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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."

6 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 zig007 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      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

      We ARE talking servers from 2005-2007 here. Servers unlikely and unsuitable for production or any other professional use anyway.
      Also, no end-of-support date for Solaris 10 has even been published yet.

      Oracle is relevant since it still provides some advantages over the competition, no mystery there. However, I know what you mean. :-)

      --
      Baboons are cute.
    2. Re:Sounds like good news by drolli · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Servers from 2005 to 2007 are unsuitable for production?

      The usual life cycle for a server may be slightly longer than 4 years. When i worked in the computing center there were single solaris machines which had specific tasks which were about 10 years old, even the solaris terminal/web servers were in use for 6-8 years.

      For a serious (not in terms of the size) database server i would hope that its possible to operate it for longer (but obvious that does not mean you need a new OS, if the old one is still patched).

    3. Re:Sounds like good news by drolli · · Score: 4, Informative

      The University i studied at bought a (As far as remember, its the only system matching the spec which i remember) Ultra Enterprise 4000 in around 1996 or 1997.

      Please direct your view to:

      http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-support-hardware-os-337182.pdf

      So the regular supported time would have been 14 years and the extended supported time would have been longer.

    4. 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. And Then There's IBM: They Get IT by BBCWatcher · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.