Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H) [LWN.net]

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 8:25 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (11 responses)

*Some* parts of IBM push AIX

Others know very well they need Linux to achieve their profit objectives. (I'm sure IBM does a nice profit on Windows systems too).

Oracle is much too profit-oriented to wander around changing roadmaps every year and dropping product lines that earn hard money in the pursuit of phantomatic schemes like Solaris everywhere.

In case you haven't noticed, all the manufacturers that wished to renew their Solaris x86 agreement had to sign up on Oracle Unbreakable Linux too.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 8:33 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (10 responses)

Nobody is talking about dropping anything. Sure, they need Linux, and they will support Linux, because their customers run Linux. However, they both need their own operating system for things that are unpractical to do with Linux.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 12:17 UTC (Wed) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (7 responses)

Unpractical?

Not that Oracle would not *love* selling overpriced hardware to people who think like this, but in the real world, I've wasted an hour yesterday trying to explain someone tasked with writing Oracle filesystem requirements there was *nothing* to do under RHEL 5.x (Oracle merged all it needed upstream ages ago, and is even dropping support for raw devices nowadays since Linux filesystems just work for them).

Because AIX/Solaris/VxFS all required magic filesystem parameters, he would not take nothing for an answer.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 13:11 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (6 responses)

Yes, unpractical. For various reasons, from organisational (controlling the way the operating system is being developed; they can't do this with Linux, unless they fork it), to economical (if they pay for Linux development, it will help their competitors; it's not a problem with Solaris, because e.g. IBM offering Solaris would be a epic PR failure for IBM), to technological - scalability et al. Same thing as with e.g. IBM (AIX) or Apple (OSX).

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 16:04 UTC (Wed) by tzafrir (subscriber, #11501) [Link]

They managed to get code they wanted into Linux, haven't they? Full control over an OS is only a means to an end: make your software stack work well on it.

IBM does not seem to have a problem investing its code in Linux.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 16:59 UTC (Wed) by chad.netzer (subscriber, #4257) [Link]

Sure they can control the way the Linux is being developed! They are paying people to develop for Linux, and those people are having an influence (btrfs, for example).

If you mean have ultimate control, that's another matter. And its not clear that's what Oracle wants or needs at the OS level (it's a heavy burden.)

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 22:46 UTC (Wed) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link] (3 responses)

IBM offering Solaris would be a epic PR failure for IBM

As usual you are hilariously ignorant. IBM has been selling Solaris systems for years, and still does.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 21:11 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (2 responses)

Doesn't matter - I'm talking about marketing, not just having something in the price list. Oracle can say "hey, look at this Oracle hardware with its awesome Oracle Solaris operating system". IBM can say "hey, look at this IBM hardware with its awesome Linux operating system". IBM can't say "hey, look at this IBM hardware with its awesome Oracle... erm, wait". Simple, eh?

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 21:15 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

In other words - Solaris can be a strong selling point for Oracle; Linux can be a selling point for IBM, but Solaris can't be a selling point for IBM, because that would be marketing failure. It's like with Macs - sure, you can install Windows on them, there is BootCamp etc, but Apple doesn't market Macs by saying "it's great, because you can run Windows instead of OSX".

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 11, 2010 7:16 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Sounds more like how low end hardware is sold. This would be more like "look at this awesome free stay at a nice hotel".

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 12:40 UTC (Wed) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link] (1 responses)

I know you like to be inflammatory, but customers are running from Solaris and AIX for lots of reasons -- not because Linux isn't practical. Oracle especially has a bad reputation for pricing and treatment of customers, and this fact alone makes people evaluate alternatives.

It isn't entirely clear to me what Oracle wants to message with Solaris. Larry Ellison has in the past spoken lovingly about Linux, but after the purchase of Sun, he's now changed his tune -- despite his own RHEL fork.

Announcements like Illumos are the best news possible for Solaris. People are taking the code into their own hands and not waiting for corporate sponsors. I would have thought that the decline of Solaris would have been a boon for FreeBSD development. Perhaps you could comment on that?

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 13:26 UTC (Wed) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

I'm talking about being practical from the vendor (IBM or Oracle) point of view.

Ellison "spoken lovingly" about Linux, because everyone except Ballmer did it - IBM did it, and even Sun did. Also, Ellison didn't really have a choice then - Oracle didn't have their own platform.

As for FreeBSD - no idea. FreeBSD got (and still gets, i.e. pulls from vendor) some pretty important code from Solaris; Solaris got its WiFi stack from FreeBSD, IIRC. On the other hand, there was some talk by the PostgreSQL guys about FreeBSD having the nice features of Solaris while avoiding the doubts about OpenSolaris future.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 18:12 UTC (Wed) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (17 responses)

> Actually, it's the other way around - Oracle purchased Sun to be able to compete with IBM by providing complete solution, from the hardware, through the operating system, to the database and application server.

No I really don't think so. I know the story about how Oracle was suppose to crank out these super fast database monster machines since now they can optimize everything from the hardware on up. But everything Oracle has done so far points to them simply not caring about that approach.

I think they will continue to hack around with Solaris and support Sparc as long as people will be willing to keep paying the support contracts, but they are not going to put a lot of money and effort into that approach. Organizations will continue to want Solaris and Sparc because that is what their applications require, but I really doubt anybody is aiming to revitalize the Sparc platform and make big new deployments on it.

I think what they care about is their vertical application stacks. A OS and hardware for them is simply a mechanism to host Java VMs and provide a way to interface with storage in order to run database software. That's just about it.

Does Java/Solaris really provide that big advantage over Java/Linux to justify putting the time and effort into maintaining two enterprise operating systems?

> Solaris is crucial for that - for the same reason AIX is crucial for IBM. Not so with Linux, btw, and we can expect Oracle to start doing what IBM is doing, i.e. push its own system instead of Linux.

Well Solaris/Sparc is certainly no AIX/POWER. IBM POWER trounced Sun in the high-end and Solaris/Sparc is no longer competitive. Poring money into the hardware platform and trying to compete with IBM head on is one of the reasons Sun is dead now and I do not think that Oracle is aiming to repeat history.

It seems likely that Oracle's approach to scalability now seems to be the clustering approach, which is Linux's bread and butter and cheap x86-based hardware has a clear advantage. The advantage to custom hardware in this situation is to provide high-speed interconnect, improve the hot swapping of hardware, improve cooling, and increase density... small fast drives, blade servers, and the like.

I think your misreading IBM a bit also. IBM is extremely mercenary and I don't think that IBM really cares what OS or what hardware your using as long as you get it from them and your paying the support contracts. They will recommend you use AIX or Linux or Windows based on your requirements and your ability to pay. I am sure that some IBM goons push AIX, but that may have to do with their sales commission more then anything else.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 20:41 UTC (Wed) by paragw (guest, #45306) [Link] (16 responses)

I don't see why Oracle would not want to increase spending on marketing Solaris/SPARC for high end databases and even for heavily virtualized workloads.

For one thing newer SPARC hardware is pretty competitive for Database or WebServer/Application Server type of workloads and Solaris 10 offers features that are nothing to sneeze at. After all what other 16-Core/128 Threads box with built in SSL acceleration can I buy for the price of a Sun T5240 for example?

For the Java+DB workload I think Solaris/SPARC does provide a big advantage over Linux/x86 mostly due to the newer SPARC hardware and Solaris 10 feature set - Zones/ZFS/DTrace etc. Then there is also the irrational fear of stability and scalability that decision makers get hung up on when it comes to choosing Linux/x86. It's either HP-UX/Itanium (increasingly so) or Solaris/SPARC for high end workloads.

I can see one problem though - with many ex-Sun Solaris Engineering folks leaving Oracle - that could slow down Solaris and thus SPARC.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 22:31 UTC (Wed) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link]

> Then there is also the irrational fear of stability and scalability that decision makers get hung up on when it comes to choosing Linux/x86.

Maybe this irrational fear is due to their laptop crashing when they up(!)grade the Linux distribution installed on it. Just before they reboot into Windows.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 4, 2010 23:12 UTC (Wed) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] (9 responses)

Oracle could also spend money on Linux/SPARC. After all, they already have their own distribution.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 0:37 UTC (Thu) by clump (subscriber, #27801) [Link] (1 responses)

Oracle doesn't really have their own distribution. They're just repackaging Red Hat Enterprise Linux and making a few tweaks. RHEL doesn't have a supported SPARC distribution, so, surprise, neither does Oracle.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 12:19 UTC (Thu) by lkundrak (subscriber, #43452) [Link]

I believe nicooo was suggesting they spend money on it. If they did, they could have a sparc distribution (after all Fedora, which is upstream for their Linux distro runs on sparc).

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 21:07 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (6 responses)

Except that for Oracle, spending money on Linux equals to giving money to IBM. Which is obviously not nice from the business point of view.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 23:08 UTC (Thu) by nicooo (guest, #69134) [Link] (3 responses)

Look at all the money they're giving to IBM:
http://www.oracle.com/technologies/linux/linux-tech-leade...

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 6, 2010 8:05 UTC (Fri) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link] (2 responses)

Yeah, and I'm wondering what will happen with that.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 6, 2010 11:29 UTC (Fri) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] (1 responses)

It will increase? Oracle have expanded their Linux development workforce *since* buying Sun. This much is public knowledge available with about two minutes' Google searches.

You really don't do any research at all before posting, do you?

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 7, 2010 11:01 UTC (Sat) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

No, I tend to not rely on unverified information found by two minutes of googling. URL?

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 6, 2010 2:10 UTC (Fri) by Doogie (guest, #59626) [Link] (1 responses)

As I'm sure you are "aware", Oracle not only spends money to improve Linux, they also market Solaris specifically for IBM hardware. Simple, eh?

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 6, 2010 8:06 UTC (Fri) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

And Apple supports Windows on Macs. See explanation below.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 0:49 UTC (Thu) by drag (guest, #31333) [Link] (1 responses)

> I don't see why Oracle would not want to increase spending on marketing Solaris/SPARC for high end databases and even for heavily virtualized workloads.

Because against Intel and IBM it's a losing battle. That's all. If putting money into Sparc was such a good idea then Sun would of never gotten cheap enough to get purchased and we would not be having this discussion.

> For one thing newer SPARC hardware is pretty competitive for Database or WebServer/Application Server type of workloads and Solaris 10 offers features that are nothing to sneeze at. After all what other 16-Core/128 Threads box with built in SSL acceleration can I buy for the price of a Sun T5240 for example?

Well dual SMP Intel system will get you 16 cores, easily. Dual Opterons now offer 24 real processor cores. Both are available from many vendors at a cheaper price and their per-thread performance blows Sparc out of the water. As time goes by this trend is just going to get worse for Sparc.

That and, especially for the web, nothing comes close to clustering in terms of scalability.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 1:54 UTC (Thu) by paragw (guest, #45306) [Link]

>Because against Intel and IBM it's a losing battle. That's all. If putting money into Sparc was such a good idea then Sun would of never gotten cheap enough to get purchased and we would not be having this discussion.

It wasn't SPARC - post Niagara it has it's place in the market. It was the Sun Marketing folks. They never marketed the Niagara enough. And then there was the uncertainty associated with Sun's financials and their lack of a coherent sounding strategy. But since T1/T2 are here and T3 is upcoming, Financial uncertainty is gone, hopefully most of the bad Sun marketing people have been let go - there is no reason Oracle would like to shy away from SPARC in 2010.

If UltraSPARC T3 delivers on its promise we are talking massive amount of threads and cores - 16 cores 4 way SMP and 8 threads per core. Plus DDR3/16 Crypto Engines on board and a ton of per socket bandwidth (2.4 Tb/s) to feed all those threads. Sure per thread performance for T1/T2 may not be on par with Intel/AMD (or T3 might come closer who knows) but this stuff is exactly what web/db/java app server loads rock on.

You may be right that it still might get worse for SPARC depending on what Oracle has planned/how much they can deliver, how much they are going to be able to keep the Solaris momentum going and how fast Intel/AMD will catch up to T3 - but I think it's not clear that the end of road for SPARC is near yet.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 11:35 UTC (Thu) by nim-nim (subscriber, #34454) [Link] (1 responses)

To put things into perspective: everyone but HP is dropping support for Itanium. Intel is quickly losing interest in it as it finally managed to design competitive x64 (not ia64) chips.

If your reading of the Sparc market is as good as your reading of the Intanium market, then Sparc is trully dead.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 5, 2010 21:04 UTC (Thu) by trasz (guest, #45786) [Link]

Itanium doesn't have any technical advantages - it's expensive, power-hungry and slow. Also, it's not being owned or developed by HP, while HP is pretty much the only company that needs it. So, it's a completely different situation than with SPARC or POWER.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 9, 2010 9:47 UTC (Mon) by Cato (guest, #7643) [Link]

The trend I see for large IT workloads (200 plus cores for a single application) is towards Linux and x86. This could use Solaris and x86 but I don't see anyone pushing for Solaris/SPARC.

Illumos launched as OpenSolaris derivative (The H)

Posted Aug 11, 2010 7:27 UTC (Wed) by job (guest, #670) [Link]

Sun may have thought of Opensolaris as a hardware mover, but that will not be the case with Oracle. Being locked into their database is why you'd want to buy Oracle gear and their database runs just as well on Linux. When they find out Oracle Linux is cheaper to maintain than Opensolaris in the long run that will be it.