The announcement of Dell and HP readying to resell Oracle's Solaris and Enterprise Linux operating systems, as well as its Oracle VM implementation of the Xen hypervisor on their respective PowerEdge and ProLiant servers, has prompted a couple of bloggers to remind customers that these systems are just two of a multitude of systems available to them as options.

Customers interested in which vendors and systems add support and are compatible with OpenSolaris and Oracle Solaris should read through the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL), which identifies hardware (servers, desktop and laptop systems and a selection of peripheral devices) that meet this criteria.

As Edward Moffat and Joerg Moellenkamp point out, both IBM and Fujistu are on the list.

Moffat, whose blog focuses on desktop virtualization solutions, states that many customers are unaware that Sun Ray servers can be run on non-Oracle/Sun hardware. Customers who have standardized on one hardware platform should know that most applications and OS platforms will run on any X86 hardware platform. They should be aware that Sun technologies are optimized to work together. "And yes, we are going to recommend Sun servers because we do all our integration and testing on them (and they are genuinely cutting edge from design and eco computing perspectives)," he writes, "and you are going to want to have your Support contract in place, but we also recognize customers may have different standards for servers".

In regards to Sun Ray Server, Secure Global Desktop, or VDI servers, Moffat reminds customers to run these in a supported fashion, which entails using a fully supported Solaris or Linux instance. "That means that you can have Solaris running on your HP server and get full support on the Secure Global Desktop service through Oracle Premium Support," he illustrates.

Moellenkamp offers his interpretation of the support customers can receive, breaking it down into pricing, licensing, and server rules.

A few highlights:

• Pricing is socket-based. Systems with one to four sockets cost $1000 for Oracle Premier Support for Operating Systems per year, per socket; systems with more than five sockets cost $2000 per socket, per year.

• Software License Agreement for Solaris allows use for up to 90 days in production use without entitlement. The support offering provides a non-perpetual entitlement to run Solaris 10 on a non-Oracle HW. "It's a subscription," he clarifies. "This entitlement is valid for the same period as your support."

• Server bundles provide a perpetual license with costs of 8% for software or 12% for software plus hardware of the net systems price for support.

More Information

Oracle Solaris OS: Hardware Compatibility Lists

Rival Hardware Vendors Get OK to Resell Three Oracle Operating Systems

Oracle Solaris Premier Subscriptions for Non-Oracle x86 Systems [...read more...]

		fullsource
Print Email Current Profile Archive Blog Generate newsletter

Other articles in the Servers section of Volume 150, Issue 2: Multiple Server Hardware Options Available for Customers (this article) See all archived articles in the Servers section.

Top 10 Most Popular Articles in Current Issue (Vol 167, Issue 4) Simplified Administration with ZFS Documentation for Common Sysadmin Tasks Solaris 10 OS and ZFS Cut Costs, Boost Uptime as Alternative to RAID Oracle Certified Associate (OCA), Oracle Solaris 11 System Administrator MySQL: An Introduction for Oracle DBAs illumos Meetup at FOSDEM Linux Adoption Trends 2012: A Survey of Enterprise End Users MySQL 5.0 and 5.1 available on Solaris 11 World Record x86 TPC-C Result Java Spotlight Episode 65: Deployment & Plugin Recent Blog Entries as of February 4, 2012, 11:52 am Oracle Enterprise Manager Enables Cerner Health Care to Cut Capital Expenditures by $9.5 Million Beefing Up Xeon Reliability, Availability, and Serviceability: Slide Set Java Spotlight Episode 54: Stuart Marks on the Coinification of JDK7 Getting PostgreSQL HA to Work in vFabric Data Director November 9th, Oracle Solaris 11 Launch, New York City The [System] Developer's Edge: 322 page pdf Oracle Global IT Upgrades to Sun Storage Products UNIX - Dead or alive? LibreOffice Adopts ODF 1.2 as an OASIS Standard The Growth Prospects for Tape vs. HDD and NAND as a Storage Devices Blog RSS Feed