Maximize IT Uptime T5x20

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MAXIMIZE IT UPTIME

BY UTILIZING DEPENDABLESUN SPARC ENTERPRISE T5120

AND T5220 SERVERSWhite Paper

February 2009


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Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Table of Contents

Executive Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

The Critical Role of Information Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Requirements for Dependable IT Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Pervasive Demand for Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability Features . . . . . . . . 3

Introducing Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 Servers. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Designed for Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Minimizing Component Count to Achieve Maximum Reliability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Improving Availability Part Redundancy, On-line Serviceability, and Self Diagnosis

and Correction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

Integrated Lights Out Management for Simplified Remote Serviceability . . . . . . . . 12

Isolating Faults with Sun Virtualization Technologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Sun Logical Domains Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Solaris Containers Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Suns Comprehensive Focus On IT Service Uptime . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Speeding Diagnosis with a Comprehensive Fault Management Architecture. . . . . . 19

Reducing Downtime with the Solaris Operating System. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Sun Software for Efficient System Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Measuring Server Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

Sun Availability Benchmark Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26

R-Cubed Metrics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Assessing RAS Levels of Scale-Out Architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

For More Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31


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1 Executive Summary Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Executive Summary

IT solutions play a critical role in helping enterprises compete effectively in todays fastchanging global markets. Organizations of every size and type increasingly depend

upon information technology to execute day-to-day operations, interact with

customers, and generate revenue. Current trends toward non-stop business operations

place pressure on IT departments to keep services available around-the-clock. As a

result, the reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) capabilities of systems and

software applications continue to escalate in importance.

Reliability, availability, and serviceability are intricately related and each factor is

equally important to achieving maximum IT service uptime. The reliability features of a

system work to minimize the frequency of faults and ensure data integrity. Availability

capabilities support continuous accessibility to IT services despite system faults or error

events. Serviceability mechanisms foster short service cycles for component upgrades

or repair. In some cases, designing for all three RAS factors at the same time can pose a

challenge. For instance, maximizing redundancy can boost system availability.

However, redundancy also adds to component count, lowering potential reliability

levels. Determined to continuously improve RAS capabilities, Sun utilizes carefully-

engineered metrics to aid design efforts to balance and optimize the reliability,

availability, and serviceability levels of each new generation of servers.

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers provide excellent RAS characteristics,

ideal for maximizing the uptime of business-critical IT services. Highly reliable parts and

a relatively low total component count minimize the opportunity for system errors. In

addition, these servers include core and thread offlining capabilities, redundant hot-

swap disks, power supplies, and fans, integrated disk RAID functions, and extensive ECC

hardware protection. The energy efficiency of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220

servers minimizes heat generation, helping enterprises avoid susceptibility to faults

related to environmental factors. An Integrated Lights Out Management service

processor provides extensive system monitoring and eases administration.

Taking a comprehensive top to bottom approach, Sun focuses on RAS at each and

every platform layer. Suns intimate knowledge of technology at the processor, server,

virtualization, operating system, and system management layers results in delivery oftightly integrated, extremely dependable platforms. Combining highly dependable and

energy efficient, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 server platforms with Sun

Logical Domains technology, the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), and Sun

management tools further improves upon platform stability. By taking advantage of

Sun technology, organizations can create exceptional IT solutions that minimize total

cost of ownership (TCO), optimize asset utilization, and maximize IT service uptime

levels.


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2 The Critical Role of Information Technology Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Chapter 1

The Critical Role of Information Technology

Information technology (IT) plays a critical role in organizations of every kind from

large government agencies and fortune 500 companies to small municipalities and

start-up ventures. In the extreme, the very existence of some organizations depends on

information technology and Web connectivity. Electronic storefronts, social networking

sites, and Voice over IP (VoIP) providers offer just a few examples. Traditional

businesses also rely heavily on information technology. For example, manufacturers

often use IT services to communicate and complete business-to-business transactions

with supply chain partners functions critical to effective operation, production, and

distribution of products. Indeed, a multitude of organizations depend on IT services to

expand revenue opportunities, execute critical business functions, and lower the costof operations.

As network-centric technologies evolve, the importance of IT continues to escalate.

Coupled with a rapid increase in new user and device connections, compelling network

services and the emergence of Web 2.0 collaboration are driving demand for new IT

services. Furthermore, end-users often expect constant availability, accessibility, and

responsiveness from these new IT services. As a result, service providers and IT

departments are under intense pressure to minimize service interruptions.

Requirements for Dependable IT ServicesToday, pervasive dependence on electronic transactions and communication places IT

systems in the critical revenue path for most organizations. System downtime can carry

financial consequences on the order of hundreds of thousands of dollars of lost revenue

per minute. In addition, trends toward network-facing business operations means that

the consequences of downtime can often reach beyond financial loss to include

damage to brand image, lower levels of customer satisfaction, and heightened

potential for security risks and compliance failure. With such heavy reliance on IT and

so much as stake, downtime in many environments is now unacceptable.

Whether specifically stated in service level agreements or simply implicit, IT

departments and CIOs are often held responsible for meeting availability expectations.

True availability of an IT service hinges on all contributing elements processors,

system platforms, operating systems, management tools, and more. With heightened

demand for highly reliable, available, and serviceable IT products and solutions across

every area of the enterprise, organizations are working to minimize both planned and

unplanned downtime.


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Pervasive Demand for Reliability, Availability, andServiceability Features

The reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) features of IT systems are more

critical to a wider range of organizations than ever before. While RAS is important to

many projects budgets, workload sizes, and resulting architectural approaches can

vary greatly. Large, vertically-scalable systems are known for extensive RAS features

and are suitable for some IT service deployments. However, a monolithic scaling

strategy is not appropriate or cost effective for all projects. For example, many stateless

network-centric IT services achieve maximum performance by spreading the workload

across multiple systems and application instances in a horizontally-scaled architecture.

While techniques that distribute network-centric applications across multiple systems

take some pressure off of individual server availability, continuous operation of each

system remains important.

The growing trend toward adoption of virtualization technologies in horizontally scaled

architectures is increasing the importance of RAS features in these environments.

Virtualization technology helps organizations maximize utilization of IT assets by

allowing multiple applications to run on each server. Increasingly powerful,

multithreaded and multicore processors along with fine-grained virtualization

capabilities help organizations continuously raise the number of applications and

services hosted on a single server. By combining powerful processors with virtualization

technologies, enterprises can consolidate multiple horizontally-scaled applications

onto a minimal number of servers (Figure 1-1). A virtualized, consolidated, scale-out

architectural approach can maximize performance and efficiency while reducing

administrative efforts and acquisition costs. As with any consolidation strategy, placing

more applications on each server increases the importance of system RAS capabilities.


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Figure 1-1. Virtualization technology facilitates radical server consolidation, dramatically increasing

the importance of platform RAS features.

Introducing Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 Servers

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers provide enterprises with an energy

efficient, high performance, consolidation platform (Figure 1-2). Based on the second

generation of Suns Chip Multithreading Technology (CMT) in the UltraSPARC T2

processor, these servers offer organizations a unique blend of vertical and horizontal

scalability. Optimized for the enterprise datacenter, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and

T5220 servers are ideal for maximizing the uptime of network-centric Web and

application-tier workloads, as well as on-line transaction databases and other software

programs that require massive compute power and memory capacity.

Virtual

Machine A

Portal

Web Server B

Virtual

Machine B

Portal

Web Server C

Virtual

Machine C

Inventory

Web Server C

Virtual

Machine D

PortalApplication

Server B

Virtual

Machine E

InventoryApplication

Server B

Poral WebServer A

PortalApplication Server A

Portal WebServer B

PortalApplication Server B

Portal WebServer C

InventoryWeb Server A

InventoryApplication Server A

InventoryWeb Server B

InventoryApplication Server B

InventoryWeb Server C

Employee Portal Web and

Application Tier Servers

Inventory Tracking Web and

Application Tier Servers

Virtual

Machine A

Portal

Web Server A

Virtual

Machine B

Inventory

Web Server A

Virtual

Machine C

Inventory

Web Server B

Virtual

Machine D

PortalApplication

Server A

Virtual

Machine E

InventoryApplication

Server A


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Figure 1-2. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers include advanced reliability, availability, and

serviceability features, helping organizations maximize IT service uptime.

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers incorporate the following key design

elements to help organizations improve the dependability of IT services.

Reduced parts count contributes to better overall stability and reliability of the

platform

Processor thread and core offlining and built-in RAID capabilities supports

continuous system operations in the face of certain fault conditions

Redundancy and hot-swap components lays the foundation for system resiliency

and increased serviceability

Parity protection and error correction capabilities detects and corrects errors

throughout the system and works to ensure data integrity

Integrated Lights Out Management (ILOM) service processor eases remote

management and provides considerable administrative flexibility

Superior energy efficiency reduces heat dissipated into the datacenter, helping to

minimize susceptibility to faults due to thermal conditions

Robust virtualization technology facilitates fault isolation between applications

and contributes additional reliability, availability, and serviceability features to

further improve IT service uptime

Comprehensive fault management provides proactive management of faults and

error conditions in all major elements including the system, virtualization

technology, and operating system layers


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Table 1-1 details the features of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers.

Table 1-1. Overview of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 server features

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120Server

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220Server

Enclosure One rack unit Two rack units

Processors Four-, six-, or eight-core 1.2 GHzor 1.4 GHz UltraSPARC T2processor

Up to 64 threads

Four-, six-, or eight-core 1.2 GHzor eight-core 1.4 GHzUltraSPARC T2 processor

Up to 64 threads

Memory Up to 128 GB 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, or 8GB

FBDIMMs

Up to 128 GB 1 GB, 2 GB, 4 GB, or 8GB

FBDIMMs

Ethernet Four on-board Gigabit Ethernetports (10/100/1000)

Two 10 Gb Ethernet ports viaXAUI combo slots

Four on-board Gigabit Ethernetports (10/100/1000)

Two 10 Gb Ethernet ports viaXAUI combo slots

Internal Storage Up to eight internal drives 73 GB, 146 GB, or 300 GB 2.5 inch SAS hard drives RAID 0/1

Up to sixteen internal drives 73 GB, 146 GB, or 300 GB 2.5 inch SAS hard drives RAID 0/1

Expansion Bus One eight lane PCI Express Two four lane PCI Express or

XAUI combo slots

Two eight lane PCI Express Two four lane PCI Express Two four lane PCI Express or

XAUI combo slots

Power Two hot-swap power supplyunits

AC 720 Watt (Climate Savera) orDC 660 Watt

N+1 redundancy

a. For more information on the Climate Savers Computing Initiative, please see

http://www.climatesaverscomputing.org/

Two hot-swap power supplyunits

AC 750 Watt or AC 1100 Wattb

N+1 redundancy

b. The AC 1100 Watt power supply isrequired for systems with a 16-disk backplane

Fans Four hot-swap fan trays, with

two fans per tray N+1 redundancy

Three hot-swap fan trays, with

two fans per tray N+1 redundancy

Service Processor Integrated Lights Out Manager RJ45 serial port and RJ45

Ethernet connectors

Integrated Lights Out Manager RJ45 serial port and RJ45

Ethernet connectors

Operating System Solaris 10 Operating System Solaris 10 Operating System

VirtualizationTechnology

Solaris Containers technology Sun Logical Domains

technology

Solaris Containers technology Sun Logical Domains

technology


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7 Designed for Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Chapter 2

Designed for Reliability, Availability, and

Serviceability

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers help organizations maximize the uptime

of IT services. By minimizing the total number of system components, these servers are

naturally more reliable since using fewer parts tends to result in lower numbers of

failures. In addition, inclusion of redundant components and features that automate

data integrity, isolation, and correction improve the robustness of Sun SPARC

Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers. Online maintenance capabilities and simplified

maintenance procedures help enterprises avoid the need for planned outages.

Extensive fault management and self healing capabilities reduce unplanned outages

and speed recovery time.

Minimizing Component Count to Achieve MaximumReliability

Given the detrimental impact of downtime, IT architects are driven to build IT services

on the most reliable systems available. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers

contain significantly fewer parts than competitive systems, dramatically reducing the

potential for service interruptions due to component failure (Figure 2-1). Extensive

processor and system integration also results in less susceptibility to faults. Highly

reliable components are integrated whenever redundancy can not be afforded by

design or cost, fostering enhanced system stability.

Figure 2-1. Built with a streamlined architecture, the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 server contains

dramatically fewer parts than systems based on traditional architecture designs.

8 96 74 52 310

Parts Count (thousand)

Dell

PowerEdge2950

IBM

System

p5 p520

Sun SPARC

Enterprise

T5120

HP

ProLiant

DL585


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As the industrys first massively-threaded system-on-a-chip (SoC), the Sun UltraSPARC T2

processor directly contributes to the low component count of Sun SPARC Enterprise

T5120 and T5220 servers. Based on a 65 nm manufacturing process, the UltraSPARC T2

processor combines all major server functions on a single chip die, including a network

interface unit for 10 Gigabit Ethernet processing, PCI-Express for low latency data

transfer, and a stream processing unit (SPU) for wire speed cryptography (Figure 2-2).

Figure 2-2. The system-on-a-chip design of the UltraSPARC T2 processor incorporates massive compute

power, networking, I/O, and cryptographic capabilities into a single die.

The Sun UltraSPARC T2 processor includes the following key design elements:

Support for up to 64 simultaneous threads

Eight cores with two processing pipelines each

Eight threads per core

Eight floating point units (1 per core)

Eight stream processing units (1 per core, acting as cryptographic coprocessors

operating in parallel with the core)

On-chip caches and memory management

Two on-chip 10 Gb Ethernet ports

On-chip PCI Express I/O

Cross Bar

L2$ L2$ L2$ L2$ L2$ L2$ L2$ L2$

C0 C1 C2 C3 C4 C5 C6 C7

FPU FPU FPU FPU FPU FPU FPU FPU

System I/FNetworkInterface Unit

PCIe

10 GigabitEthernet Ports (2)

x8 @ 2.0 GHz

FB DIMM FB DIMM FB DIMM FB DIMM

FB DIMM FB DIMM FB DIMM FB DIMM

SPU SPU SPU SPU SPU SPU SPU SPU

MCU MCU MCU MCU


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The system-on-a-chip design of the UltraSPARC T2 processor reduces the need for

additional ASICs to connect on-board components. As a result, Sun SPARC Enterprise

T5120 and T5220 servers simply contain fewer parts and pins that can fail than many

traditional servers with multiple single-threaded dual-core or quad-core processors.

Figure 2-3 illustrates the drastic simplification in system design afforded by the

UltraSPARC T2 processor.

Figure 2-3. With eight cores providing 64 threads, the UltraSPARC T2 processor maximizes compute

power and minimizes system component count at the same time delivering greater reliability than

systems with many more processors, multiple system boards, and far more complicated designs.

Sun estimates that as much as ten percent of all hardware failures are caused by

excessive heat in the datacenter. The power efficient components within Sun SPARC

Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers help keep these systems cool and add to potential

reliability. Since individual cores in the UltraSPARC T2 processor implement much

simpler pipelines than single-threaded chips, the processors are substantially cooler

and require significantly less electrical energy to operate. As in most systems, air flows

through the front of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers, passing the disk

drives prior to crossing over the systems board and electronics. These systems utilize

I/O

Memory

Memory

Memory

Core0

Core1

Core2

Core3

Core4

Core5

Core6

Core7

Memory

System-on-a-chip DesignUltraSPARC T2 Processor

I/O

CPU

Memory

I/O

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

Switch

CPU

Memory

I/O

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

Switch

CPU

Memory

I/O

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

Switch

CPU

Memory

I/O

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

Switch

CPU

Memory

I/O

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

Switch

Classic System Design

CPU

Memory

I/O

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

Switch

CPU

Memory

I/O

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

Switch

CPU

Memory

I/O

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

CPU

Memory

Switch

Switch

Switch


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2.5 SAS hard disk drives which draw less than half the power of 3.5 SAS hard disk

drives, providing another important contribution to reducing heat dissipation and

keeping the platforms cool.

Improving Availability Part Redundancy, On-lineServiceability, and Self Diagnosis and Correction

Minimizing the need for system interruptions in order to correct error conditions

improves the availability of a system and the hosted IT service. Sun SPARC Enterprise

T5120 and T5220 servers provide many design features to help enable completion of

maintenance procedures without impacting continuous system operation.

Redundant, Hot-Swap Components and RAID Capabilities

Hot-swap and hot-plug technology improves the serviceability and availability of a

system by enabling addition and replacement of components without service

disruption. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers support hot-plug of chassis

mounted hard drives, and hot-swap of redundant fan units and power supplies. For

systems configured with redundant components, administrators can utilize software

commands to remove and replace disks, power supplies, and fan units while the

system continues to operate.

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers also support the attachment of an

optional Sun External I/O Expansion Unit. Taking advantage of the External I/O

Expansion unit increases the I/O connectivity capabilities of these systems, providing

the means to create additional I/O path redundancies. The External I/O Expansion Unitis a 4U rack-mountable device which accommodates up to 12 additional PCI Express

slots1 connected to, and managed by, the Sun SPARC Enterprise server. Attachment

of the External I/O Expansion unit consumes two host PCI Express slots, resulting in a

net gain of 10 PCI Express slots. By using cassettes, the expansion unit supports active

replacement of hot-plug cards. In addition, the External I/O Expansion unit offers

redundancy and hot-plug capabilities for power supply units, fans, and I/O boats.

The built-in RAID capabilities of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers provide

data redundancy and increased performance at no additional cost. These servers

support on-board hardware RAID 1 to enable mirroring of data across any two internal

drives. In addition, the RAID capabilities of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220

servers support creation of two, three, or four disk RAID 0 striped volumes. Sun also

provides optional PCI-Express cards that offer higher levels of RAID, including RAID 5

and RAID 6 together with the benefit of battery backed write caches. The optional PCI-

Express RAID cards can operate on internal disks or external disk chassis.

1. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers are not qualified to utilize the PCI-X variant of the

External I/O Expansion unit .


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Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers running the Solaris OS can also take

advantage of software RAID capabilities. For example, the Solaris Volume Manager and

Solaris ZFS file system can be used for internal or external storage devices, providing

flexibility and redundancy beyond the server chassis.

Hardware Protection ECC Everywhere

System self diagnosis, error correction, and parity checking features in high-end

systems help enterprises maximize IT service uptime. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and

T5220 servers include mainframe-class processor RAS features that enhance system

uptime by maintaining data integrity across on-chip memory a unique capability not

found in other volume market systems. For example, extended ECC technology helps

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers withstand multibit memory errors within

a DRAM device, including failures that cause incorrect data on all data bits of the

device.

The extensive data protection of the UltraSPARC T2 processor provides for self diagnosis

and corrective actions, facilitating continuous system operation in the face of error

conditions. Parity protection is provided throughout the UltraSPARC T2 processor

including the following elements:

Instruction cache (I-cache)

Data cache (D-cache) tags and data

Instruction Translation Lookaside Buffer (ITLB)

Data Translation Lookaside Buffer (DTLB)

Modular arithmetic memory and store buffer addresses

Utilizing a combination of hardware and software correction flows, Sun SPARC

Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers work to maximize data integrity. In the event of an

error, hardware re-fetch is used for single error correction (SEC) of the I-cache and D-

cache. ECC protection is provided for integer RF, floating-point FR, store buffer data,

trap stack, and other internal arrays.

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers use Content Addressable Memory (CAM)

technology to implement hardware-based virtual address (VA) lookup, and physical

address translation is implemented in RAM. Parity protection is provided for both VA

lookup and physical address translation. While parity protection for the physicaladdress translation function is increasingly common, variable page size support makes

accomplishing parity protection for hardware based VA lookup much more challenging.

Suns unique patented approach to providing parity protection for hardware-based VA

lookup provides organizations with added reliability not found in other platforms.

The Robust UltraSPARC T2 Processor

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers leverage the UltraSPARC T2 processors

fault management support for all major elements, including the cores, threads,


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Voltage conditions

Solaris watchdog, boot time-outs and automatic server restart events

ILOM provides administrators with the capability to monitor and control Sun SPARC

Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers over a dedicated Ethernet connection and supports

secure shell (SSH), Web, and Integrated Platform Management Interface (IPMI) access.

ILOM functions can also be accessed through a dedicated serial port for connection to a

terminal or terminal server. The ILOM command-line and browser-based interfaces

simplify remote administration of geographically distributed or physically inaccessible

machines. In addition, ILOM provides remote execution of diagnostics that generally

require physical proximity to the server serial port. ILOM can be configured to distribute

email alerts of hardware failures and warnings, as well as other events related to the

server.


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14 Isolating Faults with Sun Virtualization Technologies Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Chapter 3

Isolating Faults with Sun Virtualization

Technologies

Consolidation of many applications on a single server is often a necessity in order to

economically host and manage the high number of IT services required within an

enterprise. Sun Logical Domains and Solaris Containers technology provide the ability

to virtualize the considerable system resources of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and

T5220 servers. Within the context of a consolidation strategy, virtualization

technologies from Sun can help isolate individual software application faults from

impacting other IT services hosted on the same platform. In fact, utilizing Sun

virtualization technologies can help organizations improve resource utilization while

reducing downtime.

Sun Logical Domains Technology

Any virtualization solution must be carefully examined for its contribution to the

reliability, availability, and serviceability of key applications and services. Implemented

both in firmware and hardware, Sun Logical Domains technology fosters greater

reliability than software-based virtualization solutions. In addition to robust fault

isolation, Sun Logical Domains technology includes a number of options for creating

redundancy within configurations, provides proactive fault management capabilities,

and implements a unique I/O architecture that speeds recovery time of guest logical

domains.

Sun Logical Domains technology provides extensive resource isolation through

firmware and hardware constructs. Each logical domain can be created, destroyed,

reconfigured, and rebooted independently, without requiring a power cycle of the

server. Logical domains are also managed as entirely independent machines, with

localized control of the following resources:

Kernel, patches, and tuning parameters

User accounts

Disks

Network interfaces

MAC addresses

IP addresses

Sun Logical Domains technology uses a lightweight hypervisor firmware layer provided

on the UltraSPARC T2 processor to virtualize machine hardware, decoupling the link

between the operating system and the hardware (Figure 3-1). As such, the number of

virtual machines that can be created relies upon the capabilities of the hypervisor as

opposed to the number of physical hardware devices installed in the system. Within


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Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers, up to 64 logical domains can be

established1. Each logical domain is a full virtual machine that runs an independent

operating system instance or runtime environment and contains virtualized CPU,

memory, storage, console, and cryptographic devices.

All logical domain instances rely upon the same fundamental technology constructs

just described. However, several different roles exist for logical domains. Based on

context and use, a single logical domain may function in one or more of the following

roles.

Control domain executes Logical Domains Manager software to govern logical

domain creation and assignment of physical resources

Service domain interfaces with the hypervisor on behalf of a guest domain to

manage access to hardware resources such as CPU, memory, network, disk, console,

and cryptographic units

I/O domain controls direct physical access to input/output devices, such as PCI

Express cards, storage units, and network devices

Guest domain utilizes virtual devices offered by service and I/O domains and

operates under the management of the control domain

Figure 3-1. The UltraSPARC T2 hypervisor provides isolation of virtual machine operating system

instances and allocated hardware resources through Sun Logical Domains technology.

Logical Domain Isolation

Organizations often utilize virtualization technologies to host multiple business-critical

applications on the same server. As a result, enterprises need assurance that software

faults or maintenance events in one virtual machine remain isolated and unable to

impact the availability of IT services in other partitions.

1. Though establishing 64 logical domains is possible, this is not a recommended practice.

OperatingSystem

LDom A LDom B LDom C LDom D

LDoms

Hypervisor

Platform

HardwareMemory

CPU CPU CPU

I/O I/O

Memory

CPU CPU

Memory

CPU CPU

Memory

CPU


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Unfortunately, many virtualization solutions require a full system reset in order to

reboot a control or service domain. In contrast, Sun Logical Domains technology

supports reboot and reset of any domain, independent of all other domains even

domains with direct control over physical hardware resources. Guest logical domains

can be configured, started, and stopped independently, without power-cycling the

machine and with out impact to continuous operation of other logical domains. In

addition, virtual I/O interfaces can connect and disconnect as necessary without

impacting other logical domains on same platform. Administrators can even

dynamically add and remove virtual CPUs on a logical domain while the operating

system instance continues to execute, helping avoid the need for planned downtime.

Robust Virtualized I/O

Continuous communication with I/O devices proves critical to delivery of many IT

services. Within Sun Logical Domains technology, an I/O domain is a logical domain

which physically connects to I/O devices. I/O domains also generally act as service

domains, sharing I/O access to other domains in the form of virtual devices. Sun

Logical Domains technology provides a number of features and architectural elements

to mitigate the impact of I/O and service domain fault conditions, helping provide

uninterrupted access to I/O devices.

Masking I/O Fault EventsThe capabilities of Sun Logical Domains technology mitigate the impacts caused by

temporary loss of I/O connectivity. In response to a fault or maintenance operation

on an I/O device, Sun Logical Domains technology interfaces with the Solaris OS togracefully suspend I/O operations to all impacted virtual I/O devices. After recovery

of the physical I/O device, virtual I/O devices can reconnect and resume I/O

transactions at the point of suspension.

Redundant I/O PathsWhile I/O suspension provides a means to mask faults, many applications simply can

not afford any period of time without I/O service. Employing Solaris I/O multipathing

software can help ensure continuous access to disk and network services despite loss

of a single I/O path. For example, an administrator can configure two service

domains, each providing a unique path to a physical disk subsystem somewhat

analogous to employing two host bus adapters (HBAs) in a traditional I/Oconnectivity model. Once initialized within a guest domain, Solaris I/O multipathing

software provides a mechanism for automatic fail-over between the two paths in the

event of a failure. In addition, the Solaris I/O multipathing software includes a

manual path switch-over capability, letting administrators redirect I/O to an

alternate path during reconfiguration or reboot of the primary I/O domain.


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Clustering I/O DomainsAdministrators can further increase the availability of virtualized I/O services by

adopting clustering technology. Sun Logical Domains technology is certified for use

with Solaris Cluster software and Veritas Cluster Server by Symantec to provide for

failover of I/O domains. Clustering I/O domains provides for automated failover of

I/O device services, minimizing the time to recover I/O connectivity and ultimately

improving overall IT service availability.

Speeding Boot Times

After a fault or maintenance event occurs, reducing the time required to bring systems

back on-line is a key step toward maximizing IT service availability. Hosting an IT service

in a logical domain can actually speed recovery time. In the event of a planned or

unplanned reboot of a logical domain, Sun Logical Domains technology allows an

operating system instance to bypass time consuming I/O bring-up procedures. The

majority of logical domains utilize virtual I/O devices, delegating the burden of I/O bus

ownership, probing buses for devices, and loading device drivers to an I/O domain.

Logical domains that utilizes virtual I/O devices contain no I/O bus topology to probe,

and no physical connection to I/O devices, speeding recovery by eliminating the need

for time-consuming I/O initialization steps during boot of an operating system.

Solaris Containers Technology

Whether used in a single system image of the Solaris OS or within a logical domain,

Solaris Containers technology can further isolate software applications and services

using flexible, software-defined boundaries. A breakthrough approach to virtualization

and software partitioning, Solaris Containers technology allows creation of many

private execution environments within a single instance of the Solaris OS (Figure 3-2).

Figure 3-2. Solaris Containers use flexible software mechanisms to isolate applications.

Solaris Containers provide a complete, isolated, secure runtime environment for

applications and allow for granular management of system resources. Each Solaris

Container can be managed independently with regard to users, device paths, CPU and

Container

Users

Container

Users

Server with Sun SPARC, AMD, or Intel Processors

Container

Users

Single Solaris 10 Operating System Instance

AllocatedResources

AllocatedResources

AllocatedResources

Applications Applications Applications


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memory resources, and networking. Dynamic resource reallocation capabilities let

unused system resources shift among containers as needed, providing high quality of

service to hosted applications. Resources can also be allocated or reserved for critical

services to reduce contention for compute power with lower priority workloads. The

fine-grained resource management provided by Solaris Containers encourages efficient

use of computing power while maintaining high levels of service availability.

Applications within containers are isolated, preventing activities in one container from

monitoring or affecting processes running in another container. Even a superuser

process can not view or affect activity in other containers. Software fault and security

isolation features of Solaris Containers also prohibit poorly behaved applications from

impacting other containers. By utilizing Solaris Containers and Sun Logical Domains

technology individually or in combination, organizations can better define and meet

service levels by dynamically controlling application and resource priorities.


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19 Suns Comprehensive Focus On IT Service Uptime Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Chapter 4

Suns Comprehensive Focus On IT Service Uptime

Operating system and management tool choices heavily influence IT service uptime. As

a part of a dedicated effort toward helping organizations build highly dependable

solutions, Sun works to integrate reliability, availability, and serviceability at all levels

of the platform. In fact, the Solaris OS includes a comprehensive fault management

architecture known as Predictive Self Healing that governs error handing throughout

the hardware, virtualization, and operating system layers of Sun SPARC Enterprise

T5120 and T5220 servers. By utilizing the Solaris OS and Sun management tools in

conjunction with Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers, organizations can

further enhance the availability of hosted IT services.

Speeding Diagnosis with a Comprehensive FaultManagement Architecture

When faults occur or maintenance is required, the amount of time required to return

an IT service to an operational state becomes critical. Extending the fault management

framework first introduced in the Solaris OS, Sun Predictive Self Healing technology

governs error events across all technology layers within Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120

and T5220 server platforms, including individual hardware components and Sun Logical

Domains technology. By proactively diagnosing, isolating, and recovering from both

hardware and software failures, Sun Predictive Self Healing technology provides

meaningful information about faults, speeds resumption of IT services, and even helps

prevent certain system failures.

Solaris Predictive Self Healing Software

Solaris Predictive Self Healing software proactively monitors and manages system

components to help organizations achieve maximum availability of IT services.

Predictive Self Healing is an innovative capability in the Solaris 10 OS that

automatically diagnoses, isolates, and recovers from many hardware and application

faults. As a result, business-critical applications and essential system services can

continue uninterrupted in the event of software failures, major hardware component

failures, and even software configuration problems.

Solaris Fault Manager and Solaris Service Manager are the two main components of

Predictive Self Healing. Solaris Fault Manager receives data relating to hardware and

software errors and automatically diagnoses the underlying problem. Once diagnosed,

Solaris Fault Manager automatically responds by offlining faulty components and

signaling the error condition to administrators (via console messages and external

system and component status indicators on the front and rear of the chassis). Solaris

Service Manager makes services rather than processes into first-class citizens,


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permitting automatic self-healing. Service descriptions for base services of the Solaris

OS include full dependency information for start, stop, and restart. Configuring user

applications to run under Solaris Service Manager is relatively simple, helping

organizations to effectively manage faults for all IT services hosted on Sun SPARC

Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers.

Predictive Self Healing for Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220

Servers

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers leverage a number of Predictive Self

Healing response agents already in the Solaris OS, including syslog, CPU offline,

memory page retire, and I/O retire agents. The ILOM software on the service processor

provides an additional set of response agents. These agents include a dynamic field

replaceable unit ID (FRUID) agent that updates the faulted FRU with the error event,

and an LED agent that lights the appropriate system or component (FRU) status

indicator for specific faults.

Fault diagnosis and recovery status is synchronized between the logical domain and

service processor. Fault events on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers

include the FRU part and serial number of the faulted components. In addition, error

and fault persistence, common messaging, and knowledge articles specific to the Sun

SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers can be accessed at

sun.com/msg.

The following capabilities provide a few examples of the granularity and power of the

Sun Predictive Self Healing implementation on Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220servers.

Within the UltraSPARC T2 processor, the L1 and L2 caches, per-thread registers,

integrated dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet interfaces and cryptographic units include error

reporting mechanisms that can be diagnosed by Sun Predictive Self Healing

technology.

When a correctable memory error is encountered by a Power On Self Test (POST) on

Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers, the error is queued up for Predictive

Self Healing diagnosis. Memory pages are automatically retired as necessary.

Faults within the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers governed by SunPredictive Self Healing include direct I/O devices with hardened and non-hardened

drivers, as well as devices that are virtualized by the hypervisor.

The PCI express switches and SAS/SATA controllers utilize hardened device drivers

that generate reports whenever an error is detected by the error handlers. Errors are

forwarded for complete analysis and diagnosis.


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Predictive Self Healing for Logical Domains

In order to execute proper error handling within a virtualized environment, messages

and alerts must extend to virtual machine instances. In addition to close integration

with Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 server hardware, Sun Predictive Self

Healing technology governs fault handling within logical domains. Taking a

comprehensive system view, error conditions for devices abstracted by the hypervisor

processors, memory, console, and cryptographic devices trap to the hypervisor,

generating a standard error report that is sent to the service processor via the host to

service processor mailbox channel. A diagnosis engine provides complete analysis of

each error report and the logical domains manager distributes alerts to each

potentially affected OS instance. A Sun Predictive Self Healing technology knowledge

base is also available. Administrators can use the knowledge base to correlate error

messages related to Sun Logical Domains technology execution to documented pre-

defined corrective actions, speeding time to system recovery.

Reducing Downtime with the Solaris Operating System

Over two decades of investment contribute to making the Solaris OS one of the most

reliable operating systems in the industry. Key computing elements operating

system, networking, and user environment combine within the Solaris OS to provide

a stable, high-quality foundation for execution of IT services. In fact, many

organizations can point to systems running the Solaris OS that execute continuously for

months or years without need for a restart.

The Solaris OS is designed for availability. Built with a small, compact kernel, the

Solaris OS limits the potential for operating system faults and subsequent platform

downtime. In addition, the Solaris OS establishes a clear distinction between the

kernel, shared libraries, and applications in order to limit the impact of application

failures. Furthermore, the ability to install most patches and other incremental

software updates for the Solaris OS without taking the system offline helps

organizations increase uptime and ease serviceability. Ease-of-use features including

Web-based installation and a graphical process manager can also help boost

availability, by reducing the risk of operator error and by minimizing service times.

Described in the sections that follow, a number of key features of the Solaris OS can

help organizations develop, deploy, and manage IT services with extreme reliability,relentless availability, and simplified serviceability.

Solaris Memory Page Retirement

In many systems, addressing both correctable or uncorrectable permanent memory

errors requires server downtime. As a part of the Solaris Predictive Self Healing

technology framework, the Solaris OS memory page retirement (MPR) capability works

to isolate memory issues without system interruption. Diagnosis software in the

Predictive Self Healing technology Fault Manager examines memory correctable errors


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and uncorrectable errors detected by underlying hardware on a continual basis. MPR

retires memory pages containing correctable errors and relocatable clean pages

containing uncorrectable errors without interrupting user applications. In addition,

MPR can also isolate relocatable dirty pages containing uncorrectable errors with

limited impact on affected user processes and avoids forcing an outage of an entire

system. By utilizing MPR on Sun servers, system interruption rates can be reduced by as

much as 35 to 40 percent1.

Solaris File Systems

Reliable data subsystems are critical to creating highly-available IT services.

Organizations continue to depend on the UNIX File System (UFS) within the Solaris 10

OS to provide high-resiliency features, such as metadata logging to protect against data

corruption and to speed recovery in the event of system failure. In addition, the Solaris

10 OS now also features the Solaris ZFS, a file system that offers a dramatic advance in

data management with an innovative approach to data integrity.

Solaris ZFS provides increased protection against administrative error and delivers end-

to-end data integrity elements, such as 64-bit checksumming and comprehensive data

updates. To ensure that the data on disk is self-consistent at all times, Solaris ZFS

combines proven and cutting edge technologies, such as copy-on-write and end-to-end

checksumming. Data is always written to a new block on disk before changing the

pointers to the data and committing the write. Since the file system is always

consistent, time-consuming recovery procedures like fsck are not required if the

system is shut down in an unclean manner. Copy-on-write also enables administrators

to take consistent backups or roll data back to a known point in time.

The Solaris 10 OS with Solaris ZFS is the only known OS designed to provide end-to-end

checksumming for all data. Solaris ZFS constantly reads and checks data to help ensure

integrity, and if an error exists in a mirrored pool, the technology can automatically

repair the corrupt data. This relentless vigilance on behalf of availability protects

against costly and time-consuming data loss even previously undetectable silent

data corruption.

Solaris Flash and Solaris Live Upgrade

In many cases, planned downtime accounts for the bulk of system interruptions each

year. Solaris Flash and Solaris Live Upgrade help organizations decrease requirements

for planned downtime by providing efficient installation and upgrade operations. By

employing Solaris Flash and Solaris Live Upgrade, deployment or upgrades of Sun

SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers can complete in minutes.

The Solaris Flash facility helps IT organizations quickly install and update systems

with an operating system configuration tailored to enterprise needs. The technology1. Assessment of the Effect of Memory Page Retirement on System RAS Against Hardware Faults,

http://blogs.sun.com/mws/resource/ieee.pdf


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in Solaris Flash software provides tools to system administrators for building custom

rapid-install images including applications, patches, and parameters that can

be installed at a data rate close to the full speed of the hardware.

Solaris Live Upgrade software provides mechanisms to upgrade and manage multiple

on-disk instances of the Solaris OS. This technology facilitates installation of a new

operating system or patches on a running production system without taking a server

offline. Downtime is only required to reboot the new configuration. A specific feature

of Solaris Live Upgrade software provides administrators with the ability to quickly

roll systems back to the initial state if desired.

Sun Software for Efficient System Management

Technologies that automate management procedures help prevent faults and provide

efficiencies that help system administrators manage a greater number of servers. Inaddition to the ILOM system controller, organizations can take advantage of powerful

Sun Management Center software and Sun N1 System Manager software. These

sophisticated tools automate monitoring and administrative functions, lowering the

administrative burden and reducing the opportunity for common errors. Sun

Management Center software simplifies administrative tasks and Sun N1 System

Manager software automates complex software installation and configuration, helping

to ease operations.

Sun Management Center Software

Streamlining system management procedures simplifies operations and can result inhigher availability levels. Sun Management Center software improves management

efficiency by providing an aggregate view of the entire network of Sun components

from the heart of the datacenter to remote locations at the edge of the network.

Within Sun Management Center software, a single interface provides IT administrators

with the ability to proactively manage and monitor remote Sun systems, storage

components, the Solaris OS, and applications. Remote access services enable system

administrators, local or remote, to gain protected access through administrative

networks. From this interface, technicians can monitor system health, perform remote

bring-up, and restart or take down individual machines.

Consolidating management views even further, integration of Sun Management

software with Solaris Cluster also allows visibility and control over cluster resources. In

addition, to support legacy networks and heterogeneous environments, Sun

Management Center software tightly integrates with all major management

frameworks, includingCA Unicenter TNG, HP Open-View, IBM Tivoli, and BMC Patrol.

Sun Management Center software is based on a three-tiered design with an agent-

based framework that provides a single point of management for the enterprise

(Figure 4-1). The architecture of Sun Management Center software simplifies systems


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management by delivering a higher level of scalability and availability while reducing

cost and complexity. A major strength of Sun Management Center software is that

these autonomous agents continue to operate even when contact with the central

software server is lost. After loss of the central server, remote agents continue to

collect data and take action if an event is triggered. The agents are reconnected when

the Sun Management Center server is restarted, perhaps at a backup site. The central

server collects data on all events that occurred during the downtime, allowing

administrators to retain historical perspectives.

Figure 4-1. Sun Management Center software three-tier architecture

Sun N1 System Manager Software

Providing high availability levels in a rapidly changing IT infrastructure requires the

ability to provision and reprovision servers efficiently while minimizing the opportunity

for process errors. Sun N1 System Manager software automates complex software

installation and configuration across heterogeneous network infrastructures, helpingto speed and simplify IT service deployments. Sun N1 System Manager software also

provides a comprehensive solution to simplify system infrastructure life-cycle

management. By utilizing Sun N1 System Manager software, administrators can

discover, provision, monitor, update, and manage hundreds of Sun SPARC and x64

based servers from a single console, with an innovative and user-friendly hybrid

graphical and command line interface (CLI). Sun N1 System Manager software also

provides greater flexibility in allocating and reallocating resources as enterprise

requirements shift.

JavaTM

Console WebConsoleCommand

Line

Interface

Management

Server

Sun System

Sun

Management

Center

Console Layer

Java Technology-Based Management Applications

IPA-Based

Services

Java Client API

Trap, Topology

Services

Security

Services

Sun System Sun System

Sun

Management

Center

Server Layer

Sun

ManagementCenter

Agent Layer

RMI HTTPS IPv6

SNMPv3


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Designed to simplify datacenter management tasks, Sun N1 System Manager software

includes features to facilitate remote power control, operating system deployment and

patching, system BIOS and firmware updates, event logging and notification, and

hardware and operating system monitoring. In addition, the software features the

ability to create logical groups of systems and perform actions across these groupings

as easily as if performing actions on a single node. By providing fast and easy access to

systems for monitoring and maintenance, Sun N1 System Manager software increases

operational efficiency and minimizes downtime related to process errors.


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26 Measuring Server Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Chapter 5

Measuring Server Reliability, Availability, and

Serviceability

Taking a holistic view of system operation, Sun studies the interrelation between

reliability, availability, and serviceability and works to optimize all three factors at the

same time. By utilizing repeatable metrics during the design of new systems, Sun can

achieve continuous improvements over current and previous generations of Sun servers

and competitive systems. Given the importance of system availability, Sun continues to

invest and work actively to help establish industry wide standards for measurement.

Sun Availability Benchmark Framework

Benchmarks often guide research and development efforts to enhance computer

systems performance. As the reliability, availability, and serviceability features of

systems increases in importance, there is a natural desire on the part of engineers to

benchmark availability levels. Unfortunately, industry-accepted standards are still a

work in progress in this important area. With a goal of adopting a methodical approach

to improving system dependability and in view of no existing industry standard for

measurement, Sun created an availability benchmark framework called R-Cubed1. The

Sun R-cubed availability benchmark framework is applicable to a wide range of systems

and information about the methodology is published openly for reuse by the industry,

academia, and the technical community at large.

In addition to traditional measures of server outage minutes per year, Sun's R-Cubed

availability benchmark framework reaches further to focus on overall dependability

the ability of a system to remain available and prevent service interruptions. As such,

the R-cubed framework accounts for system reliability, availability, and serviceability

levels by quantifying three key attributes.

Fault and maintenance rate measures the frequency of system faults in a given

period of time

Robustness accounts for the extent to which system operation degrades due to a

fault, as well as the potential for completing repairs online Recovery examines system characteristics to quantify the effort required to return

to an operational state after a fault or maintenance event

While optimizing the three elements of the R-cubed framework results in high levels of

system dependability, increasing all three R-cubed factors at the same time takes a

careful approach. For example, designing a server with a low component count

minimizes the fault and maintenance rate, increasing reliability. However, a system

1. R-Cubed (R3): Rate, Robustness, and Recovery An Availability Benchmark Framework,

research.sun.com/techrep/2002/abstract-109.html


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with a low component count in all probability lacks the robustness provided by

redundant parts. Without redundancy, single component errors or faults can cause

system outages essentially placing reliability at odds with increased availability.

Utilizing the R-cubed framework helps Sun take a balanced approach to maximizing

overall system reliability, availability, and serviceability.

R-Cubed Metrics

The R-cubed Availability framework incorporates the following measures to help system

designers quantify the dependability of a system design and evaluate potential

improvements.

Fault Robustness Benchmark-A (FRB-A) rewards systems where faults do not cause

disruption of service. Measurement is indicated by a numeric scalar between 1 and

100, where 1 means any single failure causes disruption and 100 means no single

failure causes a disruption. A system scores higher on FRB-A by optimizing cost and

redundancy trade-offs less reliable parts are made redundant, and more reliable

parts are utilized where economical.

Maintenance Robustness Benchmark-A (MRB-A) quantifies the ability to perform

maintenance without system disruption by utilizing a numeric scalar. A score of 1

means all maintenance actions result in a system outage while a score of 100

indicates all field replaceable units can be replaced without downtime. MRB-A scores

are higher for systems with hot-swap capabilities. In general, small form factor

servers do not score as well as larger servers that are designed for online hardware

servicing.

Mean Time Between Services (MTBS) utilizes mean time between failure (MTBF)

rates, isolating calculations to only include field replaceable unit (FRU) failures that

incur a service exception.

Mean Time Between System Interrupts (MTBSI) quantifies component failures which

lead to system downtime and scheduled shutdowns for service actions. MTBSI

considers both scheduled and unscheduled system interruptions. In some cases, an

unscheduled interruption results in a degraded mode of system operation and

requires a scheduled interruption to replace failed components.

Unscheduled Mean Time Between System Interrupts (U_MTBSI) measures the rate ofsystem interrupts that are caused by component failures. Unscheduled interruptions

pose the most significant impact to predictable service delivery.

Availabilityprovides a traditional measure of the percentage of uptime achieved by a

system per year, assuming utilization of SunSpectrumSM Gold service plan

maintenance response times, Sun approved software installation methods, and

system management best practices.


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As evidenced by the data in Table 5-1 and the bar chart in Figure 5-1, the Sun SPARC

Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers make great strides toward maximizing

dependability when compared to earlier Sun systems such as the Sun Fire V490 server.

Table 5-1. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 servers score significantly

higher on R-cubed metrics than the Sun Fire V490 server, released only a few years ago.

Figure 5-1. Graphical representation of R-cubed benchmark results for the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120,

T5220, and Sun Fire V490 servers.

SystemFaultRobustnessBenchmark-A

MaintenanceRobustnessBenchmark-A

U_MTBSI MTBSI MTBS Availability

Sun SPARCEnterpriseT5120 server

81.2 56.98 409,628 212,737 87,050 0.99999


80.06 54.52 407,056 212,041 92,282 0.99999

Sun Fire

V490 server

58.7 32.77 161,804 83,539 77,905 0.99998

Sun SPARC

Enterprise

T5120

Sun SPARC

Enterprise

T5220

Sun Fire

V490

Hours

100,000 200,000 300,000 400,000 500,0000

U_MTBSI

MTBSI

MTBS

Sun SPARC

Enterprise

T5120

Sun SPARC

Enterprise

T5220

Sun Fire

V490

80 9060 7040 5020 30100

Fault RobustnessBenchmark - A

Maintenance RobustnessBenchmark - A

Robustness on Scale of 1 to 100


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Assessing RAS Levels of Scale-Out Architectures

Network-centric applications often utilize a scale-out approach to achieve desired

throughput, replicating a single application across a number of rackmount servers. In

scale-out designs, loss of a single server generally incurs little impact on desired

application performance or availability. Rather, uptime and effective performance of

the IT service often hinges on the continuous operation of a subset of the total servers

deployed. For example, in a deployment of nine servers, only eight servers may be

required to meet performance goals or contracted service levels. At the same time, loss

of more than a certain number of servers can impact throughput, degrade

responsiveness, and even result in denial of service to clients.

In order to measure the dependability of a scale-out architecture, and to assess its

ability to meet performance targets, Sun utilizes a metric called performability. After

calculating the number of required units for each type of server to meet a baselineperformance level, performability can be measured. The performability calculation

quantifies the probability that a certain set of servers can be expected to be available to

deliver baseline performance. The performability data in Table 5-2 for Sun SPARC

Enterprise T5120, Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220, and Sun Fire V490 servers illustrates

Suns commitment to continuously increase availability along with performance. Sun

SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers meet baseline performance with fewer

systems, lowering the number of service intervals, reducing costs, simplifying

administration, and minimizing energy consumption, heat dissipation, and space

requirements.

Table 5-2. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and Sun SPARC Enterprise T5220 servers improve upon the

performability levels of the Sun Fire V490 server.

System Units Sockets/Unit Performability Yearly Services


6+1 One eight-coreUltraSPARC T2processor

0.9999988 0.664


6+1 One eight-coreUltraSPARC T2processor

0.9999988 0.704

Sun Fire V490server

9+1 Four dual-coreUltraSPARC IV+processor

0.9999893 1.124


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30 Conclusion Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Chapter 6

Conclusion

Requirements for relentless availability of IT services are increasingly common.

Deploying Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers can help support

organizational efforts to achieve high IT service uptime goals. A low component count,

extensive data integrity features, and superior energy efficiency promote reliability.

Redundant components foster high levels of availability. Integrated Lights Out

Management and self healing features simplify serviceability.

As a part of a comprehensive design approach, the processor, virtualization technology,

operating system, and software tools for Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 servers

all provide innovative RAS features. Utilizing Sun Logical Domains and Solaris

Containers technology to virtualize platforms helps enterprises isolate IT services

against failure while optimizing asset utilization. The Solaris OS enables RAS features

previously only available in large-scale systems, such as Memory Page Retirement

(MPR) and Extended ECC protection. The extension of Solaris Predictive Self Healing

technology to Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 platforms, the UltraSPARC T2

processor, and Sun Logical Domains technology helps facilitate rapid system recovery

in the event of a fault. Sun also provides additional tools such as Sun N1 Systems

Manger and Sun Management Center software to help organizations prevent

administrative error, realize greater serviceability, and benefit from faster recovery

times.

For over 20 years, Sun has brought enterprise expertise and innovation to the

development of hardware and software products. With each new generation of

systems, Sun works to improve platform reliability, availability, and serviceability

capabilities. As a result, Sun systems provide a strong foundation for organizations

seeking to support non-stop IT service operations.


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31 Conclusion Sun Microsystems, Inc.

For More Information

To learn more about Sun products and the benefits of Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and

T5220 servers, contact a Sun sales representative or consult the related documents and

Web sites listed in Table 6-1 below.

Table 6-1. Related Web Sites

Web Site URL Title

sun.com/coolthreads Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5120 Servers

sun.com/processors/UltraSPARC-T2 Sun UltraSPARC T2 Processor

opensparc.net/opensparc-t2 OpenSPARC T2

sun.com/processors/throughput Throughput Computing

sun.com/servers/coolthreads/overview Sun Servers with CoolThreads Technology

sun.com/servers/coolthreads/ldoms Sun Logical Domains

sun.com/solaris The Solaris Operating System

sun.com/software/products/system_manage

Sun N1 System Manager

sun.com/software/products/sunmanagementcenter

Sun Management Center

research.sun.com/techrep/2002/smli_tr-2002-109.pdf

R-Cubed Availability Framework


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Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120 and T5220 Servers On the Web sun.com/coolthreads

Sun Microsystems, Inc. 4150 Network Circle, Santa Clara, CA 95054 USA Phone 1-650-960-1300 or 1-800-555-9SUN (9786) Web sun.com

2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc. All rights reserved. Sun, Sun Microsystems, the Sun logo, Java, N1, Sun FIre, SunSpectrum, Solaris, and SPARC Enterprise are trademarks, registered trademarks, or service marks ofSun Microsystems, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. in the U.S. and other countries. Productsbearing SPARC trademarks are based upon architecture developed by SunMicrosystems Inc Information subject to change without notice Printed in USA 02/09 SunWIN # 512751

Documents

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