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Oracle Shuts Older Servers Out of Solaris 11

Posted by Soulskill on from the hope-you're-done-with-them-'cause-we-sure-are dept.

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."

4 of 203 comments (clear)

  1. Sounds like good news by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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

    1. Re:Sounds like good news by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      (but obvious that does not mean you need a new OS, if the old one is still patched).

      I would rather strongly suspect that this will be the bigger factor in customer ire, or lack thereof. Given that SPARC gear has never been cheap, systems of that vintage still in operation were, presumably, purchased because there was some important task to be done that was done best on Solaris and/or SPARC. If that was a matter of performance, an upgrade to some newer hardware is likely in the cards. If it was a matter of specific application compatibility, they are unlikely to be switching OS versions until the present one loses support.

      If 10 is supported for a nice long time, people likely won't care much. If they find that both their existing hardware and their existing software are being ditched, they will be Less. Happy.

    2. Re:Sounds like good news by buchanmilne · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Strange, most place I dealt with the server was gone when the support ran out, which was typically 3 to 5 years depending on the contract.

      So, you didn't have any "big iron" then?

      Now since i'm sure Oracle doesn't sell support for this hardware anymore

      They do.

      I bet most companies have already shitcanned them or sold them off, so I bet this will only affect a minority at best. For those that are still running what is frankly in computing terms ancient hardware it isn't like there aren't free Linux distros that will run on these machines,

      You want to run an unsupported, experimental port of Linux on an E6900, or an E10000, or an E20000?

      and if you are so concerned about money you are running actual business on a server that old frankly I doubt you're gonna pay for an upgrade to the latest and greatest Solaris anyway.

      In this market (midrange servers), it's usually not about the money, but the supposed "stability". And, you wouldn't pay to upgrade, you've been paying premium software support to be able to run whatever version of Solaris is supported.

      So I don't see this as any different than say MSFT saying they wouldn't support running Winserver 2K10 on a P4, since that is the age we are talking about here. I just don't see old servers getting expensive new OSes, that just wouldn't make any sense. Maybe someone can chime in here and say why they'd buy new server licenses to run on 6 year old tech?

      Our company bought new UltraSparc III and IV servers (V215s, V445s) in 2008 (bad decision, I didn't support it). At the same time we bought Sun X4450 Intel-based servers. Guess which ones will still have a supported OS in 7 year's time? The cheaper ones with 4 times the cores.

  2. Oracle wants old SPARC customers to upgrade... by IYagami · · Score: 1, Insightful

    ... 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.