|
Q: What are the plans to support Solaris on laptops, things like power mgmt, suspend/hibernte, wifi, cardbus. Do you plan support for laptop type things in Solaris?
Chris Ratcliffe (A): We currently support over 180 laptops with Solaris 10 and actually have a number of these technologies running (in fact some of them are running on the system I'm using now). We hope to release them soon. Q: Chris, thanks for the answer on the Oracle support on Solaris x64! Just to make sure,yes, the page in question does list both Sparc and x86, but is Oracle fully supported on the 64 bit platforms (Solaris x64).As of right now , it does nots seem to be the case... Chris Ratcliffe (A): Like all x86 applications, it's supported on x64 platforms but in this case, it's currently a 32-bit application. Q: Will Solaris support all the other x86 processors excluding operaton (eg. xeon, celeron, athlon 64, pentium m?) Chris Ratcliffe (A): Yes, it already does. Q: What has been the uptake on the Container feature for Solaris 10? Chris Ratcliffe (A): It's been huge. We have some customers running literally hundereds of Containers on a single system. See http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/chrisra?entry=solaris_containers_why_use_anything for an interesting comment from one of our major customers. Q: Yury Bokhoncovich: Have you plan to open a learning center somewhere in Europe, e.g. in Russia? Robbie Turner (A): We offer training throughout Europe, including Russia. For more details check out: www.sun.com/training Look for: Training outside the U.S. Q: I've read that Sun is working on getting Xen to work in Solaris. Any news on this? Chris Ratcliffe (A): We have a version working internally, see http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/chrisra?entry=xen_and_the_art_of for more details. Q: DO you like Nvida better then ATI? Herb Hinstorff (A): They both make great products and we support them both. Q: What is the services story for the Sun Fire products? Robbie Turner (A): The Sun Fire x4100, x4200 and x2100 servers are the latest in Sun's line of x64 servers. Services from Sun can add incredible value to these x64 systems. Whether you're running Solaris OS, Windows OS or Red Hat and/or SUSE Linux, Sun offers you world-class heterongenous support. Choose from a wide range of software and hardware support plans to keep your systems and applications running reliably and smoothly. To help you get it right from the start, we offer installation of your hardware and software. We also offer a wide range of training courses that offer the information you need - straight from the source of the technology you are purchasing. If you're in need of a flexible approach to remote management and support for any component from the network through the application layer, Sun Managed Operations Services provides ITIL-based operations multi-vendor support for heterongeneous computing environments. Sun also provides remote support for products and custom software integrated within solutions designed, developed, and implemented by Sun. For more info check out: sun.com/service Q: When is Solaris 11 going to be launched? Chris Ratcliffe (A): We currently do not have a launch date for Solaris 11. Q: When will the Sun iSCSI drivers be officially released for x86 Solaris 10? Nancy Hurley (A): iSCSI drivers will be delivered in a Solaris update early next year. Q: How serious does Sun take supporting x86 laptops, eg. power mgmt, wifi drivers, cardbus etc? Herb Hinstorff (A): We already support over 183 laptops with Solaris 10 and are in the process of releasing some new features that will specifically address power management, wifi support etc. Q: How do you see the future of storage and storage management, to achieve efficient allocation of resources across the grid with deterministic quality of service? Nancy Hurley (A): Storage and the software to manage and protect stored data are integral to the grid. In order to automatically deliver storage resources based on the demands of business applications, the backend storage infrastructure needs to be tightly integrated with applications, servers and the associated management solutions. In order to accomplish this, Sun will integrate storage management software that monitors, manages, migrates and protects data with our overall portolio to deliver application and storage SLA's. Q: Why is the roadmap of the Sunray 2 slipping? We hoped it would be available this year but it looks like it will arrive in 2006? The Sunray is great please don't let others catch up! Herb Hinstorff (A): We haven't announced any next-generation Sun Ray roadmap. We certainly have exciting plans in both the client hardware and software area to further enhance the technology. Stay tuned! Q: As a scientific systems engineer, we see a lot of value in the given to the hardware through the OS. Solaris is great at providing value. However, many complimentary science projects run in a Linux environment, which puts pressure on us to migrate for compatibility. Is this being addressed with zones and Project Janus? I also understand you have signed a reseller agreement with VMware. Could you address this issue? Chris Ratcliffe (A): The combination of Solaris Containers and functionality we will deliver in Solaris 10 next year (previously known as Project Janus) will give customers the ability to run Linux applications on Solaris 10 while at the same time taking advantage of features such as Predictive Self-Healing and DTrace. VMWare is a slightly different approach to the same problem in that it requires you to actually run instances of both Solaris and Linux on the same platform. It is however available and supported today. Q: How hard was it to pick Opteron over Itanium a few years ago? David Lawler (A): Not hard at all. Just look at the market size. Q: when will you annouce the StarOffice 8 Iyer Venkatesan (A): Soon! Q: Has Sun outsourced its graphic card development? Will Sun use "industry standard" graphic cards in the future? Ali Alasti (A): Currently, all x86 systems use industry standard graphics cards from Nvidia and ATI. Q: I'm just wondering do the new servers work with WINNT 4 server? David Lawler (A): No, unfortunately not. Q: What kind of driver compatablity issues are there when running windows on the galaxy servers? Ali Alasti (A): None. Galaxy servers are Microsoft WHQL certified. We provide LSI Logic SAS Controller drivers to make this experience as smooth as Windows installation process allows :) Q: In small market such as mine (Ireland) I'm wondering if there will be enough demand for the new Galaxy products. If the demand isn't there, will your local partners (such as Horizon Open Systems) be hurt -- especially considering the push there is behind Galaxy? David Lawler (A): Sun is supporting the new servers world-wide, including in Ireland (it better - I'm Irish). Our channel partners world-wide have geen trained and are ramping up for Galaxy as we speak. Q: How do you expect to make money off your grid initiative? From everything I have read about Sun's thoughts on it, a business model that will bring in dollars in the long-term is invisible. Thanks! Jonathan Schwartz (A): How many other vendors can bring together the systems platform - hardware, software and storage - at the level Sun can? None, as far as I can tell - to that end, we feel we can generate far more value in the market than the competition - and as we continue to sign up customers, and work on cost-reducing the infrastructure, we clearly see an attractive business model. Q: Will the N1 system manager handle doing jumpstarts, log management, patching, live upgrades, etc? Jim Sangster (A): Sun N1 System Manager uses jumpstart today, everything on the system is logged (but log management will be included in the future), patching is done today, as is firmware. Live upgrade is not supported today. Q: Will Tarantella products become integrated with Sun Rays, or maintain their own product line? Kevin Strohmeyer (A): The Sun Secure Global Desktop (Formally Tarantella) will remain its own product line. Sun Ray thin clients may access applications published through the Sun Secure Global Desktop. Q: Will this chatting contents be published or send email to participants? Moderator (A): Absolutely, a transcript of this chat will be made available on this site, and will be sent in follow-up email communications. Q: Will there be a niagara blade which can be placed in a rack like the former B1600? Ali Alasti (A): B1600 is EOL'ed. We are working on the next generation blade technology which will marry Niagara with it. Q: When will ZFS be available? Chris Ratcliffe (A): November/December for public early access - right now we're in private beta with customers across the world, tuning and enhancing for the public release. Stay tuned (or talk to your Sun contacts if you want to participate in the beta). Q: Can I use CRS to customise my environment? Ravi Pendekanti (A): Absolutely! that is whole idea behind CRS which stand for Customer Ready Systems and implies customization of the IT infrastructure based on the customers need. Q: Trying to squeeze the last question... Are there any plans for dual-core CPU with 3.0 Ghz and higher? Ali Alasti (A): When they will be available from AMD we will support them. Q: When wil be the new line of X4100/4200, and Sun Sparc 3 too available in other markets than U.S.? I'm from Argentina - Soth America. David Lawler (A): The new Galaxy servers will be available world-wide in October. Not sure what you mean by "Sparc 3" Q: When will Sun have a an x86 product for the consumer? David Lawler (A): The Utra 20 is as close as we will get for now. We are primarily focused on business infrastructure. Q: We have found that 64 bit Solaris x86 support is very spotty, even with Sun itself. Is that likely to disappear in the near future? Chris Ratcliffe (A): We're seeing accelerating adoption among both ISV's as well as IHV's - so stay tuned, support is getting more comprehensive by the minute (and open sourcing Solaris clearly makes it simpler). Q: In the past DR was always a feature of Sun Servers. And now there is a box like a pc. Are there any plans for hotplug ? Nancy Hurley (A): Galaxy servers support hotplug for power supplies, fans, disk drives, etc. Hot-plug of x86 processor is not possible due to the particular nature of the implementations of these processors. However, Solaris-10 does provide a feature called predictive self-healing that allows the processors, cores and memory to be taken off line automatically prior to a hard failure without impacting the applications running on the system. Q: Will the N1 System Manager help manage zones? Jim Sangster (A): Absolutely, N1 System Manager will be the central point of management for everything from the OS layer down through HW infrastructure. Everything including (but not limited to) Domains, OSs, Solaris 10 Containers (aka zones), and virtualization technologies. N1 System Manager already covers heterogeneous OSs, and will cover all Sun servers (and beyond). Of course some features that N1 System Manager does (or will do) will be limited to what the underlying managed entity supports (ie a specific feature like Solaris 10 Containers, or something like Dynamic Reconfiguration of Domains). Q: Will you license your products under GPL sometime in the future? Jonathan Schwartz (A): We license plenty of our products under GPL. Gnome, Looking Glass, a whole host of development products and libraries. We absolutely see value in the license, but there's no one hammer for all nails in the open source community. Q: What kind of impact do you expect Galaxy will have on local resellers? Marsha Cavanaugh (A): Combined with the launch of Sun Partner Advantage Program for ISVs, Galaxy will give Resellers a low cost platform--combined with a broad ecosystem of Solaris 10 applications. More choice for low cost customer solutions. Q: The process for ordering Sun Service subscription plans for Solaris is slow and cumbersome, at least compared to my experience buying Oracle service, is the order and delivery process being reviewed? Two weeks to get the order processed and two more to get the contract activated seems a bit excessive. John groenveld@acm.org John groenveld@acm.org Robbie Turner (A): We appreciate your feedback. We have already implemented changes to the order process and have longer term changes scheduled in order to improve the order process. Q: Does sun have any intentions of getting more desktop users on solaris (opensolaris?) Chris Ratcliffe (A): With the extensive x86 platform support in Solaris 10 and Sun's x64 workstation products, we are seeing an increasing number of desktop users already on Solaris 10. In addition, there are a number of projects currently underway both internally at Sun and within the OpenSolaris community that will be very attractive to desktop customers. Q: I don't suppose you could get your 1U size down to a laptop - Maybe then perminently fly your flag on the Dell building...any hope? Jonathan Schwartz (A): I've spoken to Michael and Kevin about flying our flag on their headquarters. So far, they're resisting. But as they lose share, I'm sure they'll come around. Q: The initial products in the Galaxy are great and I'm looking forward to more radical followon products. Does Suns sales model support the PC hardware builder type user with the Galaxy products. For example, I have two dual-code AMD CPUs "lying around" looking for a good home, and I'd rather put them into a Sun Galaxy "box" than build something from scratch. Will Sun supply people like me with "stripped" boxes and still allow me to get the CPU heatsinks etc. that I need to customize 'my' Galaxy server?? Thanks David Lawler (A): Sorry, no. We provide the full support and service for our systems. Q: What clients do Tarantella support? Kevin Strohmeyer (A): The Tarantella product has been announced as a Sun product called the Sun Secure Global Desktop Software. Any device with a Java enabled Web Browser can access applications through the Sun Secure Global Desktop. This includes PC's, Laptops, Macs, thin clients, Sun Ray thin clients, PDA's, tablets, and public kiosks. Q: I see the JES components are now grouped together. Will customers have the opportunity to pay for and choose only the components they need and use? Jim McHugh (A): Yes, customers may take a subscription for an individual Suite at $50 per employee or the complete Java Enterprise System at $140 per employee per year. The Suites that are currently available are The Application Platform Suite, Identity Management Suite, Communications Suite, Availability Suite and Web Infrastructure Suite. More information can be found at: http://www.sun.com/software/javaenterprisesystem/index.xml Q: Yet another one ;-) Do we anticipate having any alternatives to the storage arrays (workgroup-class) 3310/3510? Judy Depuy (A): Sun does plan to offer follow-on products to the 3310/3510. Q: When will the partner program have offerings for different industry and verticals? Jason Incorvaia (A): Under the umbrella of the Sun Partner Advantage Program, we are currently developing an Industry Advantage track that will bring added benefits to partners who complement Sun's industry and micro vertical focused offerings. The Industry Advantage track is slated to be offered by the end of this calendar year. Q: I thing Openoffice is going great but it seems that it is in a little slow development phase. You gave the base code for OOo, also for Netbeans and now making the same for opensolaris. The same problem may certainly can arise for it. Have you got plans to speed up the process of their developments or is this a strategy of you? Iyer Venkatesan (A): Thanks. We're definitely proud of our efforts around OpenOffice.org. OO.o 2.0 will be available shortly. We want to do everything we can to speed up the process and grow the community. However because it's a community-led development process, this is not a strategy by Sun for OO.o or other open source projects. Q: What is the most profitable department in Sun? Jonathan Schwartz (A): The salesforce, by a long shot. Moderator: Hello! Our event will be ending soon. Don't miss your opportunity to ask our panel of experts your questions. Q: Are you not afraid of the position linux has on the galaxy servers ? Chris Ratcliffe (A): There's no such thing as "linux," there are only really distros - like Red Hat and SuSe. Are we afraid of Red Hat? No, not at all - we think there's ample opportunity to partner with them to erode the world of proprietary/dead Unixes, like HP-UX and AIX. Solaris and Red Hat both provide wonderful migration platforms for HP and IBM customers feeling abandoned on industry standard servers. Q: What is Sun's system management story for Sun Fire? Jim Sangster (A): The new Galaxy systems ship with integrated capablities known as ILOM, and provide management functions, protocols, and the service processor for single systems. Sun N1 System Manager is the central point of management for aggregating systems together to provide OS layer down through server capabilities. Over time all existing products will be managed by N1 System Manager, and at the same time the functionality in some other tools (such as Sun MC) will be integrated into this single tool. Each different layer (ILOM, N1 System Manager) can also plug into higher level enterprise frameworks from partners such as HP, IBM, CA, BMC. Q: Will windows running on X4200 beat windows on Intel-64 David Lawler (A): If by Intel 64 you mean Itanic, then yes handily. As for Xeon EM64T, in a comparable socket-count comparision, we beat any Xeon server. Q: Any news on project honeycomb? I read that it was transistioned to the network storage team. Nancy Hurley (A): Honeycomb does reside in the Data Management Group (new name for the Sun & STK storage group). Development continues on Honeycomb as part of the overall portfolio of Intelligent Archive Solutions. Q: When will sunrays be available as laptops? Herb Hinstorff (A): Tadpole, a subsidiary of General Dynamics, sells laptops based on Sun Ray technology today. Q: will SAS drives be added to all the Sun servers? Judy Depuy (A): Sun will be going from SCSI to SAS drives across our entire server product family. With our storage products, we be moving to offer either SAS or Fiber Channel drives. Q: I shared the experience among others that it's taking too long to purchase a low end workstation/server or even a Solaris support contract. Do you realize the problem and are you working on it? Robbie Turner (A): I assume you are referring to buying through the Sun Store. Sun's low end systems and Solaris Service Plans are offered through the Sun Store. We have taken feedback from customers on their experiences ordering through the Sun Store and have an effort underway to improve the customer experience on the Sun Store. Q: Why is Sun not making a bigger push for Reference Architectures as in the past? Ravi Pendekanti (A): Sun is continuing to push Reference Architectures and you will see them being offered as part of our solution offerings. Q: Jonathan, saw you rocking out on stage. Will Sun really be going into fun consumer products? Jonathan Schwartz (A): We have two of the most high volume consumer products on the internet today - the Java runtime (java.com), and OpenOffice (openoffice.org). So yes. Will we have a rack you can put in your pocket? We're working on it, but it's a tough design challenge. Q: Will the Niagara boxes look as kewl? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Absolutely yes. Q: Kudos to Sun and Oracle for Database Packs for Solaris x64 systems; any plans for mysql or Postgres starter kits? John groenveld@acm.org Marsha Cavanaugh (A): There are no plans currently in place, however we have multiple Open Source initiatives we continue to review with our ISVs, including mysql and Postgres. Q: I love what you've done with the Ultra 20 workstation. How have sales been? Are there additionalplans on the board for an expanded range of workstations? Herb Hinstorff (A): Can't comment on sales. We will be expanding the range of workstations over time. Q: Hi, Do you guys have any plans for individuals or small companies to obtain a Sun Fire server paying a monthly amount of money ? And would that be possible outside US as well ? Not everyone lives in US. Thanks,Stefan David Lawler (A): Yes, we announced an offer for a $40/mo offering for the x2100. Stay tuned. Q: I there is a 64-bit Java in the works at Sun? (bala@m0rph.com) Jim McHugh (A): We already have a 64-bit JVM included with Solaris 10. Q: I have been reading a lot about a new storage offering from Sun called "Honeycomb". What is it and when will it ship? Tom Martin (A): Honeycomb was originally a project in Sun Labs developed for highly scalable, intelligent archival for storage and rapid retrieval of fixed content. After market feasibility was determined the project was moved to the Data Management Group at Sun and will be incorporated in the Intelligent Archival Solutions Portfolio. Release dates to be announced. Q: Yury Bokhoncovich: ABout OBP on Opterons. ARe there plnas to implement this? It's so kewl vs. poor PC BIOS! Ali Alasti (A): We have no plans for it at this time. Poor PC BIOS remains alive :) Q: Any plans on making a cheap sparc desktop like the Ultra20? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Stay tuned. Q: Jonathan, what does success look like to you for Sun? When do you think you've crossed over to "fat and happy days"? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Easy. #1, and growing share in all markets in which we're participating. Q: In Solaris 10, there is webmin and now the N1 system manager is out for x86/sparc. How are these two solutions positioned? Jim Sangster (A): Solaris management features (webmin among others) are aimed and positioned for single system management, as well as user level settings in this case. To broaden the scope, Galaxy also has a built in management capablity called ILOM which provides capablilities to the service processor and server level functions for single system Galaxy products. Sun N1 System Manager provides aggregate management capabilities, including grouping capabilities. As such, N1 System Manager is intended to be used when the number of systems to be managed gets over a simple deployment of a few systems. N1 System Manager provides provisioning, monitoring and management. Additionally the N1 System Manager can be used in combination with other N1 products such as Sun N1 Grid Engine or Sun N1 Service Provisioning System to provide higher level management capabilities that extend up into applications, workloads, and service level management. Q: Jonathan, congratulations on Sun stck being upgraded to "Promising". Great news! Jonathan Schwartz (A): Thanks - there are about 39,000 employees at Sun who are feeling mighty proud of their accomplishment.... Q: Please, please, please can you give us a dual core Ultra 20? David Lawler (A): It's coming - stay tuned. Q: Are ther plans for java to be open source? Jonathan Schwartz (A): The source to Java is already available - I think your real question is will we change the license to be one in which fragmentation is not only supported but encouraged. For now, no - we still believe there's enormous value in compatbility through community, a point IBM recently endorsed by rejoining Sun in the Java Community for 11 years. (They weren't happy with 10 :) Q: I would like to thank you all for the answers! Here goes another question, are they any target dates for the Oracle support on Solarisx64? Chris Ratcliffe (A): It's already there, go to https://partneradvantage.sun.com/partners/10moves/solutions-ko.html for a complete list of supported products. Q: What is the Java web services software integration with the new hardware - - will you support SJS AS8.1, EE on Opteron servers? Jim McHugh (A): The complete Application Platform Suite is supported on our Opteron based Galaxy servers. Exciting new SOA and Web services benefits come from the inclusion of Service Registry and support for Open ESB. Q: Can you confirm that UltraSPARC IV+ processors will start rolling out in Sun Fire servers, next week? If so, what benefits do you see from them? Thanks. David Lawler (A): I'm sorry, I can't comment on future products. Q: Whos is the target audience for the C-series tape drives? Judy Depuy (A): The C-series tape automation products are targeted toward the same enterprise class customers that the Opteron based servers are approaching, ones that are price/performance sensitive. The C-series tape products offers customers the opportunity for complete system infrastructure solutions at a reasonable cost. Q: When will benchmarking be available for the Sun Fire products? David Lawler (A): They're available now: http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4100/benchmarks.jsp And more benchmarks will be coming all the time. Q: Is Solaris the primary development environment for the Project DReaM proof of concepts or like Project Looking Glass will it first developed under Linux? John groenveld@acm.org Jonathan Schwartz (A): Solaris is the default development environment at Sun for all projects - we then port to alternative OS's as the opportunity requires. Q: Could you please share with me the competitives advantages of Sun in front of his competitors ? An MBA student. Thanks Jonathan Schwartz (A): We innovate in the datacenter, our competition seems more focused on living rooms and printers. That's a start... Q: At 4 times the performance of SPARC and at a much lower cost. Why should I buy SPARC? Jonathan Schwartz (A): I guess I disagree with your math. If you need large scale symmetric multi-processing systems, there is no such entrant in the industry standard world (ie, there are no 64 way Galaxy systems (yet)). And clearly SPARC targets a different marketplace - a point made all the more clearly by looking at Niagara, which is "rumored" to be a 32-way system on a chip... that will certainly redefine where SPARC is headed. There is no one hammer for all nails - we plan on fully participating in the overall broad market for network infrastructure. There's opportunity everywhere :) Q: Does Galaxy have the equiv. of OBP on SPARC boxes? If not, any plan to add one? David Lawler (A): Galaxy uses industry standard BIOS. It was critical that our initial offerings be 100% industry standard. We are reviewing techology innovations in this area but nothing is commited at this time. Q: So, what is the big buzz around the Java Enterprise System for this announcement? Jim McHugh (A): Sun latest version of Java Enterprise System, Release 4, will ship next quarter and support the Galaxy servers. Included in this new release are updates to the Sun Java Access Manager and SOA features provided by Sun Service Registry and Support for Open ESB. Q: How is development coming with the ZFS features of Solaris 10? Any ideas when it will be released? Chris Ratcliffe (A): We are currently in the final stages of the ZFS Beta program and we expect to ship by the end of the year. Q: Someone previously was discussing Acer Ferrari laptops. Will there be a mobile solution from DELL coinciding with McLaren Mercedes? Herb Hinstorff (A): Not sure. From what we hear, the problem is that it requires a radiator larger than the one in the McLaren. :-) Q: Do you see Galaxy-inspired innovations (power, space, cooling) being blended your workstation products? David Lawler (A): Yes, absolutely. We view computing as a continuum and innovations from our servers line will clearly appear in our workstation line in the future. Q: What's involved in the "System Service Plans for Microsoft Windows Server?" Does this mean I can get Windows Server support from Sun if I buy a Sun x64 server? Robbie Turner (A): Yes, Sun Service Plans for Windows OS provides integrated Sun hardware and Microsfot Windows OS support. The service plans offer a choice of four coverage/response combinations for Sun x64 systems (servers & workstations) running the Microsoft Windows Operating System. Q: So, Jonathan. Is Sun friendly with RedHat now? What can we expect in the future from that relationship? Jonathan Schwartz (A): We're both eyeing the opportunity to migrate away the legacy Unix platforms, like HP-UX and AIX, into the future. And we're both clearly leading the charge in open source operating systems - so is there upside in cooperating? Absolutely. We see the marketplace the same way, but still have differing approaches. Q: Is sun planning on replacing the 1600 blade platform? Ali Alasti (A): 1600 blade has been officially EOL'ed by Sun. We are working on the next generation of blade technology. Please stay tuned. Q: Are there further plans to integrate a lot of galaxy servers into a grid ? Are there special concepts of sun for administrative tools ? David Lawler (A): Absolutely. We announced the Sun Grid Rack System, a complete offering for delivering fully-racked Galaxy systems to Grid deployments. Galaxy was designed from the ground up with advnaced management functions standard in the box. We also announce N1 System Manager, a tool for provisioning, monitoring, and managing large numbers of our low-end systems. This complements our N1 Grid Engine and N1 Service Provisioning System offerings. Q: What are the plans with Solaris 10 x86 on the galaxy servers ? Do you thought customer prefer this os instead of Linux ? Chris Ratcliffe (A): We already support Solaris on the Galaxy servers, Solaris brings a range of functionality not available with any other OS to the x64/x86 space. The OS choice customers make should be based on their business requirements, that's why we offer Solaris, Windows, Red Hat and SuSE on all our x64 platforms. By installing Solaris 10, customers get access to unique enterprise class features such as Predictive Self-Healing, DTrace and Solaris Containers, for FREE. Q: Hs Sun developed Reference architectures using Galaxy servers? Ali Alasti (A): Sun has architected and designed its own servers (Galaxy) from ground up. We don't intend to disclose them to general public. Q: Are you concerned that some of the stunt marketing that Sun did on Monday will be misunderstood? How has it been received by customers? Jonathan Schwartz (A): I'm very happy that the marketing activities generated the awareness - and controversy - they did. We obviously have our competition worried, and we generated a ton of media attention - combine the two, and our salesforce seems pretty happy with the opportunity in front of them... Q: How many partners have already signed up for the new program? Marsha Cavanaugh (A): Since the launch of the program on September 7th for the ISVs, we have had 100 new applications to the program--added on the already existing 6500+ we immediately migrated to the new program and substantially expanded benefits. Q: Did you have good business in Russia? Especially with those AMD beasts (v20z/v40z, etc )?8) Jonathan Schwartz (A): Getting better by the day - we're doing a lot of development in Russia, and obviously quite a bit of market development. So we see huge upside opportunities... Q: Are there plans from Sun for larger servers (more procs) in view of Galaxy ? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Stay tuned. I wouldn't want to spoil the surprise. Q: How was the 56% energy efficiency attained? (bala@m0rph.com) David Lawler (A): Very simply - PSU rating vs. PSU rating. Anything else is very subjective and workload dependent. Q: What do you expect StorageTek to bring to Sun's portfolio? Jonathan Schwartz (A): 17,000 customers, a third of the world's archived data, more than 2,000 experts around the world, and a brand that inspires confidence in data mgmt. We're obviously pretty excited about the opportunity. Q: Are the Galaxy Servers Sun Cluster supported ? Jim Sangster (A): We have announced the support, qualifications are nearly done. Once qualified we will open the part numbers for shipment. This will be coming soon. Q: Storage in the Galaxy line seems to have moved to SAS drives. What were the considerations that brought in SAS over SATA? Ali Alasti (A): SAS drives are more reliable. They support full-duplex data movement in and out of the drive. Drive manufacturers put their highest performing and most reliable technologies on SAS drives. Q: Any plans for supporting Sun Cluster on Solaris 10 on Sparc as well as x86 ...since without it ..we dont see much of its value in our data center? Jim Sangster (A): Done. Sun Cluster 3.1 8/05 just announced, but was not a highlight at the NC (lots and lots of products). This version supports Solaris 10. Of course it supports SPARC, and previous versions of Sun Cluster already supported x64 on Solaris 9. Specific Galaxy support is soon to come. As a bonus, a new product in this portfolio was also released, Sun Cluster Geographic Edition, which provides a disaster tolerance solution by connecting mutliple Sun Clusters together across unlimited distances. All of this and more is also wrapped together as the components within the Sun Java Availability Suite for $50/employee/year. Q: Sun's been making alot of acquisitions lately. Do they have the financial resources to justify them? Jonathan Schwartz (A): With over $4billion in cash currently, and nearly two decades of consistent cash generation, we not only have the cash to continue driving acquisitions today, we're obviously planning on generating more cash in the future as we continue to execute in the marketplace. Q: Why is the price of Sun stock today nearly what it was prior to the announcement of Galaxy? Jonathan Schwartz (A): You'll have to ask the Wall Street analysts (we don't speculate on the price of our stock). Q: When will Microsoft make it easier to convert StarOffice documents? That is my main issue with using StarOffice. Iyer Venkatesan (A): Can't really speak for them. However StarOffice 8, which will be available shortly, uses the OASIS-standard OpenDocument file format which has been endorsed by a number of organizations, including the European Union and the state of Massachusetts. As more and more companies adopt this standard, the easier it will be to exchange files. StarOffice 8 offers tremendous improvements in being able to import and export MS Office files. Q: Are there any plans to implement DirectX Technology like support in home user hardware? Herb Hinstorff (A): Sun workstations and servers that support Windows support the DirectX technology today. Q: I'm again.:) About Opteron, more specific - not many time ago there was a presentation for Sun partners and we saw charts about what future SPARC CPU fits which niche (i.e. Niagara will be for Networking, Rock will be for DBs) and there was a dim realm - High Performance Computing. Opteron CPUs in your plans fits thes realm or what? David Lawler (A): Opteron servers can fully address the entire workload range from High-Performance Computing to network facing to low-end Database. Q: Erdrick Swincicki-Murai: Will SUN ever venture to MMOG like its competitor MSFT? Jonathan Schwartz (A): We clearly see the MMOG market for infrastructure as being large and growing - will we be delivering our own games (vs. supplying folks like EA and Sony with our infrastructure)? Probably not... but you never know :) Q: Will we see exponential increase in performance of J2EE applications on these servers Jim McHugh (A): Yes, we have two world records in this space. I suggest you visit the following web address for more information. http://www.sun.com/servers/entry/x4100/benchmarks.jsp Q: Who came up with the idea of flying a banner over the DELL building? ^_^ Jonathan Schwartz (A): All of us. And remember, that's only the first banner :-) Q: Opteron is also now being offered by HP & IBM ..in that case what is your value proposition? Why should anyone buy your server? Are they any different from the ones being offered by HP & IBM? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Neither HP nor IBM have nearly the space, power and performance efficiencies we have - and of course neither have an operating system to run on their own platforms. And at least IBM appears to be pulling away from AMD in favor of Intel (which is confusing, given the performance delta in favor of AMD) - but again, we're happy to have competition. It ensures customers have choice. Again, the important thing to recognize is that customers running HP-UX and AIX are being abandoned on x64, whereas Sun customers running Solaris have not only the choice of Sun's platforms, but HP's and IBM's industry standard servers as well. Q: With huge flash memory developments, How feasible is to have them on these Servers Ali Alasti (A): It is certainly possible to replace current CD/DVD drives and disks with Flash memory. Use of Flash memory (in place of DVD) is under investigation. But currently, our customers are more comfortable dealing with DVD drives due to their known and proven compatiblity and use cases. Q: How do you support a galaxy server if a customer choose Linux as operating system ? Robbie Turner (A): If you're running Red Hat and/or SUSE Linux OS, opt for a Sun Software Service Plan for the Linux OS. This plan provides two levels of support - standard and premium - to help your IT deployments stay reliable and secure 24x7. Comine the Linux OS support with a Sun Hardware Service Plan for complete system coverage. For more on what the Sun Software Service Plan for Linux provides, go to: sun.com/service/support/software/linux/index.html Q: When is Sun going to participate in the blade market; currently that is dominated by IBM, HP and DELL. David Lawler (A): We are working on our future blade offering. Our strategy has been to enter the larger market first - rackmount servers - then go after blades. Q: Are you guys going to phase out SPARC in the entry-level servers segment in the favour of Opteron? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Absolutely not - they're going after different markets. SPARC is clearly targeting (with Niagara) massive power efficiency - and performance of throughput oriented/threaded applications. Our Galaxy line is going after high performance technical computing, and single threaded apps. Either way, our customers have the choice - which they obviously appreciate. Q: Will these new servers start appearing at retail/online stores, since the price is so low!! David Lawler (A): No, we'll only be offering these on our own web site and via our traditional channels. Q: Could you give any chart that shows grid performance in x64 systems Vs. SPARC Systems ? Ravi Pendekanti (A): We only have individual system performance numbers for x64 systems and SPARC systems at this time. Stay tuned for the grid performance numbers comparing the two shortly. Q: Will you compete with Citrix? Kevin Strohmeyer (A): No Q: Are you concerned with clients seeing the v20/40z's and x-series products as overlap, or will the v20/40's be replaced by the x-series? David Lawler (A): No - The new servers largely complement and extend our current Opteron offerings. The x2100 is a single-socket, low-cost server. The x4100 is a complete Enterprise-grade 1U 2S server, and the x4200 is a complete Enterprise-grade 1U 2S server. Q: Another question (hopefully the previous one will find its way), are they any plans for the SSL board accel. support for V20/V40? We use V480 with the SSL enc. board as of right now and it has been working great!! Ali Alasti (A): No, there are no current plans from Sun to support SSL PCI cards for V20z/V40z. Please keep using your V480s and buy more :) Q: How have the Ultra 3 mobile workstation systems been received by customers and will there be a x64 based counterpart competitive with the Acer Ferrari? John groenveld@acm.org Herb Hinstorff (A): The mobile workstations have been well received. We aren't able to discuss potential future product plans here. Q: What are the benefits to ISV's for joining the new partner program? And why did Sun decide to rename their partner program again? Marsha Cavanaugh (A): We have expanded our offering set to ISVs across Education, Technology, Marketing and Sales Engagement--with 20+ new benefits. We renamed the program to create a stronger association with the Sun Brand for our partners. For specifics on our new offerings for ISVs, go to www.sun.com/partners/isv. Q: The recently released Sun Update Connection client tool for Solaris 10 service subscriptions has not been well received in the communities I follow, are additional resources being redirected to fix those bugs in the client and Sun's back-end servers? John groenveld@acm.org Robbie Turner (A): We took feedback from the first version and have already made changes and released a new version. We continue to have resources assigned to future versions of Sun Update Connection. Q: hey - who's Sun's biggest baddest rival these days? Microsoft seems like a brand new best friend; Red Hat, too, is sounding somewhat chummy. IBM, HP, Dell - are they the new nemeses? Might they, too, becomes bosom buddies and join Sun on its Galaxy quest? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Well, we certainly see partnering with Red Hat and Microsoft as opportunities to erode IBM and HP's proprietary presence - HP-UX and AIX are clearly on the wane, and working with those two vendors will accelerate their demise. But our real competition is complexity and price - in the long run, targeting a company is seldom as effective as targeting an opportunity... Q: When will Galaxy support Veritas VM 4.x? Ali Alasti (A): This question should be asked to Veritas, please. We are closely working with them. Q: Given the recent history of almost abandoning Solaris for x86-based machines, do you believe the market may be a little skeptical about your commitment to x86 market now with the Galaxy server line? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Nope, it's never too late - witness the mass adoption of Solaris 10 (we just crested 2.5M licenses this week, we've yet to issue the press release), and we're the fastest growing x86 vendor on the market. So combined together, it's a ton of opportunity - and the "but what about history" questions are, in fact, history... Q: Do these servers come with some form of built in health monitoring? Ali Alasti (A): Definitely and a lot more. All Galaxy servers have built-in embedded processors that not only monitor most states of Galaxy servers but they are able to insert information into the servers, such as downloading new BIOS, updated the disk drives with OS patches, etc. Q: This is a question for a class - what is your web business strategy and who is your target audience? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Well, we believe the network is the most efficient channel to market - not just for us, but for any business seeking a mass audience. Our target audience? IT buyers - folks that care about price/performance (not dentist offices, but medium to large enterprises). Q: Is Sun intending to suplant the E/F25 machine set with these processors, or will the existing machine structure handle the new processor(s) Ali Alasti (A): Our existing Sun Fire E25K servers continue on their current projectories. Galaxy servers are providing additional choices for our Enterprise customers. Q: What is the future of AMD and Sun? Jonathan Schwartz (A): To continue working together to raise industry expectations of what a truly performant industry standard server would look like. To continue cooperating on the evolution of Solaris on industry standard platforms, and continue eroding the proprietary IBM and HP platforms whose operating systems cannot be supported on industry standard platforms. Q: Will there be any offers for those already owning Sun Servers David Lawler (A): There will be an upgrade advantage program for ownners of current Sun systems. More details will be coming on this in the coming weeks. Q: Are there plans in converting the system-handbook at sunsolve into 3D objects ? Ravi Pendekanti (A): Not at this time Q: Can it run Windows and Solaris OS on the same box, maybe in separate partitions? Chris Ratcliffe (A): Yes. There are two options, you can install both OSes and just boot the version you want to run at any one time, or use technology such as VMWare to run multiple OSes at the same time. We are also currently working on Xen support for Solaris. Q: Has Sun itslef done some tests to differentiate between 64-Bit Intel and 64-Bit AMD CPUs Ali Alasti (A): Yes. Simple answer is performance benchmarks, price, power efficiency and all ratios of these essential metrics. Compared to ANY HP/IBM/Dell Intel 1- and 2-U servers, we beat competition on all of the above fronts by a wide margin. Q: Which Linux distributions are the Galaxy servers certified against? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Red Hat, SuSe, and everyone else that we can find. Q: Folks, I know this session is mostly x64-related but, can anyone comment on Global Desktop (Tarentella) and its implication for deploying desktops for large enterprises? Kevin Strohmeyer (A): Reduce cost complexity, improve security, and provide greater mobility. The Sun Secure Global Desktop Software allows user facing applications running on Windows Terminal Services, Mainframe, AS400, Solaris, AIX, HP-UX or Linux to be published to any user in the enterprise using any device with a Java Enabled Web Browser. Uncoupling applications from device dependencies allows for rapid deployment of new applications, updates, and patches. In addition, the Sun Secure Global Desktop three tier architecture allows for secure remote access.. greatly simplifying the support of mobile or at-home employees, and even allowing for secure access for business partners... Q: is sun developing home user hardware configurations for labtops Ravi Pendekanti (A): We already have SPARC based laptops on our price list today Q: Adobe and RealNetworks are on-board with JDS for Linux and Solaris/SPARC, are they on-board for Solaris/x64? John groenveld@acm.org Jonathan Schwartz (A): Not yet, but they're on the way. Make sure you let them know you want them aboard :) Q: What is the attach-rate of Sun Service contracts to those 2M Solaris downloads? John groenveld@acm.org Robbie Turner (A): John, we have currently distributed over 2.6M licenses. We don't break out revenue by product line so I can't share that info with you. However, I can tell you that over two thirds of the licenses are for x86 systems and that 91 of the fortune 100 have licenses and are either evaluating or have deployed Solaris 10. Q: Does Sun see value in extending the X64 architecture into the mid-range and enterprise server markets? David Lawler (A): Absolutely. We've already stated we will extend the Galaxy family to 16-way servers. We see a huge opportunity in taking Sun's Enterprise class engineering and service expertise into x64 computing from 1 socket all the way up as far as the technology can go. Q: What is the goal for the galaxy servers ? Which market would like to reach with the new products ? David Lawler (A): Entry level Sun Fire X2100 at starting list price of $745 will address Enterprise solutions that provide redundancy at application layer. Sun Fire X4100 and Sun Fire X4200 provide highly redundant systems that provide RAS at HW layer. All Galaxy servers are intended for Enterprise customers. Others are welcome to buy them :) Q: Hello at first. I want to say I am glad for being here. Quickly coming to the question, I want to ask that, There is a step-by-step increase in computing and its power eventhough the better can be done. In this manner I think you make greater steps than others, why do you prefer this? In my opinion, and I think that this is true with respect to my sight, you can get more profit following intel, namely making less great steps. I ask "Why?"... Sincerely... Jonathan Schwartz (A): Well, Intel tried to make an incremental step with Itanium, and they clearly failed. They tried to ratchet up single threaded performance, and then failed. So we're hopeful they'll catch up to give AMD a fair fight, but for now, they're woefully behind following an incremental strategy. OpenSolaris wasn't an incremental improvement over Solaris, it was a wholesale shift (which leaves HP-UX and AIX in the dust, not running on industry standard servers). Q: Have you plans to make use non-Opteron 64-bit AMD CPUs? Ali Alasti (A): We plan to use the best x64 processors that are available. Currently this would be AMD Opteron. Q: There was a news that Sun intends to open source all its software.Is that true? Also java was to be open sourced as well. Any new information on that? Jim McHugh (A): Sun is currently evaluating its entire portfolio to determine the appropriate open source actions. Sun has already open sourced Solaris. Check out opensolaris.org for information on this project. Sun has also open sourced its implementation of the JEE application server. Information can be found at glassfish.org. Moderator: Our chat is now LIVE! Our panelists have already begun answering your questions. And Jonathan Schwartz, President & COO of Sun Microsystems, has joined our event. Q: Will Sun offer a thin client? Herb Hinstorff (A): Sun offers the Sun Ray thin client today. It is ideal in situations where security and low client administration costs are important. Q: How Opterons fit in your plans? Ali Alasti (A): Opteron is an x86 processor. x86 systems from Sun do provide additional choices for our customers. This is complementary to our Sparc based systems. If you wish, please be more specific and I'll try to answer. Q: Is Sun changing to a Low Cost Server company ? Jonathan Schwartz (A): Nope, we've always stood for innovation and value - a cheap product that doesn't work isn't worth a lot. We want to combine lower cost with great value... obviously that's what Solaris and Galaxy platforms are all about. Q: What have you seen so far in terms of the customer response to the Galaxy Systems? Assuming that it is positive, can you quantify this in terms of bookings versus the current products, etc. David Lawler (A): Customer response has been extremely positive. I really can't comment on bookings. Q: How is the new X-series products positioned compared to that of the V20/40z products? David Lawler (A): The new x-series servers help fill out our product line. The x2100 is our first 1 socket, dual core offering and starting at $745 covers a lower price-point than the the v20z. The x4100/x4200 add complete enterprise features to our 2-socket offerings, including fully redundant features and state-of-the art manageability. Q: Man the 3d demo rocks! Ali Alasti (A): Thank you. Moderator: The chat session will start at 10 am PDT |