February 7, 2002 5:40 PM PST  Sun imagines world of virtual
servers  SAN FRANCISCO--Sun Microsystems uncloaked "N1" on
Thursday, a stealth project that the company hopes will ease
operations at data centers filled with servers and storage
systems.  As first reported by CNET News.com, the N1 project is
an attempt to "virtualize" computing equipment, making servers
and storage look like giant pools of resources with computing
processes swimming within.  Sun Chief Technology Officer Greg
Papadopoulos unveiled the concept Thursday at the company's
analyst conference here.  Essentially, N1 describes what happens
when a network of computers and storage systems is assembled
into a much larger whole. "This is just like what an operating
system did for a computer over the last 20 years. It's all the
stuff we did in Unix and redid in Linux," he said.  The concept
resembles efforts under way at some of Sun's biggest
competitors. IBM is working on "grid" computing that unites
servers and storage into a large pool. Grid c