Using Sun Systems to Build a Virtual and Dynamic Infrastructure 
by Jacques Bessoudo
January 2009
Today's rapidly changing business environments require a flexible infrastructure that can quickly and easily adapt to evolving needs. A dynamic datacenter infrastructure, using technologies such as Sun™ Logical Domains and the Scalent™ Virtual Operating Environment (V/OE), can provide a means to easily provision and repurpose servers upon demand.
This document describes a proof-of-concept exercise that deployed a virtual and dynamic datacenter infrastructure using the Sun Blade™ 6000 modular system, Logical Domains, and the Scalent V/OE software, with clients running Windows, Linux, and Solaris™ operating systems. Intended as a starting point in designing a dynamic datacenter architecture, this document addresses the following topics:
• "The Dynamic Datacenter" on page 1 describes the need for a dynamic datacenter.
• "Technology Under Evaluation" on page 2 provides an overview of the Logical Domains and Scalent V/OE
technologies.
• "Installation Overview" on page 11 introduces the installation procedures used in this proof-of-concept
exercise.
• "Installation for Network-Booted Linux Clients" on page 15, "Installation for Solaris OS Clients" on page 19, and "Installation for Windows Clients" on page 27 outline the procedures needed to install clients running the various operating systems.
Contents
- Using Sun Systems to Build a Virtual and Dynamic Infrastructure
- The Dynamic Datacenter
- Technology Under Evaluation
- Sun™ Logical Domains
- Scalent Virtual Operating Environment (V/OE)
- Architecture Overview
- Hardware and Software Requirements
- Proof-of-Concept Architecture
- Installation Overview
- Controller Installation
- Client Configuration Options
- Disk-Booted Personas
- Using Solaris ZFS to provide NFS and iSCSI storage
- Installation for Network-Booted Linux Clients
- Linux: NFS-Booted System Configuration
- Linux: iSCSI-Booted System Configuration
- Installation for Solaris OS Clients
- Using Logical Domains (LDoms)
- Installation of Diskless Solaris Environment
- Installation for Windows Clients
- Windows Disk-Booted Systems
- Windows iSCSI Network-Booted Systems
- Summary
- About the Author
- Acknowledgements
- References
- Ordering Sun Documents
- Accessing Sun Documentation Online
- Appendix A: Supported Ethernet Switches
- Appendix B: Config_tftp Script
- Appendix C: Scalent V/OE Pre-Installation Checklist
- Appendix D: DHCP Manager Wizard
- Appendix E: Scalent Controller Installation
Jacques Bessoudo is part of the Systems Technical Marketing team and has worked on x64, SPARC and blades platforms. With Sun for eleven years, Jacques started as a telco- oriented Systems Engineer in the Mexico City sales office. He joined Technical Marketing with the Netra™ server group to support the field and sales development activities. He later joined the Competitive Intelligence group providing technical insight on competitive platforms and tracking/analyzing benchmark results, before moving to his current role.
The author would like to recognize Guy Laporte, Mahesh Natarajan, Ivan Bishop and David Morrison from Scalent for their contributions to this article.
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