Java Virtualization for Server Consolidation

Steve Wilson writes "Cassatt Corporation has released new software that enables administrators with large J2EE farms to much more efficiently use their resources. In order to do this, it leverages the virtualization capabilities inherent in the JVM to create a single shared pool of hardware resources which which all J2EE applications can draw."

Sweet

[AnonymousPrick]

So, if a program is bogging down because of lack of machine resources, this software will move it to another machine - sweet! But, I guess, it will only work if Cassatt supports that platform? In other words, if I happen to have a SUN machine on my network of primarily Windows boxes, could it move it to that, or any other platform? I can't find anything that mentions this in the links.

VMWare rocks

[guyjr]

What exactly does this do that VMWare [vmware.com] doesn't already do, and do better?

Re:TBH

[Debiant]

I think the point is that it works on linux and windows, instead of just unix. It's not just question about Jave but platform too.

The article, or the link from it, says question is about offering cheaper alternative to server virtualiazation. And refers to linux and Windows, which leaves unix as 'expensive'.

My understanding unix rocks with clusters and similar , linux and windows far less.

So the logic must be that it's cheaper to build linux or Windows virtualization system that scales than one from unixes.
That's the point, I'd wager.

100k

[FatherOfONe]

100k for 40 servers. 100k will buy quite a bit of hardware. It would be better if they showed how they have saved companies money, and not just thrown out some stats, like they have seen a consolidation of 5 servers down to 1.

Using Java's Built in VM Functionality == $$$

[theJML]

Cassatt's control software costs about $100,000 for a 40-server pool. Adding the Web Automation Module increases the cost by about $5,000 per server, the company said.
Ok, so I can run java apps that save me lots of money on server hardware... for $100,000. unless I want to spend an extra $5,000 per server (bringing the total up to $300,000). So how is this going to save me money? I mean, I could by a whole bunch of 1U Dell P4 servers each valued at about $2k a piece. 40 of those would be only 80 grand. Now, I'm pretty sure that I pay my adminstrators so they can make an informed decision on grouping two or three services on a machine where it makes sense (like dns resolution and dhcp serving) and instantly save me a few machines there. And how many of my mission critical resource poor services are executed in Java? This seems like a huge waste of money to me. Besides how hard could this have been to come up with.. I mean, Java is running IN A VM in the first place. run an identical VM on another machine, add a little code to allow transfering of processes between VMs and you've got it. I'm sure it's got some tricky aspects, but is it that hard that it'll cost $300,000 to do? Something's fishy here...

ARGH LEVERAGES

[MarkPNeyer]

PLEASE stop using that word. It's not right.

what the hell does that mean

[boxlight]

"Java Virtualization for Server Consolidation"

These are english words, but I have no idea what they mean. Does it have anything to do with "customer-centric e-solutions in web-time"?

Actually

[SuperKendall]

I mean I haven't heard of any recent Java rollouts among major businesses.

That's because it's so common now it's not news. News is when they use something other than Java.

Hence the need for virtualization as every large company has thousands of Java applications, many of which could easily be combined onto a server with other programs (as they do not really need much in the way of resources) the virtualizing thing just makes that easier by keeping them a little more isolated.

Re:VMWare rocks

[n0-0p]

Wow, you got an insightful mod when you didn't even understand the problem. The irony is overwhelming. Anyway, this really addresses a completely different problem than VMWare. It fits much more into the realm of distributed computing than virtualization. However, the JVM provides a *virtualized* platform that makes it easy to *distribute* the processing efficiently.

So, back to the VMWare thing, yes I suppose you could hack a cluster of ESX servers up to do this. Of course you would have all of the overhead that VMWare needs to introduce. This includes the host OS, world switch and priveleged instruction emulation overhead, guest os, and application image. On top of that, you would have to shovel images around your cluster to make it work so bandwidth would be a nuisance. You would also be severely limited in how dynamically you could reassign resources, given the requirements of the guest OS. And you would of course be restricted to x86 architectures, which may or may not be an issue.

So you could do it, but boy would it be dumb.

Cheap hardware ain't cheap

[WilsonSD]

I'm so glad you asked this. Hardware is cheap to buy, but really expensive to run and maintain. Thing about all the costs:

Power (which Google now says costs them more than hardware)
A/C
Administration
Maintainance
Support
Software licenses (and J2EE servers like BEA aren't cheap)

We did an analysis with one of our customers on their costs. Each box (for a 2 CPU linux box) costs over $100,000 during it's three-year lifetime.

Steve Wilson
Cassatt Corporation

If they...

[tehaxer]

If they managed to make it relatively transparent it'd be neat, but there are probably all sorts of limits on the type of classes and such that can run on the virtualization layer (which covers multiple pieces of hardware, no?), like that they be serializable and implement some special form of runnable... If that's the case, I'd expect to find this at sourceforge for free =].

Re:If they...

[WilsonSD]

There are no APIs for the system, and you don't have to modify your code to work with it. If it runs in Weblogic (other app servers coming soon) then it will work with Cassatt. The only changes are to the deployment descriptors and Cassatt makes those changes for you automatically.

-Steve

Steve Wilson
Cassatt Corporation