JVM Appliance

[robert]

Hi all

Are there any plans for an appliance based on a JVM such as the VMware JRockit Appliance?

See http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/11/bea_virtualizaiton/

The benefit here is that for Java people there is no operating system such as Linux. Just the JVM talking directly to the hardware (Applogic in this case). The Sun JVM is the most likely port but the IBM JVM would run a close second.

Regards

Robert

[PeterNic]

Robert,

Excellent suggestion. We can install JVM in an appliance easily. We will need our users to help define a good boundary for it -- where to place the user code, what properties and terminals to have, so that the appliance will be more useful than just a server-with-JVM-on-it. For example, would the WEB appliance boundary will be appropriate for a JVM appliance? How much tweaking options would you need to have (JVM's have tons of switches, just like apache...)

Regarding JVM directly on hardware (well, virtual hardware :) ) -- I was just at the Xen Summit in Santa Clara... my understanding is that this is an ongoing work for Sun and IBM. For now, we can use the OS-based JVMs -- for applications the transition should be invisible, right?

Regards,
-- Peter

[robert]

Peter,

Transitioning from an OS Based JVM to a Virtualised JVM should be pretty easy unless the Java code calls native libraries via JNI. So in the majority of cases it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

As for the boundaries, Java is often used as an integration platform, sometimes via some kind of Enterprise Service Bus and/or a number of J2EE Adapters such as a SAP adapter. So the WEB appliance boundary may not be appropriate. I would use a fairly minimal Linux install with only the services required by the JVM (.e.g. no apache as most application servers have this built in). Also some applications are JVM specific so you might find yourself publishing a JVM specific appliance or an appliance with lots of different JVMs.

I have yet to view the making an appliance webex session but once I look at this I might be able to offer a more informed view on how a JVM appliance can be made.

Regards

Robert

[robert]

Peter,

Had a look at some of the Webex sessions and doco last night. Looks like the LUX appliance would be a good starting point. But services such as cron would not need to be turned on (or even installed) as the JVM (as I understand it) does not use services such as this. Also J2EE Servers (such as JBoss) which use the JVM contain a Web and EJB container and may live in the DMZ as a web server. This means that the LUX install would need to be hardened against attack. Also I noticed that there is a JBoss appliance being built by 3tera at the moment. Do you have any more information on this?

Regards

Robert

[PeterNic]

Robert,

LUX is already quite tight. You can easily disable the cron service (I believe we keep it only for the log rotation now); we have stripped things like sendmail and many others.

We also recommend putting most appliances behind a firewall/gateway (IN or INSSL), although it is entirely possible to expose a public network interface directly (our GSC templates have direct interfaces and use iptables internally).

If you need any help on modifying the LUX appliance to harden it, let us know.

On the JBOSS side: we have helped a few customers set up JBOSS appliances, essentially helping them build either a singleton or a catalog class appliance. We don't have one that we have included in the catalog at the moment. If you want to do it, our support engineers can help.

Are you using JBOSS or only JVM for POJO? I'll be happy to set up a short conference call with webex and discuss possible uses and how a JBOSS/JVM appliance should look like. There are only a limited number of appliances that we can maintain in our system catalog and we want to have them be really good and usable.

Regards,
-- Peter

[robert]

Peter

The JBoss appliance I was refering to is mentioned here

http://doc.3tera.net/AppLogic2/PlannedAppliances.html

But there is not much information on this future appliance. Any more information would be usefull as we are looking at building a Weblogic appliance and any more detailed doco on the JBoss appliance might help us with decisions like what properties to expose at the surface of the appliance.

Regards

Robert

[PeterNic]

Robert, the JBOSS appliance is on the wishlist; we have some thoughts on a simple boundary -- really very similar to the WEB appliance, where the .war and .ear files are simply dropped in a NAS appliance connected to the 'fs' output. We have a few customers who we have helped build their own JBOSS appliances and I don't recall that they needed anything special (no properties, etc.).

If you like to discuss, please PM me and we can set up a call/webex session to brainstorm on this -- or we can do it here.

Regards,
-- Peter