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Sun Acquires CFS/Lustre, Becomes Windows OEM
anzha writes "Sun Microsystems announced today that they are acquiring Cluster File Systems Inc. CFS owns the intellectual property related to and develops the open source file system known as Lustre." Relatedly Sun has also signed an agreement with Microsoft to be a Windows OEM. "Sun and Microsoft will work together to ensure that Solaris runs well as a guest on Microsoft virtualization technologies and that Windows Server runs well as a guest on Sun's virtualization technologies. Sun and Microsoft will work together on a support process for customers who are using the virtualization solutions. This joint commitment to customers ensures that Windows and Solaris will provide a solid virtualization experience."
oh wait....
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070912-sun-to-sell-windows-server-boxes.html
Notice the so-funny-yet-true chart towards the bottom.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Microsoft seems to be making a lot of buddy buddy partnerships for compatibility recently. The novell one made me think they're going to try pulling something, but now they're going for Sun? Hmmm, maybe M$ actually is trying to actually fix its interoperability issues? Theres got to be a catch here somewhere.
So Sun got themselves a Cluster File System and a Cluster Fuck System on the same day?
www.lucernesys.comHorizon: Calendar-based personal finance
They have some nice boxes. I'm sure some admins would like to run Windows on them.
I'd like an X4600 so I could throw VMware ESX on it
Let's see here. It's a Wednesday, and the date is an even number in a month with 30 days. On the other hand, the moon is just past new, Britney Spears' performance at the VMAs bombed, and oil broke $80/barrel today.
/. today.
Clearly Sun is EVIL on
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Microsoft seems to be making a lot of buddy buddy partnerships for compatibility recently. The novell one made me think they're going to try pulling something, but now they're going for Sun? Hmmm, maybe M$ actually is trying to actually fix its interoperability issues? Theres got to be a catch here somewhere.
Yeah there's a catch alright. The "catch" is that there's fixing to be a Democrat in the whitehouse come January of 2009. And there's also going to be Democrat party controlled both houses of congress. And Microsoft knows there's nothing they can do to prevent this inevitability from coming, and the certain revival of the anti-trust court actions which they were able to weasel out of any effective punishment for nearly a decade under the Republican administration. Microsoft is now building up what they hope will be seen as a plausible defense against that. MS may be evil, but they're certainly not stupid.
Yes techies flip-flop on their opinion of Sun. But, that is because Sun flip-flops on Sun's strategies, and opinions, like mad.
Penguine suit McNeally *loves* linux. Then sun joins with scox to kill Linux. Then sun tells us that only sun linux is legal. Then sun tells that linux is great - but only as a desktop, not a server. Finally sun tells us that linux is java.
Sun's official opinions on msft, and on x86 technology, have been equally schitzo. One day sun curses msft as an evil company, with crap technology, the next day, sun is msft's biggest bestest buddy in the whole wide world. One day sun sneers at all things x86, the next day sun is releasing x86 solaris - then sun is cranking out x86 windows boxes.
So when sun stops flip-flopping on everything, maybe people will stop flip-flopping on their opinions about sun.
The big UNIX vendors blew it. They rested on their laurels when they should have been improving the system and researching new ways for people to interact with computers. Soon only IBM will be left and I think they're too smart and too well diversified to die that way. They adapted their business model as deftly as a company of several hundred thousand possibly could.
I think Apple is the UNIX company of the future. They've shown that they can put a pretty face on UNIX. You don't even have to know that it is UNIX. Their nifty little devices run UNIX and interact with people in very unique ways. They didn't take that long to develop, either. A fraction of the time the big UNIX vendors wasted sitting around arguing about "standards" and deriding PCs as "toys."
I'm just glad that if another UNIX vendor goes under, more or less, I still won't have to program for Microsoft platforms.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The author of that article knows jack. We (I'm the documentation lead for a couple of Sun x64 boxes) have been selling and supporting Windows servers for some time. We have a fair number of people working on Windows-related software, QA, support, and documentation (including me). We've even contributed some source code to a couple of open-source products in order to make them work better on Windows.
What we haven't been doing is selling servers with Windows pre-installed, or providing install discs with our drivers already on them. We couldn't do these things without an OEM agreement. Now we can. That will mean less work for me and various other Sun people, and (much more important) fewer headaches for our customers.
Next time I see Jonathan Schwartz (no, we don't know each other, but we eat in the same cafeteria) I'll have to resist the urge to prostrate myself. I just hope he's working on similar deals with our other OS partners.
Don't get me wrong, I love Solaris. It's a beautiful OS. We'll always support it. (In fact, the x86/x64 version is a lot better supported than it was 8 years ago.) But our job is to meet our customers needs, not force our favorite technology down their throat.
Get it through your heads, folks: the Sun-Microsoft feud is over. And good riddance. It was bad for both companies.