Slashdot Mirror
Oracle Shuts Older Servers Out of Solaris 11
PCM2 writes "The Register is reporting that Oracle has decided not to allow Solaris 11 to install on older Sparc hardware, including UltraSparc-I, UltraSparc-II, UltraSparc-IIe, UltraSparc-III, UltraSparc-III+, UltraSparc-IIIi, UltraSparc-IV, and UltraSparc-IV+ processors. The Solaris 11 Express development version released in November did not have this restriction, which suggests that the OS would likely run on these models. Unfortunately, the installer won't. All generations of Sparc T series processors and Sparc Enterprise M machines will be able to install and run Solaris 11, however."
Because it will force companies to re-evaluate their position with Oracle, why Oracle is even relevant in today's market is still a mystery
Nice idea, since much of the value of Sun rests in its brand reputation and loyal customer base, why not extract that value by degrading the brand and pissing off the customers? Presumably many of them are locked in to our products, at least for a little while, right?
3...
2...
1...
It's kinda funny that you spam here bragging about the order of your post and once you go back and look - no so much.
Man this guy is in serious need of medication.
did people do this during the Bush presidency? I really don't remember.
Running off into the distance? That's your credibility, that is.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Corporation is in the business of making money!
- For more on this, we now go live to Tom. Tom, I understand you've talked to some suits over there. What's your take on this?
- Charlene, my mind is blown. They seem to have this idea that they aren't running a charity. Also, they say they to increase sales in order to continue funding development. I don't understand why they don't just get a bailout from the government.
... but they can lose them.
Currently, Linux x86-64 offerings are cheaper and faster than Oracle SPARC Servers, and Dell and RedHat will welcome their money to make the migration.
Sun couldn't make any money and now Oracle in all probability will get what they paid back in addition to future profits and the fact that they conveniently own Java which powers most of their stuff. A lot of feral hippies like bruce perens always like to think that evil corporations are digging their own grave when in actual reality they're laughing all the way to the bank.
I remember a month or two ago a story about rupert murdoch trying to sell myspace and everyone having a good laugh in the comments about how he paid hundreds of millions of dollars for myspace in its prime. True but in addition to all the profit myspace made the 3 year google contract alone got them 900 million $ which is almost 3x what they paid for it. Is it a sign of failure that someones site tanks after they've already paid back the initial purchase and made over half a BILLION $ in profit?
Sun will be the same ... everyone will say how this furthers the end of Oracle and everyone will run away when in reality they'll keep taking a fortune from people who actually have money (ie: not bruce perens.).
The problem with that decision is going to be as much development and test teams having to get new hardware as production servers.
Most organizations tend to penny pinch on dev & test these days anyway - so this is going to hurt Oracle in terms of perceived reliability as well as in direct costs. (If the shit don't get a pre-production workout the production fails will be more spectacular).
At least they can run Linux.
Leave it to ORACLE to fuck you in a hole and laugh while you squeal like a pig !! Ellison is a hillybilly through and true !!
IBM has it's own JVM implementation, which is fully compliant to the Sun Java specs, so it's safe from patent lawsuits. I don't see how much more they could "love" Java.
Planned Obsolescence in hindsight. This may not seem a big deal in the USA, but the rate of growth of internet access in 3B3K nations (3 Billion People Earn $3K Per Year) is 10 times the rate of growth in developed nations. Emerging markets like Cairo and Bombay and Peru, where per capita income is around $3k GDP per capita, keep servers and PCs in use much longer. I hope that Linux is a solution, my dealings with Geeks of Color in emerging markets is that they tend to find creative ways around software bottlenecks. Here's a slide show about how internet growth in emerging markets http://tinyurl.com/6xz9lnk which is leading to things like the Arab Spring revolutions. We need to stop seeing support of legacy tech purely through the eyes of rich nations.
Gently reply
Does the same apply to OpenSolaris? Wouldn't users of the above machines be able to install that on their unixstations/servers?
If no, why not go to either Linux (RHEL, Debian) or one of the bsd (OpenBSD, FreeBSD, NetBSD)? In fact, use this opportunity to roll out a version that works on these. Incidentally, do various vendors who are members make either these, or earlier 32-bit versions?
Is Oracle still committed to the Sparc platform, or no? If yeah, they should at least support all 64-bit Sparc processors. If no, why have Solaris either - EOL it, and just promote their Linux. I mean, on an x86 platform, there is no reason to prefer Solaris (open or not) to Linux, is there?
Oracle has been alienating its customer base (particularly small to mid-level organizations) since they acquired Sun. Our university (mid-size 'business,' fairly large university) is jettisoning Oracle as a hardware/software platform, and I know other organizations that have already done so. Previously we were Sun/Oracle across the board, hardware (including SAN), software, and DB. While our hardware refresh cycle wouldn't be hurt by this decision, I can easily see many organizations which would be hampered to adopt new functionality in perfectly functional hardware. Adieu, Oracle, adieu.
Meanwhile, IBM's newest AIX 7 supports systems all the way back to POWER4 -- systems which were introduced a decade ago. Moreover, IBM just lengthened the standard priced support periods for AIX 6 and AIX 7. And IBM introduced support for AIX 5 running in AIX 7 PowerVM.
Come on, seriously, who upgrades old Solaris hosts? If its not broke don't fix it. And if it is, and it's that old, replace it.
They spent years of marketing how PPC was "better" than x86, then shut them out from their newest cats, and they won't even let you run PPC software in emulation starting from Lion. But Apple fanboys queue up for hours for the latest iShiny anyway.
Oracle will have its fanboys as well.
I'm using FreeBSD/sparc64 on UltraSPARC IIIi-based SunBlades (single and dual processors), and it's running just fine. I've also installed OpenBSD/sparc64 on some of them, and Debian Squeeze for sparc is running fine too (though I never found out how to netboot that one). It's sad the OpenIndiana hasn't produced a SPARC-release yet out of the frozen IllumOS code-base, but I hope they will eventually be there. As for Oracle as the steward of Solaris, let's forget 'em: they're the abomination they turned out to be the first day they took over.
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
Solaris 10 will keep getting feature updated in 2012, support will last at least to 2017 by then you should probably have switched to new gear. Keeping running on a v490 when there will be machines which are 10 times faster while consuming less power does not sound like a good idea. SPARC(R) hardware are often live-cycled after around four years, the T and M series have already been around longer that that.
That said I also like playing around with old hardware and install current operating systems on them, but that is not something used in a business. If your are not going to use it for anything important you might even run Linux on your old hardware ;)
Now, I'm not Oracle biggest fan when it comes to other thing, but this is not a real problem for their paying customers.
before someone disassembles the installer and throws a NOP in the appropriate place to skip the check, and reassembles the binary.
I once quadrupled the pricing of one of our services. Yes we lost more than half of our customers, but were making more money while doing less work. It's not unlike Apple's strategy.
At least they broke it intentionally, unlike Ubuntu 10.04 LTS that you can't install without already having a 10.04 system with which to write the boot flash drive.
All this complaining for an OS that isn't even shipping yet. This news tidbit is for a developer's preview drop.
USI - 1995
USII - 1997
USIIe - 1999
USIII - 2001
USIV - 2004
Is anyone really expecting to do an OS upgrade for these post 2011? Really?
Last Apple PowerPC machines shipped in 2006
Snow Leopard shipped in 2009 without PowerPC support.
So Apple didn't release a new OS for machines that were 3 years old. The Sun machine impacted by this are probably 10 years old on average. Yeah, the fact that old hardware was still supported by Solaris 10 was neat but try putting Solaris 10 on some of that old hardware and using something like JDS or ZFS, it's painfully slow.
Solaris 11 hasn't even shipped yet. Add in the fast that most enterprises don't upgrade to a new version of their server OS until it's been out for a while and I doubt this will impact anyone in a production environment.
My Hello World is 512 bytes. But it's also a valid Fat12 boot sector, Fat12 file reader, and Pmode routine.
Dammit. Guess I'll just have to put Linux on my Ultra 45.
All of this is because Oracle wants to be like apple. From a Techcrunch article 04/20/2011 "Larry Ellison has always wanted to be the Steve Jobs of the enterprise. " Like Apple, Oracle wants to take away complexity for its customers and bundle the entire IT stack neatly together so that it works without hassles and is optimized for Oracle’s software.
This is sad, but after all, this has also benefits : Oracle doesn't want you as user? Well don't use their products, especially Solaris, Oracle database, Java and MySQL.
I expect Oracle will ask some money to use Java , it will be really too funny :):)
The unsupported processors all have virtually indexed caches. This isn't in the new processors or x86 and due to the architecture of a new virtual memory subsystem due to land in Solaris 11 it would be a bitch to write a workaround. The old procs are all EOL anyway!
Looks like I won't be loading Solaris 11 on my E10k
http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2278936&cid=36612456
APK
P.S.=> I agree with you man, been there-done that too, 100%...apk
Sure, Sun was arrogant at times, and guilty of mismanagement that eventually ruined the company. But at least they weren't evil. I sure wish Google would have purchased them for whatever talent was left. Oracle is evil.
All y'all are wasting a lot of clocks debating whether or not this is an act of evil perpetrated by Oracle on loyal Sun customers. I think you're missing the point. Oracle is both pragmatic, and self absorbed. It doesn't give a a fly fsck at a rolling donut about Sun's customers unless they now become Oracle customers, and the sooner it divests itself of what it see's as a cost center (as opposed to a profit center) the happier it thinks its going to be.
If you look at the history and corporate culture of the company, it is not particularly interested in making people warm or fuzzy. It's not fascinated by making close ties to the larger community of tech businesses, open source organizations, or in any meaningful way serving the greater human condition, save its singular focus of making Larry Ellison's deep pocket even deeper.
Is Oracle myopic in burning relationships with potential customers, who should have been a captive audience? You betcha. Is Oracle gutting vital technology, that had promising value for both past and potentially future users of all things Sun? Of this there's no doubt. If a bean counter told Larry he could make an extra million dollars a day by simply pissing on babies, they urinals in the Emerald City would be lined with newborns. He's just that kind of guy. He lives in a world whose vision is a quarter deep, and whose only motive is profit. This is an ignorant, shallow, and mercenary perspective, but that makes him no better or worse than the majority of people running American businesses today. We built the system (or at least let it grow itself) to reward arrogance, blunt force, social stupidity, and a sort of moral vacuum.
We can't honestly complain about anything Larry does, it would be like complaining that a wolverine is a stinking, ill tempered, vicious little bugger, when in fact that's how nature designed it, and you should just make a practice of cutting it a wide berth. The best thing those of us with milder natures, and perspectives based on somewhat broader design, can do, is to happily take away control of that which Oracle will no longer support, and create resources and communities to empower, promote, advance, and evolve these things we love. If Oracle is going to cut us out of its equation, we should simply reciprocate and take the tillers of our collective ships of fate. Sooner or later in his haste and ignorance, Larry will toss the baby out with the bath water. It's a fait accompli.
In the meantime, rather than complaining about the rotten things Oracle does, simply look at solving the problem at hand. It seems that we now have a fairly solid future for Open Solaris. Perhaps its time we all looked at creating an Open Source alternative to Solaris itself, one that supports old and new iron, one that's more interested in creating something really great, than looking for new and exciting ways of squeezing another buck out of its customer base. OR not, your choice. I mean we're free to be stupid too, but then you wouldn't have Larry to blame.
Doesn't Fujitsu still make and sell their own Solaris boxes called PrimePower ? .. maybe theirs will still support the older hardware. Heck they were still supporting UltraSPARC-I's with v9 and v10 with microcode patches for the security issues.
Now im biased as im an oracle dba, but seriously, how can anyone who knows databases think that oracle is not relevant?
RAC - who else has clustered instances that have been tested under fire for several years
DataGuard - who else has disaster recovery solutions that can be up in seconds?
Partitioning - tested for decades, very mature, competition came out with it this decade.
I've not even mentioned performance
the list of features is as long as my arm. No other competitor comes close to the level of maturity and testing that Oracles features have undergone in enterprise environments. And as the old saying goes, no-one ever got fired for choosing Oracle: It's got the market mind-share as the technology leader, and yeah, some of it's going to be bs, but a lot is founded on solid technological facts.
Yes, oracle is a dinosaur, as is it's owner, who you just love to hate, but it doesn't change the fact that the technology is really really good, if somewhat arcane to administer.
"Everyone knows that vi vi vi is the number of the beast" -- Richard Stallman
"So i assume Product Management was right with their decision to remove the support in order to make the feature i can't talk of possible, as i don't think that many of the early migrators are still using the system in question, as most systems have reached EOSL."
http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/7363-Result-of-the-How-long-do-you-wait-before-Solaris-11-gets-on-your-prod-systems.html
And as he points out, how many people upgrade their server OS major version? The newest machines cut off are more than two years old, and no one is going for 11 today unless they have to, people will let it sit a while before they switch, if they are going to upgrade stuff, so by the time they do, this will be more than 3 years old.
Plato seems wrong to me today