Sun Microsystems, Inc. today announced significantly expanded hardware support for the Solaris Operating System (OS) x86 Platform Edition. Sun’s goal is to ensure that the Solaris OS x86 is available on the widest range of x86 systems by adding 100 new third-party systems and 100 new components to its Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) delivering more value, choice and flexibility to customers. Read on for the rest of the press release.
Sun also introduced a hardware certification test suite (HCTS) and promotion program. The HCTS is available immediately and enables integrators,
system vendors and independent hardware vendors (IHVs) to self-certify their x86 platforms and extend their reach to customers. All Solaris 9 OS x86 users
and vendors are invited to participate, test and list their products on the official Sun Solaris 9 OS x86 HCL site.
Today, IHVs wanting to leverage the growing market for Solaris x86 are
delivering the device driver support needed for enterprise-class
deployments.
Customers can access a detailed Solaris x86 hardware compatibility list at
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl and take advantage of a full range of
certified
drivers and system configurations, and a growing catalog of third-party and
open-source applications.
“As we continue to kick the Solaris x86 program into high gear, our
partner response has been overwhelming,” said Ann Wettersten, vice president
of marketing, software systems group at Sun. “We’ve seen more than
250,000 additional registered licenses of Solaris 9 x86 from industries such
as finance, government, retail and telecom in the past four months alone.
Customers are asking Sun and our partners for a proven, secure,
enterprise-class operating system that leverages the x86 volume platform
and is free and clear from any litigation concerns at a very aggressive
price
point.”
As mass viruses continue to pose a significant threat to any
organization’s IT infrastructure, customers are looking to utilize the most
reliable and secure system at a competitive price. With licensing starting
at
$99, the Solaris 9 OS x86 provides key integrated applications with built-in
security features such as an integrated, enterprise-class firewall. For
additional security, the Trusted Solaris(TM) OS for x86 delivers
carrier-grade
availability with military-grade security. Trusted Solaris is the only
enterprise-class OS that provides the highest level of security assurance in
the market.
“Sun is aggressively moving to ensure that Solaris x86 is available on
the
widest variety of x86 systems. Through our partnership agreement with Sun,
Electronic Business Solutions (EBS) will fully integrate, service and
support
the Solaris x86 platform on a variety of high volume x86 systems to offer
our
customers the benefits of the leading UNIX(r) operating system,” said Fran
Oh,
President and CEO of Electronic Business Solutions. “EBS has been authorized
by HPQ to support the Solaris OS x86 platform on their Proliant servers. EBS
will be providing HPQ field sales team and customers with front line sales
support as well as integration, service and support worldwide.”
“Sun selected Xoriant as its certification partner to help customers and
OEMs certify their specific x86 systems with the Solaris OS x86,” said
Girish Gaitonde, CEO of Xoriant. “Our partnership with Sun further
accelerates
the Solaris x86 adoption rate by providing a turnkey approach for Sun
partners
and customers who want to outsource compatibility testing for their x86
products.”
In addition to offering a highly secure operating system, Sun delivers a
safe choice amid pending intellectual property disputes. Sun indemnifies its
customers for all Solaris Operating Systems, including Sun’s SPARC, x86 and
Trusted Solaris, making the Solaris OS a safe choice for customers moving
forward.
Why is Sun putting so much energy in Solaris/x86, when they know they can’t win the race against Linux on the x86 platform.
Don’t get me wrong; Solaris still rules on high-end UltraSPARC boxes, but I don’t see much future for Solaris/x86.
The only thing I can guess of Sun’s strategy is that they are totally lost/ or the lack of direction.
Why shouldn’t they? Why would they want to “win the race”? There’s plenty of reason to choose Solaris over Linux or Windows when you have certain needs.
I mean, let’s face it: Why doesn’t Apple shut down? They know they can’t win the race against Windows or Linux.
There’s a niche for everyone. The more diversity there is, the more choice there is and it’s better for everyone in the end.
I happen to like and run Solaris for ia32. 🙂 (But I got a Mac, a Linux and a Windows machine, too. Strange.)
<conspiracy_mode>
Or they know something about SCO the rest of the world doesn’t. 😉
</conspiracy_mode>
Well, for one thing, they are trying to “educate the masses” into Solaris.
For people like me, who can’t afford a Sparc box running Solaris, having x86 Solaris allows me to work with it at home and hone my skills.
And yes, I did buy Solaris 8 and 9 for x86.
More compatable hardware would be good. Right now the only hardware I own that x86 Solaris 9 runs well on is an old PII with a BX chipset.
Certified Hardware… perhaps they should consider writing a SciTech SNAP Shell driver for Solaris – after all this would provide Solaris customers with instant access to nearly 200 certified graphics chipsets – just a thought.
Too bad Sun sucks or else I would care.
What an interesting statement… from the wording I can ascertain that your exposure to computing environments is too limited for you to come to such a conclusion.
Sun manufactures the world’s most reliable computing systems, which are highly scalable thanks to massive parallelism and crossbar interconnect architectures. Sun’s interconnect on systems like the SunFire 15k offer the highest throughput of any architecture in existance.
Thus I can’t believe you can come to the conclusion that “Sun sucks” simply because you don’t need a few dozen gigabytes per second of throughput for the SuSE machine in your mom’s basement…
Not true, Daren:
I got Solaris 9 08/03 running on an Athlon XP 2400+ box with 1GB RAM, Radeon 9000 graphics, RealTek networking and some 80GB IDE drive.
Most Solaris/x86 users that I know of simply run XFree86 instead of OpenWindows, which accomplishes the same ends.
I’ve got a dual P3 box, GeForce 2 MX400 and SoundBlaster Live!. Solaris 9 works fine for me.
I think it is interesting that they very nearly didn’t release Solaris 9 for x86 hardware, and now they claim 250 000 additional licencees in just 4 months. I bet they haven’t sold 250 000 Sparc units in that time.
“Why is Sun putting so much energy in Solaris/x86, when they know they can’t win the race against Linux on the x86 platform.”
1) It isn’t a matter of winning but getting a slice of the pie.
2) There are lots of people very used to and very comfortable with Solaris. It really is “enterprise class” in lots of ways, is extremely well documented (something Linux often lacks), and has a long history in corporate computer rooms. To many people, Sun is a known quantity (brand loyalty).
… the SunFire 15k offer the highest throughput of any architecture in existance.
What about modern mainframes? I saw some I/O statistics that put one of the higher-end mainframes about about 4 times the Sun Fire 15K. Granted, the Sun Fire is a very open, flexible, and powerful platform, but I’m not convinced that it is unbeaten in throughput.
I can ascertain that your exposure to computing environments is too limited for you to come to such a conclusion.
I work in AIX, Linux, and SCO (unfortunately). Perhaps Solaris is better on it’s native platform. But x86 Sun was pretty lame in my IMHO.
I’m a big fan of Sun hardware and software. I used to run Solaris/x86 8 at home (and yes, I paid for the media kit). I only switched to FreeBSD when the whole debacle about Solaris/X86 9 started.
I’m glad to see Sun is continuing to support the X86 platform. It quite convenient to development software on the X86 version, and running it on the big iron only requires a simple recompile.
My problem with Sun these days is there lack of direction. First their supporting Solaris and dumping on Linux…Then they are embracing Linux and dumping Solaris/x86…now they are supporting BOTH Linux and Solaris. They seem so “wishy-washy”.
The wishy-washiness that you describe is the external view of an internal conflict at Sun: those of us on the software side have believed (strongly) that Sun’s system software should be running on x86 as well as SPARC. For the hardware side of the hosue (specifically, the chip side of the house), acknowledging that Solaris should run on x86 (or better, that Sun should make x86 boxes) would acknowledge that Sun’s value-add is Solaris more than it’s SPARC.
The good news: the battle is over, and Solaris has won. Solaris x86 — a product which we in engineering single-handedly kept alive during its darkest days — has more buy-in than ever, by far. In Solaris engineering, we always believed that the difference would be when Sun actually started shipping an x86 box — and indeed it has.
And for whatever it’s worth, many of us in Solaris engineering implement on Solaris x86 first and then later confirm that everything works on Solaris SPARC. (Which it nearly always does — the vast, vast majority of the Solaris kernel isn’t ISA-specific.) Point is: x86 is very much a first-class citizen in Solaris development.
Hardware compatibility is Solaris x86′ only real limitation vs. Linux. It beats Linux in pretty much every other possible category. With Project Madhatter including Solaris x86 desktops (as well as Linux) Apple may soon get a run for its money as the best Unix desktop around.
When SCO finally kills off the penguin and then concentrates on BSD and Mac OS X the only safe haven you guys will have is either Solaris x86 or Windows XP, I give you about a year before SCO squashes the Linux community like a bug and decimates you guys, the only Nix to be available will be SCO UW or Sun Solaris so you better be helping them work on the x86 compatibility.
I assume that the reason behind the switch to XFree86 is for better device support (Solaris has been weak in this area) – correct? Now imagine not having to switch your X server and still having access to virtually all Graphics HW.
In regards to use with Xfree, SciTech SNAP is in essence XFree86 version independent. Meaning that all supported HW will work on all versions of XFree (4.0.2 and later). As new supported graphics HW is added they become instantly available to all versions of Xfree86, not just the latest version (as is the case with so many new chipsets). An advantage here would be a wider range of Graphics HW options with out the need to upgrade X – Anyway just a thought….
>>When SCO finally kills off the penguin and then concentrates on BSD and Mac OS X<<
That is what is wanted by Sunw/Sco/Msft. Which is one reason I hate all three companies. Of the three companies, sunw may be the worst, because sunw is the most hypocritical, the most sneaky, and McSquealy is such an ass.
I have no problem with sunw products, but I will avoid sunw from now on.
Bascule wrote: “Sun manufactures the world’s most reliable computing systems”
From YOUR wording I can ascertain that your exposure to SUN computing environments is too limited for you to come to such a conclusion.
Have you ever owned Ultra 10’s with bad CPU’s brand new from the factory? How about SunPCI II’s with CPU fans that go bad within two months. (Argh! The friggin’ noise.) How about Ultra 1’s with bad CPU fans and memory? However CPU modules for Enterprise 3500’s that go bad after a year or so in service? How about wonderful Sun storage that comes from the factory with bad GBICS modules?
” That is what is wanted by Sunw/Sco/Msft. Which is one reason I hate all three companies. Of the three companies, sunw may be the worst, because sunw is the most hypocritical, the most sneaky, and McSquealy is such an ass.”
Well then they will get what they want, and they are doing a good job of it, SCO is unstoppable and unbeatable. The Open Source community is starting to cave under the pressure and I can tell that by bogus ” analysis ” papers by Eric Raymond and Bruce Perens. The Open Source community cant get its story right anymore and they change their story everyday. The linux community is in so much disorganization how can they expect to get anything done. But Sun does produce the best OS and it is about time that they start to get rewarded for their hard work and dedication to the computing world. I see Linux fading into the light when SCO wins and Solaris will start to replace all those little Linux servers.
Most of you kiddies really have no Idea how powerfull Solaris is.
I’ve been a systems admin and unix developer for about 9 years and have used Solaris, AIX, HPUX, True64, IRIX, Linux on Mainframe and nothing comes close to Solaris when it comes to feature set and well round performance when compared to any other OS.
Just to name a few reason why I’ll never use any other OS besides SUN in the enterprise.
1) Java is still the defacto langage for Enterprise WebDev and crossplatform.
2) SAMQFS #1 FS for high volume I/O – Shared File system, Segment Filesystem support, unlimited capacity true HSM Solution.
3) World Class OS Solaris native MPxIO, IPmultipathing well documented and easy to follow system programming interface.
Show me anything found on any other OS’s or Vendor.
SUN will be around for a very long time, SUN’s biggest problem is that they just dont know how to sell their products.
Seth,
Where do you buy your crack? SCO doesn’t have a hope in hell. And, Linux will be with us for a long time. As I’ve stated before, computer users and professionals have a lot to thank Linux for, even if they despise it, because it made the Microsofts and Suns of the world realize that they were vulnerable.
If nothing else, Linux has made better OSes for everyone, although I guess that Apple has lead the way in terms of innovation.
1) Linux and FreeBSD are good for the market place, even if you don’t use them. Ultimately, what they have done is made the large software companies justify their pricing. The net result now are companies like Microsoft now trying to work out how they can justify the whole pricing structure and software line up.
2) If you make your purchasing decisions purely on emtional rhetoric, heaven help you. Sure, I despise Microsoft, however, I certainly would not take my biased opinion into consideration. Ultimately, if the product does the job why then try to justify replacing it using a inferior soluion just simply to spite a company.
3) I personally don’t understand the motivation behind providing Linux. Solaris can do everything linux can and more. It runs Apache, PhP, MySQL, etc etc, why then confuse the customer more by throwing Linux into the mix? Solaris is a workable solution, all there needs is some TLC to be spent polishing its hardware support (including graphical) and getting more ISV’s onboard.
Solaris is better than Linux and I love very much Sun Microsystems and will love in future.
And these are very good news.
Sun Microsystems hardware has excellent quality!
I think we can all agree that Solaris on its native platform is superior to Linux on x86.
Ignoring things like the amount of support Linux has for the x86 hardware. OS architecture wise, how much better is Solaris x86 than Linux on x86?
Some say that the Solaris/x86 version gives them the possibility to play with Solaris. Hey, a V100 server goes for $995 and a Sun Blade 150 for $1350. That’s cheap for a 64bit CPU and everything.
3) I personally don’t understand the motivation behind providing Linux. Solaris can do everything linux can and more.
Except for software support. There is a lot of third party software that’s available for Linux but not x86 Solaris. And as it stands that trend will continue. If you only us OSS and are willing to compile yourself where no binary packages exsist then fair enough, but Linux gives you a wider choice of software. There are several products, both desktop and server, that you cannot get for x 86 Solaris.
If anybody knows of software that runs on x86 Solaris, but not Linux, I’d be interested in hearing about it.
Solaris is a *nix with great posix.4 support. The only other *nix that I’ve used which has as good support was Tru64 and I can’t see that being ported to Intel! This is good news for developers of real-time systems who could use other features found in a full blown *nix environment.
They sent me an email offering me a nice (right) CD case or a spiffy plastic eyeglass holder (I think).
I’ll install Solaris 9, and send in my config. It can only help. Trinkets are nice, too.
Because even that is too much for some unemployed tech nerds like myself. I still don’t have full time work and my last employer went bankrupt while owing about 30 employees thousands of dollars each.
I can get a Solaris x86 compatible box, fully loaded, for $200 and thats a P2-450.
Coming from an ex Systems Administrator of both Windows NT/2k, Solaris, SCO, Linux, and *BSD, I can say this about Sun. Their products do provice Enterprise class performance and uptime. I’ve seen many companies offering “99.999% uptime”. All I can say is proove it. My Solaris boxes ran 100%. My NT/2K boxes got rebooted 2-3 times every 2 weeks. My *BSD and linux boxes got rebooted 2-3 times a YEAR. I don’t really know about the people who state that Solaris is a bad OS and that the hardware is faulty from the factory. I believe that those individuals are not compentent enough to install the hardware and software that they speak of. There, my 2 cents.
(And yes, unfortunately http://www.physicalplant.ttu.edu runs 2K and it sucks, and I do not have the authority to have it changed… dang) Good day all.
Sun makes great products and they kick ass when it comes to Solaris on SPARC. The x86 stuff will catch up in due time. You’d be surprised how many ppl use Solaris on x86 because of it’s OS features. A lot of the systems that hold the telecom world together are Solaris SPARC and Solaris x86. AT&T is a big user of both.
To the people who have a beef about Sun hardware… if it lasts past the first 90 days, it’ll run for years. The number one thing I’ve seen fail on Sun Enterprise systems are hard drives.. after about 5 years.. which is the how long the manufacturers say an FC drive in continual usage should last. Other than that, the parts on Enterprise servers last a long time. Sun equipment has a life cyclone of 7 years, so it should last that long, minus disk drives.
As for Sun workstations, I agree that the Ultra 1, Ultra 5, and Ultra10 were the worst workstations Sun ever made. However, they were always meant to be low-end workstations. When I worked at Sun, they were used as desktops. So they were never meant to be servers.. even though lots of people use them for that still to this day.
Sun sold more servers than Dell did in Q2 for 2003! HP and IBM won since they are diversified. So to all those weenies who say Sun is dying.. take a look:
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=11275
And for the people who say that SPARC systems are too expensive.. you should check out the prices Sun’s web page. They are competing extremely well. The V210’s and V240’s, which are dual proc boxes sell for less than $7000 and have 4 GigE ports built on. Those are 1U and 2U systems. Pretty nice. And for those who want to play with Solaris on Sparc at home.. look on Ebay.
http://www.supercomputingonline.com/article.php?sid=4285
Listen I have run commercial software off of linux like NetVault and Convolo Mission Critical Linux’s clustering software. Linux has its place. It makes a hell of an application server, backend services run well at a low cost etc..etc..etc.. You need a web server, ftp server, or a DNS server. Linux is all over that.
I have also run Oracle, Veritas VM and Netbackup, Netscape Enterprise Server and a number of other things off of Solaris. It is jokingly called Slowaris for a reason. However, it does not go down. We have 3500 mentioned above and a number of old Ultra 10 and Ultra 1s and 220R and 420R systems. The only problems we have ever had we were with the Netra 1Us when it comes to the hardware. The rest has been pretty damn golden.
Plus, I have run into hardware problems with linux. Odd ones. The broadcom giga network adapter never quite working right on a Dual Athlon machine with the Athlon SMP kernel for example. We ended up getting Intel e1000 cards and they worked right off.
The odd issue between the Raidtec chasis, the Adaptec 39320 scsi card and the U320 Seagate drives. Boot up one machine with all drives attached and everything comes up fine. Hook up another machine to the same enclosure for a little cluster setup and the adapters try to keep negotiating the speed to the lowest point for each drive before continuing. Put the speed down to 160 instead of 320 MB/s and both boxes come up but with weird LQISTAT errors and bus/dev resets. Drives on both machines but different one randomly coming up 80 MB/s which makes the boss real nervous. Oh yeah, put in 160MB/s drives (Seagate) and everything works and yes, all the drives have the latest firmware.
I just do not get that kind of weird shite on a Sun box. Of course, I would have paid out the ass for Sun Clustering.
It all depends on what you need. Listen there are a few app servers that only run on NT. I understand this. A hetereogenous server environment with flexble admins. That is what works. Not blind zealotry.
The V210’s and V240’s, which are dual proc boxes sell for less than $7000 and have 4 GigE ports built on.
These are very good systems – I worked with the V210 (the 240 is very similar architecture) and we were very pleased with it.
Where solaris shines is scalability. I have personally seen and am amazed at how solaris scales.
We have dual CPU UltraSPARC box at work with SunRay duties for our lab and development network. At any given time there are 50-75 users on it with thier sunray sessions running all sorts of stuff like mozilla,Staroffice and power hungry apps. We are taking about 2500+ processes and 4500 threads. The thing hardly breaks a sweat. You login and you wouldn’t believe there are that many users on it.
I am yet to see linux scale that well. Since Solaris x86 is very similar to solaris SPARC interms of platfrom independant code, I would expect the same form it.
“As for Sun workstations, I agree that the Ultra 1, Ultra 5, and Ultra10 were the worst workstations Sun ever made. However, they were always meant to be low-end workstations. When I worked at Sun, they were used as desktops. So they were never meant to be servers.. even though lots of people use them for that still to this day.”
What do you mean worst wokstations? Ultra 10 was Sun’s largest selling workstation. You say workstations and then compare them to servers!!