Sun-built Platform Geared for Growth

A robust launch pad for growth - that's what internet service provider Xsinet got when it recently installed a Sun Solaris10 platform on the advice of Breakpoint Solutions, a certified Sun reseller.

Xsinet Managing Director David le Roux is convinced he made the right choice. "We're phasing in the implementation because we didn't want to disrupt the service to our 60 000 customers, but the performance improvement is already about 80%."

Xsinet invested in five Sun Microsystems 64-bit AMD Opteron-based servers and two UltraSCSI StorEdge 3310 storage arrays as part of a redundant architecture. This replaced a mix of IBM and Sun systems that had grown organically with the company during its six years of operation.

Once this complex implementation is complete, and Xsinet is confident all the data housed in its legacy systems has been successfully imported, the installation of Sun's Java Enterprise System will begin. This will put in place software to support the significant growth in customers before year-end, Le Roux predicts.

"I had to look to our future when evaluating what platform to put in place. Our team is familiar with open-source systems and the very persuasive arguments expressed about its benefits," explains Le Roux.

"But I'm hesitant about open-source systems that grow organically and according to the style of the developer. Few of these types of developers document what they've done and, when they leave, it makes it incredibly difficult for successors to understand how the applications have been built. There is no standardisation and the system becomes an expensive nightmare to maintain. We're too small an organisation to carry that risk in system maintenance."

Xsinet asked for advice from both its hardware suppliers and was convinced, after six weeks of working with Solaris 10, that it offered the most robust, scalable and reliable platform for its needs.

Le Roux says Breakpoint Solutions proposed a choice of options to support Xsinet's business strategy and each was thoroughly debated to ensure the company made the correct decision.

In addition, Xsinet was impressed with Breakpoint's level of understanding of the business's needs and commitment to being part of a successful solution. Le Roux says he was also assured that ongoing support from Breakpoint Solutions - backed by Sun Microsystems - would always be available.

The Solaris platform's lean demands on IT skills will enable Xsinet to grow its business while keeping its IT headcount low.

Le Roux says cost-efficient management of overheads is essential to an ISP's profitability and many of the features of Solaris 10 are automated, leaving Xsinet's IT staff to focus on being proactive to bottlenecks and interrogating problems.

Of particular interest to Xsinet, says Breakpoint Solutions' Robert Upton, are some of the new features provided by Solaris 10, and in particular DTrace, Grid Containers and Predictive Self Healing.

DTrace is an integrated real-time tool for performance analysis and diagnosis. This provides granular kernel and application monitoring capabilities, and can be used on a live production system. It contains integrated event management and scripting capabilities and can deliver detailed information about the operation for performance analysis and application debugging. Another major new feature that comes with Solaris 10 is Grid Containers. Upton says this offers the advantage of multiple separate virtual operating systems images while maintaining a single operating system to manage.

"Containers create a private, isolated execution space for each application within the context of a single master operating system instance, each with its own local variables and proxy copies of global variables, IP address, security permissions and file system view." An additional advantage is Solaris 10's predictive self-healing, a major improvement in error detection and recovery. Sun now implements a flexible framework for setting error thresholds for CPU memory and disk, and can then trigger automated responses, including migration of process and data away from the suspect resource.