I am in the midst of a refresh of our training facility. We do backup software training on both Windows and Solaris (Sparc) environments using both SAN and LAN.
I could upgrade our Sun Blade workstations (more RAM, new OS, new HBA) and get decent performance. I already tested the upgrades and it all seems to work, but it doesn't break any speed records. Or... I could set up Solaris 10 zones in a couple of fat boxes and map the SAN resources into the guest machines. I already tested this configuration and it seems to work well too. It seems like I actually get somewhat better performance on the virtualized environment, and it cuts down on power consumption in the classroom. Either way you get a private Solaris desktop via Cygwin/X and both private and shared backup devices via a VTL. So, given that the training is more about the backup software than it is dealing with raw SAN mappings do you mind doing training on a VM? Running in a zone means you don't have direct access to the SAN device mappings and there may be some value in dealing with them. Is there some other Zone-SAN gotcha I have yet to discover? Also - thumbs up for zones on Solaris 10. So far I have been pleasantly surprised. Jake Mohnkern Cambridge Computer Services
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