Tuesday 24 December 2013

Happy Holidays

Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas to those who celebrate it, to all our prospects, clients, partners, suppliers and even our competitors.  I hope everyone has a great holiday season and comes back refreshed to face the New Year.

On a personal note it has been a fun and challenging year, my first as CEO for Metron.  Overall the economic picture remains very mixed across both geographical and vertical markets.  Some businesses seem to be thriving, some struggling, within the same territory or area of business.  Hopefully next year will be one of success and growth for everyone as the global economy slowly picks up.
 
From a capacity management perspective, the twin technological challenges of Cloud and Big Data grow ever more important.  Sat here watching the trees get buffeted by the strong winds passing across the UK at the moment makes me think of the ever-improving job that weather forecasters seem to do.  They have been pioneers in collating, analyzing and reporting on vast quantities of data.  Their forecasts seem to me to get more and more accurate in the UK – not easy for a small island in a blustery sector of the northern hemisphere.  As capacity managers, we can learn a lot from how they sift huge volumes of technically complex numbers into the concise predictions we see on the TV or Internet.

Cloud has brought different challenges, partly due to the lack of control and visibility we now have into the entities we have to manage.  A major factor in helping Metron get to grips with parts of applications and services we could not previously see has been our partnership with Correlsense and their SharePath application monitoring software.  The combination of our athene® software with SharePath has been a real sales success for us this year.  The two combined give unparalleled visibility into where, in a complex processing structure, resources are being consumed and prediction of what needs to be done to correct those issues and prevent a recurrence.  Now there’s a Christmas present worth having.


Once again, thank you to everyone who has worked with Metron over the past year.  We look forward to working with you again and contributing to your success.

Andrew Smith
CEO

Wednesday 4 December 2013

Managing capacity for Solaris containers

Solaris 10 introduced the ability to clone the base operating system to create what is known as Containers (Zones). 

I'll be hosting a web presentation tomorrow which will provide some insight and understanding into this technology, specifically covering the main differences between Zones and Containers, their rival comparatives, Process and Extended Accounting and associated benefits.

I'll also be discussing Capacity and Performance reporting, focusing on effective Zone reporting through the use of the correct commands. 

I'll show you how to check and set correct permissions for Zone file system reporting access and explain how and when Shared Memory can be reported incorrectly, and how to do it the right way. 

The agenda I'll be covering: 


Introduction
  • Hypervisor - Solaris 10
  • Difference between Zones and Containers
  • Zone nomenclature
  • Comparatives
Process and Extended Accounting
  • What are they? How they differ
  • Advantages / Disadvantages
  • UIDs and their importance

Capacity and Performance Reporting
  • Useful Metrics and their meanings
  • Zone reporting - including permissions
  • Shared Memory reporting
  • What extended accounting provides vs. other commands

I’ll be concluding with some best practice guidelines for you.

Register for free now http://www.metron-athene.com/services/training/webinars/index.html

Jamie Baker 

Principal Consultant



Monday 2 December 2013

Capacity Management for Solaris Containers

The Solaris 10 release introduced Solaris Container functionality into the distributed market. 

Solaris Containers or Zones as they are also known, provide virtualized environments within a single instance of Solaris 10.  This essentially allows for multiple virtualized systems to be hosted on a single piece of hardware.

The advantages allow many applications that run on a Solaris O/S to be isolated from each other in independent systems, with the added benefits that virtualizing systems bring.

Virtualized systems however come with their own challenges, especially when identifying Capacity and Performance requirements and lead to questions like:

·         I've heard Solaris Containers uses a Type 2 Hypervisor – what is that?

·         What is the difference between Zones and Containers?

·         How do they share resources?

·         Do they impact on each other and how?

·         What should we monitor and how do we interpret the results?

·         How can we forecast and plan for future growth? 

 I'll be hosting a webinar Capacity Management for Solaris Containers on 5th December which will cover these topics and more. Register now and join me http://www.metron-athene.com/services/training/webinars/index.html

Jamie Baker 
Principal Consultant