This is in continuation of my first day’s summary of Sun Tech Days Hyderabad.
Based on the interest we have seen for T2000, we wanted to get some printouts of this brochure on T2000. Satish called me on the night of 21st and I could get 400 copies of this brochure printed by a local internet kiosk, for a cost of less than USD 9.00.
I reached the venue by 8.00am on Thursday (22nd) and people started trickling in, even an hour before the actual start. I quickly settled into the SysNet stall. Today, there are more questions on Systems Management products and T2000. Here are some frequently asked questions:
- how we manage the system (hint: SunMC, System Manager, UCE)
- how we configure zones on T2000 (hint: Use Solaris Container Manager)
- how do we actually leverage the presence of so many cores
- how do we provision 100s of such systems (hint: SPS)
- how do we know if something is wrong with such a system (hint: SunMC alarms)
- how do we pull management data from the kernel or hardware (hint: SunMC agentry)
- what happens if one of the core goes bad for some reason
- the benefits of fair share scheduler
- how the security isolation works for many applications running on such box (hint: use Solaris zones)
- what alternatives do I have if I don’t require such CPU power, but require lot of disk space (hint: use Thumper along with ZFS.)
Overall, it is better than the previous day in terms of depth of questions and curiosity level. Both Harshit and Satish had presentations today and we are swamped by questions even when all three of us are there at the pod. By 6.00pm, I am really tired physically, but the energy level of the visitors kept me up.
Harshit’s laptop doesn’t have any entertainment media. So I couldn’t demonstrate the answer to one question. Does Solaris support media like mp3 and DVD video. I don’t have my laptop with me today, which has some demos for such occasions.
By 6.30pm, we started with HOSUG (Hyderabad Open Solaris Users Group) meeting. The hour long preso by Moinak is good and the subsequent Q & A session transformed into a well participated discussion amongst all members. There is a volunteer from community to run the HOSUG efforts. I am going to assist that person with the logistics help needed from Sun or otherwise.
By the time we winded up Day 2, it was 8.30pm.
For the third day, I packed my laptop and a couple of Discovery Channel DVDs (I love this DVD series, gifted to me by one of my friends) to demonstrate the multimedia abilities of Open Solaris. The day is split to three tracks: Open Solaris, NetBeans and Java ME. Before the OpenSolaris track started, I could demonstrate the DVDs running on OpenSolaris with xine video player. Even though my laptop is 3 years old, it plays DVDs great! I attended the OpenSolaris track till post lunch and then headed home with Satish and Harshit.
The three day event ended on a very positive note and I could see smiles on faces of everyone involved. The efforts of people who worked for the success of the event has paid off and this is one of the greatest Sun Tech Days yet, I can bet.