Rafal Maszkowski wrote:
> I mirror the Oracle OEL (on this new machine). I have asked people
> propagating this distribution about OEL on Sparc but got no answer.
> Weird - they want to have their own RHEL and they produce Sparc machines
> but cannot (do not want?) connect these two things together.[...]
<http://www.pcworld.com/article/212564/ellison_oracle_enterprise_linux_comin…>
--cut--
Ellison: Oracle Enterprise Linux Coming to Sparc
By James Niccolai, IDG News Dec 6, 2010 9:00 pm
Oracle will port its Enterprise Linux distribution to Sun's Sparc
processor, a move that could help it compete better against IBM and
Hewlett-Packard in the high-end server business.
CEO Larry Ellison made the disclosure in response to a question about
Oracle's Linux strategy at the company's Sparc systems launch last
Thursday.
"We think Sparc will become clearly the best chip for running Oracle
software. At that point we'd be nuts not to move Oracle Enterprise
Linux there. We're a ways away, but I think that's definitely going to
happen," Ellison said.
It's likely to happen in "the T4, T5 timeframe," he said, referring to
the next two versions of Sun's Sparc processor. Oracle just released
the Sparc T3 in September and the T4 isn't expected for a year or so.
Customers who buy Oracle's x86 servers today can run both Solaris and
Oracle Enterprise Linux, but for Oracle's Sparc systems, Solaris is
the only supported OS.
"Some customers have run Linux on Sparc, but it's mostly in the
high-performance computing market and it's not a supported
environment," said IDC analyst Jean Bozman.
That puts Oracle at odds with IBM and HP, whose customers can run both
Unix and Linux on those companies' high-end servers.
"You have both HP and IBM ... being able to offer their customers
Linux and their proprietary Unix on the same hardware, and that gives
them additional opportunities for customers running virtual
environments," said Nathan Brookwood, principal analyst at Insight64.
IBM customers, for example, can take a single Power7 system and run
Linux, AIX and IBM's System i software under a common hypervisor. "In
the world of virtualized data centers, being able to run all your
major OS environments on your major hardware platform gives end users
a little bit more flexibility," Brookwood said.
Linux was Oracle's preferred OS before it acquired Sun. Ellison now
calls Solaris "the leading OS on the planet," but he knows some
customers want a choice. He wants that choice to be among Oracle
products, however, not among different vendors.
"We want [customers] thinking, 'Should I go with Sparc or should I go
with x86? Should I run it on Solaris or should I run it on Linux?' End
of discussion," Ellison said. "We don't want them thinking, 'Should I
move from Sparc to Power or Solaris to AIX.' We want to give them
choice within our own family of products."
Ellison also introduced a new category of support, called Gold
Standard Services, for customers who are willing to run their Oracle
systems with exactly the configuration Oracle suggests.
Oracle will test each new software upgrade and big fix against the
Gold configurations in its labs, Ellison said. That should allow it to
guarantee higher levels of uptime for customers, he suggested.
The first "gold configurations" will be for the big integrated systems
Oracle has announced recently -- the Exadata Database Machine, the
Exalogic Elastic Cloud and the Sparc Supercluster.
It expects to include partner products too. "We're going to have IBM,
Dell and Cisco join in and create those Gold Standard configurations,"
Ellison said. He didn't give any pricing information and Oracle didn't
respond to a request for more details.
--end--
