The Register: Sun to marry iPlanet portal to Grid Engine

“The iPlanet Portal Server is a middleware program than
runs on Solaris that provides password-protected access to
applications under a Web services model, the kinds of personalized
Web applications that are cropping up every day on the internet and
on corporate internets where access to certain pieces of Web
applications have to be restricted. In essence, programs like Sun’s
iPlanet Portal Server turn the open Web interface of the internet
into the control-freak interface of stalwart systems like IBM
mainframes.

Sun’s Grid Engine software is used to aggregate the unused
processing capacity in Solaris and Linux workstations and servers
connected to each other over a network and put it to use performing
number-crunching tasks that are usually handled by supercomputers.
Sun has estimated that workstations and server spread around
companies are generally only working 5% to 20% of the time, and
says that by using Grid Engine software, companies can push the CPU
utilization of their workstations and servers as high as 98%. This
is a lot cheaper than buying a supercomputer.

The Technical Compute Portal, as the new Java frameworks are
called, link the iPlanet Portal Server and the Grid Engine
middleware programs together. For now, the iPlanet Portal Server
only runs on Solaris and so far the Technical Computer Portal Java
code has only been tested on Solaris, but Sun has committed to
porting the whole iPlanet stack to Linux and the Java frameworks
can be easily ported to Linux and presumably will be. For now,
customers can run all of this software on Solaris or in a hybrid
Solaris-Linux cluster.”

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