NYT Ponders the Future of Solaris In a Linux/Windows World

JerkBoB links to a story at the New York Times about the future prospects of Sun's Solaris, excerpting: "Linux is enjoying growth, with a contingent of devotees too large to be called a cult following at this point. Solaris, meanwhile, has thrived as a longstanding, primary Unix platform geared to enterprises. But with Linux the object of all the buzz in the industry, can Sun's rival Solaris Unix OS hang on, or is it destined to be displaced by Linux altogether?"

Comments

Of course

[Anonymous Coward]

The current solaris systems will only have issue with this if they actually need to be rebooted one day and the new admins notice its not linux.

Re:Of course

[dnoyeb]

Thats a technical reason. In the US though, its about shareholder perception. If the CEO is trying to do big things and keeps talking in "old" terms, he will quickly be accused of being out of touch with reality.

Like the post said, Linux is generating the buzz. The money follows the buzz even if it does not make sense.

Nahh.. its not going anywhere.

[k1e0x]

Solaris is a great big iron OS. I don't think it will be disappearing anytime soon.

Virtualization makes Solaris less relevant

[compumike]

The purpose of the operating system is to act between the hardware, system abstractions, and the algorithms. But now that virtualization is taking over, the hardware responsibility of OSes is being minimized -- or centralized. Therefore, the advantages of one hardware platform can be more easily decoupled from those of an OS.

In my opinion, Sun was always known for rock-solid hardware, and this move toward hardware-agnostic computing means that Solaris gets just a bit less relevant today. Especially since cost is still a factor, and the hardware-specific advantages are disappearing...

--
Hey code monkey... learn electronics! Powerful microcontroller kits for the digital generation.

Re:Virtualization makes Solaris less relevant

[mysidia]

The purpose of the operating system is to act between the hardware, system abstractions, and the algorithms. But now that virtualization is taking over, the hardware responsibility of OSes is being minimized -- or centralized. Therefore, the advantages of one hardware platform can be more easily decoupled from those of an OS.

It's more important than ever, and Solaris delivers virtualization through Sun logical domains, hardware virtualization (zones), and the xVM hypervisor based on Xen (with Solaris dom0).

Now with Virtualization: if your physical machine fails, and your hypervisor cannot recover immediately from the error (without a reboot), you don't just have one server down -- you have many virtual machines disrupted.

Your Linux VMs that use ext3 may have some problems after that unclean death (filesystem corruption); whereas, your Solaris VMs backed by ZFS are less likely to have fatal problems, as filesystem backed by ZFS with redundancy 1 with no issues, as ZFS all but guarantees filesystem itself is consistent.

You can restart axed VMs on another server, perhaps: you have a shared storage environment, but this disruption costs something, and it is higher the more VMs you were running on that machine.

Also: there are application I/O-intensive workloads that do not virtualize well, such as high-load databases i.e. your 5 billion row Oracle DB.

Solaris is perfect for managing the hardware for these specialized applications that are not efficient to be run in a virtual environment.

ZFS may also be a major factor.

If you have shared filesystems -- you need SANs & NASes.

Do you use a $5 million NAS, or do you buy a couple high-end Sun servers, load them up with a direct-attach storage arrays, and share via NFS in order to provide a good bit of reasonably fast storage on the cheap? hmmm...

Think about it: Linux isn't really even a possibility for backing your servers' storage, you want 99.9999% uptime of your servers, right?

Systems based on Linux cannot generally guarantee uptimes like that (yet); although it is over time getting closer.

Your storage can't be efficiently shared by a VM (I/O in a virtual machine is notoriously slow, plus the CPU usage and available memory for caching is limited by other usage of the host).

Re:Virtualization makes Solaris less relevant

[phantomfive]

That is the problem with Sun: they make the most amazing systems, for a market that doesn't exist. They have systems that can hot plug processors. If that is not I cool, I don't know what is. But then if you have a cluster of $200 machines, and you can just replace the whole machine, then the usefulness of such technology gets less and less, unfortunately.

Probably the wrong question.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I'm not sure that asking "will solaris survive?" is the right question. Any server OS with decent legacy traction can hang on for ages even without exciting benefits, or even parity, compared to its competitors. Any OS can also be opened up, given away, and allowed to limp along for as long as anybody cares to play with it. Solaris is essentially certain not to die.

The real question is "how much of a premium will Solaris be able to command?" This is probably connected to the question of how much of a premium SPARC hardware can command. If Sun gives Solaris away, and doesn't charge more than any of the major linux vendors for support, then Solaris will do fine; but that isn't necessarily helpful to Sun. If Solaris can justify a premium(either upfront or for support) or can drive or be driven by purchase of fancy SPARC boxes, then the resulting market share may be about the same; but far more valuable. That seems like the more relevant question.

How about some technical analysis

[synthespian]

Tech shouldn't be about "gee, everybody's using it."
How about some hard, technical facts?
So many things in Solaris are more advanced than Linux...Sounds like a Linux PR piece...
For instance, you can count on general ABI breakage on Linux. They even take pride in it. That's not a system you can trust for the long haul. You can't trust your applications will remain compatible.
Linux is a mess, IMHO.

Re:How about some technical analysis

[Darkness404]

Tech shouldn't be about "gee, everybody's using it."

Ok, lets switch our servers to Plan 9, surely any CS grad will understand how to perfectly use it, right? While yes, you are correct in saying you should look at the benefits of Solaris Vs Linux, and because it is still UNIX it is more or less a void point, but if most of the new graduates don't work with an OS, it is bound to die out and get replaced with a more familiar OS. Either that or you have an incompetent admin running your servers.

That's not a system you can trust for the long haul. You can't trust your applications will remain compatible.

No, but you can usually count on a more up-to-date system and generally a stable one at that. Solaris only has a few releases, Linux has many, many more (mostly because it is OSS). Also, most UNIX apps are developed for Linux and later ported to Solaris, not the other way around, meaning that some things may be untested on the Solaris platform.

Not all the best features are technical

[mcrbids]

When evaluating the success of a product in the marketplace, it's important to note that there are many features of even highly technical products that are not technical in nature, at all.

Linux compares very closely to BSD from a technical standpoint, BSD has a much longer history than Linux, and is arguably better than Linux in many areas. It's definitely had more time to mature. So what feature does Linux have that has everybody talking about Linux?

Its license.

I'm not knocking the excellence that Linus Torvalds has displayed over and over again over the years. He's done a great job and I depend on his efforts every day in running my own business. But as great as Linus has done managing the technology of Linux, it would be hard to say that Theo De Raadt has done any worse. It would be easy to claim that Theo's work is more secure, but both have produced excellent products that are truly world class in nature.

But what has everybody talking about Linux is the license - the share and share alike requirement laid down by the GPL, which turns the Tragedy of the Commons around on its ear so that everybody is pushing the project along together, rather than taking what's convenient and giving nothing back.

The sad truth? "More free" isn't always better. Just like "less government regulation" isn't always a good idea, you can often get a better mix for everybody by limiting people's freedom to screw each other.

Now, Solaris is behind the 8-ball. Even with the same license as Linux, they'd have to show a clear, compelling advantage to cause people to switch their efforts away from Linux. Given just how good Linux is in so many different areas that Solaris can't even touch today, that would be very, very hard to do.

Show me a Solaris supercomputer and I'll show you hundreds of Linux-based supercomputers. Show me a $40 Solaris-based router, or a Solaris phone, or a Solaris-based pocket calculator. Ironically, while Solaris is touted for "big iron", it's a non-starter in the list of the top 500 supercomputers, while Linux is dominant.

Go Tux!

Re:Not all the best features are technical

[Waffle Iron]

It's not the license. It's the huge PR machine behind it. IBM and all big boys supporting Linux are really selling hardware and are using Linux to commoditize enteprise software.

And do you know why these companies chose Linux as the focus of their PR machines? As the GP post argued, it's because the advantages the GPL provides to these big companies over BSD-style licenses.

These big companies know that if their competitors use the code they contribute, it will have to be on the same terms as the contributor. It can't be closed up, embraced, extended and then used as a weapon against the original contributor. It's a simple exercise in game theory.

Rival what huh?

[Aphoxema]

I wasn't aware of the 'rivalry' between Sun and, uhh, those bunch of other people who openly contribute to GNU/Linux.

Maybe it's similar to that 'rivalry' between Gnome and KDE, or Slackware and Red Hat, or all those other things that it's generally the onlookers that assume there's a conflict because heaven forbid there's such a thing as two different things sharing the same space when there's a choice to be had between them.

So, one day Solaris might win and then everything else will be gone?

These competitions only exist when there's money or ratings at stake, or when people are bored.

Of course it isn't going anywhere

[debatem1]

Solaris runs on mission critical systems, the kind that will (absent horrible, business-destroying failure) be running until their tape drives rust solid. It isn't going anywhere, and even if Sun's interest in it evaporates, there will probably still be thousands of systems out there chugging along merrily for years to come.

Re:Unification

[Darkness404]

One or at most 2 will become defacto standards and the others will fade away.

We already have that. We have Red Hat (RPM) based distros and Debian (APT) based distros. Just about any major distro can fall into that category, CentOS, RHEL, Fedora, Yellow Dog, and even openSUSE can be considered to be with Red Hat based (RPM) distros. On the other hand, Ubuntu, Debian, KNOPPIX, Xandros, DSL, etc.

There has also been a lot of talk about LSB that could help unification (which, honestly IMO is not needed and will just be a waste of work on distros for a failed standard)

MacOS could become dominant

I can't see Apple wanting OS X to become dominant. They make $$$ of of hardware sales to fanboys. The die-hard Mac fans. Apple honestly wouldn't be able to keep up with the demand if Macs had 25% or more of the marketshare. Apple is happy to sell iPods to everyone and keep the Macs for the fanboys. Now, they want OS X to have access to all major software and to have drivers, so they don't want too low of a marketshare, but I can't see Apple wanting OS X to have more than 10% of the marketshare. Much as how Ferrari doesn't want us all to be driving Ferraris, it loses the prestige of driving one.

In the worst case scenario the desktop and server segments become so fragmented that you'll have dozens of versions of each app - 1 per OS.

Ummm... How is that bad? There are dozens of versions of Apache, one for each OS, yet it still manages to be a unified server. And dozens of separate distro specific Linux kernels but just about all are compatible with all programs (when the proper libraries are installed).

Old OSes don't die, they just fade away...

[TheMidnight]

Solaris is the smallest percentage of UNIX platforms my company's clients run on. AIX is first, followed by HP-UX. However, though Linux is a popular operating system with universities, web sites, startups and small server solutions, Linux on x86 scales horribly (and I do mean horribly) on our application and other high-performance database solutions with thousands of users compared with the big UNIX operating systems. ext3 can't support the filesystem throughput required even with RAID 10.

We still configure Solaris systems on Solaris 10 UltraSparc, and I believe Sun just came out with a new, rather mean processor. Solaris, and certainly HP-UX and AIX, are not going anywhere soon. There are too many enterprise database systems (new, not just legacy) that require the far more powerful and scalable hardware and software that Sun, IBM and HP offer.

Have you ever benchmarked the 4.7 GHz POWER6 chips on AIX 6.1? It's the fastest processor and operating system combination I've ever seen.

Re:Solaris 10

[segfaultcoredump]

I agree.

If we were talking Solaris 8 or 9 vs linux, it would be no contest. Solaris 10 is another story.

In the current shop where I work, Solaris is the OS of first choice. We only run linux if we absolutely have to due to application compatibility issues. From a cost standpoint, they both run on the same server hardware (intel or amd), so there is no cost advantage there. The major one is that a RedHat support contract cost more than the equivalent one from Sun for Solaris (they are both free if you dont want support... sorta.... You can download solaris from sun for free and install it. You cant do the same with RedHat. That said, if you use kickstart you can get around the mandatory rhn registration that stops you dead if you dont have a valid support contract.)

  It just that with solaris we have the ability to load the box up with dozens of zones that are easy to manage compared to the alternatives on linux (yes, there are alternatives to solaris zones, and all of them involve unsupported kernel patches. ) We tend to run 20+ zones per dual proc box. Each zone gets its own env. We dont need them to differ too much from the main zone, so things like Xen are overkill. Chroot would be nice if we could also get better control over things like IP's, admin access, hostname resolution, etc. For what we want, Zones are absolutely perfect. zfs and Dtrace just add icing to the cake.

That said, this article read like a BMW sales rep's opinion of the newest Audi. If I want opinions of if solaris is dying, I'm not going to go and ask the head of the linux consortium which has a vested interestin seeing their prophecy come true.

  For a good time, go to the IDC site and read the comments. Most of them are ripping the author for the piss poor job he did since it reads like a linux marketing piece more than an actual news article.

Solaris and perception

[Anonymous Coward]

The real question is "how much of a premium will Solaris be able to command?" This is probably connected to the question of how much of a premium SPARC hardware can command.

Sun sells some (really nice) x86 kit. Solaris is certified and supported on HP hardware (though HP is not an official OEM). Dell has an OEM agreement with Sun, and so does IBM. Furthermore Solaris is being ported to IBM's mainframe systems, and it works just fine as a guest in VMware (and xVM, and work is being done with Xen).

A software support contract is cheaper for Solaris than it is for Red Hat.

The main issue is perception: Solaris is viewed as "old and tired", and Linux is viewed as new and exciting. I do not think this corresponds to any meaningful reality (and I've run DOS, DESQview, OS/2, Linux, BSD, Solaris, and OS X on my home machine since I began computing).

My perfect system would be the core of Solaris, the interface of OS X, and FreeBSD's ports tree. The development model of Linux (and BSD and GNU/FSF), and the freedom it gives you, is the most important thing that Linux has brought to the table, but I don't see anything inherent in the technology that Linux gives that makes it anything special.

Re:Or else...

[udippel]

That was the main reason why I canned OpenSolaris after trying it out.

Uhh. Yes. No.
I guess you talk about the miserable 2008.5 or so.
I for one hopped on the SXDE/SXCE/Nevada; just for a try, and have been there ever since. It contains (almost) all that I need, out of the box, from Macromedia Flash to StarOffice. The most complete one I ever tried. Compiz included, and the (alas) proprietary blobs (NVIDIA). Show me a Linux that you can install, and brings up 173.14.09 NVIDIA on reboot, at the correct resolution?

Actually, it only missed on Mplayer, Dia and Gnumeric for me. Over.
Now I run a few multi-boot systems, with Debian/Ubuntu and OpenSolaris as choices, and I tend to use OpenSolaris. The problem of OpenSolaris is not so much OpenSolaris as it is the SUN management's low visionary angle.

True, hardware support is better on Linux(Ubuntu), resource requirements are easily 2 GB (it consumes close to 1 GB after boot and starting GNOME), networking, and especially wireless, is far behind Ubuntu. Mounting of ext3 needs external programs to be installed the old SUN-way, and is not possible as R/W; it is limited to readonly. For the rest OpenSolaris is at par, if not superior.

That default username "Jack" does not exist in the world of Nevada. As I said above, the one that you had your hands on was 2008.5; codenamed Indiana, enforced on the project by a bunch of managers at SUN who have since long passed their expiration dates.

It is not only the DTrace and Zones that make it great(er), ZFS is truly the file-system contender for the next millennium. A file system needs to be seen as a self-contained, holistic, entity. fdisk and format are so last millennium.

The Caiman installer was the greatest piece of installation software I ever used. But it was broken half a year ago and now rumbles on as a low-priority project. Don't talk to me about bullshit: The installer is the first thing a potential user hits. And currently it is either the venerable CDE-SUN installer or console. This is how to screw up a visionary project like OpenSolaris at its best.
And then, community. Make me puke. The bug reports that I file (and still file) disappear in the intestines of SUN, and I can't even see them. Not to mention modify them.

Yes, OpenSolaris might fail, in the end. But not on technical reasons, and this is where the article is erroneous. It is a badly managed hybrid of proprietary-free software.