Sun readies new utility computing tools, limits hardware support

It says it will first support apps on its systems only

By Matt Hamblen

April 18, 2005 12:00 PM ET

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Computerworld - Sun Microsystems Inc. in the next 60 to 90 days will announce new and upgraded utility computing tools designed to help users deploy software and monitor applications, among other tasks. But the products will initially run only on the company's own hardware, a Sun executive said last week.
The planned announcement comes nearly a year after Sun de-emphasized the marketing of the existing versions of its N1 utility computing software, said John Loiacono, the company's executive vice president for software. He added, though, that Sun has continued to develop scaled-down releases of the technology.
"We had fallen prey to the hype," Loiacono said. "We've taken the N1 effort and dramatically simplified it. A year ago, utility and on-demand computing was going to boil the ocean and solve world hunger, but we've decided we're going to feed our family before we feed the world."
At first, the new tools will work on Sun hardware running Solaris 10 or Red Hat Linux, Loiacono said. Sun will build in support for hardware from other vendors later, but that won't happen this year, he added.
The tools, including one code-named Hot Dog that Sun is now beta-testing, will provide systems and application management capabilities, such as provisioning of servers running Solaris and Red Hat and automatic installs of software patches and updates.
James Dobson, a systems architect at Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., is testing Hot Dog and said he would like to use the software to control 64 dual-processor IBM servers that the school recently purchased. The Opteron-based systems are distributed among different departments on the Dartmouth campus and are routinely used as shared resources for complex scientific computations.


John Loiacono of Sun Microsystems Inc.

Dobson noted, though, that he will apparently have to wait until next year for a multivendor version of the software. "Sun has some great products, but they have all kinds of fun, grandiose visions that don't work very well with other vendors' products," he said.
Several users questioned the reality of the on-demand vision that's being espoused by IT vendors.
"We absolutely have a need for on-demand computing, but none of the vendors has it right yet," said Joe Poole, manager of technical support at Boscov's Department Store LLC, a 41-store retail chain based in Reading, Pa. He added that "nobody is really telling us what we need" to marshal computing resources on an as-needed basis, other than network monitoring tools.
Sun had indicated a year ago that it was backpedaling on its grand vision for making N1 interoperablewith other hardware platforms, said Jonathan Eunice, an analyst at Illuminata Inc. in Nashua, N.H. Company executives "realized how hard it is to do on-demand on a broader scale," he said.
But management tools that can control a range of system components from multiple vendors are already being sold by companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Computer Associates International Inc., according to Eunice and other analysts.

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