Acknowledgements

The authors would especially like to thank Chuck Alexander whose vision and drive behind the Sun BluePrints program has made it so successful; Shuroma Herekar and Barbara Jugo for supporting the writers, editors, and illustrators who made it all possible; and of course Gary Rush, for managing the Blueprints projects.

This book was conceived, written, reviewed, edited, produced, and printed in less than six months. Publication would not have been possible without the collaboration and cooperation of the subject matter experts, writer, reviewers, editors, and artist, who gave its development top priority, while continuing to perform their usual duties.

We would like to acknowledge and thank the cluster experts and reviewers who helped shape the technical content of this book, all of them—Mike Arwood, Joseph Bianco, Michael Byrne, Ralph Campbell, Al Clepper, David Deeths, Tom Cox, Steven Docy, Andrew Hisgen, Mark Kampe, Yousef Khalidi, Peter Lees, James MacFarlane, James McPherson, Kim Merriman, Hossein Moiin, Declan Murphy, Sohrab Modi, David Nelson-Gal, Dan Orbach, Shankar Pasupathy, Ted Persky, Ira Pramanick, Marty Rattner, Nicolas Solter, Ronnie Townsend, Nancy Tu, and Enrique Vargas—for their input and support. And, to the entire Sun Cluster engineering team, well done!

A special thanks to Dany Galgani, who is one of the most responsive and talented illustrators at Sun Microsystems, for creating and revising more than 50 illustrations in less than 15 days; and Rashmi Shah, who helped input the editorial comments in the deadline crunch.

Thanks to George Wood, our mostly patient, tenacious, and tireless technical writer and editor for blending the diverse writing styles of the subject matter experts, authors, and reviewers from several different countries into the finished product.

We would also like to acknowledge and thank Regina Elling, Rex Casey, Billie Markim, Linda Wiesner, and Mary Lou Nohr, for editing the book and providing invaluable developmental, organizational, trademark, and glossary contributions; and Cathy Miller for creating a superb index.

Richard Elling

I'd like to specially thank Regina, who always makes sure my writing is clear and puts up with my long hours at the keyboard. Thanks to Boca, who contributed much to the early conversations about this book. And, of course, Rusty, who is always along for the ride. I'd also like to thank Enrique Vargas and Ted Persky for their contributions to the book.

Tim Read

I would like to start by thanking Hazel for the love, support, and cups of tea provided as the deadlines approached. I would also like to thank my manager, Keith Glancey, for allowing me time to write this book. I am eternally grateful to my parents (all of them!), without whose support I would never have made it this far. And finally, I would like to return the compliment to Brian, Cindy and Shaun.