Where Were They?

Last updated: Tue, 08 May 2007 17:34:00 GMT

Where were they six months ago, when I needed them?

So, I'm sitting there at my desk, (new desk, new job,) and my comrade in systems administration, Paul, is on the phone. This guy comes up, and I don't really know who anyone is yet, but he's got a snappy suit, and asks "I'm in need of some Solaris advice, are you certified?"

I reply in the negative, and he dismisses me with a "I really need to talk to someone who's certified on Solaris 10." I protest, he says something about how it's not important to him; more that the client needs to know that the info came from a certified blah blah blah. Fair enough.

We wait, we chat.

Paul gets off the phone and the guy dives in. Yes, Paul is a certified Solaris sysadmin. Yes, he's done the Solaris 10 courses recently. "So, how much do you know about zones? Are zones included in the syllabus?"

"No," Paul says, "well, a little, but not much. You want to talk to this guy, he's the zone man."

Aw, shucks. Thanks, dude.

So now we're talking to me again. This guy's putting a big bid together, consolidating a lot of machines into a few biiig ones, and is proposing Solaris 10 and zones. What do I think? How well do I think it'll scale in terms of TCO, all things being equal, compared to a wider spread of smaller, physical machines?

Well, I've made no secret of it... A year ago, it was still was bloody painful, and I had spent a lot of time working around holes, losing confidence, losing sleep. The situation has improved, dramatically, and a lot of the work I've been doing recently is undoing the hacks I had to put in place so long ago. I don't think he'll see any reduction in time spent administering N zones on one big box over administering N boxes, but his box-monkey will sweat less. And his hardware will be much better utilised. For obvious reasons, I'm excited, and I'd go the way he wants to go. I express a desire to be involved.

"So, what experience do you have with zones? Have you used them in a production environment?"

Why, yes, sir. Yes I have. I sell them, sir. Have been since they were there to sell.

He liked that. Sell them, by Jove!

In the past week, literally, I've seen a sea-change in the type of customer asking about SparseZone zones. All of a sudden, real commercial interest. I hesitate to say that I knew this would happen, because it's easy to invent that cooler, wiser you that could foretell your now. But I hoped it would.

While I hoped it would, though, I obviously couldn't read the future that accurately, because these guys are all six months too late. I needed them last year, when I was trying to persuade any number of people that zones were just about to get hot, that there were people with dedicated 1U Sun boxes dotted around that really didn't need a whole machine to achieve their ends. Who were just waiting for the technology to settle enough that they'd trust it with their income.

Well, here they come.

Here they come, and I'm still here, waiting. But if I'd really known that they were coming, I might have baked a bigger cake.

Better late than never, eh?