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Oracle Switching To Linux
Bill Kendrick writes: "This Computerworld story quotes Oracle CEO Larry Ellison as saying 'We'll be on Linux no later than the summer, so we'll be running our whole business on Linux." When asked what this means for Unix vendors like Sun... "It will be several years before the big machine dies, but inevitably the big machine will die.' Ouch!"
I don't know anyone who would want their production Oracle database on Intel hardware. You can't just keep throwing faster cpus into the same outdated backplane and expect to get the kind of throughput performance that a db requires.
Additionally, who with a production system isn't going to want both the hardware & software reliability and 24/7 support of the caliber that Sun provides?
Don't get me wrong, I love Linux & use it as my primary platform. But I wouldn't deploy my db back-end on it. We used Suns at my last job for very good reasons.
He may take the Sun out of Oracle, but he won't take the Sun out of the users, and if Oracle starts slipping on the Sun support, there's always Sybase.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
This is a natural move for server (as opposed to host) vendors. Applications like Oracle typically are the only things on the server, or run with only minimal software designed specifically to run with them. (LDAP servers are another example, at least in the corporate space.) By using an existing OS that they can modify as they wish, they can optimize the system for their database, and vice versa. Because the OS is in use elsewhere, there are a number of available tools for administrators to use on their systems. At once, Oracle makes itself independent of large companies like Sun or Microsoft, and can potentially make a better product in the bargain. My guess is, there will be a specific flavor of Linux and specific supported hardware, once Oracle releases this into the marketplace.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
I think there's some typos.
;)
"We'll be on Linux no later than the summer, so we'll be running our whole business on Linux."
I think he meant to say: "We'll be owning Linux no later than the summer, so we'll be running the whole business of Linux." I can't really back that up, unless you take the fact that Larry Ellison said it as proof
Seriously, this would be good for Linux in the big picture. Most of us would stick with our MySQL and PostgreSQL servers, but with Oracle...Enterprise credibility goes up. Additionally, all the industry behemoths (AOL/TW, Oracle) would fare well to bolster Microsoft's competetors.
I might burn some Karma for saying this, but Linux is symbolically a pawn, being used by the giant corporations for leverage against their current giant corporation rivals.
I also wonder how market share affects this. Linux is growing in the server market. Oracle isn't being used in these machines. Which means less money for Ellison. I wonder how this will work out. Any suggestions?
Chaos, Mayhem, and Destruction: Not
Actually, it is licensed to run based on the number of cpu's. RAC (real application clusters) cost an extra 50%. Last I checked, you could download 9i for linux intel (just watch those system requirements very carefully, your favorite distro is most likely not covered)
All of that said, if oracle can get you to get rid of your 72CPU SunFire 15K and replace it with a 128 single cpu intel boxes..... (extra intel boxes to make up for the lost ram and system bandwidth in the 15K)
Lets see what that would cost ya...
list price for a 72 cpu license for a single box is 2.9 million. List price for those 128 cpu's w/ RAC will cost ya 7.6 million.
Lots of smaller, "cheaper" systems can often cost less overall. This is not the case here, where the price delta more than makes up for the cost of the big sun box, and we dont even have to get into the argument over the extra cost involved in managing 128 different systems. (besides, RAC is not a 'shared nothing' cluster, so management of large clusters is a real pain)
anyway, larry is always going to need sun to produce the big boxes for its big clients.
Most Oracle users don't use it for "moderate database requirements". They use it when they simply cannot afford to lose data and/or they need something that you can scale the hell out of. PostgreSQL is nice but will *never* replace Oracle. Sun would look childish to offer PGSQL as a replacement.
...it's a win for Intel. Larry says nothing in the article about the capabilities of Linux except that it's better than Windows "if you're on the Internet."
What he really liked, apparently, was the fact that the hardware was cheap and easily replaceable. It's a win for clustering, certainly, but is it a win for Linux?
As glad as I am to hear that a big company like Oracle is making the move to Linux, I think that without the "core" Linux community remaining vigilant, it could result in problems down the road.
On one hand, having a larger user base is definately a GOOD THING. Proving that Linux can provide the infrastructure for one of the world's top companies is a GOOD THING.
Problems arise in the mid to long term possibilities. Will Sun ultimately lose so much business that they're driven out of the software market? Despite the fact that they seem to be sunsetting, they're still a software/OS player, and the more players in the field, the better the products (my belief is that Linux has achieved so much partly because it had Sun, SGI, Be, MS to prove itself against) all around. Its not like MS can provide Linux with any great technical challenges to overcome...
And am I alone in worrying that having so many big companies like IBM, Oracle, God forbid AOL/TW using Linux may end up with them pushing development away from the needs of the average user? Sorof like getting a loan from the Mafia, you never know when or how you're going to pay up.
Some men spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves for having been born. --Ross MacDonald
Some of you may disagree with me, but Sun has contriubuted a lot to the OpenSource community. They have programmers working on the Mozilla, GNOME and most especially OpenOffice projects. All of these projects seek to provide highly usable and OpenSource alternatives to Microsoft software, namely, InternetExplorer, Windows and MS Office, respectively. They have (in a highly restricted way) opened up the source code to Java and have offered the JDK and all other Java API's for Linux.
Now, ironically, Linux is eating into Sun's market share, to the delight of OpenSource zealots, who decry Sun simply for being a for-profit corporation. I get the sense that many OpenSourcers are rooting against Sun, and I believe that's an entirely counter-productive position to take.
Microsoft is the enemy of OpenSource, not Sun. Sun may not have open-sourced Java and Solaris, but, hey, they need to make money just like everybody else. Sun has many OpenSource products and has contributed much to the community.
OpenSource and Linux will lose a great deal if Sun goes out of business, and not vice-versa.
This space left intentionally blank.
Intel-based servers may be cheap and all, but I do not look forward to a future where the RISC-based manufacturers, such as Sun, IBM, and SGI, are totally displaced.
Reality is that traditional RISC-based workstations and servers, such as Sun's higher-end Ultra and Blade workstations, are really a joy to work with. They are amazingly robust and flexible, since they typically are the result of long and thorough development and testing efforts. They tend to have useful lifetimes of about a decade, where they keep finding new roles and finally get mothballed after enjoying a last hurrah as a print server. They have genuine firmware, so you don't have to jump through flaming hoops to bootstrap the system they way you want to. Their enclosures are very well engineered for easy maintainence, fewer moving parts, and good airflow. And on and on...
Whenever I see the inside of an Intel-based server, I am a bit disappointed. Working with one tends to be disappointing as well. Truth is: you do get what you pay for.
I hope Oracle doesn't learn too many hard lessons these next few years.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I have had oracle 9iAS running on Linux for a year.
It is very poorly supported by oracle.
I had to do a lot of tweaking, (editing kernel headers, etc)
However, since i got it to work, it has totally outperformed the windows NT implementation.
For one thing, it has uptime of 200+ days.
back in the day, many of our clients *insisted* on using Oracle for the most trivial of applications, like BBSes or a phone-lookup service. They thought that by paying truckloads of cash their apps would be faster or something. Hell, even mySQL and Postgres would be overkill for some applications... The clients would rather pay than think!
I left the industry after clients started using similar glassy-eyed statements about Java. Both Java and Oracle have their place, but considering Oracle's insane price and administration overhead, it needs quite a bit of research before deployment.
Yeah, except anyone that would be paying out the nose for Oracle is willing to pay the money not to have to go through the process of switching to a less secure, less featured and slower database. Also, the reason you pay for Oracle is the same reason people buy Cisco support contracts. If something fucks up, they will fix it immediately, it doesn't matter if it's 3am on a Sunday night, someone who definately knows what they're doing will be there within 15 minutes. You don't get that with PostgreSQL, or any other "free" software.
What I'm saying here is that the many thousands of dollars per month large companies pay for Oracle is worth the absolute assurance that their database will be usable 24/365(6). Sometimes, it's just cheaper to pay the money than lose out on $100,000,000 worth of money transfers during the hour you're down.
This is slightly OT, but I can't find it anywhere else (i.e., Google), so whatever.
The true meaning of Oracle is:
One
Rich
Asshole
Called
Larry
Ellison
It would appear the Solaris on Intel has come to the end of the road. Here is the quote from Sun's website.
However, even if Sun wasn't end-of-lifing Solaris for Intel, there are obvious reasons why Oracle can't base their future business plans on the availability of a low-cost version of Solaris on Intel based hardware. The most obvious of these reasons is that Oracle doesn't own Solaris. If Oracle were to start suggesting to their customers that they run Oracle on free copies of Solaris for Intel (instead of Sun's Sparc hardware) then Sun is bound to notice, and they would almost certainly change the license for their Intel version. After all, they can't really let their free Intel version of Solaris cannabalize sales of their Sparc hardware.
Linux, on the other hand, is safe because Oracle has as much control over it as they need. Since Oracle has access to the source code they can easily customize Linux to their particular needs.
Larry is right, it sucks to be in the operating systems business right now. Especially if you are trying to sell a Unix-like operating system (although Microsoft is feeling the pinch as well). Linux on commodity hardware continues to improve at a remarkable pace, and you can't beat the price.