back to article Oracle dubs Solaris 11 world's 'first cloud OS'

Oracle has duly and at last announced the Solaris 11 Unix system, developed under the code-name "Nevada" at the former Sun Microsystems and representing the foundation of the future Sparc systems business that Oracle hopes to rebuild. Solaris 11 is perhaps a little later coming to market than planned because of the Oracle …

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  1. Goat Jam
    FAIL

    Meh

    I wanted to try OpenSolaris (Yes, I know it's not the same thing) for ZFS (Yes, I know FreeBSD has ZFS, I'm using it now thanks) but it is simply not possible.

    Nowhere can you download an ISO and just try it out. You go to the Opensolaris website and are told to register with Oracle before you can get past the front page.

    Fine, I have a disposable email that I can use for that.

    So register I do, only to find that there is nothing behind the RegisterWall anyway, just a bunch of Corporate Speak nonsense to wade through.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      OpenSolaris

      Where have you been, under a rock? OpenSolaris was killed LONG ago. OpenIndiana is the replacement for it.

    2. Thommy M.
      Trollface

      The fail is on your side

      If you have spent more time on following what happend to OpenSolaris than on just complaining, you would know that you can find an open Solaris download at http://openindiana.org/download/

      And Solaris 11 is downloadable at http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/downloads/index.html

    3. Goat Jam
      Trollface

      Hmmm

      5 downvotes on this post.

      Leads me to one of two conclusions;

      1) I am wrong and it is easy to download OpenSolaris but nobody could be bothered to enlighten me on just how to do it.

      or

      2) I have hit a rich seam of fanboys/shills/astroturfers.

      or

      3) The legendary El Reg downvotard brigade are having a convention here.

    4. Paul Johnston

      Why not try?

      OpenIndiana

      See http://openindiana.org/

      That has ZFS!

      1. John 62
        Coat

        OpenIndiana?

        Is that like Erie, Indiana?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Meh

    Larry killed Solaris with his insane support pricing increases and the bullet he put in OpenSolaris' head. Good luck with Solaris 11, most customers are running away from Oracle as fast as they can.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    nice pitch

    "Easier to operate and support"?? Ha ha ha. Didn't realize Oracle had a sense of humour...

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Of course Solaris 10 remains supported..

    Oracle knows damn well that if they'd drop support for Solaris 10 in the upcoming year they'd be losing quite some income then and there, instead if they can keep it on life support for a little longer they can milk it dry.

    I don't see many people upgrading to Solaris 11 any time soon now, not with the (in comparison with Sun) idiotic policy changes going on.

    Considering how the open source variant went to pieces I dare predict that this is most likely the last Solaris version we'll ever see.

    Quite a shame too IMO because Solaris had quite some potential. Oh well...

  5. Valiant
    Meh

    No-one's listening ...

    Oracle's attitude towards customers and the reseller channel, has been so heavy-handed that the former are leaving in droves, and only the usual tin-shifters are left amongst the latter.

  6. Nate Amsden

    operating systems only improve over time

    Tell that to IRIX and Tru64

  7. Matt Bryant Silver badge
    Happy

    Zero-overhead virtualisation

    Top-notch comedy from Oracle! Only real case I can think of is hardware partitioning on hp Integrity, and that's hardly granular. Maybe what Hurd meant was "zero interest virtualisation", as in no-one is interested in it. And exactly how many of those "hundreds and hundreds of thousands" of installed instances is Larry getting a support payment for?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      HP Shill

      Matt, the HP Shill, strikes again!

      1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
        FAIL

        RE: HP Shill

        Note how the Sunshiner can't supply any reasoning as to why the Slowaris virtualisation could be "zero overhead", and steers firmly clear of the fact that the majority of the Slowaris implentations mentioned generate no revenue for Snoreacle.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    M3?

    "...are expected to offer six times the throughput and 1.5 times the single-thread performance of the current M3 chips."

    What is M3?

    1. Allison Park

      They are smoking something only legal in some states

      The M3 is the SPARC64 VII+ the roadmap is right here

      http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/computing/server/sparcenterprise/technology/protection/roadmap.html

      The question is what is M4? 1.5X the single threaded performance well they could do that by greatly increasing the clock, wattage and heat like they did with the t4 (cool threads are gone).

      Larry is not one for energy savings, after all how many houses does someone really need.

      6X the throughput would require them to go from 4 to 16 cores and with the 1.5 thread improvement.

      Is Fujitsu going to be able to have a 16 core chip with 1.5X the per thread performance or 8 core chip with 4 threads and 1.5X per thread.

      Or do you think Oracle is just putting a T3 chip into the M systems from Fujitsu and customers will have to pay millions for Oracle software on all those cores?

      Just remember that the Power7 has 8X the current SPARC64VII+ so by the time "M4" comes out after 7+ I am guessing it will still be a dog which needs oracle core factor discounts to compete.

      NO THANKS!

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: M3

      M3 is the code name for the current crop of SPARC64 chips from Fujitsu

  9. Don Mitchell

    The First Cloud OS

    The first cloud OS that isn't Dave Cutler's "Red Dog" system.

  10. Mad Mike
    Unhappy

    Dead in the water

    Oracle has completely destroyed the Solaris and Sparc market even better than Sun managed. Their Exadata salesforce insist Exadata (or Exalogic) works for everything, the the best thing ever and Sparc, SANs etc. are all legacy. Obviously, others in Oracle believe the reverse. The Sparc T range of servers are OK and servicable. The Sparc T chip is being amended to work in larger systems to refresh the Sparc M range. Unfortunately, this makes Sparc exactly the same as every other chip out there. They ploughed a new furrow originally, but now are just the same. So, Sparc is more expensive in every way, hence dead except for the rump of applications that can only run on Sparc.

    Oracle has killed Itanium (which desperately needed it) and with the Sparc issues, p-Series and AIX is now the only Unix in town. Shame really as it could have been so much more.

  11. Jim 59

    Cloud

    Nice article. Built in dedupe is the only thing that stands out here.

    NB. "cloud" is purely a marketing term now. Once it was used in connection with the remote compute server business. Now it is merely an air-freshener for stale marketing campaigns and dull CVs. One is reminded of the late 90s audio biz, where everything had to be called "digital", and even headphones and the like were preposterously labelled as "digital ready".

    Great CV fodder though. You don't build virtual servers, you implement cloud-ready architectures.

  12. Sir Lancelot
    Trollface

    A cloud OS. That makes it vaporware then...

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Won't run on my Ultra 5 though, will it

    Or indeed, the E4500 I bought on eBay because 'ooh, 12 processors and 10GB of RAM' and haven't touched in months.

    1. Thommy M.
      Go

      10

      But Solaris 10 will run on that iron for many years ahead and will be updated as well.

  14. This post has been deleted by its author

  15. David Halko
    Go

    TPM - Solaris 11: Crossbow, Network Virtualization, LDoms, Xen, KVM

    Thank you, Timothy Prickett Morgan, for a reasonably written article!

    A couple of items might need a little clarification.

    TMP writes, "Solaris 10 could run Solaris 8 and Solaris 9... Solaris 11 can run Solaris 10... Ah, but can you run Solaris 9 inside of a Solaris 10 container that is inside of a Solaris 11 container?"

    No, but there is a way to run 8, 9, 10, and 11 on the smae hardware. LDom's or OracleVM for SPARC is available for the T hardware. Dynamic Domains is available on the M series. You can run Solaris 10 and Solaris 11 within different [Logical or Dynamic] Domains where both OS's provide Solaris 8, Solaris 9, Solaris 10, and Solaris 11 Zones to the user community on the same hardware.

    TPM writes, "The virtualization stack for Solaris 11 is basically the same as for Solaris 10, so it is a bit confusing as to why Oracle is calling this the first cloud OS."

    There is nothing farther from the truth. A significant step forward from Solaris 10 to OpenSolaris, Solaris 11 Express, and ultimately Solaris 11 was the inclusion of network stack virtualization via Crossbow.

    http://netmgt.blogspot.com/search/label/Crossbow

    With Crossbow, you can build an entire cloud directly on a single kernel, build virtual switches in the OS level, throttle traffic, introduce latency, etc.

    When a provider knows their intra-cloud latency, between the most distant virtual servers, the cloud (including network environment) can be simulated on your laptop or on a local server using Crossbow with Zones. Not only will a Solaris 10 user be able to run an entire cluster on their laptop/server, but simulate the entire cluster with LAN and WAN latencies under Solaris 11.

    Solaris 11 introduces ZFS DeDup, which Solaris 10 did not include. With the inclusion of ZFS DeDup, running dozens of Zones with identical applications is more efficient, since the binaries are all deduplicated in the memory of the host machine, as well as on the host machine's storage. There is a lot to be said for this efficiency, in cloud computing, but it is absolutely crazy that this may not have been stressed.

    TPM writes, "it is a bit confusing as to why Oracle is calling this the first cloud OS. (Hey, that's marketing for you. Joyent says the same thing about its Solaris-based Smart OS"

    Twp reasons amazing cloud efficiencies can be built on Solaris: Crossbow and ZFS DeDup.

    Oracle's killing of Solaris Xen was extremely disappointing, but the resurrection of [non Zones] virtualization via Joyent's KVM is absolutely amazing and should not be underestimated. The ability to dedup Windows & Linux binaries [with underlying applications] in memory, as well as on storage, brings cloud computing to a new level.

    If there was ever a platform to virtualize thousands of employee Windows desktops and throttle the usage of individual users so they can not abuse the host platform resources - that platform is [Solaris based] Joyent SmartOS. You can do it all, on a few platforms, with ZFS, Dedup, KVM, and Crossbow.

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      FAIL

      RE: TPM - Solaris 11: Crossbow, Network Virtualization, LDoms, Xen, KVM

      Thanks for the marketing splurge, Novatose (by the way, where ARE those SPARC V systems you used to pump so noisily?), but I predict the average company's response will be "Meh, it runs on that expensive dog SPARC, we'll just keep on buying VMware instead."

      1. Kebabbert

        VMware vs Containers

        If you already deploy Solaris, then it is much efficient to use Containers. Similar to nPar, I have heard. And you, as a HP-UX man, surely knows the difference between a lightweight nPar and a full virtualization environment such as VMware.

        One guy booted up 1.000 Containers on a Solaris PC with 1GB RAM. It was very slow, but it worked. Thus, Containers are much more efficient than VMware with neglibile overhead.

        For every container that is booted, the Solaris kernel just allocates some kernel data structs in RAM, and that takes a few MB RAM, and that is it. As they said, negligible overhead. Very wicked. I am sure nPars works the same way, so you can appreciate such a nPar inspired solution.

        1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
          WTF?

          RE: VMware vs Containers

          ".....Similar to nPar....." Kebbie, nPars are true hardware partitioning, a real "share-nothing" environment, something no form of Slowaris partitioning can do, period. Containers has an underlying layer (like Xen or ESX) that does the virtualisation, and that is a shared SPOF. With nPars, the hardware is electrically isolated, there is no underlying virtualisation layer, so I can blitz one nPar with absolutley zero effect on the others. All the available CPU and RAM is used by the OS instances installed on the nPars, none by the virtualisation.

          ".....One guy booted up 1.000 Containers on a Solaris PC with 1GB RAM...." <Yawn> So what? There is a minimum amount of RAM for Integrity VMs hardcoded to 512MB for a reason - anything smaller is really irrellevant. TBH, 512MB is pretty useless for real systems. You used to be able to make IVMs with as little as 100MB of RAM, but there was simply no enterprise role that could be completed with such a tiny amount of memory. In reality (I know, you don't go there much, but you should aspire to), practical VMs for us start with about 8GB of RAM (we do a lot of Oracle, it needs lots of memory) and a typical IVM has 16GB in our environment. Your "1000 containers" is just like a lot of your Snoreacle benchmarks - completely pointless and only of amusement value.

          ".....As they said, negligible overhead....." Except for the resources chewed up by the underlying virtualisation layer, which is a full-fat Slowaris instance. Nothing "negligable" there! Slowaris simply does not have a "zero overhead" virtualisation option.

  16. David Halko
    Happy

    RE: Meh... RE: Hmmm...

    Goat Jam suggests, "I wanted to try OpenSolaris... for ZFS... but it is simply not possible. Nowhere can you download an ISO and just try it out."

    You have been a member of The Register forums since early 2008. During this time, Sun replaced Solaris Express with OpenSolaris, released 2 different OpenSolaris distributions, OpenSolaris distribution was replaced with Solaris 11 Express distribution, and Solaris 11 was released - all of which could be downloaded.

    Goat Jam posts, "5 downvotes on this post. Leads me to one of two conclusions... 1... 2... 3..."

    You provided 3 reasons and received up to 10 down votes, as of now. Indicating you could not download the old OpenSolaris "to try" may sound disingenuous to many participants, due to the reasons I outlined above.

    GoatJam posts, "1) I am wrong and it is easy to download OpenSolaris but nobody could be bothered to enlighten me on just how to do it"

    You would be better advised to get a modern release like OpenIndiana, as Anonymous suggested. In another post, Paul Johnson provided the OpenIndiana URL:

    http://openindiana.org/

    ThommyM suggested Solaris 11 Oracle and illumos with 2 URL's.

    http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/downloads/index.html

    http://openindiana.org/download/

    Assuming you are not being disingenuous and if you really have your heart set on the old OpenSolaris distribution, you can go here.

    http://netmgt.blogspot.com/p/opensolaris.html

    The OpenSolaris URL I included should directly answers your comment.

  17. milliganp
    WTF?

    Did Mark Hurd use Siri?

    I have no advice to offer on the best place to download OpenSolaris, however I watched the launch video and every time Mark Hurd says "next slide" the presentation changes! Was he using Siri or is it just possible that the president of a leading technology company doesn't know how to use the most basic technology?

    1. Matt Bryant Silver badge
      Happy

      RE: Did Mark Hurd use Siri?

      Mr Hurd obviously likes having a minion to do everything for him, it's so below him to have to click for himself, so instead he barks at a marketting minion and they select the next slide for him. Probably a blonde marketting minion that used to make soft-core pr0n movies, going by his previous hiring patterns.....

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