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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.
Can now go and retract all the Sun naysaying.
I use Solaris for SPARC, its great, but Solaris X86 was half-baked from the start. The writing was on the wall for a LONG time, but when Sun finally canned it, I for one had to endure both the cries of "abandonware!" as well as generic sun bashing from the local Linux people I have to deal with.
It should be obvious now, Sun is doing the right thing by ceeding the X86 market to Linux, and infact helping the transition, for those that were in the Solaris X86 crowd. Win-win situation, as far as I can see.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
i can not believe that sun has let cobalt stagnate to the extent that they have. i very much like the management capabilities of the machines, but i would really like more resources for experimenting. the party line is that if you mess with the system it is unsupported. quite sad that they are pretty much where they were two years ago--k-6 in the raq 4's!
http://www.sunfreeware.com/
Everything will come with the OS !
--- I'm a 20th century digital boy
--- 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.
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
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?
It's a marketing strategy.
Solaris is known as "slowaris" because it is optimized for SMP systems. Single CPU boxes are cheap. Sun was getting rejected by potential customers because to get the full benefit of Solaris you have to buy a massive box. If they vend Linux then they can target both the cheapskates/small companies and the huge enterprise vendors.
Linux runs well on Sparc chips, BTW.
07.Feb.02--Sun Microsystems has embraced the Linux operating system, rolling out a multipart program that will significantly broaden the offerings of Linux on low-end Sun servers and commit new resources to the ongoing development of the Open Source operating system.
The program, announced Thursday, comprises three ambitious goals to be met in the coming year.
Sun will ship for the first time a full implementation of Linux on a new line of general-purpose servers aimed at providing "edge" services to environments such as workgroups and remote offices. 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.
Sun will dramatically expand its line of Sun Cobalt[tm] Linux appliances, the world's leading Linux-based appliance systems. Look for innovations beyond the current eight-inch-square Qube[tm] and the 1.75-inch-high rack-mountable configurations. Sun's Cobalt server appliances start around $1000 and have an installed base of more than 100,000 units.
Sun plans to participate more aggressively in the Linux developer community by freely offering key components of its Solaris[tm] operating environment software, and by releasing tools to help developers ensure compatibility between the two Unix[R] derivatives.
Delivering Value
Sun's commitment to the Linux operating system brings additional value to customers of its Solaris/SPARC[tm] architecture. Already, Sun systems have built-in compatibility with Linux, so that any Solaris-based system can also run Linux applications. New software such as Linux Compatibility Toolkit (LinCAT), announced today, can help simplify the process of assuring that Linux applications will run on the Sun Fire[tm] family of servers. And in the future, Sun's upcoming Solaris 9 Operating Environment will provide additional built-in Linux commands, utilities, and interfaces.
For Linux users, the new program will make key Sun[tm] Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) technologies available to the Linux platform, including the iPlanet[tm] Directory and Web servers, Forte[tm] for Java[tm] development tools, the Java/XML platform, Project JXTA, StarOffice[tm] productivity suite, Sun[tm] Chili!Soft ASP, and the Sun Grid Engine.
"We will now offer our customers an incredible value proposition by delivering our binary-compatible industry-leading SPARC/Solaris system family, which starts at less than one thousand and goes to nearly ten million dollars, along with our new Sun Linux low-end servers and Sun Cobalt appliances for emerging edge services applications," said Ed Zander, Sun's president and chief operating officer. "And with our Sun ONE Java- and XML-based software platform, developers can write to one software platform and run their applications or services across a vast array of systems."
Open for Business
Sun is already one of the largest providers of intellectual property to the Open Source development effort.
Sun today contributes resources and technology to free and open source projects including: OpenOffice.org, GNOME.org, Mozilla.org, Apache.org, NetBeans.org, X.org, WBEMsource Initiative, the University of Michigan NFS version 4 Linux port, the Grid Engine Project, and Project JXTA.
Now, Sun plans to take an even more active role in contributing software and expertise to the Open Source software movement.
"We have some of the industry's most advanced Unix, Java, and XML experts now working to advance Linux with the key mission-critical features of the Java platform and Solaris operating environment," Zander said. "By adding the Linux community to the hundreds of thousands of Solaris developers, and the nearly three million Java/XML developers, Sun's customers have unified access to the broadest array of innovation in the industry on which to provide services. Sun remains the best open business opportunity for developers."
Pushing the Envelope
Sun is working on a number of fronts to support and further the work being done in the Open Source community, and on the Linux code base in particular.
Today, Sun released an application development tool, ABIcheck, to the Open Source community; the tool helps ensure compatibility between Linux releases.
In the future, Sun will offer contributions to the Linux kernel.
Sun will expand its partnerships with the Linux community to provide native support of Linux on SPARC systems for both the telecommunications and embedded markets. Companies such as SuSE and Lineo support Linux native on Sun's SPARC microprocessors today.
Lineo will adapt and support Lineo's Embedix embedded Linux operating system on UltraSPARC[tm] processor-based end user-developed custom hardware.
Sun will support its Linux products with a rich set of support and professional services.
Sun will support Linux on its key StorEdge[tm] line of storage systems and software.
GNOME, the most advanced Linux user environment, will become the preferred desktop for Solaris when GNOME 2.0 begins shipping later this year.
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I (together with many others I'm sure) also submitted that Java 1.4 (Merlin) has been released, which I think is pretty big news, but it seems that story was rejected.
/LarsWestergren
User-Mode-Linux ported to Solaris might be feasible. That would be pretty damn cool; a pile of Linux images running on an E15K with Sun's nicely fascist ;) SRM accounting/scheduler forcing everybody to play nice.
Or is UML x86-specific, and I'm smoking crack here?
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
This sig intentionally left blank.
"enterprise vendors" should be "enterprise customers" in paragraph 2
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
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.
Something else they're not thinking about is that Linux is not 100% POSIX-compliant. that's going to piss off a lot of senior engineers who have to port legacy apps from HP-UX/Solaris (or, shudder, older Unixes) over to Linux.
Does this mean they are going to be nicer to the Jakarta folks???
http://jakarta.apache.org/site/news.html under "30 January 2002 - That flaming fireball in the sky..."
Sun's always been friendly to OSS as long as it gives them good press to be so. I'm not certain they are so good at heart. Maybe they were just scarred by microsoft changing the meaning of Java that they don't trust an ad-hoc group of unpaid developers to not do the same.
Karma Clown
I just cannot see Sun replacing Solaris on their high-end multi-processor machines... Or at least not until Linux scales equally well :-)
This sounds to me like Sun is just trying to give the impression that they're staying with the times. Which they are, I'll grant, but after being dusted by Oracle last week over Linux, it seems to me that Sun is still licking their wounds and hoping to make things look better for them and worse for Oracle.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
As for linux, Sun can pander to the market in some tacit fashion for now, but ultimately linux can destroy Sun's entire business. IBM knows this. So does HP. So does Intel. Sun's proprietary solution set is on its last legs, and in five years will be gone.
Short this company.
To all the Linux zealots, proclaiming the death of Sun, who have never been inside a large data centre with expensive Sun kit inside it, I'll give you a hint:
Sun's Core Business has nothing to do with Linux on cheap, commodity X86!
Sun sells high-end systems, big-iron that competes with other high-end vendors. They make all the profit off hardware, JUST LIKE IBM, when IBM sells a big-iron server with either AIX, or Linux. So remember, these vendors are competeing with Hardware, not Software. Cheap commodity X86 isnt in the race for the very high-end.
Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random numbers is, of course, in a state of sin.-John von Neumann
This is an old tactic. Sun took the best threat to its low end off of the market by absorbing it and then slowly killing it. Frankly it was a smart thing for Sun to do - they can't beat linux boxes on cost, so they have to try to outstrategize the linux market. Now that IBM and HP are throwing serious resources behind linux though, Sun has probably run out of room.
How long will it take if SGI, Sun HP/Compaq and IBM all collaborate?
Never underestimate the dark side of the Source
Maybe Sun will make a new x86 system that has improved I/O -- like, using UPA rather than (or in addition to) PCI.
Since Sun will not be worrying about Windows support, they can extend the architecture a bit. Still use x86 processors, but enhance the surrounding systems to make it less PC-like and more big-server-like.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Wow, if I had known how lucrative extremely high-end, proprietary hardware was, I would have invested in Cray and SGI. I'd be a rich man, right?
[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"?
I think there's alot of truth to this.
The low end server market is dominated by Windows. The easiest looking upgrade path from a small Windows box is a larger Windows box (whether is makes sense or not). The only bright spot for a third party vendor is Linux. It's unlikely that a IT shop that has tested the Linux waters and found them fine going to to be intimidated at tradign up to an eight way Solaris box.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
And I don't remember the last time any of these initiatives were really successful. Sun management just doesn't believe in any of it. They may have brief enthusiasms fo this technology or that, but they never really commit to it. They spend a ton of money on this R&D initiative or that acquisition. Then they lose interest and walk away.
Arguably, Java is an exception. But if Java has a long term future, it's because other players, such as IBM, have more commitment to it than Sun does.
Sun's main purpose in life seems to be as the launching platform for Oracle. Some of Sun's competitors have better performance, some have better prices, some claim to have both, but nobody has the level of Oracle support that Sun/Solaris gets. Without Oracle, there would be no Sun. Considering Larry's announcement about migrating all of Oracle's corporate systems to Linux, the handwriting is on the wall for Solaris. From Oracle's perspective, Linux is a great way to enhance their position vs. M$ SQL server on the low end, and go after IBM DB2 on the high end, all at the same time.
If anyone believes what Larry says, it looks like Oracle will elevate Linux to the top tier of supported OS, probably at the expense of Solaris. This really sucks for me because I committed to the SPARC/Solaris platform about 8 months ago. Oracle support of Linux wasn't quite there yet and I didn't have time on my side. I always thought a transition to Linux was inevitable, but I thought it would take another year or two.
From Sun's point of view, they are probably looking for a smooth way to transition SPARC Solaris to SPARC Linux, so as to drop Solaris entirely as a cost-cutting measure. Sun needs either a huge boost in SPARC CPU performance or lower pricing, preferrably both. Otherwise they will get killed by high-end X86 systems.
I think the ultimate fate of Sun/Solaris will be the same as Digital/VMS: It's another attack from the commodity boxes, armed with a standard operating system, this time without the M$ nonsense.
If Sun worked with the Linux people to get full hardware support for things like the Sunrays and the SPCi card, and for (cough) Solaris/Linux binary compatability (Heh, the WINE folk have done a harder ask...) this would make a lot of smaller servers switch to Linux, which is more suited to the hardware.
--Azaroth
And now, in short time - you'll have iPlanet - Linux port.. read their press releases...
(yes, once again - they're saying it's "customer demands")..
Hetz (Heunique)
Has Sun said anything about it's .NET/Mono strategy on Linux yet? This would be interesting to see, given Sun's strong support of Ximian.
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
HOWEVER, until Sun frees Java, they will always be viewed askance by the community. I'd understand keeping Java closed if it were a cash cow. It's not. Not freeing Java doesn't seem to make sense from a business or any other perspective. Sun execs and lawyers: wake up and smell the coffee!
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.
The resources committed to libre software by IBM, Sun and other major corporations since the .com crash now far outstrip the cumulative contributions of failed and/or former libre-only companies like VA and Eazel.
High-End Hardware. Sun makes some pretty nice High-End Hardware too. While you can get some powerful computing done with Beowulf systems, a single Sun multiproc box is more compact and manageable in the majority of instances.
I think Sun aught to put a bit more work into increasing the power and reducing the cost of their equipment. Get more of it out there while still making a decent profit.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
Three Million Java/XML developers? Where are they hiding? Or are the vast majority of them still inexperienced rugrats?
I do know a few people do are Java developers, but the C and C++ crowd still outnumbers. Even with the job market as it is today, finding Java developers (well, at least good ones with some experience) is still hard to do. I think that three million figure quite an exaggeration. More like 1/4 of that.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
Remember when SGI tried to get into the NT-workstation market? This is exactly the same thing! Sun will be making overpriced x86-boxes with proprietary crap on them, just like SGI. This just won't work.
Mikael
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
You're absolutely right about Oracle being the killer app for the E15K. Hell, it's the killer app for almost all SPARC boxes. Considering the price/performance of SPARC, it's not worth buying unless you are going to run Oracle.
There is no demand for an E15K Linux box because Oracle currently supports Solaris as a tier-1 platform, with varying degrees of support for anything else. I am an Oracle customer. To me, it looks like every patch or install kit is written and tested on Solaris, and then ported to the other systems. I once worked at a DEC/VMS shop and saw what it's like to be at the other end of the Oracle support spectrum.
If Oracle is serious about migrating their corporate systems to Linux, then it follows that the best support will someday be for Linux boxes instead of Solaris. If we ever get to that point, someone will bring Linux to the E15K. New customers will choose Linux for the same reason I chose Solaris: it's a matter of choosing the best-supported platform for Oracle. No matter what the merits of any OS, it's not worth the headache of being the stepchild of Oracle support.
Excerpt: "Lou Gerstner didn't have to do this. If I just say we're going to spend a billion dollars on this, can I take this off?" said a sweltering McNealy, referring to IBM's loud move to spend vast sums of money on Linux in 2001.
If Sun were a TV show, they would have just had their 'jumping the shark' moment...
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.