[SunHELP] Re Oracle & Sun

[Jerry Kemp]

On 04/29/09 09:44, David Strom wrote:
> So, if your org is planning to move its Oracle to Solaris, is that on 
> Solaris X64? 

Given the economy, I don't believe that anything is being ruled out, but 
if I had to put money down, I would say that we would continue on Sparc. 
  We are a large RISC organization, and everything that I am involved 
with is either Sparc or Power.  Even all of our internal mail servers 
(Lotus Notes) is on Power.

  I'm wondering because Oracle 11g is not available on
> Solaris X64, just Solaris Sparc.  Larry might change that, or release 
> version 12 on Solaris X64, now that he will be owning Solaris.

I don't know exactly threaded Oracle is.

On my application tier, I have highly threaded java serverlets.  And we 
have replaced many V480's & V490's with T5120's & T5140's.  We have the 
right application and the T5K servers soar above all others.  I don't 
believe that anything on the x86/x64 side of things could touch those at 
the price point, data through-put, or power consumption.

I do *not* have the threading on my web tier, and the T5K servers fail 
miserably there.  Sun has some software called CoolTools that can 
evaluate your workload an determine if it is a fit for a CoolThreads 
processor.  I am biased towards Sun equipment, but obviously, the 
correct answer is to use the right tool for the right job.

> 
> Of course, AIX runs on Power processors, so you wouldn't be too nervous 
> about Sparc.

Not at all.  I wear many hats, but at my current position, my primary 
roll is as a Solaris admin.

> 
> Maybe your organization has contacts with Oracle where you've gotten 
> info re Oracle 11/12 on Solaris X64?

I am certain that the DBA's that I help support have much more insight 
into this issue than I do.  And all that I really know is the press 
releases that have recently come from Oracle.  With that disclaimer, I 
will share my educated opinion, for what it is worth.

* This is a direct quote from the Oracle sun-faq.pdf file. "The Sun 
Solaris operating system is the leading platform for the Oracle 
database. With the acquisition of Sun, Oracle can optimize the Oracle 
database for some of the unique, high-end features of Solaris."

I just don't see another Sun/Cobalt type buyout happening here.  Maybe 
someone more in "the know" can offer other comments if you feel differently.

* x86/x64 support.  This has been discussed heavily on several Solaris 
list, with many comments coming from the Yahoo Solaris x86 list.  IMHO, 
one of the biggest arguments both for continued development of Solaris 
x86/x86, aside from a common code base with Sparc, is the AmberRoad/FISH 
San appliance.  Comments are that this product is doing well, and it 
utilizes both OpenSolaris and X86/X64 hardware.

> 
> I'm wondering because we are moving away from Sparc, and we would really 
> like to run Oracle on Solaris X64 rather than Linux.
> 
>
Do you have access to speak, or email your Oracle reps?  And ask them 
these type of questions?  I certainly expect things to change with Sun 
under Oracle, but until the deal is all the way through, I would 
speculate that Oracle will keep their plans close.

Jerry


  --
> David Strom