At Sun's Service Management Launch this week at its Santa Clara, Calif., campus, Zander will announce technological advancements in the company's server clustering and management software. Specifically, he will introduce Sun Cluster Version 3.0, which uses and extends the high availability and scalability of the Solaris operating environment, according to sources. It currently scales up to 256 processors in a cluster, which is enough to handle growing numbers of simultaneous users and access to large data bases.
Users can also add or remove nodes while online and mix and match servers to meet their needs.
Zander will also introduce Sun Management Center Version 3.0, which offers a single point of management for all Sun servers, desktops, storage systems, the Solaris operating environment, applications and data center services, sources said. The software will be generally available for customers within the next few weeks. Sun's goal, sources say, is to eliminate the complexity around clustering. One of its forthcoming innovations will be the ability to install an application once and then run it anywhere on the cluster, across any combination of nodes, without bringing down the system. Those sources say Sun is responding to customer frustration and annoyance at the length of time needed to load and manage the complex software required for effective scalability and maximum uptime.