A new IBM-tuned version of OpenSolaris is expected to be ready soon, according to David Noyes, president and CTO of Sine Nomine Associates, who demonstrated the enterprise-level system running on a System z mainframe during the Gartner Data Center Conference 2007.

"Because there are three entities involved here (IBM, Sun, Sine Nomine), it will take a little time to sort through all the fine points, but it's up and running now and we expect it to be ready for (general availability) soon," Boyes told eWeek's Chris Preimesberger. Sine Nomine Associates is an Ashburn, Va.-based consultancy firm that handled most of the integration and migration duties.

Preimesberger explained that the demonstration he saw, though brief, did show all the nodes that were running, plus all the necessary administrative options, storage capacity, and networking information.

Apparently, Sun and IBM are in the final stages of adapting OpenSolaris to run optimally on IBM's z System mainframes, and Boyes said there are at least 30-40 customers awaiting its release.

"This project has been in the works for about 18 months," Boyes continued. "There are a lot of older Solaris boxes out that companies are starting to replace. Some are coming back to the mainframe due to power/cooling and cost considerations. All those [administrators] won't have to be retrained in a new OS if they can run a version of Solaris on the mainframes."

Demo on Video

SearchDataCenter.com has posted five YouTube videos that offer a peek into the OpenSolaris on System Z: Part I, Part II, Part III, Part IV: (Actual startup begins), and Part V. [...read more...]

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