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Sun Unveils More Linux Strategies
A number of people have submitted the press release from Sun Microsystems about their latest announcements in conjunction with Linux. Highlights from this one include the promised release of "New single- and multiprocessor systems, to be announced mid-year, will use the x86 architecture and be capable of running thousands of Linux applications natively." As well, they are expanding the Cobalt line of servers, but even more interestingly they are going to "freely offer" parts of Solaris - but no license specified that I saw. They are also releasing "ABICheck", which should check compatibility between Linux/Solaris. C|Net is carrying coverage now as well. And it looks like Lineo and SuSe are going to get competition in the embedded and telecom support area - I wonder if that's tied to the OSDL announcement. It's good to see that they are getting on the right track - now let's hope they stay the course.
http://www.sunfreeware.com/
Everything will come with the OS !
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--- I don't know what to do by I got a lot of PROGS
1. The x86 architecture with Linux will only be used in their Cobalt and other small file/print server solutions.
2. They are not releasing any new workstations based on x86 processors.
3. They plan on working with others to support Linux on the Sparc architecture.
4. They offer products which allow Linux programs to run under Solaris.
Now for the interesting questions:
1. Is their work in Linux part of a long-range strategy to phase out Solaris? After all, they make money selling hardware. If a free UNIX is available, why waste money developing Solaris.
2. Are they taking a play out of IBM's Linux-everywhere strategy? How soon before we see E10k's and E15k's shipping with virtual machine software able to support 1000's of Linux images?
Just my take on the article.
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This post is not ment to troll but...
I keep wondering why big companies like HP and Sun choose linux, instead of freeBSD. Although I'm not an expert on any of them, as far as I understand the BSD structure resembles SunOS and HP/UX more than Linux. Both BSD and linux are open source, and the BSD license even seems to be preferable to companies if, in the end, they decide to go closed source anyway.
Can someone explain this to me?
If an experiment works, something has gone wrong.
Some of the folks involved with jakarta are less than convinced about sun's attitude towards OS.
It might be the right track for your rah-rah Linux agenda, but it's probably the wrong track for Sun. What does Sun think it can do Intel servers running Linux that IBM, HP, et al. can't? With neither hardware nor software to differentiate these boxes, what will sell them? Ed Zander's good looks?
I'll go out on a limb here, and predict that this is the beginning of an SGI-esque downward spiral into total irrelevance. Any bets on when Sun rolls out a new logo?
There's nothing sad about it. The whole point is that the Cobalt boxes are appliances. What processor is your router running? Probably not the latest of its kind, but it does the job it's intended to do. This is the philosophy behind the whole range. It's designed to do a job, it does it. If it runs out of power, they're low cost, so buy another and stick it in your rack.
Scott Scott Scott... You are so close to hitting the mark. You forgot the most valuable part of Linux... it's VM ability.
Now if you were to port Linux to your SunFire platform, you could have a direct competitor with IBM's Mainframe Linux. How is that?
Imagine taking an E15k system... Setting it up as a single domain running Linux. Now, under that, use the Usermode Linux to create VM servers. No longer would this platform limit a system to particular boards... All these VM's could run in that large single domain, sharing it's CPU's, disks and IO. This would compete directly with IBM's implimentation of Linux on the mainframes.
Now let's take it a step further... IBM's mainframe is great for Linux VM's needing I/O intensive tasks. It's CPU isn't meant for many large number crunching VM's. The SunFire are. So while IBM gets big offering services on Linux VM such as Samba & NFS file services, Oracle & DB2, Enterprise email... You could be selling for the CPU intensive side. Graphics apps, XML and PDF parsers, engineering, etc.
Sun, you cannot afford to not do this. Sun's big server market will depend on it. It's only a matter of time before IBM fill's the niche for the CPU intensive VM's... And while I do like IBM and their commitment to Linux, I'd hate to see Sun drop off the radar. Competition is what brings about inovation, it's almost cliche.
*TheDarb
GUI-Lords.org
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I thought Sun made money selling their proprietary OS on proprietary hardware ( a bit ago, when the support was good, it was worth the extra ) - I don't think they can win anymore as just another high-end hardware vendor, so maybe they'll aim at selling "Sun-approved" Linux distros + closed-source software extras ?
That would be good for Linux, I think.
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Props to Hemos for correct spelling, at last.
Why get an overpriced Sun PeeCee
for starters, sun does not make pcs. sun machines are meant to be used as servers or serious number-crunchers.
when you could get a cheaper, better-looking Macintosh running OSX, which is much more advanced and more stable than anything
how can you say that osx is more stable than sunos/solaris? have you ever used these oss? how can you say the mac is more advanced than a sun-box? show me a super-high-performance mac server and we'll talk. and about the way it looks...
macs look like a child's toy. they're 'pretty' with rounded corners. tell me - do you prefer coke over pepsi because the red can is prettier than the blue can?
Wave upon wave of demented avengers March cheerfully out of obscurity into the dream
Adding new harware to their new enterprise server systems is mindless and requires no reboot at all. If a processor board fails, just yank the dead one out and put a new one in and once the RAM and CPU check out as OK, its part of the system. And since all of the USIII based systems share the *exact same boards* (processor, I/O, power) one canreplace a blown processor board in a 15K with one from a 6800, all without a reboot. It's pretty neat to watch, although it scares the shit out of the NT guys.
Linux is great, but what would really sell it for me is good serial console support and the lights-out management support they have in their Netra line. I don't want to buy a stripped down Netra X1 when I can get a smoking fast PC for the same price. The only advantage the X1 might have is the LOMlite, built-in watchdog and serial console support. With the PC you need something like a PC-Weasel card to convert the VGA to serial to get true console support on the serial port.. otherwise if your system doesn't boot you're screwed. You can't go into the CMOS at all.
True, but the decline of that segment has been accelerating in recent years. It started before the dot-com boom, but for a few years, they did so much business selling servers to startups that it masked the problem.
Just for example, I'm pondering replacing a few Sun/Solaris servers with generic clones running Linux. The Suns work fine, but the ongoing cost of support contracts and potential upgrade costs, are pretty stifling. We're anticipating some growth, and it's just cheaper to buy a couple of spare Linux boxes and keep them in the wings as replacements or additions to the cluster. I no longer expect my systems to be reliable, I achieve reliability through redundancy and an inventory of spares. Sun equipment is too expensive to use use that way.
The high-end stuff will continue to exist for quite some time, but there's no growth left in that segment; that's why Sun has to try SOMETHING at the low end. Not sure if this will work for them, but but it's probably smarter than just sitting there milking cash out of a dying segment of the market.
[Bollocks! I had written a long thoughtful reply to this and it got eaten by the submission system. 2nd attempt...]
bandwagon and mindshare... CIOs have heard of Linux, not all of them have heard of *BSD. That's sad, because the BSDs are far more mature at a system level and I think they probably scale better. Then again, Sun and HP have Solaris and HP-UX for selling scalability.
An interesting question this point raises is: do IBM/HP/Sun consider Linux good enough to support small applications, but not good enough to be any real competition?
For instance: IBM sell special cheap zSeries processor nodes for running Linux VMs, but you can't buy a whole machine full of them. You still have to buy a "proper" node. They want you to run Linux beside zOS not instead of it. Clearly they're more worried about people running bind or Apache on non-IBM hardware than with people using Linux to do serious OLTP or something.
Is all this big guy support of Linux the equivalent of "damning with faint praise"?
This comment states it best.
Even Sun is saying the release is defered.
---Sig filler so you read the comment.---
I happen to work on Sun Enterprise Class servers. And for al you thinking Sun will port Linux to run on E15k are fooling yourselves. There is no demand for that from their customers. Most E15k's are used for 1 thing. ORACLE. As the same with the E10k. And even if Linux was to be ported to it. No customer would ever trust Linux on a 6TG Oracle DB. Linux cant scale to 105 CPU's. Until that is fixed. Dream on.