Systems Administration and Network Control

FastPak for Java can be used for many, many system administrative tasks. Here are a few examples:

• Platform Independent Daemon Processes: FastPak uses a single JVM for all applications running underneath it, thus minimizing resource consumption. This feature allows developers and administrators to write many short, simple, daemon processes in Java, place them under a FastPak instance, and then run them, while using only the resources of a single Java application. Since Java is platform independent, this can be expanded to a number of different computers using a host of different operating systems.

• Emergency Operations: FastPak has the capability of running both Java and native applications as well as reacting to input received via its networked Controller Thread. If you put all these features together, FastPak can give you the capability to do something as mundane as stopping a single program on a single machine to something as radical as bringing all systems on a network to a complete halt. These sorts of operations are obviously of particular value in emergency conditions.

• Network Management: With FastPak's Controller Thread, it's possible to launch and monitor applications underneath FastPak instances on a host of different machines and operating systems. Since even the program controlling this can be run under FastPak as well, it's entirely possible to use FastPak in load balancing, load switching, and network redirection, among other things.

• Simple Messaging: Although FastPak's Controller Thread is intended to be used for processing FastPak messages between a remote FastPak instance and a controlling program, it can also be used for simple, one-way messaging as well. Unix users familiar with the "wall" program should be familiar with this concept. FastPak can allow a wall-like program to be implemented in a cross platform, operating system independent manner.

• Platform Independent System Administration: Take all of the four items we've described above together and you form the basis for a system that can implement a great deal of system administrative tasks in a platform independent manner. It would be ludicrous to think that FastPak could be used to "do it all," but we feel at SCSC that FastPak can be used primarily to alleviate work that is primarily redundant, tedious, and often frustrating when working in a multi-platform environment.