Posted on 08/18/2007 1:44:39 PM PDT by ShadowAce
Sun Microsystems has managed to nurture a blade server business, only it's on a rival's hardware. IBM today has become the first major server vendor - other than Sun - to ship Solaris x86 on its mainstream systems. (Yes, we know Compaq once sold Solaris x86. Thanks for the memories.)
IBM has agreed to sell Sun's operating system with its BladeCenter servers in "the coming months," according to an IBM spokesman. This is quite the surprise given IBM's contentious relationship with Sun. IBM's services organization, however, does do a large amount of business selling Sun servers and Solaris, which may have helped seal the deal. Sun killed its line of blade servers after a horrible go at the market, which IBM and HP lead.
Sun has long promised that a major OEM would back its Solaris x86 push. But up until now, the major vendors largely mocked Sun's Unix embrace. Jonathan Schwartz, president at Sun, was happy gloat about the move.
"Im pleased to announce we've signed up our first tier 1 systems vendor as a Solaris supporter: it's IBM, and their decision to provide comprehensive support for Solaris on Bladecenter definitely puts them ahead of the other blade vendors in offering a truly OS neutral product," he said in a globule. "As a result of our agreement, IBM will be adding value to BladeCenter, optimizing Solaris for IBM hardware offerings, adding volume to the Solaris community, and proving that the best choice for customers is, in fact, real choice.
"It sends a clear message to IBM accounts that Solaris is now a top tier option for BladeCenter deployments."
IBM sells a broad range of blade servers, including systems based on its own PowerPC chip, AMD's Opteron chip and Intel's Xeon product. IBM was quick to tout its impressive lineup and position as blade server sales leader.
"We also openly welcome Solaris customers as they transition to the IBM BladeCenter platform to help simplify and optimize their IT infrastructure," IBM said. "IBM BladeCenter provides the broadest choice of server platforms and operating systems to customers with Linux for x86 and Power, Microsoft Windows Server, AIX and now Solaris10."
IBM expects customers to run Solaris x86 on its Xeon-based and Opteron-based systems. Sorry, no Power port yet, friends.
The two companies have an existing arrangement around Solaris x86 where IBM sells its WebSphere middleware for the OS.®
This is huge, With some of the solaris zoneing improvement coming up IBM and sun really stand to make some cash on this..
Glad to see it..
HP continues to resell Solaris. HP's x86 server group is the old Compaq, and most of its policies remain. HP probably has the broadest operating system support for its x86 servers.
to all you server ops out there....
why would you run their OS instead of BSD or Linux?
i though most of the server market was run by those two OS’s and microsoft.
no haters please, just the facts.
The simple answer is because no single OS meets all needs. Even in the case of Unixes, different flavors have their strengths and weaknesses. Solaris is a solid Unix. If you want to buy your hardware from IBM because you like the new blades, but you have admins that are much more familiar with Solaris than AIX, it might very well make sense for you to get Solaris loaded rather than AIX.
I've never been a really big fan of Solaris on X86 hardware, but will admit that it likely has gotten better than it was when I last spent considerable time trying it out.
You're a bit mistaken if you're thinking the majority of the server market was owned by Linux, BSD, and Microsoft. There is a lot of the above out there, but you'll also find rather large installations of AIX and Solaris backend servers doing serious heavy lifting in datacenters. We use a lot of Oracle running on Solaris in our shop, largely because everyone is comfortable with it. It is a proven combination for us that we're not likely to abandon without some serious thought an experimentation put into it.
In many orgs, you will see a lot of the customer-facing hardware running on BSD and Linux, because most of the apps that are customer facing are web-based, and these types of apps run great on both BSD and Linux. Which of the two you see more in any given shop is largely dependent upon in-house experience and preferences. Where I work, we're migrating from Solaris to Linux on http and some app server stuff (weblogic primarily) because it makes sense from a cost perspective. We also have some large applications that run on AIX that I doubt we'll see move to anything else because you just don't mess with revenue-generating hardware unless you have to.
I think the short answer to your initial query is that inertia is a rather strong (though not insurmountable) force in datacenters. Heavy lifting tends to be done by bigger iron, and that means IBM, Sun or similar companies. Smaller, less critical tasks will generally be assigned to servers running less robust OSes like Linux and Windows. I've seen uptime on AIX and Solaris boxes measured in years. I don't have a lot of personal experience with BSD but I wouldn't cast any aspersions against it and would rate it as more secure and stable than Linux based on the recommendations of people I know and respect.
http://www.theregister.com/2007/08/16/sun_ibm_solarisx86/
Excerpt:
The Linux crowd seems to have taken notice of this with zealots bashing Solaris x86 at every chance during recent open source trade shows. Such concern is understandable given that Solaris offers a number of high-end features not found with Linux.
IBM’s support for Solaris x86 could give the developer community a real boost, since Big Blue opens up a broader market. In addition, IBM’s move appears to confirm that there is strong demand for the OS among corporate customers. It’s hard to imagine IBM agreeing to this arrangement without customers applying serious pressure.
“It can’t be denied that Solaris x86 has reached some kind of critical mass,” Olds said.
The short answers could be
1) You already have allot of solaris (be it on x86 or sparc) and little Linux
2) You want to take advantage of solaris zones which are more mature, easier to use and (word has it) will be capable of running a linux os in a zone container.
3) Solaris offers something else Linux lacks that you need.
Why does the article say it’s from 27th October 2005? This is fresh news...?? Now I’m very confused..
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