Title :
Quantitative RAS Comparison of Sun CMT/Solaris and X86/Linux Servers
Author :
Tang, Dong ; Bryson, William
Author_Institution :
Syst. Group, Sun Microsyst., Inc., Santa Clara, CA, USA
Abstract :
By incorporating the chip multi-threading (CMT) and operating system predictive self-healing technologies, the Sun CMT/Solaris based servers are not only cost/performance effective, but also more robust in reliability, availability, and serviceability (RAS) than the X86/Linux servers with similar performance. The differentiators include higher levels of hardware integration, more fault tolerance provisions in processors, the Solaris memory page retirement (MPR), and the Solaris/SPARC processor offlining (PO) capabilities of the CMT/Solaris server. This study applies analytical models, with parameters calibrated by field experience, to quantitatively compare system RAS, against hardware faults, between the CMT/Solaris and X86/Linux servers. The results show significant RAS benefits of the CMT, MPR, and PO technologies.
Keywords :
Linux; fault tolerant computing; multi-threading; software reliability; Solaris memory page retirement; X86-Linux servers; chip multithreading; fault tolerance provisions; hardware integration; operating system; processor offlining; quantitative RAS comparison; reliability availability and serviceability; sun CMT-Solaris; Analytical models; Availability; Costs; Fault tolerance; Hardware; Linux; Operating systems; Retirement; Robustness; Sun; Availability; Chip Multithreading; RAS Modeling; Reliability; Self-Healing; Serviceability;
Conference_Titel :
Dependable Computing, 2009. PRDC '09. 15th IEEE Pacific Rim International Symposium on
Conference_Location :
Shanghai
Print_ISBN :
978-0-7695-3849-5
DOI :
10.1109/PRDC.2009.56
