No need to do that. Oracle Solaris 11 Express runs very well on x86 systems as well. In fact, it's a lot more scalable as a single-node system than many other OSs and the driver support in the new release is much improved over earlier Solaris release.
Yes, it's a commercial product. And like many commercial products, it's available free for evaluation or for use by developers. However if you wish to deploy it on your production server, you should be obtaining a support contract (which if you're serious about production is probably a good idea anyway.)
To be clear, you can use the release for production purposes but this requires a support contract. This is not unlike many other commerical operating systems or for that matter, other software products. For more details on the support offerings, see the links from the main page http://bit.ly/dkhwZ6.
As for the other restrictions, many of them are similar to again other commerical products - they're not be redistributed by third-parties, etc.
Can you provide some examples of specific patches and the specific applications that broke when you applied those patches? Solaris has a strong track record here but I'd love to know your details so we can resolve the issue.
You are aware that Solaris includes TCP Wrappers (since Solaris 9) and an IP filtering solution (IP Filter), right?
Yes, SMF can be a tad hard to master at first but the benefits are immediate especially when you're dealing with application software which fails for some reason (bugs, anyone?) If you look at MacOS X and future GNU/Linux distributions, I believe you'll see more and more systems using a SMF-like model for service management.
It's not that the userland is an afterthought but rather there has always been a strong commitment to backwards compatibility with Solaris. That said, the OpenSolaris community is taking a new look at the userland components and I would expect to see some big changes coming (this actually started to occur even before Ian came on board.)
I would also suggest looking at Solaris Express which is akin to Fedora in terms of it being a view of the future of the operating system. The current build (build 64) includes support for a bunch of new wireless chipsets, the integration of many more open source components directly in the default path (no need to set the path to include some funny directory) as well as comtinued development in Zones/Containers, DTrace, ZFS, etc.
Actually, Nexenta has been keeping up with the OpenSolaris builds. Although they haven't issue an updated installer or live CD since build 50, they've updated their online repository to at least build 61 so the command "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" followed by a reboot should do the trick.
Actually, containers don't require Sun hardware to run on - they're available on any system that Solaris 10
runs on.
From a networking performance standpoint, a server having multiple 1Gb or 10Gb network interfaces is going to need a highly multithreaded stack in order to drive those interfaces. Solaris 10's TCP/IP stack is optimized for those sorts of situations.
You are incorrect that OpenSolaris "was done in such a way" to be incompatible with Linux. This old and tired myth keeps being propagated but it isn't true. Please see Simon Phipps comments at http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messa geID=55008#55008 to get an accurate picture. There were real, practical reasons that GPL wasn't chosen but it definitely was given serious consideration.
One of the most intriguing mashups of technology that's available today via OpenSolaris is BrandZ and DTrace
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz/
BrandZ allows OpenSolaris Containers/Zones to take on different OS personalities and the primary personality is one that emulates Linux. Using DTrace, one can actually dynamically trace Linux applications running (without recompilation) under OpenSolaris.
Please check out the Chime project which is about visualization software for DTrace. You can find more information at
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/dtrace-chime /
For those who think that DTrace is old news, I really suggest that you download one of the OpenSolaris-based distributions
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/distributions/
and play around with DTrace. Yes, it's CLI is aimed at the geek in all of us but there is software like Chime and MacOS X's upcoming Xray which will help with those who prefer a different sort of UI.
FreeBSD Jails and OpenSolaris Zones are current open source solutions as well and their performance
likely matches if not excels over para-virtualization solutions such as Xen.
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I can't speak for the other products but yes, this new release is fully supported by Oracle. You can find details on the support offerings that cover both Sun/Oracle hardware and third-party hardware here. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/index.html
No need to do that. Oracle Solaris 11 Express runs very well on x86 systems as well. In fact, it's a lot more scalable as a single-node system than many other OSs and the driver support in the new release is much improved over earlier Solaris release.
Yes, it's a commercial product. And like many commercial products, it's available free for evaluation or for use by developers. However if you wish to deploy it on your production server, you should be obtaining a support contract (which if you're serious about production is probably a good idea anyway.)
To be clear, you can use the release for production purposes but this requires a support contract. This is not unlike many other commerical operating systems or for that matter, other software products. For more details on the support offerings, see the links from the main page http://bit.ly/dkhwZ6. As for the other restrictions, many of them are similar to again other commerical products - they're not be redistributed by third-parties, etc.
Can you provide some examples of specific patches and the specific applications that broke when you applied those patches? Solaris has a strong track record here but I'd love to know your details so we can resolve the issue.
There have been updates on the online repository and you can upgrade with "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade". For example, see http://mail.opensolaris.org/pipermail/opensolaris- announce/2007-April/000968.html
You are aware that Solaris includes TCP Wrappers (since Solaris 9) and an IP filtering solution (IP Filter), right? Yes, SMF can be a tad hard to master at first but the benefits are immediate especially when you're dealing with application software which fails for some reason (bugs, anyone?) If you look at MacOS X and future GNU/Linux distributions, I believe you'll see more and more systems using a SMF-like model for service management.
It's not that the userland is an afterthought but rather there has always been a strong commitment to backwards compatibility with Solaris. That said, the OpenSolaris community is taking a new look at the userland components and I would expect to see some big changes coming (this actually started to occur even before Ian came on board.) I would also suggest looking at Solaris Express which is akin to Fedora in terms of it being a view of the future of the operating system. The current build (build 64) includes support for a bunch of new wireless chipsets, the integration of many more open source components directly in the default path (no need to set the path to include some funny directory) as well as comtinued development in Zones/Containers, DTrace, ZFS, etc.
Actually, Nexenta has been keeping up with the OpenSolaris builds. Although they haven't issue an updated installer or live CD since build 50, they've updated their online repository to at least build 61 so the command "apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade" followed by a reboot should do the trick.
According to Fluendo's site, support was announced for *both* Linux and Solaris (x86/x64 and SPARC).
Actually, containers don't require Sun hardware to run on - they're available on any system that Solaris 10 runs on. From a networking performance standpoint, a server having multiple 1Gb or 10Gb network interfaces is going to need a highly multithreaded stack in order to drive those interfaces. Solaris 10's TCP/IP stack is optimized for those sorts of situations.
You are incorrect that OpenSolaris "was done in such a way" to be incompatible with Linux. This old and tired myth keeps being propagated but it isn't true. Please see Simon Phipps comments at http://www.opensolaris.org/jive/message.jspa?messa geID=55008#55008 to get an accurate picture. There were real, practical reasons that GPL wasn't chosen but it definitely was given serious consideration.
One of the most intriguing mashups of technology that's available today via OpenSolaris is BrandZ and DTrace http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/brandz/ BrandZ allows OpenSolaris Containers/Zones to take on different OS personalities and the primary personality is one that emulates Linux. Using DTrace, one can actually dynamically trace Linux applications running (without recompilation) under OpenSolaris.
Please check out the Chime project which is about visualization software for DTrace. You can find more information at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/project/dtrace-chime /
For those who think that DTrace is old news, I really suggest that you download one of the OpenSolaris-based distributions
http://www.opensolaris.org/os/about/distributions/
and play around with DTrace. Yes, it's CLI is aimed at the geek in all of us but there is software like Chime and MacOS X's upcoming Xray which will help with those who prefer a different sort of UI.
FreeBSD Jails and OpenSolaris Zones are current open source solutions as well and their performance likely matches if not excels over para-virtualization solutions such as Xen.