Sun’s Jim Grisanzio interviews Chad Mynhier, the first outside contributor of DTrace code.
Tag Archives: Sun Microsystems
My New Baby
Isn’t it gorgeous? It’s my very own Thumper, aka Sun Fire X4500 Server.
Jeff Cheeney and I (and whoever we can rope in to help) are going to make it into a video compression/archive/streaming server. (Before you start worrying about budget, don’t: this one is rebuilt and didn’t cost us anywhere near sticker price.)
Why do I need such a thing? Take a look:
I’ve shot over 100 hours of video since I began videoblogging for Sun about a year ago, and much more is on the way. I haven’t edited even half of it, partly because I’m doing all the editing and compression a Windows laptop which I also have to use for all my other work. So it would be useful to be able to offload some of the processing onto a different machine, one that can also archive and share the results.
This is also a learning exercise, to see what we can do with all this cool technology we have around, similar to the project that Jeff and Chase distilled into a ten-minute recipe for building a NAS box. Similar also to Dominic’s new recipe series, which began recently with Configuring Sun Storage J4000 Arrays and the ZFS File System in Ten Minutes.
It will probably take some months of poking around and figuring things out, and we’re not entirely sure we’ll be able to boil this one down to “Build a Video Archive/Server in 10 Minutes” – but that’s what we’re trying for. We’ll keep you posted!
Inside Sun IEC
In my visits to various Sun campuses, I enjoy comparing and contrasting Sun lifestyles worldwide.
Sun’s India Engineering Center (IEC) occupies most of the Divya Shree Chambers building off Langford Road in Bangalore. Lunch (always a major preoccupation with me) is provided at the 5th-floor canteen, which gets very crowded around 12:45. There’s a buffet of Indian food for Rs. 25 (about 60 cents US)…
or you can order a wide selection of vegetarian sandwiches and fresh fruit, including a fruit chaat plate – diced seasonal fruit lightly seasoned with spices (so lightly, in fact, that I couldn’t really detect the spices over the amazing flavors of the fruit itself).
This is mango season, so I’ve been eating mangoes every chance I get. The poor, pale things we get in the US and Europe are only very distant reminders of what a really good mango can be. Makes coming to India in the hot season worthwhile!
To give you an idea, this is a selection of three different types of mangoes that I bought in Delhi, including the famous Alfonsos (yellow, in front). The large yellow thing on the right is a papaya, the stripey things are melons.
The Sun break rooms have a great selection of teas, including elaichi (cardamom), masala (what Americans call chai spice), and ginger. Plus a selection of other hot drinks – cocoa, instant coffee, and flavored mixes that I haven’t quite understood yet.
There’s a machine dispensing hot water and hot milk to mix these with. There is also brewed coffee, brewed south Indian style. Umm… Sorry, I’m not a coffee snob, but i just can’t get used to this stuff. I’ll make do with instant.
As with most establishments of any sort in India, Sun’s offices have a lot of support staff – labor is cheap here, and people need jobs. There are men in the break rooms to brew the coffee, ensure constant supplies of everything, and wash the cups (a much more eco-friendly practice than the disposable ones used at US offices). They also come around periodically to collect cups that people have carried back to their desks. All the work areas get thoroughly dusted every morning before people arrive (I know because I arrived early yesterday). This is in sharp contrast to Broomfield, where I have to dust my desk every time I go back there.
Visiting Sun Bangalore
After seeing my daughter graduate from Woodstock School last week, this week I’m visiting Sun’s engineering center in Bangalore, to meet colleagues – and film them!
I haven’t been to Bangalore since 1980, when it was a sleepy little town. No more! The ride in from the new airport (just opened last week) took an hour and a half, the first part of it very fast on a brand-new six-lane highway. Then we hit city traffic…
Continue reading Visiting Sun Bangalore
Peter Buckingham on COMSTAR
CommunityOne, May 2008. Filmed and edited by me.