Sun N1 System Manager
Client
Sun Microsystems (Santa Clara, CA)
Releases
v1 release
Role
As Sun N1 Provisioning Server was winding down, I transistioned to working on an entirely new project. Andy Bechtolsheim had recently returned to Sun, and they were preparing to release his Opteron-based Galaxy servers to the market. The problem was that there weren't any strong management tools within Sun for managing servers running AMD Opteron processors, so project "Hot Dog" was initiated. I worked as the primary designer on the project from inception through the release of the first version, where I drove the core design while adhering (and often pushing to improve) the company-wide standard UI guidelines.
Notables
- N1 System Manager became the reference foundation for many future Sun (and later Oracle) management interfaces
- AJAX-style event based screen refreshing
- Command Line console integrated into web interface (not a java applet)
- Graphical representation of managed servers with updated monitoring status
- Drag-and-Drop OS and patch deployment to single servers or groups of servers
- Simplified console-style command line syntax with tab completion and history
- Worked with centralized design team to improve Sun's UI standards
- Worked with tools group to make N1 System Manager one of the early adopters of Sun's Lockhart JSF framework
