Solaris 9 x86 Review

ValourX writes "Here is a review of Solaris 9 x86, 08/03 edition. Now that the single-CPU edition is free to download for non-commercial use, people will be compelled to write a Solaris CD and try it out. Read this first -- there are a lot of things you should know before you begin. You might want to check out the documentation or explore other resources like the hardware compatibility list as well."

Comments

How does this help us, or Sun

[djh101010]

Don't get me wrong. I'm a Sun guy going back to the SunOS 3.5 days, Solaris is a wonderful thing. But, for x86, we have lots of *BSD and Linux options. Solaris on x86 has previously been limited in hardware supported, and in community participation.

Can someone suggest a case where it would make more sense to use x86 Solaris rather than Sparc solaris?

It seems to me that Sun's resources in these (ahem) difficult times for them would be better spent in developing what they're best at - big, robust, server-room boxes, rather than diluting their OS development efforts by spending time porting it to Intel.

Re:How does this help us, or Sun

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a foot in the door, perhaps. One of the reasons for the current popularity of Linux is its availability on cheap hardware. You play with Linux on your desktop at home, at school, wherever, and you get familiar with it. Then, when it comes time to use it in a serious server deployment, you have (at least some of) the skills and the confidence to really use it. IOW, by putting Solaris out there for the x86, Sun helps to increase the base of available admins.

Second, there are at least hints that Sun is moving towards a wider role for x86 in their business; they're offering an AMD x86 based line of servers now, for example.

Re:How does this help us, or Sun

[adam872]

I often ask myself (or am asked by someone else) the question "why do you use SPARC/Solaris when there are supposedly cheaper alternatives?"

- Reliability: I have found Solaris to be the most stable and reliable server OS I've used (obviously IBM Mainframes and VMS are even more so, but I haven't really got a lot of experience with them). This counts for a lot, as most of the sites I've looked after demand this in their requirements. Linux is pretty good too, but I have found Solaris to be absolutely rock solid.

- Relatively secure. It doesn't come out of the box with all the security you'd want, but its pretty damn easy to automate the install to get it to be so. It's certainly more secure than Windows :)

- Support. I've always found Sun support to be excellent, either through SunSolve or the call centres. This is a big plus.

- Application and Hardware support. Most of the big software and hardware vendors have a Solaris version. Makes it a bit easier to deploy things when you know they are certified.

- Ease of admin. I have become so used to Solaris that sys admin is pretty much second nature (but you could easily say the same for other OS's I guess).

- Standards compliant. All of the usual suspects are here: NFS, NIS, LDAP etc etc. Some of these standards were even developed by or with Sun's help. Interoperability is easier with Solaris than manyh other OS's IMHO.

I could go on and on, but that's my 2c. Obviously other folks will be able to say the same things for other OS's, but Sun have earned my trust (and dollars) over the years. I don't see any reason to fix what is already working, particularly with the price of their hardware coming down dramatically.

Re:How does this help us, or Sun

[Avihson]

This helps me by giving me true Solaris experience.
This helps Sun by giving me true Solaris experience.

I agree that using Solaris is not the best use of an Intel box, but working within the limitations of Solaris is a great learning experience for the Linux admin. One more OS to add to the Resume, it proves to potential employers that you are willing to learn the different Operating systems and are not a zealot for a particular operating system or worse, a particular Linux distribution.

This is not the same as Solaris experience on Sparc boxes, but it will help bridge the gap. I have seen Human Resource drones ignore senior system admins with Sun and IBM experience when looking for HP-UX people, it is not hard to imagine that they would do the same for Solaris admins. If it gets your foot in the door to interview with someone who knows the difference between Sol-9-sparc and Sol-9-x86 then the interviewer should be able to know that your IRIX or AIX experience will transfer to their systems.

Now if Solaris for Intel is someone's only "real unix" experience, I doubt if they will be able to parley that and their home linux exerience into a Solaris sys-admin slot. In fact I hope not!

I know that I will not put Solaris or HP-UX on my resume, but I do put Openview. I spent 3 years using Linux as a front end for some network monitoring apps that ran on openview. The HP-UX guys kept the box running, and I ran the monitors.

Sparc-Intel differences?

[Trbmxfz]

Definitely not the same if you ask me

How comes? Do Sun deliberately package their x86 version differently? If so, what's different?

self-teaching

[c1pher]

Even if you don't have a need for personally, it's still a good opportunity to put it on a space workstation to play with and learn the ins and outs of the OS, so that you're at least familiar with it for future employment.

Re:Most useful in an existing Solaris environment

[Xolotl]

I realise this is probably troll or flamebait, but since you're replying to my post, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. To reply:

except linux isnt free
Given that you can download Linux in the same way as Solaris or BSD,and in addition is GPL, in what way isn't it free?

is incoherent from distribution to distribution
Sure, there are differences, but no organisation using Linux for production work is going to use 5 different distros, they'll pick one and stick to it.

causes things tobe hard to port
Solaris shares many of the same libraries and Linux is largely POSIX compatible, in what way is is hard to port things?

breaks more often
Ok, this one is fairly subjective, so I'll leave it.

is poorly supported
(a) there a a large number of companies which support Linux (RedHat, SuSE, IBM, being the obvious ones), (b) there is a huge experience base among admins, larger now than with Solaris.

incorrecly implements NFS
I can only comment from a practical aspect: in 5 years of using NFS on Linux on mixed Linux/Sun/HP-UX networks, I haven't had any problems which couldn't be solved by correctly configuring the NFS mounts.

has poor automounter
Okay, this I'll grant, the automounter isn't very robust.

ive never seen it run right disklessly
Can't comment, haven't tried.

Engineers and IT infrastructure, thats a job for solaris. Period end. no room for linux.
Sure, many many engineers, scientists and so on use Solaris. Partly because it's good, partly because of history - they were using SunOS/Solaris before Linux was around (I've been using SunOS since version 4 on Sun 3's, and Linux since 0.99pl10). However, many many other engineers, and scientists use Linux - partly because it's also good, partly becuase it and the hardware are much cheaper, partly becuase they can easily get at the source and tweak and customize it. Both systems have their advantages and both are widely used. To say there is "no room for Linux" is just plain wrong.

Why would I need Solaris at all?

[axxackall]

Can someone suggest a case where it would make more sense to use x86 Solaris rather than Sparc solaris?

Can someone suggest a case where it would make more sense to use x86 Solaris rather than x86 Linux?

Having the same OS on newer and more optimal hardware (read x86) as on old overpriced one (Sparc)? Give me a break.

The compnay where a friend of mine works they installed Linux on all low-end Sparc stations the used to host small servers. And they exchanged mid/high-end Sparcs with Power4/PPC thanking IBM for a very good exchange program. Of course Power4/PPC run Linux/PPC. They have Linux everywhere across all server (and even some desktop) computers and very happy with drammatically reduced TCO because of that. Also, after living like that one year they analyzed their failure statistics and found that their reliability is ncreased a lot. No need to mention that the time foe bus and security holes has beem droped a lot (before they lived for years with promises from Sun to fix a known annoying bug).

So, one more time, why would I need Solaris/x86?

Solaris Just Isn't A Desktop OS

[bajan_on_ice]

Why do you think Sun is going with the SuSe/JDS for their desktops? Solaris blows when it comes to hardware compatability, and thats exactly what you need when you are doing desktops, since you will find just about any mix of cpu, disks, controllers, networking, sound, video and periferals on a desktop PC.

Solaris was DESIGNED as a workstation OS for SPARC boxes with very specific hardware specs. It grew up to be an enterprise OS to be run on SPARC boxes with very specific hardware specs.

Expecting it to run flawlessly on your generic whitebox PC is like expecting to use a hammer to open a beer bottle. Sure it could work, but the results are more than likely to be ugly.

Not a fair review

[UNIXGK]

The entire review really boils down to one statement: "It's not Linux". And it's not. Solaris is an enterprise OS--standards compliant, stable, scalable, extremely well documented, and well supported (both through free and paid channels). It has good performance management tools, too. It beats Linux handily in all of these categories.

These are things you won't notice immediately "out of the box", but you'll certainly notice them if you need maximum uptime for your mission-critical enterprise applications. If the factors I mentioned above mean something to you, then you probably already have Solaris in your environment.

Re:Solaris X86 is no different than a Linux distro

[Dud7734]

I administer a network consisting of a mix of SPARC Solaris, Win2k Professional, and 1 SCO unix box. The SCO box is very old and is used as a controller for a special application. Some time ago I decided to port the SCO box software to Redhat linux 8.0. As I was nearing completion of the port I discovered that Redhat was dropping this line of linux.

I believe it's important to be able to maintain patch levels on my systems for security reasons. Knowing that in the future I will not be able to keep my patches up to date leaves me feeling that Redhat left me high and dry. In my mind I cannot justify paying Redhat annual support for their Enterprise version of linux when I only need patches. I can handle the other support issues myself.

I'm comfortable with Solaris administration on the SPARC platform but I have no experience with the x86 version. After reading the review I believe the described shortcomings don't apply to my situation, except perhaps for the networking problem. I don't need sound or graphics at all and I have no problem configuring networking manually.

Solaris patches are easily reviewed and a list of recommended security patches is released on a regular basis. The patches are easy to download from a high performance site and I don't have to worry about access to those patches because I didn't pay for a priority connection.

The full documentation is available to download in pdf form or html.

With the help of the review, I think I just talked myself into redirecting my port of the old SCO box to Solaris x86. At least I should give it a try.

Apple is better

[mark_space2001]

Not technically better, because I don't know that. But Apple is better because they can get people to LINE UP THE NIGHT BEFORE to pay $129 for what is basically a free BSD OS.

Remember, free as in speech, not as in beer. Giving away your labour is not the idea. The idea is that you don't hamstring your customers so that they can't tinker around with your OS if they want to.

Apple's OS X seems to be the best of both worlds. Fast and sexy, non-technical people seem to love it. Get under the hood and its just BSD. Download any POSIX source, compile and install. Tons of documentation, read the kernel source, do whatever you want.

And people were like having a party just to buy the thing. I think geeks should be 1000% behind this product and Apple too.

iso image

[Anonymous Coward]

the download seems to be slashdotted so can someone offer bittorrent for the iso image?
or is that even allowed under the license terms?

Solaris Vs. LINUX FUD

[Anonymous Coward]

I seldom read all the way through Slashdot comments because of signal/noise ratio but Solaris is near and dear to my heart. I've used Solaris/SPARC in server environments in several projects at several companies and I would like to weigh in with a vote of confidence for two very important factors: reliability, and scalability. In our telecommunications startup we had a multi-tiered web server / application server / database architecture. We designed it to scale big and we needed incredibly high uptimes. We put a lot of effort into architecting the solution and we relied very heavily on Solaris for reliable and scalable 'servability'.

It delivered 100%. We had major problems in other areas of our company, project, and personal lives but Solaris was the bedrock of our company and it was stable. We never had to worry about bugs or issues or whatevers.

We leveraged a lot of free software to sweeten things, we intermixed development on Windows to cut our development costs.

As someone who has worked closely with Solaris I was pretty disappointed with one apparently biased Linux user's inability to make light work of a Solaris install. Solaris is not a hobby system and you aren't going to play too many games on it. No you aren't going to have fun recompiling the Solaris kernel, but then maybe there are other productive tasks at hand...

- AndrewZ