Solaris 10 Resource Manager and Solaris Zones software partitioning technology are both parts of the container. Zones allow application components to be isolated from one another even though the zones share a single instance of the Solaris Operating System. The Solaris Resource Manager provides the capability to dynamically allocate the quantity of resources that a workload in a zone receives.

Containers establish boundaries for resources such as CPUs and can be expanded to adapt to the changing processing requirements of the application or applications running in the container. Applications within containers are isolated, preventing processes in one container from monitoring or affecting processes running in another container. Even a superuser process from one container can not view or affect activity in other containers.

Solaris Containers are multicore aware and are designed to provide fine-grained control over the resources that applications use, allowing multiple applications to operate on a single server while maintaining specified Quality-of-Service (QoS) levels. Fixed resources such as processors and memory can be partitioned into pools on multiprocessor systems, with different pools shared by different projects (a specified collection of processes) and isolated application environments. Dynamic resource sharing allows different projects to be assigned different ratios of system resources.

The Fair Share Scheduler supports dynamic resource allocation, enabling proportions of resources — such as fractions of a CPU — to be allocated to containers. When

resources like CPUs and memory are dynamically allocated, resource-capping controls can be used to set limits on the amount of resources consumed by specific containers. Finally, Solaris IP Quality-of-Service can be used to manage network bandwidth used by multiple containers, helping administrators to maintain specified QoS levels in a consolidated environment.

With all of these resource management capabilities, organizations can consolidate many SAP applications onto one server, helping to reduce operational and

administrative costs while increasing flexibility. To increase application availability, Solaris Containers support fault isolation and can instantly restart applications if necessary.

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Solaris Containers provide an ideal mechanism for consolidating the SAP environment, as illustrated in Figure 1, where all of the Web and application servers are in containers on one system, and all of the instances of the database, including development, test, and production, are in containers on a second system. In this example the number of servers is consolidated from nine down to two servers, which can dramatically decrease complexity and operating costs.

Figure 1. Consolidating the SAP environment with Solaris Containers

In this configuration, if an application server fails, it is automatically restarted. If a hardware component is failing or fails, it is automatically taken off-line and the applications are restarted if necessary. If the application can not restart, its server resources are dynamically assigned to the remaining applications so the system is still optimally utilized.

On the database server, resources can be shifted to where they are needed and each of the database instances is completely isolated from the others. It is even possible to reboot the individual environments without affecting the others. One benefit is the possibility of reduced database licenses. In an unconsolidated environment, a database license is required for all of the cores in each system, whether those cores are in use by the database or simply there for peak usage. In a Solaris Containers environment, the resources of all of the cores can be configured so they are constantly in use and can be temporarily shared during peak demand. For example, the resources of the

development and test databases could be temporarily assigned to the production database to run jobs during the night. This fine-grained resource management enables optimal resource utilization as well as possible decreased database license costs. Solaris 10 10/08 also includes Solaris Containers enhancements. A feature called

update on attach enables a Solaris Container to automatically update its environment when moved from one system to another.

Sun Server Sun Server Solaris 10 OS Solaris 10 OS Web Server Application Server Development Database Test Database Production Database Web Server Application Server Application Server Application Server

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Solaris ZFS™ file system

The Solaris ZFS file system offers a dramatic advance in data management with an innovative approach to data integrity, tremendous performance improvements, and an integration of file system and volume management capabilities. The centerpiece of this architecture is the concept of the virtual storage pool, which de-couples the file system from physical storage in the same way that virtual memory abstracts the address space from physical memory, as illustrated in Figure 2, allowing for much more efficient use of the storage devices.

Figure 2. ZFS file system

In the ZFS file system, space is shared dynamically between multiple file systems from a single storage pool and is parceled out from the pool as file systems request it. As a result, physical storage can be added to or removed from storage pools dynamically, without interrupting services. This provides new levels of flexibility, availability, and performance. In terms of scalability, Solaris ZFS is a 128- bit file system, so its

theoretical limits are virtually unlimited — 2128 bytes of storage and 264 for everything else, such as the number of file systems, snapshots, directory entries, devices, etc. Other benefits and features of the ZFS file system include:

• Data integrity — The ZFS file system combines proven and cutting edge technologies like copy-on-write and end-to-end 64- bit checksumming, providing extreme reliability to help ensure that the data on the disk is self-consistent at all times.

• Improved performance — The ZFS file system optimizes and simplifies the code paths from the application to the hardware, producing sustained throughput at near platter speeds. New block allocation algorithms accelerate write operations, and consolidate what would traditionally be many small random writes into a single more efficient sequential operation. Additionally, the ZFS file system implements intelligent prefetch, performing read ahead (in either direction) for sequential data streaming, and can adapt its read behavior on-the-fly for more complex access patterns. It also eliminates bottlenecks and increases the speed of both reads and

File System File System File System

Volume Volume Volume

ZFS ZFS ZFS

Storage Pool

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writes by striping data across all of the available storage devices, balancing I/O and maximizing throughput.

• Reduced costs — Unlike traditional file systems that require a separate volume manager, the ZFS file system architecture integrates volume management functions, so there is no need to purchase additional volume manager software.

• Simplified management — The ZFS file system integrates devices, storage, and file system structures into a single structure, simplifying file system management and providing a reliable and flexible solution that can help reduce cost, complexity, and risk.

• Low overhead RAID — The ZFS file system provides software RAID through RAID-Z. Z is a virtual device that stores data and parity on multiple disks, similar to RAID-5. RAID-Z uses variable-width RAID stripes so that all writes are full-stripe writes. The Solaris 10 OS integrates a Solaris Fault Manager diagnostic engine for the ZFS file system that is capable of diagnosing and reporting pool failures and device failures. Checksum, I/O, device, and pool errors associated with pool or device failures are also reported to help quickly identify and resolve failures.

The ZFS file system in the Solaris 10 update 6 OS is enhanced with recent work from the OpenSolaris community, providing ease of data management with no additional cost for acquisition or support. The new version of ZFS file system offers increased data integrity and expanded data set recovery capabilities. The ZFS file system can be used as the sole file system for any class of system, with support for booting and/or for use as a root file system.

Minimizing planned downtime with Solaris Containers and

ZFS file system

The Minimized Downtime Project developed by Sun utilizes ZFS file systems and Solaris Containers to minimize the planned downtime when upgrading SAP applications.  For example, Figure 3 shows a production SAP portal instance running in a container. In Step 1, the SAP instance is copied, or cloned, into Container B using ZFS file system features.

This process typically takes only a few seconds, after which the application can be started on Container B. In Step 2, the SAP system in Container A continues to run, while the SAP system in Container B is upgraded to a new version. Once the upgrade of the SAP system on Container B is finished, the live system is switched from Container A to the upgraded system on Container B in Step 3. This is a very effective process and reduces the downtime during upgrades dramatically, which is especially beneficial when upgrading portal applications, because when the portal is down users can not access the systems.

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Figure 3. Minimizing downtime with Solaris Containers and ZFS file systems

Hybrid Storage Pools with the ZFS file system

Intel’s latest technology innovations, including 6-core Intel Xeon 7400-series and Intel Core Microarchitecture processors highlight a significant gap in the IT ecosystem: multisocket, multicore servers have far outpaced the performance limitations of traditional disk drives. The result is expensive and complex architectures — that use massive amounts of expensive DRAM and/or disk drives — designed to maximize CPU utilization. The result is an IT infrastructure that is costly to buy and operate.

The ZFS file system and Intel High-Performance Solid State Drives (SSDs) combine to provide innovative Hybrid Storage Pools. Intel flash-based SSDs provide 100x I/O performance improvement compared to mechanical disk drives. The ZFS file system can utilize a handful of Intel SSDs as high-speed disk cache to turbocharge application performance, helping to keep up with modern, multicore systems. Using Hybrid Storage Pools can provide maximum performance while reducing capital and operating expenses.

The ZFS file system transparently manages data placement, holding copies of frequently used data in fast SSDs while less-frequently used data is stored in slower, less expensive mechanical disks. The application data set can now be completely isolated from slower mechanical disk drives, unlocking new levels of performance and higher ROI.

The ZFS file system transparently caches data on SSDs, overcoming the need to modify applications. This functionality was introduced in the OpenSolaris 2008.05 OS release, and will continue to be enhanced in future OpenSolaris OS updates. Support is planned to be integrated in a future Solaris 10 update as well.

Step 1: Create Clone Step 2: Upgrade Clone Step 3: Switch Clone Container A Container B

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Architectures based on Hybrid Storage Pools can consume 1/5 the power and 1/3 the cost of standard monolithic storage pools while providing maximum performance. For example, if an application environment with a 350 GB working set needs 30,000 IOPS to meet service level agreements, 100 15K RPM HDDs would be needed. If the drives are 300 GB, consume 17.5 watts, and cost $750 USD each, this traditional environment provides the IOPS needed, has 30 TB capacity, costs $75,000 to buy, and consumes  1.75 kWh of electricity.

Using a Hybrid Storage Pool, six 64 GB SSDs (at $1,000 each) provide the 30,000 IOPS required, and hold the 350 GB working set. Lower cost, high-capacity drives can be used to store the rest of the data — thirty 1 TB 7200 RPM drives, at $689 each ($20,670) and consuming 13 watts, provide cost-effective HDD storage. The savings are dramatic: • Purchase cost is $26,670, a 64% savings

• Electricity consumed is 0.392 kWh, a 77% savings

Desktop virtualization

IT organizations with a large and sprawling desktop client community struggle with complex and ineffective desktop management strategies. Traditionally, all applications run directly on a local desktop. Sun desktop virtualization solutions help IT deliver applications and full desktop environments to clients using a server-based computing model.

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All of the intelligence — compute power, storage, software, and administration — is concentrated in the datacenter. Many companies are reducing their SAP datacenter costs and energy consumption with Sun desktop virtualization solutions, including the SAP University Competency Center (UCC), SAP Belgium Education Center, Puliacqua, University Hospital rechts der Isar, and ANSMANN AG.

Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software

Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 2.0 is designed to deliver a secure, centralized desktop environment, enables IT managed data backup and security, and allows users to access their full desktop environment from nearly any client device without installing software. Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 2.0 introduces the new Sun Virtual Desktop Connector, which provides seamless integration to third-party virtualization technologies within an organization's infrastructure. Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure Software 2.0 includes support for virtual desktops based on the Solaris OS, Windows, Mac OS X, or Linux and provides access from any supported client device — from traditional PCs to alternative devices such as Sun Ray™ ultra thin virtual display clients — over nearly any network connection.

The unique capabilities of Sun's virtual desktop infrastructure can help companies improve their information security, manage access to critical data more effectively, reduce IT operational costs, and empower employee mobility.

Sun Secure Global Desktop software

Sun Secure Global Desktop Software gives organizations the ability to centralize applications in the datacenter. Operating systems, applications, and data no longer reside on private desktop or laptop computers. Environments and applications run on dedicated systems in the datacenter and are displayed on client devices, providing anytime, anywhere access from any device. Organizations can publish most Microsoft Windows, UNIX®, midrange, or mainframe applications to any network-attached client, including PCs, Macintosh computers, laptops, wireless devices, and more.

Sun xVM VirtualBox

Sun xVM VirtualBox, part of the Sun xVM portfolio, is a hosted virtualization product that also takes advantage of Intel Virtualization Technology chip sets to improve the performance of Windows OS guest operating systems over systems without Intel Virtualization Technology.

Server virtualization

Virtualization with Sun xVM Ops Center and VMware Infrastructure and partitioning with Solaris Containers offers a flexible set of choices for consolidating multiple SAP applications, instances, or environments onto a single Sun x64 server.

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• To consolidate multiple applications running on the Solaris 10 OS, use Solaris Containers.

• To consolidate multiple applications running on other versions of the Solaris OS or Linux, use Solaris Containers and Branded Zones (to run Linux applications).

• To consolidate a mix of applications running on the Solaris 10 OS, Linux, or Microsoft Windows, use Sun xVM Ops Center or VMware Infrastructure, as illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4. Virtualized x64 server.

Sun xVM Ops Center software

With the new Sun xVM Ops Center software, Sun delivers an easy-to-use, open source, datacenter-grade server virtualization solution to virtualize and manage heterogeneous workloads, including Windows, Red Hat and SUSE Linux, Solaris, and OpenSolaris operating systems, on Sun x64 platforms and SPARC processor-based servers. With a state-of-the-art Web GUI, Sun xVM Ops Center software provides built-in management through a browser, enterprise-class scalability, reliability, and security. Sun xVM Ops Center software is designed to interoperate with VMware and uses the same virtual hard disk and virtual appliance formats, enabling administrators to easily move workloads between VMware ESX and Sun xVM Ops Center software. And when the Solaris 10 OS is used as a guest OS in Xen-based hypervisors such as Sun xVM Ops Center, it can now support paravirtualization.

VMware Infrastructure

VMware Infrastructure, comprised of VMware ESX Server and VirtualCenter, is another virtual machine technology. VMware ESX Server provides a virtual machine platform with resource management capabilities, all managed through VMware VirtualCenter. VMware ESX Server runs directly on supported Sun x64 servers to provide a secure, uniform platform for deploying, managing, and remotely controlling multiple operating system instances. Sun offers the VMware Infrastructure and VMware View product suite on Sun hardware systems with full support available from Sun.

Virtualized Hardware Applications Users Solaris 10 OS Virtualized Hardware Applications Users Sun x64 Server Linux Virtualized Hardware Applications Users Windows

Sun xVM Ops Center or VMware

Allocated

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Sun supports Sun xVM Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 2.0 on VMware Infrastructure 3 software, which allows IT to use their VMware deployment to host Windows virtual machines and leverage Sun's nearly 10 years of experience in delivering full-screen desktop sessions over the network.

Virtualization management

With the release of Sun xVM Ops Center 2.0, Sun provides integrated, simplified management of virtual and physical environments. The new release adds virtual guest management to its existing ability to manage physical infrastructures, making it easier for users to manage thousands of geographically distributed systems simultaneously. Sun xVM Ops Center's best-of-class software lifecycle management simplifies and accelerates the discovery, provisioning, updating, monitoring, and reporting of physical and virtual assets, as well as compliance reporting through one unified browser-based interface.

Sun also offers comprehensive services for Sun xVM Ops Center 2.0 to help enterprises build and support next-generation virtual datacenters. Sun's Virtualization Suite of Services provides the right mix of services for planning, designing, and implementing, including: Virtualization Workshop, Virtualization Architecture, and Virtualization Implementation. As part of this offering, Sun provides customized assessments of current and long-term needs and helps companies and organizations implement the appropriate virtualization technology from Sun and other recognized platforms, helping reduce risk and speed up deployments. In addition, Sun offers:

• Sun Solution Centers for SAP to fine-tune the reference architecture to specific needs and minimize deployment risk.

• The Sun Joint Support Center for SAP Applications to resolve interoperability issues — increasing the availability of SAP application services.

Sun Java™ Virtual Machine (JVM™) on the Intel architecture

As mentioned previously, SAP extensively utilizes Java technology in its applications. Sun and Intel collaborate to increase Java platform performance for the latest JVM on Intel processor-based servers. JVM is highly optimized for Intel processors to help ensure that applications take advantage of the latest processor features without requiring tuning on the part of application developers.

Sun and Intel exchange hardware and software that enable best practices for performance optimization on the latest Intel hardware platforms. The collaboration between Intel and Sun enables Java developers to obtain significant performance gains by simply choosing the Sun JDK.

• Optimized cache utilization — Enterprise-class Java applications often run very high numbers of threads. It is useful to have at least as many software threads available as

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there are hardware threads. Because of this large number of threads, J2EE applications derive particular benefit from the cache characteristics of Intel Xeon processors. JVM software’s prefetch mechanism is high optimized for the Intel architecture.

• Memory subsystem optimization — The large numbers of threads in enterprise-class Java applications create very large demands on the memory subsystem, which creates a challenge in terms of overcoming the effects of memory latency. Because Java applications must depend on the JVM instead of managing memory directly, it is important for those mechanisms to be very efficient. The Sun JVM uses parallel memory management processes to help increase throughput, while also using concurrent processes where appropriate to help decrease pause times. Intel processors (5400 series forward) support these enhancements in memory handling with Intel Smart Memory Access.

• Processor core affinity — The Sun JVM is designed specifically so that each software thread continues to operate on the same hardware thread. This optimization helps to ensure that the most relevant cache contents are continually available on a local basis for the thread to use, increasing efficiency. The Sun JVM uses Thread-Local Allocation Buffers (TLABs), which allow threads to allocate objects in a private space. The latest version of the Sun JVM optimized the use of TLABs relative to the Intel Xeon processor’s cache.

High availability

Global competition and international customers mean systems must be available 7x24x365 and be capable of immediately handling increases in demand. The Solaris 10 OS includes features such as Solaris Predictive Self Healing and Solaris Fault Manager to keep systems and applications up and running, even in the event of hardware failures. Solaris Cluster software and Sun Cluster Geographic Edition software protect against system and site failure for even higher availability.

Solaris Predictive Self Healing and Solaris Fault Manager

Solaris Predictive Self Healing is an innovative capability in the Solaris 10 OS that automatically diagnoses, isolates, and recovers from many hardware and application faults. As a result, business-critical SAP applications and essential system services can continue uninterrupted in the event of software failures, major hardware component failures, and even software mis-configuration problems.

Solaris Fault Manager

Solaris Fault Manager is a Solaris Predictive Self Healing facility that collects data relating to hardware and software errors. It automatically and silently detects and diagnoses the underlying problem, with an extensible set of agents automatically responding by taking the faulty component offline. Easy-to-understand diagnostic

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messages link to articles in Sun's knowledge base that clearly guide administrators through corrective tasks requiring human intervention. The open design of the Solaris Fault Manager facility also permits administrators and field personnel to observe the activities of the diagnostic system. With Solaris Fault Manager, the overall time from a fault condition to automated diagnosis to any necessary human intervention is greatly reduced, increasing application uptime.

Solaris Service Manager

The Solaris Service Manager facility creates a standardized control mechanism for application services by turning them into first-class objects that administrators can observe and manage in a uniform way. These services can then be automatically restarted if they are accidentally terminated by an administrator, if they are aborted as the result of a software programming error, or if they are interrupted by an underlying hardware problem. In addition, the Solaris Service Manager software reduces system boot time by as much as 75% by starting services in parallel according to their dependencies. An undo feature helps safeguard against human errors by permitting easy change rollback. Solaris Service Manager is also simple to deploy — developers can convert most existing applications to take full advantage of Solaris Service Manager features just by adding a simple XML file to each application.

Solaris Cluster 3.2 software

Solaris Cluster software can be used to improve the availability of SAP components running on the Solaris OS. Solaris Cluster uses redundant computers to protect against downtime, eliminating the server as a single point of failure. With the Sun Cluster Geographic Edition software, SPARC and x64 clusters can be combined across unlimited distances to provide business continuity even in the event of a datacenter failure. And, Solaris Cluster Advanced Edition for Oracle RAC offers enterprises increased

manageability and availability for Oracle Real Application Clusters (RAC) deployments for both SPARC and x64 platforms.

All tiers of an SAP NetWeaver platform can be consolidated within a Solaris Cluster environment, allowing for a single point of management with agents for SAP DB, SAP Enqueue (including enqueue and replication servers, Central Services, and Web Application Server), SAP J2EE Engine, and SAP liveCache 7.6 (Solaris Cluster 3.2 01/09 software), as well as many others.

Solaris Cluster leverages existing, proven Solaris 10 OS availability features to

automatically increase overall system availability. Solaris Cluster integrates tightly with Solaris Predictive Self Healing and allows Solaris Service Manager controlled

applications to be automatically integrated within the Solaris Cluster. Local service-level management continues to be operated by Solaris Service Manager, while whole resource level cluster-wide failure handling operations (node and storage) are carried out by Solaris Cluster software.

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Solaris Cluster software also supports ZFS file system as a failover file system. ZFS file system and Solaris Cluster offer a best-in-class file system solution combining high availability, data integrity, performance, and scalability to meet the needs of the most demanding SAP environments.

Solaris Cluster software provides expanded support for Solaris Containers, enabling server consolidation even in high-availability environments. The Solaris Cluster HA Container agent can monitor and manage Branded Containers. Solaris 8, Solaris 9, or Linux images are failed-over to another server in case of outage. These virtualization capabilities allow scalable or fail-over applications and associated Solaris Cluster agents to run unmodified within Solaris Containers. This type of environment offers multiple layers of availability. For example, an application can be configured to first try to restart in its container. If the restart fails, it can attempt to start in another container using Solaris Cluster failover. If this fails, it can attempt to restart on a different server using Solaris Cluster failover.

Solaris Cluster 3.2 01/09 software extends Solaris Container support for applications such as Oracle RAC databases, enabling highly available consolidated services at lower cost. Solaris Container Cluster allows fully isolated virtual clusters to be created based on Solaris Container virtual nodes. Distributed applications such as Oracle RAC databases, and in the near future other solutions, can be run in separate virtual clusters. Multiple databases or database version can be consolidated into one physical cluster for highly available consolidated service. In addition, Solaris Cluster GeoGraphic Edition 3.2 01/09 also supports Oracle Data Guard.

Security

SAP NetWeaver enables access to a broader range of applications and information by a wider range of users, delivering game-changing benefits to the enterprise. Products ship faster, productivity climbs, and customer satisfaction increases. The challenge is to open up the enterprise to more users in a cost-effective manner while simultaneously ensuring that information assets remain secure.

The Solaris 10 Operating System provides security features previously only found in Sun's military-grade Trusted Solaris OS. Solaris User and Process Rights Management work in conjunction with Solaris Containers to securely host multiple applications and many users on the same system. Security administrators can minimize and harden Solaris to even greater degree than ever before to implement a secure foundation for deploying services.

Solaris Trusted Extensions

Solaris Trusted Extensions is an extension of the proven Solaris 10 security policy that allows enterprises with specific regulatory or information protection requirements to

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take advantage of labeling features previously only available in highly specialized operating systems or appliances. Solaris Trusted Extensions enables controlled access to data and applications based on sensitivity level, not just on ownership. The security policy in the Solaris OS is extended to support labels on elements of the operating system so that data marked as Confidential can not be accessed by public services such as Web browsers and e-mail applications, regardless of who attempts the access.  In addition, data can not be written to a device, such as a CD or USB Flash drive, that is labeled with a lower classification than the data itself, which helps protect most sensitive data.

Labeling extends to network packets, the CDE and Sun Java Desktop System interfaces, file systems, terminals, disk drives, USB thumb drives, CD-ROMs, printers, audio devices, network interfaces, and all processes.

Secure execution and file integrity

In the Solaris 10 OS, most binaries are digitally signed, enabling administrators to track changes easily. In addition, all patches or enhancements are embedded with digital signatures, eliminating the false positives associated with upgrading or patching file integrity-checking software. Solaris Secure Execution features makes it possible to configure a system to allow only valid, signed executables from a list of trusted authorities to run. Rogue applications, Trojan horses, and viruses can not execute.  And any binary can be signed — third-party commercial offerings, open source, or home-grown code — without needing the source code.

Basic Audit and Reporting Tool (BART) is a file integrity-checking application for data files and applications. As part of the Solaris Fingerprint Database project, digital signatures are provided for all files shipped in the Solaris OS, and these signatures allow the integrity of Solaris files to be inspected to ensure that critical system files have not been modified. The Solaris Fingerprint Database also offers free online verification of Sun issued binaries. Together, these tools provide powerful, flexible ways to monitor and protect against unauthorized changes to the operating system

platform.

Solaris User Rights Management and Process Rights Management

Any user or application with root access has the ability to make major changes to the operating system and is typically the target of hacking attempts. Borrowing technology from Trusted Solaris OS, Solaris 10 offers unique Solaris User Rights Management (also known as Role Based Access Control) and Process Rights Management (also known as Privileges). These technologies reduce security risk by granting users and applications only the minimum capabilities needed to perform their duties. And, unlike other solutions on the market, no application changes are required to take advantage of these security enhancements.

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Solaris Process Rights Management gives IT operators the ability to limit and selectively enable applications to gain access to just enough system resources to perform their functions. This capability dramatically reduces the possibility of attack from a poorly written application by eliminating inappropriate access to the system. Even if hackers gain access to an application server, they are unable to increase operating privileges, thus limiting the opportunity to inject malicious code or otherwise damage data or operate devices (e.g., access the /dev/ip device). In Solaris Containers, Solaris Process Rights Management helps ensure that applications — even those run with privileges — are constrained to access resources only in their own Solaris Containers.

Cryptographic Infrastructure

Sun Enterprise Authentication Mechanism™ software (Sun’s implementation of Kerberos), lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP), and interoperability enhancements enable enterprise-wide, secure, standards-based single sign-on to servers and applications. These enhancements reduce costs by centralizing

administration of system access across multiple operating systems while increasing security.

The Solaris 10 Operating System includes Kerberos-enabled remote applications such as rsh, rcp, telnet, and others. In addition, the Solaris Cryptographic Framework adds a common application programming interface (API) for system-wide cryptographic routines. This framework provides a single point of administration and uniform access to hardware-accelerated cryptographic functions for cryptographically aware

applications and can load-balance across accelerators, increasing encrypted network traffic throughput.

IP Filter

The Solaris Operating System has included firewall protection technology with every copy shipped for years, with the specific goal of protecting individual systems from attack. In Solaris 10, the Solaris IP Filter firewall software is based on the popular IP Filter project from the free and open source software community and is completely integrated into the Solaris IP stack. This high-speed firewall allows administrators to restrict access to particular networking services in a stateful manner.

Sun Network Services for SAP Solutions

Sun Network Services for SAP Solutions provides a comprehensive set of identity services and secure access that make it possible to reap the benefits of collaborative business while maintaining security and costs. In fact, Sun Network Services for SAP Solutions is unique in that Sun Java System Identity Manager is the only identity management product with full integration into the SAP NetWeaver platform and is Powered by SAP NetWeaver certified. It runs on top of the SAP NetWeaver Application Server and is integrated with SAP Portal, SAP HR, SAP R/3, and SAP GRC.

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Sun and SAP can help enterprises implement automated continuous compliance with a solution that integrates Sun identity management solutions with SAP solutions for governance, risk, and compliance (GRC).

Sun understands that all environments are different and have distinct needs. Sun offers a comprehensive portfolio of consulting services and workshops that leverage Sun’s vast experience with SAP, identity management, and network security to help design, implement, and manage optimal solutions that meet the robust requirements of unique SAP environments.

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Chapter 3 Sun Fire x64 Servers

Thirty-two-bit application servers present increasing challenges in installed SAP environments, such as memory limits, increased tuning and support, and inability to run Unicode with good performance. Furthermore, the trend toward consolidating engines into the application server (ITS, graphics server, Adobe, Java VM, etc.) increases the need for main memory. In addition, the hidden cost of an x86 infrastructure is becoming apparent for many enterprises. Issues like x86 server utilization rates at 5% to 15% and server sprawl that is costly to manage, maintain, power, and cool are becoming more apparent every day. With their larger table buffers and object caches, 64-bit application servers deliver the performance gains necessary to handle increased workloads, as well as the capability to consolidate many servers into one server. SAP plans that from 2009 on, new releases of SAP NetWeaver and SAP applications based on SAP NetWeaver will no longer support Windows and Linux 32-bit, although developer workplaces still support 32-bit application servers for single user operation. In order to keep up with demand and take advantage of new features such as Unicode, a platform change is required.

Sun and Intel provide a choice of innovative systems that help IT managers implementing SAP solutions to realize and maximize the full potential of the latest  64-bit technologies. Sun jointly develops Intel Xeon processor-based systems with Intel that are designed to enable Sun to take full advantage of Intel Xeon processors. These systems feature state-of-the-art, high-performance system architectures that are scalable, run 32- and 64-bit applications, and are energy and space efficient. In addition, Sun works with Intel to co-develop Sun software, such as OpenSolaris, the Solaris 10 OS, Sun Studio compilers, and the Java Virtual Machine, to provide optimal performance on Intel Xeon processors.

Sun and Intel Corporation participate in a broad strategic alliance centered on Intel's endorsement of the Solaris Operating System and Sun's commitment to deliver a comprehensive family of enterprise and telecommunications servers and workstations based on Intel Xeon processors. Because the Solaris 10 OS is open source, it is easier for Sun to work together with Intel to make sure the Solaris 10 OS supports all Xeon features and functionality to reduce complexity in the datacenter. For example, binary compatibility is guaranteed across Intel Xeon platforms from a single processor or single core to multiprocessor multicore.

Sun brings 20 years of Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) systems expertise to the Intel Xeon platforms and Solaris 10 OS is the third release of the OS designed to support multicore systems. Innovative Solaris 10 technologies like Solaris Containers, Solaris Predictive Self Healing, and DTrace, are multicore aware and designed to take

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advantage of Intel Xeon architectures, while multicore features specific to Solaris on Sun Fire servers such as Memory Placement Optimization (MPO) and scheduler enhancements are also supported. Users can protect their Solaris investment since all existing Solaris OS applications can immediately access all the benefits of multicore platforms without modification or recompilation.

By combining the free and open source Solaris 10 OS with Intel Xeon processor-based systems, SAP users can take advantage of a robust and secure infrastructure for their SAP database, application, and Web, and desktop virtualization servers. Solaris 10 on x64 platforms enables enterprises to grow with their needs and upgrade SAP versions from 32-bit to 64-bit within the same hardware infrastructure.

Sun x64 server benefits

Sun x64 servers utilize the advantages of Intel’s Core Microarchitecture and are more efficient and scalable by design than competitive systems. Use of less power-hungry components allows for much lower power consumption than other servers.

Additionally, under full load, Sun x64 servers demonstrate better scalability and higher performance than similarly sized competitive servers, with the ability to consolidate many legacy applications onto a single server.

The Sun x64 product family is anchored by a broad range of industry standard rack-mount servers. Sun’s expertise in delivering dense, high-performance systems and its focus on eco-responsibility are evident in designs of a new platform family — the Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 servers — that are ideal for supporting consolidation and virtualization initiatives. Using innovative Intel Core Microarchitecture processor technology, Sun has engineered powerful 1 RU and 2 RU systems that are well-suited for SAP applications, as well as HPC, grid computing, database, Web infrastructure, consolidation, and virtualization. These systems offer density and expandability of compute, memory, storage, and I/O subsystems. At the same time, they are highly energy efficient and offer flexible support for multiple operating systems — the Solaris Operating System, OpenSolaris, Linux, Windows, and VMware.These systems deliver optimal application performance and throughput while minimizing the need for power and cooling.

The Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 servers showcase Intel’s talent for creating high-performance commodity chipsets along with Sun’s innovative engineering and quality system design. Engineered for mission-critical availability, these servers feature several redundant and hot-swappable components and built-in system management tools. With efficient front-to-back air flow, highly efficient power supplies, and Intel’s built-in processor power management technologies, these servers are engineered to conserve valuable energy resources, which can lower day-to-day operational expenses. These servers support up to two processors for eight cores, up to 144 GB memory, and four 

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on-board Gigabit Ethernet ports. All systems support internal SAS/SATA hard drives or solid state drives.

A follow-on product to the successful Sun Fire X2250 server, the Sun Fire X2270 server is another example of Sun’s innovative engineering delivering one of the most compelling x64 solution in the market. Equipped with up to two Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series, the Sun Fire X2270 server delivers world-class 32-bit and 64-bit performance in a rack-mountable 1 RU form factor. The server supports up to 48 GB of memory, up to four SATA or solid state drives, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports. Hosting applications across an array of inexpensive servers, scale-out computing maximizes server utilization, raises application availability, and lowers acquisition costs. Unfortunately, organizations often find that resulting performance, power and cooling, and system management challenges outweigh the benefits. Sun x64 servers are designed to help enterprises realize the positive aspects of a scale-out architecture while reducing the hidden costs and complexities.

Innovation

Today’s budget constrained enterprises are seeking innovative options for building cost effective, powerful infrastructures based on standardized components. Sun x64 systems reduce cost and complexity by providing a universal platform that simultaneously runs 32-bit and 64-bit applications at full speed on a choice of operating systems, including the Solaris OS, Linux, Windows, or VMware. These modular, rackmount and blade servers are designed to Sun’s exacting standards to take full advantage of the exceptional power of Intel Xeon processors and the Intel Core Microarchitecture, resulting in significantly greater performance and energy efficiency than comparable servers.

Blazing performance

The Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 servers share a common motherboard that contains two sockets for Intel Xeon Processor 5500 Series (formerly Nehalem-EP). With new HyperThreading technology, these CPUs can provide twice as many compute threads as previous generation processors. They also support enhanced power management features and the new QuickPath Interconnect technology that helps to deliver new levels of performance while reducing power consumption.

Sun x64 servers, featuring the Intel Xeon processor, have set the industry standard for performance, powering some of the fastest supercomputers on the planet. With an innovative architecture and the latest eight-core, 64-bit Intel Core Microarchitecture processors, Sun x64 servers have set numerous world records, both in standard tests such as SPECfp2006, SPECompM2001, SPECjAppServer2004, SPECjbb2005, and SPEC CPU2006, as well as in commercial applications such as SAP Sales and Distribution

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Standard Application Benchmark, ABAQUS/Explicit, FLUENT, ANSYS, and LS-DYNA.  For the latest results, see sun.com/x64/intel/benchmarks.

In addition, the Sun Fire X4150, X4250, and X4450 servers feature dual-, quad-, and six-core Intel Xeon 5000 and 7000 Sequence processors. With large integrated caches and high clock speeds, these processors offer high system performance and throughput compared with systems based on earlier generation Intel chip sets. In high-end configu-rations, Sun Fire X4150, X4250, and X4450 servers can house multiple Intel Xeon proces-sors — for example, the Sun Fire X4450 server supports up to four six-core Intel Xeon X7450 processors clocked at 2.66 GHz, for a maximum of 24 cores and impressive per-formance in a compact 2 RU chassis.

Outstanding energy efficiency

The Sun Fire X2250 server features a single AC power supply rated at 500 watts and also offers the option of utilizing a low-voltage quad-core Intel Xeon processor that

dissipates just 12.5 watts per core for a total of 50 watts Thermal Design Power (TDP). This thermal footprint is 37% lower than standard 80 watt parts and 58% lower than 120 watt parts. Lower power consumption and better energy efficiency make the Sun Fire X2250 server ideal for highly-dense, power-sensitive environments.

In the Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 servers, Intel Xeon processors incorporate new technologies that minimize power use and enhance energy efficiency. The Intel Core Microarchitecture optimizes processor performance relative to the power consumed. Power management capabilities limit power to unused execution units in each core, which helps to reduce power and cooling requirements. High-efficiency power supplies in the server chassis lessen overall power consumption. Variable speed fans, disk carrier design, and front-to-back air flow in the chassis help to effectively cool the system and maintain appropriate processor and system ambient temperatures.

The Sun Blade modular system provides optimized cooling and airflow that can lead to reliable system operation and efficient datacenter cooling. In fact, Sun Blade modular systems, including the new Sun Blade X6270 and X6275 server modules, deliver the same cooling and airflow capacity of Sun’s rackmount systems, resulting in reliable system operation and less required cooling infrastructure. Better airflow can translate directly into better reliability, reduced downtime, and improved serviceability.

Remarkable density = massive scalability

The ability to expand a server over time reduces the need for additional capital

acquisitions and lowers application lifecycle costs. Density is the cornerstone of the Sun Fire X2750, X4170, X4270, and X4275 server and Sun Blade modular system designs. When populated in a 42-rack unit RU enclosure, the 1 RU Sun Fire X4170 server facilitates a single rack with up to 84 processors, 756 DIMM slots and 126 PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 slots. In a single 2 RU chassis, the Sun Fire X4275 server supports up to 12 TB of internal storage (based on 3.5-inch SATA devices). These servers provide the density

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needed for consolidation and virtualization initiatives — many smaller servers can be merged into a single Sun Fire X4170, X4270, or X4275 server to conserve space, lower energy expense, and reduce costly administrative talent. Support for multiple operating systems helps to streamline consolidation, simplify virtualization, and diminish server sprawl, particularly in SAP landscapes.

Figure 5. Sun Fire X4275 server supports 8 cores, 8 disks, 18 DIMMS, up to 12 SAS/SATA or 8 SATA SSDs, and 6 PCI2 2.0 slots in 2 RU.

Unsurpassed choice

Sun x64 servers offer enterprises more choice with the broadest line-up available.  The systems help CIOs meet their performance, server consolidation, and Web infrastructure goals, whether running the Solaris, Linux, or Windows operating systems. In addition, Sun offers a proven portfolio of open, integrated, and

interoperable software, available individually or as a complete system, that runs across multiple platforms and environments. And, Sun x64 servers can run the virtualization technology best suited for a specific environment, with a broad choice of Solaris Containers, VMware, Microsoft Virtual Server, or Xen.

Manageability

Across the Sun x64 family, one integrated lights out management (ILOM) architecture runs everything, at no added cost. ILOM enables system administrators to monitor and manage system proactively, and provides the ability to configure network information, view and edit hardware configurations, monitor vital system information, and manage

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system alerts. ILOM consists of dedicated management hardware (service processor) and integrated system management software. Every Sun x64 server includes an embedded service processor for complete local and remote control. New side-band

management capabilities allow one of the four on-board Ethernet ports to be

configured for system management, which can reduce the number of network switch connections needed.

All Sun Service Processors support key industry standards and interfaces to enable easy integration and familiarity for system administrators. These include Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IMPI) 2.0, SSH 2.0, SNMP (V1, V2c, V3, DMTF command line interface), Java Remote Console, and a browser-based user interface.

Enterprise-class reliability and availability

The Sun Fire X4170, X4270, and X4275 servers are designed with enterprise-class RAS (Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability) features. To maximize uptime, systems include redundant swappable fans and can be configured with redundant hot-swappable power supplies. Using a Sun StorageTek SAS RAID Host Bus Adapter (HBA), internal SAS or SATA disk drives can be configured for RAID 0, 1, 1E, 10, 5, 5EE, 50, 6, and 60 — when mirroring is implemented, drives are also hot-swappable. Four

integrated Gigabit Ethernet ports enhance network availability — without consuming a PCIe slot — and can be implemented in failover configurations. On-board system management tools encourage remote, proactive monitoring and intervention. Sun Blade modular systems are intended for a long life, with a design that assumes ongoing improvements in technology. The chassis integrates AC power supplies and cooling fans for all of the server and I/O modules. This approach keeps these

components off of the server modules, making them efficient and more reliable. Power supplies and fans in the chassis are designed for ease-of-service, hot-swappability, and redundancy. The chassis provides power and cooling infrastructure to support current and future CPU and memory configurations, helping to ensure that the chassis life-cycle will span multiple generations of processor upgrades. All modular components such as the CMM, server modules, EMs, and NEMs are hot-plug capable. In addition, I/O paths can be configured in a redundant fashion.

World record SAP benchmark performance

For example, the compact Sun Fire X4270 server running on the SAP ERP 6.0

Enhancement Pack 4 (Unicode) with Oracle Database Server 10g on the Solaris 10 OS delivered the highest two-processor result on the two-tier SAP SD Standard Application Benchmark with Enhancement Pack 4, as of March 30, 2009. This benchmark result highlights the optimal performance of SAP ERP on Intel Xeon-based Sun Fire servers 

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