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Solaris 11 Released
angry tapir writes "Oracle has updated its Unix-based operating system Solaris, adding some features that would make the OS more suitable for running cloud deployments, as well as integrating it more tightly with other Oracle products. While not as widely known for its cloud software, Oracle has been marketing Solaris as a cloud-friendly OS. In Oracle's architecture, users can set up different partitions, called Zones, inside a Solaris implementation, which would allow different workloads to run simultaneously, each within their own environment, on a single machine."
I know it is the usual thing to hate on slashdot, but Solaris combined with cloud hosting works wonders for our company. It's generally much more easier to deploy than Linux based distros, and comes with extra performance. Our sites usually have a stable amount of traffic, but sometimes it peaks, and those are the times we really want the website to perform well. Solaris+Cloud hosting is perfect for that. As fallback, we have Azure, which also performs really good, but it requires extra work as it's different platform. But generally, scalable cloud hosting really is good for hosting big traffic sites.
Given how much they've done negatively to OpenSolaris (taking it from developer-friendly to "we don't care how many people get compromised, we're not going to hand out security updates without a large-fee contract", Oracle's made it worse than AIX.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
can you believe they are trying to impose 8 character user names???
And what's with the not being able to select packages on install... it's just one size fits all.
BAH!
N/T
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
10 years and counting and still no ZFS bp rewrite implemented. For those that care, this presumably is required to implement such uninteresting things as vdev removal and defragmentation. And please, no defrag-denialists here... ZFS fragments like a cheap suit dipped into liquid nitrogen.
Zones have been around in Solaris 10 for years. They're very nice, btw.
Michael J.
Root, God, what is difference?
Partitions in solaris are so.... 1996.
e10k was a POS.... though it was trying mighty hard to keep up with LPARs under AIX...
I only use real Unix, like Solaris and Mac OS X, rather than cheap, reverse-engineered, and possibly illegal copies like Linux. At my age and high salary, I should be living like an adult and not steal digital content (like Unix software, movies, or music). I guess if you're young, stupid, and/or poor, then you can go ahead and do immoral things (like touching yourself at night as you stroke your neckbeard, which is what 90% of you do).
Oracle has messed up Solaris and pretty much everything they have acquired (Java, Vbox, OO).
Move along. Get Linux.
Let me quote from an email that an associate of mine recently sent me on his experience with Oracle.
"Oracle Solaris Cloud leverages core skillsets and world-class synergy through teamwork to provide clients worldwide with robust, scalable, modern turnkey implementations of flexible, personalized, cutting-edge Internet-enabled ebusiness application product suite esolution architectures that accelerate response to customer and real-world market demands and reliably adapt to evolving technology needs, seamlessly and efficiently integrating and synchronizing with their existing legacy infrastructure, enhancing the sodomy-readiness capabilities of their ecommerce production environments across the enterprise while giving them a critical competitive advantage and taking them to the next level."
...And firmware.
No ridiculously overpriced contract; no firmware updates.
Solaris? Wasn't that a lame sci-fi movie with George Clooney? It's a Unix-based OS from Oracle you say? Humm, never heard of it....
I have no issues with Solaris, I used to like it. But since Oracle went all ape shit on OpenSolaris and once again made Solaris yet another walled garden of failure.. eh.
I guess Ellison changed his mind about cloud computing... here's him a year or two back ranting about how stupid the idea is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FacYAI6DY0
solaris is terrible for distributed compiling
I am d3matt
I think what I'm most excited for with this release is seeing if Oracle follows through on their promise to put out the source for the up-to-the-date work on ZFS. While ZFS at v28 has proven to be both a lot of fun and very useful for many of us, the updates since (first available for general use with Solaris 11 Express last year I believe) add a few really nice features, including crypto and work on block pointer rewrite. While the illumos project could certainly fork it if required, it would be really great if everyone could stay in sync more. After the acquisition, rather then do nightly releases there was a decision to opt for only releasing code with major versions, which while disappointing at least offered hope going forward. I don't see that Oracle has anything to lose here by staying open with that component, filesystems benefit a lot from widespread use and lots of testing, but, well, it is Oracle.
So basically, BSD jails: Solaris edition.
Ever since Oracle bought out Sun, they went overboard with the licensing costs for Solaris. Remember a few years back when Sun will let you run Solaris 10 for free? Well no more, if you have a non-Oracle two processor server it will cost you $2,000 per year. You don't own a license, you are basically renting the privilege to run Solaris on a server for one year. Also, you only get one flavor of support which they laughably call "premium". Their support is a joke now, and in my experience the good Sun engineers left a long time ago. For starters, you now get to talk to an overseas helpdesk which logs your call and for severity one issues, they give you a call back in an hour (if you're lucky). It used to be you will call an easy to remember number (1-800-USA-4SUN) and you will get a live transfer to a knowledgeable engineer to fix your problem. A few years ago I used to be a staunch supporter of Sun and Solaris but it seems like Oracle has done everything to drive me away from Sun's hardware and software. I am pretty sure I am not the only one either.
On the positive side, Oracle has created a pretty good number of jobs on migration projects from Sun/Solaris to Linux or other Unix flavors. I'm working on a Solaris migration project now for a large bank that still has some Sun servers that they haven't gotten rid of yet.
On the other hand, if you actually like the Solaris platform, Oracle is pure, unadulterated evil.
Unless you've got SPARC hardware and an oracle software stack, i suspect very few people are going to be excited by this at all.
I run: Windows, OS X, Linux, FreeBSD. Just because you have a hammer, doesn't mean everything is a nail.
use a condom
"In Oracle's architecture, users can set up different partitions, called Zones, inside a Solaris implementation, which would allow different workloads to run simultaneously, each within their own environment, on a single machine."
This has nothing to do with Solaris 11, containers or zones are part of many OS's and have been a part of Solaris 10. This "partition" usage flame baits Solaris and Oracle essentially.
... use the SmartOS fork instead. Do you really trust Oracle?
I wish this will end up being rightly implemented in the BSD's, though.
Come on Slashdot: surely the headline should have been "Solaris goes up too 11" !!
Now that Oracle has it's own OS, maybe the DBA's will stop trying to "get the OS out of the way". Cause you know, you can get the OS out of the way.
(hint, mod funny)
In Oracle's architecture, users can set up different partitions, called Zones, inside a Solaris implementation, which would allow different workloads to run simultaneously, each within their own environment, on a single machine.
IBM's been doing that type of thing on their midrange, not even mainframe level, OS' like OS/400 (on AS/400 hardware) for decades now.
I first used it in the mid 1990's, because the sysadmins would set that type of partitions up for RPG developers, and I'm sure it was done before that (probably well into the System 34/36/38 era, but don't quote me on those running partitions though, I just know they're OS/400's forerunners)
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Solaris Zones have been around for years... more stupid "it's new & cloud-based" crap when is just re-marketing their old technology.
IBM destroyed the mainframe clone market. While I don't know much about it, Amdahl and others had machines compatible with the 360 architecture that would run IBM's operating systems. IBM has been successful in even keeping the free Hercules emulator from legally running their OS.
Larry Ellison has never destroyed a major competetor - Sybase and Informix still stand.
Ellison also did not build Union Carbide, Dow Chemical, or Monsanto. Ellison can sleep at night, deservedly so.
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Each has it's strengths.
Linux you can have longer usernames (which CAN be useful, SOMETIMES). Solaris IS still VERY robust; although typically, the combinations of hardware and software doesn't make it the fastest platform around, but it'll just run and run and run.
ZFS is still...I think, really should fall into the class of Btrfs - experimental at best. I've tried it. Twice. And ended up resorting to NTFS to manage a 27 TB array. (Other contenders were XFS and JFS, one defunct, and the other; I won't be able to run without POWER/PPC hardware).
And they DID neglect to mention the cost now, since Oracle changed their EULA like over a year ago now. Sad. But as one of the few SVR5-derived UNIXes that run on x86/x64, it is still incredibly powerful.
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