N1--The Next Technology Revolution for the Data Center

What's so great about N1? N1 could just be the next evolutionary step to enter the data center since distributed computing. N1 would allow data center managers to do more with less and improve flexibility in the process. Traditional thinking says there is a one-to-one relationship between systems and applications. Systems are sized based on specific application requirements. All too often, this sizing exercise leads to major inefficiencies in both system utilization and the people required to manage them. With the advent of N1, the focus is taken off the fundamentals of sizing a system for an application. No longer will you need to allocate a single, or cluster, of systems for a single application.

The N1 concept requires a bit of a paradigm shift in traditional data center thinking. Traditionally, the CPU, or system, is the brain of the environment. Not so with N1. With N1, the application is the new leader of the computing environment. In the new paradigm, entire systems, CPUs, memory, disk storage and networks are all pooled resources that an application or service can provision on the fly. These resources may be physically located in a single system or spread across a geography or the Internet.

Now, while utilizing resources across geographies isn't exactly new stuff, what is new is that the application--or applications--can draw upon and share resources on the fly. Rule of thumb would also say that business-critical ERP, CRM and SFA applications rarely share resources to avoid conflict sharing of sub-systems. If they do share a resource, it's typically only a specific sub-system. Again, this leads to major resource inefficiencies. With N1, the applications are in control and able to dynamically allocate resources from the pool as needed.

Does this sound familiar? If you've been around the data center long enough to be exposed to centralized mainframe systems, it may. N1 brings the best of the centralized world with the best of the distributed computing world. But N1 also brings the intelligence to effectively manage this pool of disparate resources. This intelligence has been the Holy Grail that distributed computing has sought for years.

How efficiently and successful will the N1 architecture operate? That will be the proof in the pudding for Sun. But, even if N1 is only partially successful, it will become a huge win for data center managers looking for ways to streamline operations, improve resource flexibility and increase efficiencies of systems and administrators.

Still don't buy into the N1 architecture? Well, get ready, N1 is Sun's long-term vision for the future. Over the next two to three years, Sun plans to deploy three phases of N1. In 2002, phase one, virtualization will bring the aggregation of resources. Phase two, in 2003, will allow definition of services. And in 2004, phase three will provide automated policy setting of application service level objectives. Based on the number of deployed Sun systems in the field today, and projected numbers over the next few years, N1 is sure to be a strong contender in whatever form it ultimately takes.