14 DAY TRIAL // Sun Microsystems has just had a bitter sample of the anonymity that protects users with devious intentions.
To show users the power of their new computing grid, Sun allowed all visitors to transform text into audio via a publicly available site.
The result? On its inaugural day, the site was targeted by a denial of service attack (DoS), which rendered it inoperable. The solution? Sun closed the site and allowed only registered users to access the service.
Sun Grid is an affordable solution for anyone who needs to complete a CPU-intensive project in a short amount of time or needs additional resources to handle computing tasks during peak hours.
According to a Sun spokesperson, the website was hosted outside the grid and the attack did not affect the computing cluster.
"There were some minimal DoS attempts early yesterday which is normal for any internet service. The problem was resolved quickly. The Sun Grid was not compromised and there was no degradation of service for users inside the Sun Grid," the company said in an emailed statement to vnunet.com.
Those who want to benefit from Sun's computing power don't have to make a reservation or to negotiate the price or terms, the only prerequisites being a credit card and a PayPal account.