Utility computing is online today from Sun Microsystems

Utility computing is still finding its feet in the market. While many vendors debate roadmaps going forward, Sun Microsystems has already implemented products and solutions that make utility computing a reality today.

Utility computing powered by grid technology offers a world of new computing possibilities, especially for smaller end-users who do not require owned solutions. This new approach to provision computing resources is still finding its place in the market though, as solution providers test the waters in developing roadmaps.

Sun Microsystems, however, believes it has the models needed to make utility computing a reality. In fact, the company has already gone to market with utility computing solutions internationally.

Says Helen Constantinides, data centre and data management manager for Sun Microsystems: "Utility computing involves technologically complex grid computing technology. We believe the key to success for this model relies on making utility computing as simple as possible at the point of use, while basing it on standards, reliability in terms of availability and scalability, allowing users to only access and pay for as much computing power as they require."

This model creates a standards-compliant platform opening up utility computing to any sector of the market that should require it, with a metered-type pricing structure based on usage, driving economical benefits from a roadmap perspective.

Sun Microsystems has gone live with utility computing centres in America, Europe and Asia, bringing utility computing to these regions with a solution called 'Sun Grid Utility'.

"This solution makes it possible for anyone requiring access to grid computing for processor-intensive applications to hire resources from Sun remotely," says Constantinides. "With metered pricing, they will be charged at only $1 per hour, per CPU."

She explains that the solution is completely scalable as users can indicate how many CPUs are required, according to their processing needs.

"From the customer's perspective, this allows them a zero-barrier to entry and exit without having to invest in and manage their own solutions," says Constantinides. "We also offer storage facilities at these centres, charged at $1 per gigabyte, per month."

The company is currently investigating the need for such a centre in southern Africa. "We have not currently identified a demand in the market for such a facility," says Constantinides. "However, we are braced to bring this utility computing offering to Africa when and where it is needed as currently no such solution exists on the continent."

Other technologies from Sun bring managed grid computing solutions to established platforms. "One such technology is Sun NI Advanced Architecture (N1AA)," enthuses Constantinides. "This has been developed specifically for SAP applications and integrates with the SAP user interfaces. It is also SAP certified. What this does is take advantage of the fact that SAP deployments make use of several dedicated servers for testing, development, application serving and other requirements. Sun's solution allows these servers to be combined in a grid configuration when not being used, utilising their resources to run SAP jobs. This allows for jobs to completed in much less time.

Another solution is Sun's N1Service Provisioning system which automates application deployment. It simplifies application lifecycle management by rapidly provisioning business services across heterogeneous environments. Customers can provision the entire software stack, from operating system to application, from a single Web console. "The product is certified with many vendors, including Oracle database, Oracle applications and WebLogic," says Constantinides. "It can be used for automatic provisioning of applications and even patch management. A standard image is built for what the application environment should look like and these images can then be provisioned over the network or Internet, making it easy to setup systems and deploy applications and patches quickly. It can also be used for deploying tasks such as routine backups and others. Using this solution, grid networks can be deployed rapidly and easily."

Finally, the Sun Solaris operating system has inherent support for grid containers. Essentially, this technology allows for the utilisation of server resources with management and provisioning tools via user-implemented containers. "This makes resource provisioning quick and easy with logical resource partitions which can be managed via tools built directly into the operating system layer," concludes Constantinides.