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Oracle Restricts Access To Sun Firmware Downloads

Posted by kdawson on from the where-the-bits-did-once-freely-roam dept.

boer lee writes with the news that you can expect trouble in downloading firmware updates for your Sun server if you purchased it before March 16, 2010. "In a somewhat surprising move (and without any notification to customers), Oracle shut down public access to firmware downloads. I learned this the hard way when I contacted Oracle customer service almost two weeks ago. Yes, it took 13 days for me to get access to the firmware download for systems under the standard warranty (i.e. less than a year old)."

14 of 202 comments (clear)

  1. Purchased Before March 16, 2010? by WrongSizeGlass · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Purchased Before March 16, 2010? Doesn't that exclude, like, almost all purchases of Sun hardware?

    1. Re:Purchased Before March 16, 2010? by Too+Much+Noise · · Score: 5, Informative

      Purchased Before March 16, 2010? Doesn't that exclude, like, almost all purchases of Sun hardware?

      No 'almost' about it. According to TFA, systems sold before that date come with the 'old' Sun warranty, while the ones after have the 'Oracle Global Warranty'. The two don't mix and the old systems require 'opening a formal service case' to get the firmware that they're entitled to.

    2. Re:Purchased Before March 16, 2010? by ender- · · Score: 5, Informative

      I just tested this and I was able to download firmware for some of our x86 servers with no issues.

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      Nothing to see here
  2. Not entirely unexpected by ilikejam · · Score: 4, Informative

    Linky linky
    http://wikis.sun.com/display/SunSolve/How+Entitlement+Works

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    C-x C-s C-x k
  3. Oh, good Lord. by David+Gerard · · Score: 5, Funny

    Speaking as a Solaris admin of nine years, this is the best news Dell and Red Hat could ever get.

    --
    http://rocknerd.co.uk
    1. Re:Oh, good Lord. by TooMuchToDo · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Don't discount CentOS. My organization just did some consulting work with a Fortune 500 company that has several thousand CentOS boxes. They just couldn't justify the cost to run RHEL when they had enough in-house talent to fix problems when they came up (it being open source and all).

    2. Re:Oh, good Lord. by forkazoo · · Score: 5, Funny

      Speaking as a Solaris admin of nine years, this is the best news Dell and Red Hat could ever get.

      Yeah, Oracle has been so unkind to customers since the Sun acquisition that at this point, it's less like Oracle is a doctor trying to bring Sun back to life, and more like Oracle is a drug addled psychotic who filled the rotted corpse of Sun with a bunch of knives and used needles and has decided to rape it continuously until sunrise. At this point, so many would-be Sun customers have been hearing this steady drumbeat of "Oracle are acting like jackass" stories that even if they became the perfect vendor tomorrow, almost nobody would touch them with a ten foot pole.

    3. Re:Oh, good Lord. by fm6 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      If you've been running Sun systems for that long, you know what a pain it is to navigate Sun's absolute mess of customer web sites. I used to have a hell of a time finding the download I needed — and I was a Sun employee. That's one reason other server vendors (like Dell) have cleaning Sun's clock for a long time.

      I wrote technical docs for Sun, some of which appeared on the web. One of the least favorite parts of my job was dealing with the company's web bureaucrats. They were in denial about the many problems with their tech, knew jack about clean web design, and had way too many processes that should have been automated but weren't. Worst of all, Sun's politics and organizational dysfunction meant that web content was generated by a half dozen different groups with overlapping and conflicting responsibilities.

      Naturally, Oracle is trying to clean up this mess. And it's predictable that whoever is reworking Sun's web presence is going to screw up now and then — something that complicated is Murphy's Law waiting to happen. It's still a step in the right direction.

    4. Re:Oh, good Lord. by David+Gerard · · Score: 4, Funny

      Mod parent up. This is what it feels like. Except that I would phrase them as "Oracle are acting like Oracle" stories.

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      http://rocknerd.co.uk
  4. Re:Bound to Happen by Jeng · · Score: 5, Funny

    For small values of support.

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    Don't know something? Look it up. Still don't know? Then ask.
  5. Looking more and more like I will stop using Sun.. by Fallen+Kell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I mean, come on. This is firmware which ONLY WORKS on your Sun/Oracle hardware. If you own the hardware, you should be able to get the latest system firmware. This might be the final straw in terms of me recommending Sun/Oracle hardware anymore. Personally, I loved them. My work loved them as well. But this is getting ridiculous. Ok, I can understand closing off downloads of different patches to the OS. You want updates, get a service contract because the OS was free. But to cut off firmware updates to their hardware? No one does this. You can freely download the firmware from the manufacturer of everything out there for free, because, to use that firmware, you needed to OWN the hardware which means, the company received their money for it... We have thousands of Sun desktops and servers (no exaggeration, literally, thousands) at work. I have been a very happy Sun Unix Administrator for the last 12 years, but I have to say anymore, I can't recommend we keep buying these things (especially as the majority of the codebase has been slowly ported from SPARC to x86 over the last 5 years). I have still been recommending Sun x86 hardware for their ALOM/ILOM interface and very well engineered gear which tends to last for many years longer than a Dell or HP... But the nickle/dimming to death is starting to make it so that it is not worth it to purchase a Sun box with the extra premium when I similar spec'ed Dell for 30% less, and take that extra 30% savings knowing that about 20% of it will be used in needing to replace the box a few years sooner due to hardware failure.

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    We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
  6. jonbenson by jonbenson · · Score: 4, Informative

    I am downloading the firmware for my Sparc T5520 server right now. This sounds like a personal problem.

  7. Re:Find the users... by Panaflex · · Score: 5, Funny

    No, they snort the noxious gases from a chasm and quack. Using the power of Oracle 13i and a huge dataset of duck calls, they are able to manage a software empire. Recently Oracle, announced the procurement of the Sun God Ra, after he defeated Osiris and left Isis searching the river for his missing uh... firmware.

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    I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
  8. Sun confirmed it to me on April 9th by borcharc · · Score: 5, Informative

    Its not a glitch, I received this email from sun after submitting a ticket that i was unable to download the firmware for my workstation on 04/09/2010:

    Hello,

    As of April 5th customers now need either hardware warranty or a 'system' level contract to download firmware, drivers, etc from either SunSolve or the Download Center.

    Sincerely,

    Sun Web Team
    Sun Microsystems, Inc.

    -

    When trying to download the current bios and driver iso for my Sun Ultra 24 it says i am not authorized. Please advise.