Joyent

Technical Specifications

OS CPU bursting flexibility Delivering own applications on infrastructure RAM/CPU upgrades w/o downtime Simple hardware-based load Virtualization technology Scalable storage Easy migration to in-house
Amazon EC2
and S3		 Linux No No Not an option No Xen Yes No
Do-it-yourself Depends N/A Yes Must be using virtual-
ization tech.		 Large upfront invest-
ment		 Depends Large upfront invest-
ment		 Yes
GoDaddy Linux Windows No Yes No No None No No
Joyent
Accelerators		 Solaris Yes Yes Yes Yes Solaris
Zones		 Yes Yes
LayeredTech
GridLayer		 Linux No N/A Yes No None No No
Media
Temple Grid		 Linux N/A N/A Not an option Built-in None Maybe No
The Planet Linux No N/A No No None No No
Rackspace Linux Windows No N/A No No VMWare Yes No
ServerBeach Linux No N/A No No None No No

Accelerator Component Fabric

When you use Joyent Accelerators to power your application, you are running your application on the best infrastructure (servers, storage, routers, load balancers, spam prevention) available. Joyent technology integrates these components into a seamless fabric that can be used by customers on-demand. Here is a roster of the current technology, software and people behind Joyent Accelerators (subject to change for the better as technology improves):

Servers

AMD Dual-core and Intel Quad-core premium servers for Web/application and database tiers. Our servers are the workhorse of the Joyent Accelerator fabric. Customers that have deployed applications on single core white box servers in the past have been stunned when they see their application’s performance Joyent multi-core servers. Ruby applications, for example, scream.

The Sun Fire T1000 is an UltraSparc T1 (with CoolThreads) based server ideally suited for applications able to take advantage of massive parallelism. The processor’s 32 threads deliver massive, horizontal scalability to email servers, ejabber servers, and Web environments such as Java.

Storage

Sun Fire X4500 (aka “Thumper”) integrates state-of-the-art storage and server technologies into a single package. Capable of delivering sustained throughput of >2GB/second, Joyent manages more than 100 TB of data today using Sun Fire X4500. The fact that the storage runs the same operating system as the servers allows customer maximum flexibility in deployment of their accelerators. We have customers with Accelerators on their nearline X4500-based storage doing transformations (e.g. video format conversations) as data is written to disk. Further, the economics of Sun Fire X4500-based storage allows Joyent and customers to think in new ways about distribution, pricing, and applications that might have been cost-prohibitive in the past.

Routers and Switches

Joyent uses E-Series routers and switches from Force 10 for maximum throughput, redundancy and reliability. The E-Series line from Force 10 is the pioneer in resilient Gigabit and 10 Gigabit Ethernet switching and routing. The Force10 E-Series switch/routers provide best-in-class resiliency, unmatched scalability, line-rate performance, and full L2 switching and L3 routing. Based on revolutionary system architecture that combines fully distributed hardware and modular software, the E-Series switch/routers ensure predictable application performance, increase network availability.

Load Balancers

F5 Networks BIG-IP load balancers are used to provide the stunning performance for Ruby on Rails and other applications using Joyent Accelerators.

Spam

Tired of getting bombarded with the hot penny stock of the day? Ironport email security appliances provide Joyent Accelerator customers with best-of-class spam protection.

Data Centers

Joyent has Accelerator data centers in Emeryville, CA and San Diego, CA. These are carrier-grade data centers.

Team

Joyent Accelerators come with a team of system architects, system administrators, and system programmers that have run infrastructures with thousands of nodes. They are actively involved in the development of OpenSolaris, next-generation storage technologies, and Joyent’s management and ERP system that enables the great features Accelerators provide customers.

The Advantages of OpenSolaris

Joyent has been using OpenSolaris in production (now with more than 100 TB of data) since December, 2005. Previously we used a mix of FreeBSD and Ubuntu Linux. OpenSolaris is the only open source operating system that provides real-time observability, the Zetabyte file system (ZFS), mature scale on large multi-processor, multi-core systems, among many other benefits.

Real-time Observability

Real-time observability allows you and Joyent to see how your applications are running without the overhead of a measurement tool. This is accomplished through DTrace, the utility built into OpenSolaris that won the 2006 Wall Street Journal “Gold Medal” for technical achievement. Joyent has built on top of DTrace to provide real-time monitoring of the health and welfare of our customer Accelerators to ensure they are running with the right mix of resources. Joyent has worked with Sun to push beyond what DTrace provides and go deeper in managing customer Accelerators as resource “contracts” that can expand and contract base on predefined parameter.

ZFS

The Zettabyte file system (‘ZFS’) means customer data won’t be lost due to catastrophic hardware failure. It also allows Joyent to quickly clone Accelerators on an on-demand basis. And while crashes still happen, ZFS allows Joyent Accelerators to recover and come back on-line within a matter of seconds since file system checks after crashes are a thing of the past.

Mature on Multi-processor/core Systems

Solaris has been running on large scale multi-processor systems for over a decade. Solaris is the operating system at the key transit points of the world’s telecommunications infrastructure, and financial services operations. These are industries that require maturity in the operating system to deliver always-on solutions. Solaris has been able to address machines with 96+ processors and gobs of RAM for more than a decade. Solaris’ multi-core, RAM-rich capabilities are ideally suited for the newer breed of x64 and x86 multi-core architectures. The new multi-core processors are a cake walk.

Responsive Community

OpenSolaris is developed by a large community of contributors and Sun operating system engineers. Joyent Accelerator customers are able to take advantage of this heritage when deploying their own, next-generation, mission-critical applications on the Web.