Sun Tries Some Sharp New Tricks
Sun
is making a strong play to its traditional customers – as well as
to those of competitors IBM and HP – with its new Sun Fire Blade
Platform and N1 software for Blades.
As usual, Sun had a lot to say about the superiority of its
hardware, but this time CEO Scott McNealy down-played the hardware
to emphasize the overall package.
Hammering again and again at the expensive solutions offered
by rival IBM, McNealy claimed Sun would “solve the problem through
R&D (not) through heterogeneous integration.”
(In case you’ve missed this catch phrase in the past,
McNealy means IBM’s Global Services unit, the largest consulting
and systems integration organization in the world.)
Sun
is determined to simplify their product offering for customers and
partners by moving to a quarterly announcement cycle and to offer
its products as part of an integrated and tested system, rather than
as components. Sun will
call these NC (for Network Computer, see below) 03 (for the year) Q1
(for the quarter). Expect
NC03Q2 in a few months. That
means Sun is committing to four announcements a year.
We can’t imagine that their partners or their customers are
really going to be able to absorb that many (or that they – or
anyone - would have four compelling ones each year), but I think
it’s fair to say we should wait and see what happens.
It’s The Network Computer – Again
Sun
calls this offering “The Network Computer” (having forgotten,
apparently, that the industry still uses that term interchangeably
with the terms “NC,” and “thin computer” to describe light
weight intelligent terminals that derive much of their functionality
from the server to which they’re connected.
But,
more importantly, Sun’s point is that this isn’t just a bunch of
blades, but a network computer built out of blades, that is, an
integrated system.
What
Sun would like is for customers to agree that life would be much
simpler if they stopped trying to run these complicated
heterogeneous data centers and moved to a single standard –
Sun’s Solaris. In
this homogeneous environment, with N1-implemented automation, things
would be much simpler. We
can’t disagree. They
would be. We just
can’t figure out how most customers would get from their famously
heterogeneous environments to this nice, neat place.
Sun
has in mind offering a building block approach. Everything will be built in their new blade architecture,
managed by N1, and supported either directly by Sun or by Sun
partners. For example,
Sun plans to offer to test and tune customers’ “dream”
configurations in their iForce Centers, then offer a bill of
materials of the parts which enabled the result.
Sun will then offer to build to order, preloading software
and settings, so the customer receives a system that’s ready to
go. It could be set up
in the customer’s own data center or at a Sun Tone partner. In either case, Sun suggests that customers let Sun handle
the hardware (that is, do any upgrading, repairs, or maintenance).
(Please
note that it is not at all unusual today to offer customers an
opportunity to test systems in advance.
For instance, IBM and its partners offer a variety of schemes
to come into their centers and test hardware and software
configurations. They
also offer a “Try and Buy” test program, where customers can
install and test a system before committing to purchase.)
Hardware
This
is enabled by snappily priced Blade servers (Sun comes to this
market a bit later than IBM or HP). It is the only blade system
enabling customers to mix, match and manage Solaris and Linux
operating systems, SPARC® and x86 architectures and special
function blades in the same chassis, which can be outfitted with
SPARC 64-bit blades and/or x86 blades running Linux or Solaris.
Sun agrees that others sell blade hardware but believe theirs
is cheaper, more powerful, and sleeker.
Sun’s chassis is built on an intelligent shelf which offers
a secure path for data. Redundant
power supplies are included in the standard configuration.
Software
The N1
Provisioning Server 3.0 Blades Edition enables customers to rapidly
design, configure, provision and scale blade-based server farms.
During installation the N1 software discovers the blade platform
hardware, adds those resources to a pool from which server farms can
be built and presents a logical view of the blade platform via a
Graphical User Interface. As we note below, in the N1 section of
this article, other vendors, like IBM, offer similar functions
through their autonomic technology for servers.
Sun
will offer the blades with its own Sun ONE middleware such as Sun
ONE Directory, Web, Portal, and Application servers and its Sun ONE
Grid Engine software.
Sun
can run multiple operating systems in a blade chassis, but they are
not alone. IBM, for
example, can run Windows, Linux, and Netware natively on x-series
blades and when their Power Blades ship later this year they will
offer Linux and AIX. (As
always, the exact combinations vary from vendor to vendor, so
different vendors will clearly appeal to different customers.)
Specialty Blades
Sun
has decided to use specialty blades as part of its architecture and
will itself offer a load balancing blade and an SSL proxy blade
later this year. A Sun
partner will be offering a streaming video blade.
Others are expected to follow.
An IBM executive pointed out to us that there is a lively
discussion among blade architects as to whether specialized blades
are a good idea. One
objective of the blade architecture is to be able to readily
repurpose blades; of course, specialized blades are not repurposable. On the other hand, they can achieve special purposes
(such as performance), which may justify the tradeoff.
It is likely that as in the appliance market, there will
always be a limited market for specialized blades, but most interest
will be reserved for the flexibility of repurposing.
Services
We
have long pointed to Sun’s business model, compared to other
systems vendors, and noted that we believe it could use a higher
percentage of service revenue.
The new blade model points in that direction.
Sun
says that to extract maximum value from the Network Computer
platform around N1 you need the assistance their services provide. These include workshops, assessments and roadmaps, customer
ready systems, and site support.
(We think this means they provide training, pre-sale
consulting of the type which is usually provided free or subsidized
by marketing, pre-loaded systems and maintenance.)
Sun needs to think about providing more consulting services,
systems integration, and outsourcing if it expects to get its
services revenue to a place where it can provide a suitable
alternative for pressured hardware margins.
The Importance Of N1
The
blade announcements on February 10th marked an important
milestone for Sun’s N1 which will now be delivered as an essential
part of shipping products. Sun’s
Neil Knox seemed to be saying that N1 would, in this first stage of
its roadmap, be mainly about providing systems management in Sun
environments, but further remarks by Jonathan Schwartz and others
enlarged that.
N1
is clearly designed for heterogeneous environments. Solaris, HP/UX, AIX, and Windows are already supported.
(I didn’t hear Linux mentioned, but I bet it’s included.)
Sun is working on being able to provide connectivity for a
number of heterogeneous devices and applications.
We’re
hoping that when we attend Sun’s Analyst Conference in a few weeks
in San Francisco we’ll get additional clarification on just what
is available now and what will be available later this year.
When
we were soliciting comments from IBM on the Sun announcement we
asked them if their blade server used IBM autonomic computing
technology, IBM’s competitor to N1.
IBM’s Tim Dougherty gave me this run down:
Autonomic
computing has four facets. Three
of them are currently in use in IBM’s blade technology and the
fourth is in the works.
-
Self-configuring:
The blades management module (a collection point for
information from the blades) feeds information to the IBM
Director (an IBM management scheme). When the chassis is plugged into the network it discovers
whatever’s there and downloads the OS and applications.
-
Self
– managing: The
system collects information from every field replaceable unit
onto an LED on each blade. A light shows on the chassis when a
problem occurs at the blade position; remove the blade and a
light on the blade indicates the particular failure.
-
Predictive:
Performs failure analysis and software rejuvenation.
(I didn’t know what that meant either.
It means it gracefully schedules reboots from blue
screens of death.)
-
Self-optimizing:
This isn’t available yet, but is work in progress.
It will permit the customer to provide parameters, such
as priorities for jobs, and the system will assign resources.
Every
vendor has noted the importance of seriously committing to work on
reducing complexity. Sun’s
N1, IBM’s autonomic computing, and HP’s Adaptive Infrastructure
are early examples of long-awaited changes that are going to change
how we work with complex systems. It’s early, but we’re on the
way.
Availability And Pricing
Sun
will provide the Sun Fire Blade Platform in a number of
configurations and prices, from a Starter Kit to fully customized
offerings. Various
service offerings are available to assist customers in selecting,
configuring, and implementing the offerings, which are expected to
be available in April.
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