Apple, Sun embrace openness

On Feb. 10, Sun Microsystems will unveil the first commercial incarnation of its N1 networked resource management strategy, working in concert with the Sun Blade Computing Platform. Apple’s long-awaited Xserve RAID array, which is expected to be announced the same day, shows how serious this long-term niche player is about making a name for itself in the enterprise space. What these announcements — and indeed the vendors’ long-term strategies — have in common is their core message: Open up the technology and drive down IT’s operating costs.

The combination of the N1 Provisioning Server with the Sun Blade Computing Platform will allow administrators to manage UltraSparc- and x86-based blade systems in logical groups. The N1 software, acquired from Terraspring, creates virtualized pools of computing, network, and storage resources. It’s only one step toward the grander vision that was expressed by Sun CTO Greg Papadopoulos in January. This first step represents an important one for businesses and provides reassuring evidence that Papadopoulos is not just a visionary but a real strategic mover at Sun. The key elements of his vision implemented in the announced products are heterogeneous computing, simplified management, and reduced power consumption.

The Sun Blade Computing Platform, which will be the primary hardware vehicle for N1, combines Sparc and x86 blade devices and can run a combination of Solaris and Linux operating systems. N1 will pool Windows servers as well, although (not surprisingly) Sun is not offering to host Windows on its SunFire blades. From a cost standpoint, N1’s greatest value lies not in easing initial configuration but in simplifying that most daunting of IT tasks, reconfiguration. Few organizations would dare try to move servers from a database farm to a Web farm today. Each of N1’s pooled assets has no inherent purpose and no default role. A blade, a server, a switch port, or a block of network storage is a floating asset that an administrator can repurpose at will. The promise that this can be done from a console, with a minimum of rewiring, has enormous impact on costs. Each blade system’s miniscule power requirements — 18 watts for the Sparc blade, 40 for the x86 — vastly reduces cooling and electricity costs, and N1’s efficient role-based grouping and monitoring of assets means that wasted resources can be identified, moved, or eliminated.

Apple’s Xserve RAID array attacks costs more directly by handing businesses 2.5TB of high-availability, online storage for only $11,000. It incorporates features no one could expect from any vendor at this price, including remote management, pervasive redundancy, and, according to Apple’s numbers, excellent performance. Of course the Xserve RAID product is built to interoperate with the Xserve rack server — the first model and the revamped model also introduced to be introduced on Monday — but more importantly for those watching Apple for signs of a return to its proprietary model, Apple’s RAID array is open. The graphical administration interface is written in Java and runs wherever Java runs. Apple is pursuing independent certification of the Xserve RAID array’s interoperability with major brands of enterprise networking hardware. In important ways, Apple and Sun are leading a charge toward inexpensive, scalable, and easily managed enterprise computing.