SUN—N1 N1 is Sun's vision for the next-generation data center. Sun's N1 manages widely distributed computing resources, such as servers, storage, software, and networks, and enables them to operate as a single entity. In September 2002, Sun Microsystems, Inc., unveiled the road map for N1. By automating away the complexity associated with managing technology, business and IT managers will be able to optimize the utilization, efficiency, and agility of their data centers. N1 builds on over 20 years of Sun knowledge and R&D in system architectures to deliver what will be the cornerstone of the next generation of Sun's systems strategy. Such network-centric computing innovations as NFS (Network File System), Dynamic System Domains, Java technology, Solaris, and the Sun ONE Grid Engine software will help Sun to deliver the benefits of the N1 architecture to its customers. N1 is focused on allowing companies to use their resources on added value projects and doing more with less. N1 is an evolution of the system that will have an impact on the data center. In the N1 world, customers can expand their IT resources to a larger scale, increase utilization rates exponentially, and deploy new services in shorter timeframes than with traditional approaches, without having to keep an army of systems administrators working on maintaining the network. N1 Road Map The N1 architecture enables utility computing, where customers "pay as they grow," and brings a new level to the way businesses manage technology. This is a long-term strategy and Sun will be rolling out N1 products to the market in a phased approach, according to the following road map, which is also illustrated in Figure 14.1: -
Phase 1—Virtualization (2002 on): This first phase provides the basic infrastructure for N1. Here, customers will begin transforming individual computers, network elements, and storage systems into an aggregated pool of resources. The system allocates, monitors, and meters the usage of these resources. -
Phase 2—Services Provisioning (2003 on): In Phase 2, administrators specify the business service definition for a service, such as eBanking, and N1 takes care of provisioning the resources required from the virtual computer created in Phase 1. -
3. Phase 3—Policy-Automation (2004 on): Finally, in Phase 3, application service level objectives are automatically maintained by N1. Policies that reflect business requirements and priorities are defined and used to manage applications and their required network-wide resources. For example, the eBanking service set-up in Phase 2 can be set to give priority access to "VIP" clients. Figure 14.1. Sun's N1 product road map lays out the delivery of individual components from now until end of 2005. 
Let us discuss each element of the road map in slightly greater detail: Virtualization is the real-time pooling of heterogeneous computing, storage, and other network resources—a critical part of the N1 strategy. Virtualization simplifies network-centric computing by fostering a "wire once, reconfigure logically" capability. With N1, administrators need only cable their networks a single time. N1 manages the relationships between virtualized storage, computing, and network resources, and enables system administrators to assign selected resources to a specific application or business. Once physical resources have been pooled, the next phase is to map business services onto the virtual resource pool. This is the provisioning level of the N1 architecture. The N1 Provisioning Server will play a key role here by creating logical server farms. The software captures all service requirements—network topology, processor types, software, and storage—describes them in software, and then implements the design from pooled resources. Once the server farm is created, the service can be mapped onto it. The software monitors its health and availability to help assure that the service is meeting the business's needs. Policy and automation make up the third level of the N1 architecture. With policy-based automation, a customer can create a rule defining performance objectives for a given service. Based on set policies, N1 will manage the corporate environment, adding and removing resources as needed to maintain a particular service level objective. N1 virtualization and provisioning technology offers a new and innovative method for simplifying the deployment and management of complex computing resources. With N1, the focus is not on the individual servers and storage systems. Rather, N1 is all about managing an IT infrastructure as a smoothly integrated whole. It's about making the data center behave as a single, unified system. N1 is designed to reduce management complexity and cost, increase datacenter resource utilization, improve infrastructure responsiveness and agility, and ensure investment protection. The N1 architecture: -
Makes datacenters work like systems. -
Unifies heterogeneous resources into "pools." -
Up-levels operation to business service. -
Enables policy-driven services and utility computing. With N1, IT management and administration functions begin to operate in a shared real-time mode. In the past, an application had a dedicated server and set of storage assigned to it. Because applications aren't designed to share resources, nor can they predict what the user load will be at different times, each instance of an application needed to have its own excess capacity to handle peak usage loads. N1 allows data center resource capacity to be shared by any number of services. So if one service requires additional capacity, while at the same time another requires less, N1 handles it. It's automatic. N1 also enables administrators to manage a much larger number of systems because they manage the service, not the underlying resources. With N1, system administrators are now free to focus on maintaining service-level quality and implementing new competitive features. All of this adds up to increased business agility, reduced complexity, streamlined management, increased resources, and lower costs. Conclusions N1 is a bold effort by Sun, with a long-term vision for the new computing system infrastructure of the future and its customers. With such a fundamental set of changes in the specification, design, deployment, and operation of computing systems, N1 is a vision to be realized and adopted in phases when available. |
