Join the Sun Startup Essentials team us as we host the 5^th Digital Living Room Summit and Venture Forum on Tuesday, December 15 at our Santa Clara auditorium, produced in association with iHollywood Forum. Sun Startup Essentials members: Get 20% off until December 4th. Contact: startupteam@sun.com to get the discount code. 

As we head into 2010, many of the promises of previous years are becoming reality: Internet-enabled television; HD, iTV and soon 3D TV, networked game consoles and subscripion VOD, to name just a few. But many critical questions remain: which technologies will succeed? What will the adoption curve and price points look like?

That's why the fifth annual Digital Living Room, Dec. 15 in Santa Clara, CA, should be on your calendar.  One of the oldest conferences about the future of home entertainment, this year's Digital Living Room focuses on 2010 and the technologies most likely to transform consumer experience next year. Why wait for CES when you can get a jump on networking and intelligence-gathering now?

Here's some of what you'll learn about:

• The arrival of 3D television
• Social TV.
• Networked games
• The connected home
• Cloud computing and the living room
• New paradigms for VOD
• Analyst projections for 2010

Hear from visionaries like Bill Binenstock, Vice President and Manager, CBS.com; Brad McManus, Director of Investments, Panasonic; Tushar Saxena, Director of Home Networking Technologies, Verizon Communications; plus top executives from Playstation, EpixHD, Sun, Intel and many more. Plus, you'll get to network and make deals with these people in an intimate environment you'll never find at CES.

For just 48 hours, take advantage of a special rate available of as low as $150 for a basic ticket. Buy a Deluxe ticket for $195 and get a free ticket to our kickoff party in San Francisco on Dec.14 at Blumberg Capital. Register at www.digitallivingroom.eventbrite.com.

Are you an entrepreneur or venture capitalist? Consider joining us for the DLR Venture Forum, a unique platform to pitch for funds and demo your product. To apply, please send an email to zahava@ihollywoodforum.com.  For information, call 310.736.4133 or email host Michael Stroud at michael@ihollywoodforum.com. 

This is a posting by Hermione way, from Techfluff.TV one of Sun's Startup Essentials Partners

Find Hermione on Twitter at @hermioneway or presenting http://techfluff.tv/

A comprehensive networking list for any startup, that can help determine where to focus your networking time and energy.

Organizations:

Microsoft Bizpark: A program that provides Software, Support and Visibility for Software Startups. In the UK, Bindi Karia is the woman you want to speak to.

Sun Microsystems: Get discounted servers, open source and discounted software free technical expertise and more, free to join and the man you’re after, the man with the most colorful shirts in London is Stewart Townsend.

SeedCamp:  At Seedcamp, they believe Europe has the talent, the role models, and the capital founders needed to succeed.  Reshma Sohoni is  CEO and here is the Seedcamp twitter account.

NACUE: The National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs is a national organization that supports and represents university enterprise societies and student entrepreneurs to drive the growth of entrepreneurship across the UK. They also run a funding process. Victoria Lennox is at the helm. NACUE Twitter account and here is Victoria’s

CmyPitch: cmypitch.com offers free online services for small to mid-sized firms / entrepreneurs. Get supplier quotes, pitch for funding, watch videos. cmypitch Twitter account.

Smarta: Smarta founded by entrepreneur Shaa Wasmund is a new support platform for business owners and entrepreneurs. Our aim is to provide a one-stop-shop where business owners can connect, learn and actually *do* business. Here’s the Smarta Twitter account.

Angel’s Den: Angels Den offers a service for two types of people: those who are trying to obtain business funding and small business finance – and those private investors (the business angels) looking for exciting business ideas to invest in. Startups pay a fee to join. Angel’s Den Twitter and the man behind it all is Bill Morrow

MakeYourMark: The campaign is run by Enterprise Insight, which was founded by the four leading UK business membership organizations – the British Chambers of Commerce, the CBI, the Federation of Small Businesses and the Institute of Directors. Their Director Generals sit on Enterprise Insight’s board, which is chaired by entrepreneur Peter Jones. Enterprise Insight is supported by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and is endorsed by the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown.Alongside the Make Your Mark campaign, Enterprise Insight runs:Global Entrepreneurship Week.

Make your mark Twitter

Entrepreneur’s World: is a membership-only organization offering a unique environment where entrepreneurs have stimulating interactions with like-minded business leaders and investors; share experiences; exchange advice; are inspired and collaborate in relaxed, informal environments. with an application criteria of a minimum company annual turnover of £1 million. Ivor Tucker is the founder, I don’t want to give his email so hed to the site to contact him.

School for Startups: The inspiration of serial entrepreneur and angel investor Doug Richard, School for Startups is the UK’s leading provider of business training for entrepreneurs. We provide expert tuition on the critical issues entrepreneurs need to understand, including how to start a business, finance and investment, product management, managing successful teams and entrepreneurial marketing. Schoolforstartups Twitter

Up North

Entrepreneur’s Forum: Encouraging a culture of enterprise and entrepreneurship within the North East. Was established in 2002 by a group of the North East’s leading entrepreneurs.

Growth Investment Network East Midlands: ‘We’ve got the network of East Midlands people you should know if you want to take your business successfully to the next level’. Toby Ried is behind it all, I don’t want to give out his email so i’ll update when I find out his linkedIn.

Startup 2.0: Founded in 2006 with the help of KPMG, Startup 2.0 (NS20) has taken the bold responsibility to build a sustainable ecosystem for early stage tech companies in Britain. At the core of this initiative is a series of premier monthly events focusing on the needs of Tech StartUps.  Manoj Ranaweera is your man.

Girl Geek Dinners Founded and run by Sarah Blow has been providing girls in tech with dinners and events for a number of years.

Events- There are many more Tweetups and events than the ones below, here are some of my favourites:

Drinktank: Started by one of the UK’s most popular startups Huddle, Drink Tank is one of my favourites with a good crowd and free drink, often held at a snazzy bar just off Regent’s street. Huddle’s Suz is behind it all and also organises a girls networking event called Silicon Stilettos

Minibar Started by Christian (weirdly I don’t know his second name) Minibar is free and is held at The Old Truman Brewery in East London. Free bar if you get there early before it runs out. Minibar usually has a theme where startups can pitch to the crowd and get questioned on their business model/pitch etc. Last time the theme was online publishing.

Tuttle Club Started by Lloyd Davis Tuttle is held at the ICA every Friday morning -Tuttle is ‘Co-creating a Social Media Café for London’ and sometimes has free coffee and cake.

OpenSoho Started by Mr know everyone, entrepreneur and investor Paul Walsh Open Soho is usually on a Thursday night in a funky central London venue (usually Floridita or Kettners)- Free drinks until they run out-get there early!

Shoreditch Twit: East London, normally hosted in the Elbow Rooms, started by aptly named Lewis Webb, I’m not sure if they get sponsors for drinks but you can play a game of pool.

Facebook Developers Garage This is for the more techy specific people (coders and developers) held at Sun Microsystems there is without fail free pizza and beer., every time- win! Started by Joshua March they are run monthly and usually have a theme- the last theme was gaming.

BootLaw Started by our favourite technorati lawyers Danvers and Barry, Bootlaw is a free monthly seminar with the next one coming up in September themed on selling shares. If free pizza and beer wasn’t enough they also dish out iPods to people who have listened and learnt the most!

The Glasshouse/Second Chance Tuesday Founded by Judith Clegg The Glasshouse puts on ticketed events monthly. They always have interesting speakers like founder of Bebo Michael Birch, so it’s definitely worth the money. The next event is coming up soon has the Spotify founders up on stage- check the site for more details.

First Tuesday is a professional networking forum for established technology entrepreneurs and companies seeking venture capital, investors and related service provider, They are usually held at The Hospital Club in Covent Garden- no free bar but successful startup founders speak about their journey on stage. email: info@firsttuesday.org.uk

Big Fish You have to apply to become a BigFish member, but it’s free and once accepted you get to hear people like Luke Johnson speak (He is Chaiman of Channel 4 and turned Pizza Express into a huge success story.) Big Fish run monthly events.

Media- Again loads of media but just naming a few blogs/publications that I surround myself with:

TechCrunch: @mikebutcher ’s your man, everyone knows him, everyone loves him and everyone wants to be him! He has a brilliant job running around Europe reviewing startups for the TechCrunch blog. TechCrunch Europe runs a number of events throughout the year where you can pitch your startup.

The Next Woman: Online business magazine for women, showcasing some of the best women in tech Internet/Tech sector. Simone Brummelhuis is your woman.

The Next Web: Founded by serial entrepreneur Boris. Besides the blog, The Next Web runs a few conferences per year, last year co-hosted by your truly!. @Zee is editor for the blog.

Mashable: With a large American following, but set up by Scottish entrepreneur Pete Cashmore (yes the hot one) Mashable is not only a tech blog but holds events in New York and LA.

People- There are loads, I should write another post entirely for people, I will endeavor, but here are a couple of the best:

Oli Barrett Named by WiredUK as one of the most connected men in Britain, Oli has a high calibre network of entrepreneurs, investors and mentors.

Ian Ellis heads up Technology Business at Morgan Stanley, Irish, very intelligent, you can find him on LinkedIn.

Ryan Carson is the founder of Carsonified and also runs the FOWA events all over the world. You should really attend the FOWA FOWD events if your company is in the design/apps sector. In fact, you should really just attend full stop. The events are fantastic.

Other added by you:

http://www.findnetworkingevents.com

OpenCoffee

http://www.bplans.co.uk – a leading Uk resource for entrepreneurs looking to write a business plan. The site includes links free sample business plans as well as articles, calculators and tools.

The Entrepreneurial Exchange which is Scotland’s leading organisation for ambitious growth oriented entrepreneurs. The Exchange helps inform, motivate, educate, inspire and support entrepreneurs to build their businesses bigger, faster.

http://www.BusinessZone.co.uk – part of B2B publisher Sift Media which has been running community websites since 1996, long before it became known as social media!

We also run http://www.ukbusinessforums.co.uk – the UK’s most active online forums for small business owners which generates 7,000 posts a week from a audience of 50,000 registered members.

Earlier this summer we held five UK regional heats (watch videos at http://www.businesszone.co.uk/pitch-2009), the winners from which will compete in a grand final during November’s Enterprise Week in central London (one for you Hermoine!). Doug Richard and Tim Campbell are on the judging panel.

Tickets to the event are free and it will include a full day conference with some very inspirational speakers. Keep an eye on BusinessZone.co.uk and http://www.thepitch2009.com

Don’t forget Shell LiveWIRE! We have a forum and social network with nearly 100,000 entrepreneurs! We also have the Grand Ideas Awards – up to 5 monthly prizes of £1000 for innovative ideas, and the £10K ‘Shell LiveWIRE Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award’- entries for these can be found at our website http://www.shell-livewire.org.

Network King Oli Barrett’s list

Julia Hobsbawm’s Editorial Intelligence (blending politics, business and media)

Anything by Steve Moore (everything from Channel 4 education gatherings to Reboot Britain)

Drink Tank organised by Huddle (Andy, Ali and Suz)

Paul Walsh’s Open Soho

Carole Stone’s Salons and Club events

Andrea Zur Strassen’s The Nomads (for people on the move)

Duncan Cheatle’s Supper Club (for entrepreneurs with 1m+ turnover)

Charlie Hoult’s Castaway (’open office’ event for agency folk, with high proportion of owners)

Anything by Coutts (Andrew Haigh hosts some of the best dinners in London)

The Mandrake Club by Ed Hardy

Anything by EO (the Entrepreneurs Organisation)

Christine Hartland’s Mosaic Networking

TED (hosting events in California, UK, India, and now globally thanks to TEDx)

The Tuttle Club by Lloyd Davis

Growing Business events including Young Guns

Jamie Oliver’s PR masterclass series

Chain Reaction (held in November and inspired by the Council on Social Action)

Tom Ball’s Entretain and Summer/Christmas parties

Techcrunch Europe’s signature events (eg The Europas)

Glasshouse Events by Judith Clegg

By Shanti Subramanyam

I attended the Bay Area Startup Weekend in Mountain View this previous week-end. This was the first such event I attended and it was an amazing experience – so I thought I’d share it.

The idea behind the event was that a bunch of folks would show up, some of them would pitch ideas for new startups and the others would join them if they liked the idea and/or had the necessary skills to build it. The goal was to build a working prototype over the course of the week-end. Read more.

When you officially launch your startup and send out a flurry of press releases, the silence can be deafening while you wait for the phone to ring and reporters to call you. Here are some tips to improve your chances of getting noticed by the media.

1) Make sure your press release stands out, but don't overdo it. A clear, concise, and brief press release that gets your message across without a lot of excess verbiage is far more preferable than a long release filled with flowery adjectives and an overabundance of information. It's not necessary to fill a press release with every detail of your company and staff history -- save those for your interview.

2) Make sure your Web site has a press kit and plenty of contact information. Nothing tells a reporter you're serious about media coverage more than giving them easy access to the tools they need to research your company. Here's the place to discuss the history of your company, patents you hold, future goals, and groups you're affiliated with. If you're a technology startup, make sure to include details about about any software licenses you use, especially if you develop software in-house. Feel free to add as much information as you wish, because you never know what information will strike a reporter's fancy.

3) When you land an interview, respect the reporter's time and they'll respect yours. A good journalist won't expect you to drop everything to talk to them, but if you commit to a meeting or conference all, keep the appointment. The reporter is probably working on a deadline and their time is just as valuable as yours. If you're really pressed for time, offer to conduct the interview via email and many reporters will be happy to comply.

4) Offer prep materials ahead of the meeting. Point the journalist to a press kit, create a slide deck to illustrate important points, or offer access to your product so the writer can be as familiar as possible with what your company does. It's fine to offer revocable access to a Web-based service or request a review product be returned -- in fact, an ethical journalist will insist upon it.

5) If you want your PR person to sit in on the meeting or conference call, that's fine -- but don't let them run it. It's only natural for your marketing guru to want to make sure you highlight all the important points of your company, but make sure the reporter has a chance to get the information he needs for his story. Nothing turns a writer off faster than sitting in a rehearsed sales call where there's little chance to glean any unique insight into the company.

6) Relax. It's easy to get nervous when faced with the prospect of seeing every word you say in print for everyone to see. It's also tempting to worry that the journalist will try and dig up dirt or portray your company in an unfavorable light to draw attention to themselves. The reality is, most reporters are very down-to-earth and are typically reporting on industries and niches they find fascinating. A good reporter's job is to educate readers about your company and why they should want to know more about it. That said, don't hesitate to research a reporter ahead of time to get a feel for their tone. If a journalist seems overly negative, or historically paints the companies they cover in a bad light, you may want to consult with your PR person for advice before your interview.

7) If you notice any issues or discrepancies once the story appears, politely contact the writer and point it out. Honest errors can be fixed and, since the reporter's integrity and credibility are also at stake, they will be just as concerned as you are about correcting the situation.

It's not easy to get your startup noticed above the din of all the other companies vying for the media's attention. Handled correctly, though, it's easy to develop an ongoing relationship with the journalists who cover your industry by establishing mutual trust and respect right from the start.

This is a post from Tweetmeme's Blog on Twitter Advertising by Nick Halstead

It always amazes me how things converge onto a point in what seems to be complete coincidence, but when it happens time and again you see that it is just a natural convergence of multiple minds pushing forward ideas towards a natural conclusion.

And so when I arrived at the Techcrunch Crunchup I was not surprised to find that a number of companies (including Twitter themselves ) would be talking about Twitter based advertising.

I was also at the Crunchup to announce our own new Twitter advertising model called Adtweets – which is a new ad-platform that allows established ad-networks to leverage the power of the retweet (something we feel we have extensive knowledge within.) by allowing current display adverts to gain a retweetable element. If you want to read the full details we have a separate post.

Retweet Analytics

I wanted to share some fascinating numbers on how content gets disseminated across twitter via Retweets, we recently launched our own Analytics package that allows individual stories to be analysed in great detail.

An interesting fact that has an immense impact for anyone trying to advertise on Twitter is that when I analysed 20 of the top tier Twitter accounts (e.g. with followers of more than 500,000) I found that on average only 35% of the retweets that a link gained were directly originated from their own Twitter account.

So as an example a recent Mashable story with 1598 retweets I found that only 586 were a direct result of their pushing it out to the@mashable Twitter account (which has 1,751,213 followers) and the largest proportion (825 of them) was in fact from originating retweets (e.g. clicking our retweet button).

The second interesting set of numbers is the click data that then results from all those retweets – again from the same story we find that it was clicked 12558 times (split across 5 different shortener services) of that total 8196 were direct (e.g. mostly from Twitter clients such as Seesmic, Tweetdeck) 2896 were from the Twitter.com and the 1539 were from 80+ other Twitter web based clients.

What do I draw from these facts? The first is that any model must be inclusive of external clients. So in the instance of Robert Scoble’s ‘SuperTweets‘ the Twitter clients will need a big incentive to display those adverts – e.g. a revenue share. My gut feeling is that in-tweet advertising is still the only effective route forward – just because it applies to the KISS principle.

My second conclusion is that distribution into the mainstream Twitter user-base is absolutely crucial to getting the message heard by the greatest number of users.

Lastly I would like to show you the kind of advertising that I think is the future – and that works perfectly with a model of retweeting. [disclosure: Sun Microsystems is a partner of TweetMeme]

Tweetmeme is a member of Sun's Startup Essentials programme and was one of the first startups in the UK to join

Le mercredi 2 décembre à 11h00 - heure de Paris - Sun Starup Essentials vous invite à découvrir l'offre de Planet-Work, notre partenaire hébergement.

Frédéric Vannière, Directeur Technique, vous expliquera comment il a mis en oeuvre les fonctionnalités de virtualisation de Solaris et de ZFS pour proposer des packages d'hébergement souples, évolutifs et économiques. En route pour le Cloud Computing !

Inscrivez-vous !

Le mercredi 2 décembre à 11h00 - heure de Paris - Sun Starup Essentials vous invite à découvrir l'offre de Planet-Work, notre partenaire hébergement.

Frédéric Vannière, Directeur Technique, vous expliquera comment il a mis en oeuvre les fonctionnalités de virtualisation de Solaris et de ZFS pour proposer des packages d'hébergement souples, évolutifs et économiques. En route pour le Cloud Computing !
Inscrivez-vous !

I am late following up on a question we got during the Webinar last Wednesday on High Availability for Web applications. The question was about whether MySQL Cluster is using disks for persistency.

In previous releases of MySQL, the NDB cluster engine (a.k.a. MySQL Cluster) would log on disk but would store all the data in memory. Eventually asynchronous checkpoints would flush data to disks. Reliability was also ensured through intra-cluster replication on different nodes.

Sun Startup Essentials - How can Sun Microsystems help you ? from stewart townsend on Vimeo.

Learn how Sun Startup Essentials can help you if you are a company less than 6 years old, with 150 employees or less.

Following on from my previous job posting here I'm happy to announce some more startup vacancies:

• Worldeka hiring an intern for community development Click
• Huddle hiring an intern for Commercial experience Click 
• Jess Ratcliffe is looking for a web designer/coder to join her startup Click 
• Fabio has a friend looking for a Facebook coder with Flash skills Click
• Fabio is looking for PHP Developer with front end skills Click 

Let me know @scoobeesnac if you have other startup opportunities 

X4150 Server for Startups - Roll up, Roll up now - Clearance Remanufactured stock for you.

If you are a startup, and a member of Sun's Startup Essentials programme you can get this and X2200 now as well, the price list is being sent to you as I write this, if you are not a member then sign up now at http://sun.com/startups and get these servers whilst stock lasts....

X4150 with E5450 CPU & 4GB RAM   £1,200.00/ €1400

2 Quad Core CPUS (8Cores) 4 Gig memory, 4 Hard Discs

 X4150 with E5345 CPU & 4GB RAM    2xQuad-Core Intel Xeon E5450 CPUs (2x6MB L2, 3.0 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 80W), 4GB memory (2x2GB PC2 5300 FB-DIMM), 4x 146GB 10K RPM 2.5 SAS drives, internal SAS RAID PCI Exp. HBA, DVD+/-RW drive, 2x PSU, embedded LOM, 4x Ethernet ports, 5x USB 2.0 ports, 3x 8-lane PCIslots,                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

X4150 with E5345 CPU & 4GB RAM  £1,050.00/ €1200

2 Quad Core CPUS (8Cores) 4 Gig memory, 4 Hard Discs

X4150 with E5345 CPU & 4GB RAM    D    2xQuad-Core Intel Xeon E5345 CPUs (2x4MB L2, 2.33 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB, 80W), 4GB mem. (2x2GB PC2 5300 FB-DIMM), 4x146GB 10K RPM 2.5 SAS drives, internal SAS RAID PCI Exp. HBA, DVD+/-RW drive, 2x PSU, embedded LOM, 4x Ethernet ports, 5x USB 2.0 ports, 2x 8-lane PCI slots, no power cord, order Geo-specific x-option. RoHS-5.

I had an interesting discussion with 2 colleagues about the possible interest of putting the swap space of a system on a SSD.

If I consider the gain in latency that an SSD brings versus a capacity disk - in the region of 100x - the solution seems obvious. Swapping - or more precisely paging - must be much faster/ with an SSD. Since RAM is expensive versus SSD, I could even be tempted to design a system with a small amount of RAM and a large amount of swap space on SSDs. In other words, I can ask myself if trying to prevent my system to page is still a good fight?

Let's try to shed some light on these questions.

Paging takes place when my system runs out of RAM because more processes are created or because existing processes requires more memory (check this article for details about how to monitor paging). At some point, the operating system keeps on looking for pages in RAM that can be transfered into the swap space, while at the same time it brings back in RAM pages that were paged out and that are required by running applications. This situation is commonly referred to as a paging system. At this point, the performance of my system brutally goes down: copying memory pages back and forth between RAM and disk slows down my whole system mainly because of disk performance. Moving the swap space from a disk to an SSD does not reduce this activity. It only makes it faster. Bare in mind that the CPU doesn't have direct access to the swap space, to the SSD. For the CPU to access data or instructions that have been paged out, these data or instructions still need to be copied back into RAM, which brings us to another side effect of paging: it creates traffic on the IO bus.

In addition, ahead of the critical paging situation, when the demand for RAM starts to grow, other things happen on my system. I am using ZFS for my storage and ZFS has its primary cache - the ARC - in RAM. When RAM gets under pressure, this cache sees its size reduced. The data removed from the ARC goes in the ZFS level 2 cache - the L2ARC. The L2ARC can be located either on disks or SSDs, but as soon as it is involved there is some additional traffic on the IO bus that now competes with the traffic created by the paging activity. Eventually, when the L2ARC gets full, the data is not cached anymore. A long story short, if I am running an application that creates a lot of IOs the shortage of RAM impacts its performance.

Finally, we compared the performance of an SSD versus a disk, but in terms of latency an SSD is still 1000x slower than RAM, so the impact that paging brings (i.e. moving from RAM to SSD) is still noticeable. At the end, even though SSDs can improve paging performance, preventing my system to page is still a must if I want to get the best out of it. If I have some extra money to spend on performance after increasing the RAM of my system and if my application is IO intensive I would rather buy an SSD for the L2ARC cache rather than for swapping. This will certainly have a positive impact on the IO perf of my application.

We are pleased to share with you another initiative that could be of interest to Startups such as yours. Our engineering team alongwith our partners will conduct a fortnightly technology session on a topic of interest to startups. The inaugural  session is scheduled for 25th November at Divyasree Chambers in our Sun offices in Bangalore and the details are as below:

Technology Session on My SQL - High Availability Solutions

Where : Sun Microsystems Office , Divyasree Chambers , Bangalore
When : 3pm to 6pm on Wednesday , 25th November, 2009

Agenda

Welcome

3.15 PM - 4.15 PM  : Different High Availability Solutions in My SQL

4.30 PM - 5.30 PM : Scaling with My SQL

               + Challenges faced by end users to keep servers
                 performing at their best while being configured to be
                 highly available.
               + Sun technologies addressing the challenges
               + Brief overview of both MySQL & Sun availability options
               + How to  achieve end to end high availability without
                 compromising on performance and scalability.

5.30 -5.45 PM : Closing Remarks

There are only 30 seats available , if interested please send us email on isvsupport-AT-sun-DOT-com  with the following details:
Email Subject: Technology Session on My SQL - High Availability Solutions
Name of the participant :
Functional Area
E mail
Phone

Look forward to hearing back from you. Also would appreciate inputs on the technology topics that would interest you, so that we can plan subsequent technology sessions.

Désolé, il ne reste plus de place pour cette matinée dédiée à l'optimisation des performances MySQL.

Date : 24 novembre 2009
Prix : Cette matinée est gratuite !

Session 1 : 9h30-10h45

• Architecture MySQL : Parsing, exécution, optimizer, query cache, binlog…etc
• Architecture Innodb : Clustered index, bufferpool, hash index, insert buffer, locking model, MVCC, recovery log, checkpoint…etc. Comparaison avec les autres moteurs de stockage (PBXT, MySQL Cluster) et bases de données (PostgreSQL, Oracle ..).

Pause/Café : 10h45-11h00.

Session 2 : 11h00-12h30

• Évolutions récentes : Google SMP patches,  XtraDB, Oracle innodb plugin 1.0.4
• Apports de MySQL 5.4
• Améliorations à venir :  Ahead flushing / Adaptive checkpoint,  Purge lag / Purge thread, Splitted locks, etc…Explication technique des améliorations et des gains de performance obtenus.

Nous parlerons aussi de MySQL Enterprise et du MySQL Query analyzer qui vous permet d’optimiser un environnement MySQL.

Cette matinée se veut conviviale et interactive avec Q&A.

Désolé, il ne reste plus de place pour cette matinée dédiée à l'optimisation des performances MySQL.

Date : 24 novembre 2009

Session 1 : 9h30-10h45

• Architecture MySQL : Parsing, exécution, optimizer, query cache, binlog…etc
• Architecture Innodb : Clustered index, bufferpool, hash index, insert buffer, locking model, MVCC, recovery log, checkpoint…etc. Comparaison avec les autres moteurs de stockage (PBXT, MySQL Cluster) et bases de données (PostgreSQL, Oracle ..).

Pause/Café : 10h45-11h00.

Session 2 : 11h00-12h30

• Évolutions récentes : Google SMP patches,  XtraDB, Oracle innodb plugin 1.0.4
• Apports de MySQL 5.4
• Améliorations à venir :  Ahead flushing / Adaptive checkpoint,  Purge lag / Purge thread, Splitted locks, etc…Explication technique des améliorations et des gains de performance obtenus.

Nous parlerons aussi de MySQL Enterprise et du MySQL Query analyzer qui vous permet d’optimiser un environnement MySQL.

Cette matinée se veut conviviale et interactive avec Q&A.

 

Sun公司– WebGame&虚拟化解决方案交流会

会议日程表

日期：2008年11月14日

地点：世纪金源大酒店（金翔厅）

日程安排 ：

DAY1 11月14日， 星期五		内 容	演 讲 人
13:15-13:30		签到办理
13:30-13:40	SUN欢迎致词
13:40-14:00	在社区中加入WEBGAME功能		许四清 蓝讯副总裁
14:00-14:30	CDN加速WEBGAME运营		路庆晖 网宿科技副总裁
14:30-15:00	SUN在web2.0游戏社区的解决方案		曹喜平
15:00-15:10	茶歇
15:10-15:30	MySQL企业版新特性及monitor功能演示		Sun 软件部
15:30-16:15	SNS与WEBGAME技术及互动产品开放讨论
16:15-16:35	Sun基于xVM的虚拟主机解决方案		耿煜
16:35-17:00	Sun开放存储平台技术介绍 - 基于open source存储软件和开放存储架构的互联网存储解决方案		周伟
17:00-17:30	Sun 高性能吞吐量服务器介绍		耿煜
17:30-17:40	问答及填写调查问卷及纪念品发放
18:00-19:30	晚餐		中式围餐 地点：
19:30-21:00	酒店娱乐活动（球类或游泳）		自由参加，参加者请在签到时说明
21:00	结束

日

Congrats Joyent team for the fantastic announcement today!! 

Intel has just announced a strategic investment in Joyent. More on the Press Release.

Joyent, both a long-time Sun Startup Essentials member and hosting partner - has been profitable for years, and boasts some really impressive customers (e.g. ABC.com, LinkedIn, and more). More recently Gilt Groupe, an online luxury goods retailer with over $200M, publicly stated that they spend less than 1% of their revenue on IT infrastructure (all on Joyent), which is 70% savings over Gartner industry averages. That saves them at least $10M a year!

Check out this great video!

2008年8月7日消息，Sun公司宣布为Facebook网站推出了一个新的社交网络游戏—— “MyPicks Beijing 2008”。

据悉，通过体验这一款新网游，全球的2008北京奥运会的爱好者可与朋友们一起为各自的国家进行在线竞赛，为本次奥运会的各个比赛项目预测奖牌得主。

MyPicks Beijing 2008网络游戏，让游戏玩家预测2008北京奥运会期间各比赛项目的金牌、银牌和铜牌得主，预测正确即可为各自的国家赢得积分。最终夺得最高总积分的国家将赢得MyPicks Beijing 2008奥运会优胜者的称号。今天， MyPicks Beijing 2008游戏已在Facebook网站(http://apps.facebook.com/mypicksbeijing/Home)对外提供。

MyPicks Beijing 2008由Pramati Technologies公司采用zembly开发而成，而zembly是Sun公司全新的基于浏览器的社交应用开发环境。2008年6月以专用?测试版形式发布的zembly是全球第一个社交编程环境，特为Facebook、Meebo、OpenSocial和iPhone等Web上最通用平台量身打造，用以创建和搭载各类社交应用。zembly采用了Network.com上的Sun公司硬件系统，同时发挥了Solaris 10操作系统、GlassFish应用服务器和MySQL数据库等Sun优秀软件的技术优势。

zembly让您建立小型，一次性申请，并公开部署。zembly背后是鼓励你再接再厉曾发行服务
和工具创造独特的，部署的应用程序。目前的Release您建立服务，工具，甚至Facebook的应用程序。

Le prochain OpenCoffee de Rennes se tiendra demain, mercredi 18 novembre à 19h00, au St Melaine rue St Melaine.

Réunion de l'OpenCoffee de Sophia le jeudi 19 novembre de 18 à 21h00, aux Terrasses d'Antipolis, 300 route des Crêtes.

All the details can be found in this article.

This past week I have been working with 2 Web2.0 startups - members of Sun Startup Essentials, they get the support for free - that are looking at improving the response time of their web site.

We've been working at understanding how they servers behave today and what could prevent their application to scale, which led me to show how to run a quick diagnostic on an existing system and to restate some key fundamentals in terms of scalability.

Let's start by the fundamentals.

Any piece of software is nothing else than a set of instructions that need 2 things: computing units to execute on, and a fast access to data.

Computing units are available in the form of a hardware threads located on a processor. The number of threads that a server makes available to the application depends on the number of processors on the server, the number of core per processor, and of threads per core. The only thing we have to keep in mind is that the industry has moved heavily to processors that provide many hardware threads (up to 64 on a CMT chip), so taking advantage of multiple threads is definitely the right way to scale as far as computing power is concerned.

As per the fast access to data, the rule of thumb I always used is that good performance can only be achieved if the data is located in physical memory - in RAM. As soon as disks are involved the penalty is in an order of magnitude - if not more.

How do I take advantage of multiple threads with MySQL or memcached? The good news is that both support multithreading which means they both have the ability to create many software threads that are mapped to HW-threads to execute many instruction sets in parallel (with memcached you may have to recompile the code according to this page).

Now how do I check what's really happening on my system?

First, let's check how many HW threads are available on my server. On Solaris or OpenSolaris I run psrinfo:

root@pelvoux:~# psrinfo
0    on-line   since 11/15/2009 17:09:45
1    on-line   since 11/15/2009 17:09:49

The command reports me that I have 2 HW threads on line (I have a dual-core X86 processor on my laptop).

Then I can check how many software threads each application is actually using. To do so I run the prstat command. On the following example prstat 5 tells me that MySQL is using 10 software threads. The number is displayed on the right-hand side column NLWP. Note that with 10 software threads MySQL can not take advantage of a server that has 64 HW-threads, but for my 2 core laptop this is already more than needed.

Next, are the software threads leveraging the HW-threads? Are they keeping the CPU busy? The fastest way to check if the CPU is loaded is to run vmstat 5:

In this example my CPU spends 98 to 99% of its time idle, and 0 or 1% executing code from an application - column us, or from the system - column sy. If MySQL was running on all CPU cylinders, I would see most of the load reported in column us, and possibly a few percent points in column sy. In my case MySQL does not receive any request.

But there might be other cases where I see both slow or hanging requests and a CPU partially loaded with applications. If my CPU is not fully loaded, and if I have enough software threads, why do I see slow requests? Well, in that case it's likely that requests are competing for resources - such as tables - that can not be shared. This is a situation that impedes scalability. Only a few requests are executed at a time keeping only a few threads busy. Though outside of the scope of this article note that if you are using MyISAM, moving to InnoDB can help you to address table-lock issues, hence improve the scalability of your application.

So with psrinfo, prstat, and vmstat I can have a quick overview of how my server is doing in terms of CPU power an load.

Now, how can I check if I am running out of physical memory?

The diagnostic above assumes that the limiting factor is the computing power and not the access to data, not the amount of physical memory. But how can I be sure I have enough RAM and what happens in the face of a shortage?

When running out of RAM, a system starts to page. It tries to free some space in RAM by transferring some content from RAM - available as pages - to disk. The OS kernel scans the RAM to locate the last recently used pages and put them on disk, with the hope that they won't be used anytime soon (in which case they would have to be brought back into RAM).

A peak in paging activity is nothing wrong. Cleaning up the RAM a little bit does not mean I am facing a shortage. It's when my system keeps on paging that I know I do not have enough RAM. Once again vmstat 5 helps me monitor the rate at which the kernel scans the RAM looking for pages to be moved away: the sr column reports the scaning rate. If it never goes back to zero it's time to add some more RAM to my server.

    主机托管在web1.0时是一种很成熟的解决方案，网络运营商或大的IT集成商为中小企业提供的主机托管，帮助中小企业建立它们的网站或简单的IT系统。每一中小企业都有一单独的主机，网络运营商或大的IT集成商为它们开/关/日常的系统维护。
    托管业务优点有 ：成本较低，专业技术人员负责维护，托管网络设备扩展方便，用户可以任意选择2M-100M（独享或共享）接入速率 ，网络稳定等等。
    现实生活中，主机托管客户对很多IDC公司表示非常不满以及达到一种无法形容的地步，主机托管客户购买产品很难以一种有效的方式来监控和管理托管主机的性能。
    下面就是一基于VirtualBox的主机托管方案，该方案的最大好处在于主机托管客户能够自己监控和管理托管主机。


    主机托管客户能够通过网络浏览器发出开、关，监控托管主机，应用服务器得到这个命令,它将执行相关的网络服务（WebServices）以执行相关的对虚拟主机的操作并将结果返回到网络浏览器。　

    本周四在2008 中国开源软件竞赛－ 开源行动日济南站代表公司主讲二个主题。一个是OpenSolaris的新特性，另一个是关于Sun的虚拟化产品和方案。Intel中国公司和中科红旗也是这次活动的参与者。

    在这次活动中，我自己也听到了一些很有意思的内容，某著名芯片公司在谈到它们的开源编译器中就提到下面一观点，因为它们最懂它们的CPU，所以它们的编译器对编译后的代码效果最好。很多人深以为然。没敢否认它的观点，只是心中认为这种逻辑好像有点问题。

    农民最懂粮食和蔬菜，但不一定做出来的菜最好吃。“闻道有先后，术业有专工”，显然这样说有点不厚道。毕竟人家的产品是开源的。无论怎样，至少用户多一种选择是一件好事。但现在的公司都分分往自己的核心产品的上下游延伸，应该不是一种进步。

    Web 2.0已是一个三四年前的热名词，现在的网站,如果你说它是Web1.0，它肯定和你急。但是无可否认，Web 2.0技术包括可增加Web应用回应速度与使用性的技术，能够带来良好的用户体验，体现以人为本，
技术服务人类的宗旨。

    作为一个老IT从业者说一说Web2.0带来工作方式的变化。特别是一些跨国公司，因为它的分枝机构发布在如此众多的国家，常常一个项目组里包含几个国家的成员，老式的交流通常是电话会议，Email，如果是远程的演示就要求VNC Server。很不方便。

    现在我用Skype参加电话会议，用WebEx来远程的演示，用Jing将我的工作成果转化成Flash。每当一个新项目开始的时候，大家用Wiki和Facebook来交流。众多的IT公司已经将新的Web2.0用来作为新的工作模式。如IBM， Sun，Yahoo 等等。

    下面列一下主流的Web2.0公司

GreenBeat 2009 will bring together the nation’s 500 leading entrepreneurs, investors, utilities, technology executives, and policymakers to accelerate the development of a leaner, more efficient electrical grid. GreenBeat 2009 will map out the hottest business and technology opportunities the Smart Grid has to offer. Renovating the power grid requires big ideas from start-ups!

The program will feature participation by Al Gore, former Vice President and Nobel Prize Winner; John Doerr of Kleiner Perkins; Eric Schmitt of Google and Vinod Khosla of Khosla Ventures.  The program also features executives from Cisco, Tendril, Oracle, and more. Expect lively discussion and power networking. The program also includes an innovation competition that will highlight new technologies and will explore the financial and investment opportunities afforded by the stimulus package.  More details can be found at www.greenbeat2009.com.

Will Smart Grid and smart metering initiatives change consumer behavior, and how? How will the more than $4 billion the Obama Administration has earmarked for Smart Grid make a difference? Which incentives and policies will speed deployment? Where will the most disruption take place in this trillion-dollar business that hasn’t changed for decades? Do startups stand a chance? Where should they focus? What role will cybersecurity and interoperability play in how a new, revamped grid takes shape? GreenBeat will get industry leaders’ answers to these questions and more.

We have made arrangements for 30% off the regular rate and you may use the following link and special code to register. http://greenbeat2009.eventbrite.com/?discount=GBSunVIP

    按照VirtualBox中的帮助， 如果你需要从 VirtualBox 的客户机中使用主机里面的文件，
那么通过共享文件夹的方式可以达成此目的。说说设置的过程。

    1 ： 在主机:vista中设置共享文件夹。

    2 ： 启动虚拟机（本例为 Windows XP）。

    3 ： 使用了 net use d: \\vboxsvr\D_DIRVE 命令后提示“找不到网络名”。
    一通折腾之后，无果。

    更奇怪的是在虚拟机中浏览器中输入主机的IP地址，总是显示“找不到网络名”，后想是不是
因为虚拟机的用户名和主机中的用户名不相符。在虚拟机中增加同一用户名和口令。重复步骤2，3. 通过资源管理器你便可以使用共享文件夹中的所有文件了。

What an evening of discussion and education on Brand, Michael Bayler gave an amazingly energetic hours talk on brand and how important it is to be clear about your brand strategy before you do anything else.  The video of this event will be available in a few weeks time and thus all Sun Startup Essential members who couldn't make the event can watch the material and gain an insight into this wonderful evening.

Michael Bayler has a website here if you wish to know more about him and what he can do for you.

Have you ever had a great idea for a startup but needed the motivation and encouragement to actually make it a reality? Join the Startup Weekend community and find out how easy it is to go from idea to launch in only 54 hours! 

We are also excited to announce Sun Startup Essentials will be supporting Startup Weekend in New York City for Global Entrepreneurship Week November 20-22^nd at our office in Manhattan! Sun Startup Essentials members get 25% off. Send us an email to get the discount code.

Not in NYC? There are 14 events before the end of the year! Find all of the upcoming events at http://startupweekend.org/

What is Startup Weekend?

Startup Weekend is a 54 hour startup event that provides networking, resources and incentives for individuals and teams to go from idea to launch. Get connected with local developers, innovators and entrepreneurs. Build Community. Start Companies. No Talk - All Action. 

When:

November 20-22 (Friday 6pm-11pm, Sat/Sun 8am-10pm)

Where:

Sun Microsystems, 101 Park Ave, NYC. Map.

Website: http://nyc.startupweekend.org/

Who Should Attend:

Startup Weekend is open to anyone who wants to be an entrepreneur!  Developers, Designers, Marketing, Business Development, Social Media, Lawyers, Students, etc… Anyone who considers themselves an entrepreneur.

What:

On Friday night people pitch their ideas, there can be as few as 25 pitches or as many as 100, we keep on pitching until everyone is done!  We do a simple vote of everyone’s favorite 2 or 3 to narrow down the ideas by about 80%. Individuals then gather around each idea to discuss feasibility, and normally a few more will be dropped.  For a room of one hundred people we generally see teams between 5-10 people and a total of between 10-15 teams working away on 10-15 new startups. People then come in early on Saturday and work work work for the rest of the weekend until giving a demo of the newly created startup on Sunday evening.  We’ve had teams that were generating revenue on Saturday evening in the past!  It’s a great learning experience, great networking, and a lot of fun to roll up your sleeves and get in the trenches launching a new startup!  

Cost:

Only $75 which includes amazing speakers, mentors & assistance from experienced entrepreneurs, prizes, 7 Meals, Drinks, Free Web Hosting, Handouts, Swag, and more.

About Startup Weekend:

Startup Weekend is a nonprofit association supported by companies like Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, The Kauffman Foundation, Unleashing Ideas, Cooley Godward Kronish, Media Temple, and many others. Startup Weekend has been covered on the likes of CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC, The Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, and more. We are passionate entrepreneurs out to help other entrepreneurs pursue new ideas more efficiently and effectively than ever before.

Contacts:

Ph: +1.206.659.4484

E-Mail

Follow Startup Weekend on Twitter