h4.[Creating Self-Balancing Solutions with Solaris Containers !Main^download.gif!|http://www.sun.com/blueprints/0605/819-2888.pdf]
*by David Collier-Brown*
{excerpt}June, 2005{excerpt}
Transactions of some kind are an integral part of every organization, and must be completed on time if the business is to operate effectively and efficiently. Chaos, and damage, can be caused if critical transactions are not handled correctly. Today, IT managers often try to break workloads into chunks and process them with separate program instances in the hope that they can distribute the workload across the instances and keep pace with demand. This technique has its drawbacks. What happens when one instance fails to finish in time? Worse, what if the business is growing, and every month the number of lagging instances increases? How are system administrators supposed to figure out which instance is going to be late the next time?
System administrators need to find ways to balance workloads across computing resources. With Solaris 10, Solaris Containers were further enhanced to include a new facility, Solaris Zones, which can be used to create a virtual environment that enables the management of unbalanced load problems. This Sun BluePrints article presents several techniques for dealing with unexpected load changes, and provides best practices for employing Solaris Containers in this effort.
*by David Collier-Brown*
{excerpt}June, 2005{excerpt}
Transactions of some kind are an integral part of every organization, and must be completed on time if the business is to operate effectively and efficiently. Chaos, and damage, can be caused if critical transactions are not handled correctly. Today, IT managers often try to break workloads into chunks and process them with separate program instances in the hope that they can distribute the workload across the instances and keep pace with demand. This technique has its drawbacks. What happens when one instance fails to finish in time? Worse, what if the business is growing, and every month the number of lagging instances increases? How are system administrators supposed to figure out which instance is going to be late the next time?
System administrators need to find ways to balance workloads across computing resources. With Solaris 10, Solaris Containers were further enhanced to include a new facility, Solaris Zones, which can be used to create a virtual environment that enables the management of unbalanced load problems. This Sun BluePrints article presents several techniques for dealing with unexpected load changes, and provides best practices for employing Solaris Containers in this effort.