Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Virtualization: Solaris Zones vs VMWare

I am in the process of writing a whitepaper/best practices for creating, managing and supporting Solaris Zones. In the meanwhile i thought it may be a good idea to start comparing the features of Zones vs VMware.

My first take on Solaris Zones/Containers.

Note: Sun Solaris term for Virtual machine is zone/Containers. I am going to use the term zone.
  • OS Agnostic:It is not operating system agnostic like vmware where you can run virtually almost all of the microsoft OS and linux. In Zones You can only create virtual machines running just the solaris 10 OS. For unix geeks like me thats the best. But most of the Solaris uses may not feel the same. Also if it is unix you don't talk GUI. If your organization is huge solaris user then zones may be a great thing (nothing less than the best) to try on Solaris Servers you already have.
  • GUI and CLI: I can create the Zones using only the CLI. For every shell/perl programmer out there this is a boon to automate the creation of zones. Vmware provides a nice GUI to simplify the whole operation and even automate the same.
  • Command and Control: Vmware provides a central VMWare virtual center to manage multiple VMware ESX as well as VMachines. I have not seen/read of centralized command control on Solaris Zones.
  • Lean Virtual Machines: Virtual machines created by vmware should have an entire OS stored in those VMs. But Solaris Zones offers a way called "Sparse Root Model" by which you don't have to populate a virtual machine with all of the same library and binary files. These libs and bin files can be shared across multiple VMs. This saves a lot of disk space and a lot of admin effort in managing and maintaining the same executables and libraries in multiple VMs. Once the global zone is updated all the zones under the global zone gets the update.
Please hang on to blog to know what i find more

Tuesday, April 28, 2009

EMC Symmetrix V-MAX Green claims

EMC claims Symmetrix V-MAX consumes 20% less power per TB compared to DMX-4

Here is my calculation which will prove it wrong.

V-MAX uses 24.2% more power per TB compared to DMX-4. EMC’s claims on using 20% less power per TB is false. These claims are absolutely outrageous about being green. May be DMX-4 is greener than V-MAX.

DMX-4 supports 1 System Bay and 8 Storage Bay. Maximum Scalability 2400 Drives(can be flash, FC or SATA)
As per my earlier calculation of power consumption

1 x System Bay * 6.4kVA = 6.4kVA
8 x Storage Bay * 6.1kVA = 48.8kVA

Total DMX-4 Power Consumption for 2400 drives = 55.2kVA

V-Max supports 1 System Bay and 11 Storage Bay. Maximum Scalability 2400 Drives(can be flash, FC or SATA)
1 x System Bay * 7.8kVA = 7.8kVA
10 x Storage Bay * 6.1kVA = 61.1kVA

Total V-MAX Power Consumption for 2400 drives = 68.9kVA

This proves EMC is greenwashing the lower power consumption. If you dont know what is greenwashing click here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing