As part of the comprehensive alliance between Amdahl and Sun Microsystems(R) announced in September 1993, Amdahl has extended SunSoft's Solaris operating environment to better meet the needs of the high-end commercial server market. Designed specifically for use with large-scale commercial applications, Amdahl's A+Edition system exploits the SPARC V8 multi-processor architecture optimizing Solaris's response time, capacity, and throughput on Sun's SPARCserver(TM) 1000s and SPARCcenter(TM) 2000s.
Customers' investments in Solaris application software are preserved, as the A+Edition system conforms to the Solaris system interfaces and associated industry standards. Amdahl and Sun(Tm) have jointly analyzed the architecture of the extensions for conformity with Solaris Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). These extensions maintain Application Binary Interface (ABI) compatibility with the existing Solaris Enterprise Server environment; this requirement has been rigorously tested by both companies.
The A+Edition systems software brings data center values and functionality to the distributed computing environment by capitalizing on Amdahl's more than 20 years of experience in the data center and more than 13 years of experience in Open Systems. Together as suppliers of information systems from the desktop to the data center, Amdahl and Sun can provide commercial customers a single source for mission-critical, distributed environments incorporating high-end SPARC servers.
A+Edition systems software is built specifically to the hardware architecture of the SPARCserver 1000 and SPARCcenter 2000. Amdahl's approach to performance is complementary to SunSoft's: SunSoft focuses on performance improvements that apply across all their supported platforms, and Amdahl focuses on maximizing performance on commercial workloads on the specific high-end hardware architecture.
Amdahl's analysis of Solaris performance uses commercial workload models (developed through 20 years of software performance analysis to design S/390 hardware) that extends down to the specific CPU architecture. To achieve its improvements, Amdahl performed instruction and memory-access level analysis on the Sun 4D architecture (the combination of chip, cache, and bus designs that are the basis of the high-performance SPARCserver 1000 and SPARCcenter 2000 systems).
A+Edition systems software demonstrates improved multi-processor efficiency (i.e., the MP factor) for additional CPUs over that observed for Solaris 2.3. This efficient MP behavior provides consistent and uniform levels of throughput in high-MP, high-load environments. Therefore, customers gain performance growth as their MP configurations grow, and they avoid sudden performance degradation in overload situations. A+Edition software has demonstrated superior or equal system performance in all benchmark environments measured relative to the native Solaris 2.3.
A+Edition software provides cost-effective solutions for system growth: Because it makes larger multi-processor configurations practical, capacity can be added through system boards and CPUs instead of requiring entire new systems; avoiding the installation of additional systems saves costs in new hardware purchases (including additional I/O and network capacity), additional software, more complex administration, and other operational costs.
While preserving Solaris's client/server environment advantages, the A+Edition enhancements bring significant increases in throughput to multi-user, high-MP, high-load environments typical of large data centers. This enhances the competitiveness of SPARC solutions in large-scale commercial environments.
Detailed performance analysis information is available from Amdahl.
Third-party software products and third-party hardware peripherals that are supported on Solaris 2.3 are supported without modification on A+Edition, which is designed to leave the Solaris 2.x ABI (Application Binary Interfaces), API (Application Programming Interfaces), and peripheral interfaces unmodified.
Amdahl and Sun have tested A+Edition extensions for Solaris compatibility. Testing includes both formal interface verification and execution of user applications and middleware. The A+Edition APIs are tested with a wide variety of test suites including XPG4, POSIX, and SVVS to verify exact conformance with Solaris 2.3 APIs. Programs written to previous releases of Solaris will also run unmodified unless they use obsoleted libraries (e.g., NeWS). Application and middleware testing uses many different critical software applications including compilers, RDBMSs, object oriented systems, publication software, etc.
A+Edition extensions improve the authentication of network file transfers. File Transfer Protocol (FTP) authentication enhancements do an additional access check of account and password expiration in the FTP daemon, making the checks consistent with other Solaris login commands.
In addition to the application and standards verification of Solaris to confirm compatibility with third party and customer-written applications, the A+Edition system is extensively tested to verify that it meets large-scale commercial workload requirements. Amdahl also uses a series of regression testing suites to confirm functionality completeness and maintenance consistency.
Added error logging improves serviceability and reduces system repair time. Amdahl has added a general-purpose event-logging facility used to record a variety of hardware and software errors and events, increasing the serviceability of the system. In the first release of A+Edition system, 15 classes of events are logged; more will be included in future versions. Hardware and software repair is simplified by reference to the dedicated log, which contains detailed failure information not appropriate to the system log. System administrators can observe system reliability and availability trends through the error log reports and take corrective actions.
The A+UniTree (TM)hierarchical storage manager and A+USER Access(TM) back-up system are components of Amdahl's Enterprise File Manager(TM) offering, an integrated set of tools designed to centrally manage data across distributed environments. A+UniTree software, the company's data- center quality implementation of UniTree Hierarchical Storage Management technology, provides enterprise-wide file system administration. A+User Access software is an automated back-up management and scheduling facility that backs up desktops or servers to more secure and less expensive tape media.
Future A+Edition releases are planned which will continue to provide performance improvements focused on large commercial workloads.
Future A+Edition releases will continue the evolution of Solaris toward greater availability and serviceability.
Amdahl has identified and is actively developing subsequent improvements to make Solaris meet large-scale commercial security requirements, including single sign-on, system entry controls, and session management.
Amdahl intends to offer additional A+ products that will provide value-added features essential for mission-critical commercial applications.
Packaging and installation are simple and familiar, representing a natural extension of the customer's experience with Solaris. The A+Edition software is supplied on CD-ROM with the complete infrastructure for automatic installation, upgrade, and configuration management. The systems administrator installs A+Edition CD-ROM in the same manner as standard Solaris.
As an option, Amdahl offers a fee-based service to perform this installation.
Within Amdahl's service offerings, customers can receive:
These benefits are delivered by Amdahl Worldwide Customer Support Centers and other Amdahl Customer Support organizations, which have a 20-year history of outstanding services performance for the world's premier users of information technology. This history of services performance, combined with the comprehensive services infrastructure that Amdahl has developed, means that customers receive exceptional value when choosing any level of Amdahl services support.
Amdahl's Customer Services organization provides a portfolio of services including focused consulting and integration support during all phases of the customer's client/server implementation. These services include:
Amdahl uses proven tools and methodologies in the delivery of these services, including the OPENframework methodology, which is used worldwide in the delivery of open systems integration services.
The Amdahl Education organization offers a variety of classroom and computer-based training on Client/Server, Networking, and Open Systems topics.