back to article Oracle on Unix biz: We can rebuild it

While Oracle's homegrown Linux kernel, new Exalogic Web application clusters, updated Exadata OLTP/BI appliances, and Sparc T3 processors and servers hogged the stage at the OpenWorld event in San Francisco over the past two days, the software giant and new hardware player did find some time to give its upcoming Solaris 11 Unix …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Linux Can Patch At Runtime

    "Solaris 11 will also reduce maintenance windows by allowing more system software components to be patched without restarting (Oracle thinks it can cut restarts in half.)"

    Linux allows for patching of the kernel at runtime. About 20 milliseconds of downtime required.

    Picture of a Bird Of Prey.

    1. Tom Maddox Silver badge
      Stop

      Sigh

      Fortunately, the kernel is the only thing that ever requires patching, right? RIGHT?

    2. fch

      "patching at runtime" - not new at all

      Hmm, digging up old news:

      http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/8/ds/ds-ras/ds-ras.pdf

      "Dynamic update to kernel software", "hot patching".

      These hooks got purged because the mechanism was one of those that are glorious on paper but impractical in reality. Customers were expecting runtime patches for things that really don't want to be runtime patched, expecting runtime patches for a configuration that was so "patchy" as to be almost impossible to recreate in the lab (to get the starting config from which to create a runtime patch). And if you reboot / crash, should the runtime patch become active again, the old config, or the non-runtime 'actual' patch version ?

      It's interesting that Fowler is now attempting to pass a warm-up of something that Sun couldn't sell in its own days as great-and-shiny brand-new jewel of Oracle Solaris. Maybe it's true that every technology has its time and the pioneer often doesn't reap the money.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    May they burn...

    After their brilliant handling of OpenSolaris:

    May they burn. I'm not touching ANYTHING coming from Darth Ellison's empire again. And I refuse to deal with their hordes of faboi zombies as well.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Go

      So..

      So you'll not use Java, InnoDB, Solaris, NFS, NIS, OpenOffice, MySQL, VirtualBox (to name just a few).......???

      Guess you'll just be switching your mobile phone, desktop and laptop off for good then.

      Just what is a faboi anyway?

      Good to know that the useful stuff hasn't got mucky little hands on it now.

      Run along there troll, nobody cares that you've thrown your toys out the pram and nobody will notice.

  3. Fractured Cell
    Go

    We can rebuild it...

    We have the technology.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      Are You Sure ?

      Oracle Legal dept. probably has a neat stash of patents. See the Google/Java lawsuit.

  4. Christopher E. Stith

    35,000?

    I believe that number in the linked memo was speaking of Oracle-on-Solaris, not Solaris as a whole.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    And exaclty how much will Oracle cost on these boxes?

    A Sparc System running Solaris, that's fine.

    The real sting in the tail is the cost of Oracle for them.

    This makes the actual hardware cost really insignificant.

    All the Sun kit is up for H/W replacement in 6/9 months at our place. We have already been instructed to ditch it for off the shelf X86/64 servers.

    Oracle has made our IT Directors really mad with its 'new & improved' licensing costs. Does a 60Tb Data warehouse really need to cost more than a million a year in Software Licensing?

    Oracle is out the door in 12 months.

    So you can make that 49,999 customers for Solaris now.

    Mr Ellison, you are really going a long way to pissing your long suffering customers off so much that they will soon be waving 'bye-bye' in their droves.

    As for your 'unbreakable Linux', all I can say is, 'Are you having a Larf?'

    mega fail for obvious reasons

    1. Robert Moore
      Linux

      49998 and falling.

      Probably 2 years until the last of the Solaris boxes leave here, but it is on its way out the door.

      I used to think of Solaris as Linux' grown up big brother, but I have come to realize Solaris is really Linux' retarded brother.

      You can't even encrypt the file system, not even part of the file system! I have clients who demand this.

  6. Ex-Solaris Admin
    Thumb Down

    Gone gone gone

    I have been a Sun certified Systems Administrator and Network Administrator for 6 years. Up until last year I had no trouble picking up contracts to install Solaris. I have had no work since November last year. Next month, I will hopefully become a RHCE and be able to pick up some of the contracts that require me to know Red Hat Linux.

    Solaris is dead dead dead. By the time Oracle come to realise this, they won't be able to do anything about it because all the good Solaris admins will have chosen to switch to other *nixs to continue being able to work and they won't be coming back. Solaris was the best Unix around for a long time and it is appalling how badly Oracle have handled its acquisition. Let's face it, Microsoft would have done a better job than Oracle has.

    The real joke is the emails I get from Oracle asking me to take training on Solaris. Yeah RIGHT!!!!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Bye

      Don't let the door hit you on the ass on the way out!

  7. Kebabbert

    Solaris 11 will rock

    seriously. In 2013 there will be 8-socket T3+ servers with 1024 threads. Those T3+ cpus which will arrive late next year, will have 3-5x better thread performance than today. When you try to handle 1024 threads, it turns out that the OS is single threaded here and there. It takes many years to get rid of all single threaded places so it can scale. Linux can not scale to that extent. You will need Solaris 11 to run those new 8-socket servers. They will crush everything. The best performant server on the market, will be those running Solaris 11.

    I promise you, there is a new Solaris 11 revival. Oracle will make all their OracleDB customers switch to the extreme performance servers running Solaris 11 and the new beefy T3+ cpus. If you want the best performance out of OracleDB and data mining, business intelligence, etc - you will need Solaris 11.

    1. fch
      Flame

      wasn't Rock cancelled ?

      ... you're saying Solaris 11 will rock on the non-rock('ing-bandaid-) T3+ ? In 2013 ?

      If you up the per-thread performance of current "UltraSPARC-T*" by 3-5x you're still not close to commodity-off-the-shelf whiteboxes (dare I say x86/x64). Intel's / AMDs x64 CPUs have per-socket cores/threads of about ~20 right now. That's not far off what existing T-series ultrasparc have. So the prospected gain over 3 years is hardly impressive (not compared to existing T3 nor to other CPU suppliers' babies).

      It's catchup but not leapfrog. The rest of the world isn't standing still while Oracle/Sun plays catchup.

      Solaris as operating system scales to enormous threadcounts , fine, one of the things it's rightfully being loved for. But that doesn't mean your application side has caught up. Scalable software is still a form of (arcane) art, all talks notwithstanding about how Java makes that automatic, how the database does it for you, how the OS enables you to do all that. As you say, it takes years - have your all your app suppliers done their piece yet ?

      If your CPU singlethreaded performance is abysmal then one required application exhibiting such a "scaling issue" will pretty much eradicate T3+ from your list of potential hardware to use.

      Stuff that scales out has its market, granted, and the T3+ as its existing cousins will shine in those. Whether that can grow to eat into where (previously) Sun use(d) Fujitsu's SPARC64 - that remains to be seen. As it remains to be seen whether it can ever eat into low-end/low-power channel that's currently being stuffed with Atom- or ARM-based bits&pieces.

      I hope that Oracle doesn't fall back into Sun's folly and believes its own CPUs will reach competition-trashing performance "when they ship" (especially since Oracle hasn't yet improved Sun's track record on shipping-on-date).

      I'm an x86/x64 fanboi - give me Solaris 11 for those please.

      1. Kebabbert

        @fch

        No, I am not saying that Solaris 11 will rock in 2013. It rocks today. It has DTrace that no other OS has. DTrace is the single reason many developers have switched to Solaris, away from Linux. For instance, Mozilla devs have switched to Solaris, just because of DTrace.

        http://blog.mozilla.com/rob-sayre/2007/09/06/land-of-dtrace/

        "... Intel's / AMDs x64 CPUs have per-socket cores/threads of about ~20 right now. That's not far off what existing T-series ultrasparc have. So the prospected gain over 3 years is hardly impressive (not compared to existing T3 nor to other CPU suppliers' babies)..." Maybe you missed the newly released world records that the "slow" T3 has? How can the "T3 be much slower than x86" if T3 is fastest in the world today? I suggest you check up things before you talk nonsense.

        For instance, a company migrated from 251 Dell Linux servers with dual Intel cpus running 700 instances of MySQL down to 24 Sun machines with dual Niagara T2. If they now continue migration to T3, it would suffice with six T3-4 servers. When the T3+ arrives next year, it will suffice with 2-3 servers. How do you explain this consolidation of 251 x86 servers down to 2-3 servers, if the T3 is so slow? Something is not right. And, when the 8-socket T3+ servers arrive, you would need one to handle all the 251 x86 servers work load.

        Oracle has admiitted that T3+ will start to eat into SPARC servers, beacuse the T3+ will have beefy cores. But much higher throughput.

        1. Jesper Frimann
          Badgers

          hmm

          "Maybe you missed the newly released world records that the "slow" T3 has?"

          You are always sure to win when you join a race where you are the only participant

          "How can the "T3 be much slower than x86" if T3 is fastest in the world today? "

          Hmm.. Lets see on this benchmark.

          http://www.spec.org/jvm2008/results/jvm2008.html

          2 x Nehalem-EP's do 317,3 base.

          http://www.oracle.com/us/solutions/performance-scalability/t3-2-specjvm-92010-bmark-172820.html

          2x T3 do 323 peak.

          So peak values barely beat base values for a an 1 1/2 year old Nehalem-EP. Wonder how it would match up to a Westmere-EP or a Nehalem-EX...

          "I suggest you check up things before you talk nonsense."

          The one talking nonsense is you. Oracle's marketing messages is your law.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I just want a copy for my machines at home

    As a hobbyist, I just want copies to run on my sparc h/w at home. (Shipping was included when buying the medium from Sun but the Oracle Store now charges more for shipping than for the medium -- and no, I cannot download the distribution with a medium-speed connection out in the rural areas.)

  9. Glen Turner 666

    Solaris, a hero enters the retirement home

    Once in a while I have to log into a Solaris machine. It's like opening a wormhole back to the computer labs of my youth. Back then we loved SunOS, it was fast, pleasant to use, everything just worked compared with all the other computers we could choose. But now it's like the rest of the world has moved on and Solaris is still left in that lab, as if it were the slowest student, still trying to graduate.

    Bragging about automatically-resolved package dependencies, entire machine package management and rapid reboot just reminds you that Linux already has nice package management (apt-get or yum), can already flash the BIOS with a package update (see SMBIOS), can already reboot without a reset (see kexec) and so on. It just reinforces how very far Solaris has fallen behind, how its development goals are to chase the tail lights of its competitors.

    There's nothing new, nothing that you need to think about until you go "I get it, it's so fantastic I can't live without it, I can't believe no one thought of it before it is so Just Right". Nothing, in short, that we traditionally expect from Sun.

    Today Solaris joins HPUX, VMS and SCO on the Respirator Track of operating systems you don't deploy if you can avoid it. I don't know if Sun put it there and Oracle merely acknowledged the reality, or if Oracle have pulled out of Solaris development. But either way, it's in the ward being drip fed just enough to keep it at the very edge of relevancy.

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