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Sun’s Next Virtual Step
SUN MICROSYSTEMS’ latest step deeper into the world of virtualization shows where companies will be spending their money: in managing, not creating, virtual servers. Sun’s new xVM Ops Center is a data center automation tool aimed at managing both virtual and physical resources.
Sun also recently announced xVM, a virtualization hypervisor for Intel and AMD servers based on the open source Xen software. In the long run, Sun seeks to participate in more than just the creation of x86 virtual machines, a market close to commoditization. Sun also wants to discover, monitor, provision, and update virtual machines through its xVM Ops Center.
Ops Center will be sold on a subscription basis beginning Jan. 8, ahead of the commercial release of Sun’s xVM hypervisor in the second quarter. That means Ops Center will manage only physical resources initially. Ops Center code will be released under the open source General Public License, starting with the Common Agent Container this week.
Sun isn’t fazed by the fact that VMware has 55 percent of the x86 server virtualization market, according to IDC, or that open source Xen represents a freely available alternative. It’s still early in the virtualization wave, and Sun believes alternatives to VMware will gain share in the growing market. Ops Center’s subscription license may give Sun a lower up-front cost advantage vs. VMware, which sells products on a lifetime license basis. An Ops Center subscription will cost $100 to $350 a year per managed server, depending on the level of technical support sought.
A disadvantage could be that, for now, Ops Center is focused on managing Sun xVM virtual machines. “Over time, we’ll see what the requirement is for true, multiple virtual machine management,” says SteveWilson, VP of xVM.
Sun expects to capitalize on its fault-management architecture, the ability to isolate and heal a fault such as a CPU failure, and on its DTrace feature, which gives users the ability to put probes into operating system functions and view the results. Both are part of its Solaris 10 operating system, and both xVM and Ops Center will leverage those capabilities.
Google’s Big Gig: Energy
Google will spend hundreds of millions of dollars on technologies that harness solar, geothermal, wind, and other renewable energy sources. Google plans to work with other companies, R&D labs, and universities to develop sources that generate electricity at a fraction of the cost of “dirty technologies” such as coal-powered plants. Initially, Google will focus mostly on solar power. The company says it plans to hire 20 to 30 energy experts and engineers. Whatever promising technology comes out of that effort would be tested by Google, particularly in its massive data centers.
How Google would make money from the technologies has yet to be determined. The company could license products, or it could take a percentage of the energy savings from their use. Google says it will continue to spend 70 percent of its R&D on Web search and 20 percent on Web applications. The energy project fits into the 10 percent the company sets aside for innovation.
Exit Sand Mafia
The administration in Kerala’s Thrissur district has introduced a centralized reservation system to fight the state’s sand mafia.
System for Normal Attumanal (river sand) Distribution (or SAND) has been developed by the district unit of the National Informatics Centre (NIC). In Kerala, river sand is used extensively for construction and the real estate boom has further propelled demand. Earlier, each village panchayat used to sell sand mining rights. As the system was not-transparent, certain people cornered these rights and controlled the price of sand. The new system enables end-customers to buy sand directly from the district revenue department. They are allowed to reserve sand at a mining point of their choice by paying a fee. The software checks the availability of sand in a particular spot and allots a date for sand collection. Buyers are required to produce an electoral identity card, a land tax receipt and a certificate from the local panchayat on the bona fides of the intent. A customer can reserve a maximum of eight truckloads, for which they will get eight tokens. However, the computer will allot only one truckload in three days so that buyers cannot sell sand in the open market.
A Better Way To Board
In the US, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) and Continental Airlines have launched a pilot program in Houston that lets passengers use electronic boarding passes on their cell phones and PDAs to board planes. TSA officers use handheld devices to scan the e-boarding passes, which contain a two-dimensional bar code, as well as passenger and flight information.
TSA and Continental worked together to develop the paperless process, with TSA creating the scanning concept and Continental coming up with a plan for encrypting boarding passes on mobile devices. E-boarding passes do away with easily lost paper ones, and they make it easier to detect fraudulent documents. TSA predicts better customer service, including a faster boarding process. Now passengers had just better hope their phone batteries don’t die before they get to the head of the security line.
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