openslowaris
If they open up a new opensolaris, at least its ZFS implementation will see many x86 based systems
Systems maker Oracle is getting out the dogs and ponies and hauling them to New York City for the official launch of the long-awaited Solaris 11 operating system next week. The operating system, formerly known by the internal code-name "Nevada" when it was under development at the former Sun Microsystems, is not coming out at …
You say "So basically any processor chip that Sun made excepting the Sparc T series is kaput as far as Solaris 11 is concerned."
What about SPARC V, V+, VI, VI+ systems?
Looks like Solaris 11 runs on anything made after 2003 or there about.
Try running Windows 7 on something from 2005... or AIX 5.3 ... or HP-UX 11... or Redhat 6... Not reading articles about this...
Actually AIX 5.3 will run on a POWER3 system... a RS/6000 44p 270 for example which was released in 2000.
OK you're not going to be running many applications on such a system these days but the OS will boot and run quite happily.
Of course with AIX 6.1 you're completely out of luck as that requires POWER4 or higher.
The V490 2100 GA's in 2007, last ship date April 2009, so it is a fairly quick obsolescence. To be fair, if you were buying a V490 in 2009, it was probably because you needed to run Solaris 8 or 9 due to application compatibility reasons; the M4000 GA'd in October 2007, the M3000 in December 2008.
When you add in that most shops won't even look to deploy Solaris 11 for another 6 months, it's not likely to be that big a problem for most people.
Finally, all the US-IV & earlier kit has an end of support date of 2014 or earlier; it doesn't make a huge amount of sense to upgrade your OS when it's just going to be out of mainline support in 3 years...
"It will be interesting to see if Oracle can get Solaris 11 on a wide selection of x86-based servers, too."
Well, I know they need to validate it etc, but I have been running Solaris 11 Express on a converted desktop for a while now as a test bed, with no issues. I have to say I love it.
"If they open up a new opensolaris"
I have heard they will be releasing source after they release 11 in full, so it should give a boost to the Solaris-based systems (Nexenta etc.) and other ZFS implementations.
"It will be interesting to see if Oracle can get Solaris 11 on a wide selection of x86-based servers, too."
I struggle to understand why Oracle would really want to push this on x86 if their preferred option is OVM. I would be worried about deploying Solaris on x86 as I see no commitment from Oracle on this combination over the long term.
tranzophobia writes, "I struggle to understand why Oracle would really want to push this on x86 if their preferred option is OVM. I would be worried about deploying Solaris on x86 as I see no commitment from Oracle on this combination"
The combination has been supported for awhile and Oracle published their reasoning:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/vm/solaris-098101.html
"For customers facing challenging business and technical requirements - such as lowering costs, simplifying system administration, and maintaining high service levels - the Oracle Solaris Operating System is the ideal cross-platform choice... The Oracle VM Templates for Oracle Solaris can be used to rapidly provision new virtual machines running Oracle Solaris OS on x86 platforms."
If Oracle x86 was not going to be supported for the long term, Oracle would have killed it, already, when they killed off other Sun products, during the acquisition.
The staying-power looks pretty good. The announcement on the 9th will help solidify it.
tranz -I struggle to understand why Oracle would really want to push this on x86 if their preferred option is OVM
Because OVM is a virtualisation technology that supports operating systems like Solaris x86
tranz - worried about deploying Solaris on x86 as I see no commitment from Oracle on this combination
the sky might fall, too. better find an underground bunker.