sun's solaris 10 server, N1 Grid Technology and other cool features

[deftones12]

From what i've been reading on about this release, available for download i see i think for non-commercial release, it seems pretty neat. This new N1 grid technology as far as i can understand can prevent future buffer overflows by allocating each application ran into its own grid in a container.

N1 Grid Containers deliver a breakthrough approach to system virtualization with support for over 8,000 software partitions per single instance of the OS. It's designed to increase utilization of your hardware resources and boost your server-to-administrator ratio. N1 Grid Container technology allows you to create up to 4000 secure, fault-isolated software partitions (or containers), each with its own IP address, memory space, file area, host name, and root password.

Its hard to think without actually experiencing it and having the OS at hand to play with what this is capable of. Is there any other OS or Server OS that does this? Maybe its not as big as i think, but from what im reading, could this server be the most stable yet and secure? I've always understood its been a bad idea to run regular apps and or alot of applications on a server due to more chances for insecurity, but with these containers and this new grid technology it seems so what if they get hacked, there is no where for them to go in the container...unless there is a fault in the grid technology?

Want to subdivide a single domain into thousands of containers and create fully isolated test and execution environments? You can. Using the advanced isolation and restart capabilities in the N1 Grid Containers software, you can even test a new database application on the same system you're using as your production environment. The N1 Grid Containers software has a feature that lets you start, provision, or restart a container at the flick of a switch, without disrupting any other applications running on the system. That's the beauty of a virtualized environment.
# Predictive self healing and fault management, for a highly reliable software environment

# Advanced security features, such as process rights management, that significantly reduce the risks of system exploits from hackers

# Instant Restart capability, so you can destroy and restart a containerized test environment quickly and easily, without disrupting operations in neighboring containers

# Accounting and reporting capabilities that capture usage data based on workloads, not system use, for more accurate billing

# Network bandwidth management, so you can allocate needed bandwidth to individual application services

Maybe im making a bigger deal than it really is, but im excited to get a copy and try all this out, might be a lil over my head but it should be fun playing around with this new grid thing, anyone else know anything more than i've read or have any input on how good this will be? I mean if you can isolate certain applications and their memory in a container in a grid, where can the buffer overflows and exploits and hackers go? Sounds like putting a application or service in jail, and what would be the point of hacking into a jail? Maybe im mispercieving this, someone shed some more light into what this could be?

Some links.... http://www.sun.com/2004-0330/feature/index.html - N1 Grid Feature Story
http://wwws.sun.com/software/solaris/10/ -overview of the OS

[thehorse13]

Sounds like VMWare to me or application isolation features in Win2k3.

[R0n1n]

Hasn`t this been available in Mainframes for about, I don`t know, 20 years??? I know zOS allows you to set up all kinds of seperate environements on the same box. Each completely seperate from the next.

And yes, I agree with thehorse, in the PC world ity sounds like VMWare.

[deftones12]

then why would sun be announcing this and making such a big deal? so this isnt a big thing at all then?????????

[thehorse13]

Two words: BLING $ BLING


Seriously though. It's a new product for them and it wouldn't sell very well if people weren't convinced it was cool. It's called creating buzz. Look at Microsoft, they are masters of this marketing art.

[deftones12]

just seems like there is more than just marketing techniques goin on there. but ok if thats your educated opinion i'll take it into consideration. in what aspect does windows do this? they are the king in exploits and buffer overflows. am i wrong in thinking that suns grid technology will help prevent buffer overflows if the grid is secure and no holes in it, or will the server still be just as vulnerable as windows?