Sun Introduces N1 Architecture, Looks To Manage Networks As A Single System

Sun Microsystems

N1 is Sun's vision of how widely distributed computing resources--including servers, storage, software and networking--can be virtualized and managed as a single system, said Steve MacKay, vice president of N1.

Solution providers can expect to see the first parts of the N1 architecture later this year as Sun introduces blade servers with N1 awareness built in, said Adam Hawley, group manager of N1 product marketing.

MacKay said most of today's networks were built to accommodate peak loads and as a result are underutilized, whether in terms of server utilization, number of administrators, number of servers per administrator, number of Tbytes of storage per administrator, and so on.

And since most of these networks are built to provide specific services, any upgrades can result in a lot of work or even the ripping up of the related infrastructure, MacKay said.

Instead, Sun wants to turn all the systems in a network into components of a single system via virtualization, said MacKay. "Sun has been saying that the network is the computer," he said. "It still is. N1 is the computer built out of the network. The network is the system, and the computers, storage, etc., are now components. You start managing that system, and not the components."

The N1 architecture consists of four parts, MacKay said. First are the foundation resources, including servers, storage and blade servers. He said these are not ripped out to build N1, but instead can be used without modification. However, over time, Sun plans to make these components N1-aware.

The second part is virtualization, which creates flexible pools of resources. Sun plans to unveil a virtualization engine that can be used to treat servers as a single pool of computing power, while storage virtualization will be handled in part by technology gained through the acquisition Thursday of Pirus Networks, a storage virtualization developer.

The third part is provisioning, which allows services to be provisioned to the pools of resources, not to specific servers, MacKay said. The fourth is telemetry, which allows setting of policies to manage the services, not the individual components.

In a demonstration, a Sun employee set up a service to sell books online. Instead of grabbing server and storage resources and then building the service on top of what was available, the employee first answered a series of questions about required average lookup time, average buy time, charge back costs for the infrastructure, and other service-level information.

Based on this information, the N1 demo software immediately created a logical map of the services infrastructure for approval. Once approved, the application automatically provisioned the service to the network, grabbing the amount of resources needed to give the specific quality of service as determined by the employee.

Such a system can also be used to upgrade services, or build services for later deployment, MacKay said. "This is all handled by the service owners," he said. "There is no need for interaction from IT."

The difference between N1 and traditional network infrastructures is that under N1, a single system is managed instead of individual boxes, MacKay said. Deployment is dynamic under N1, and accounting is done according to the service and not according to the number of boxes used, he said.

N1 is expected to be rolled out in three phases, Hawley said. Solution providers will be able to participate in N1 from the beginning, he said.

In phase one, slated to begin by year-end, virtualization engines for servers and storage will become available to start virtualizing the network elements. Hawley said to expect this to happen in two ways. First, along with a new series of blade servers to be announced by year-end, Sun will offer a blade server bundled with the virtualization engine to manage 10s of blades. Sun probably also will offer software for customers who do not wish to buy the blade, he said.

Under phase two, planned to start next year, administrators will be able to specify the business service definition for services, with N1 automatically handling the provisioning.

Phase three, which allows policies to be automated, is expected to begin in 2004.