Taylor's Take on Sun Storage
My storage team and I focus on three of the most important aspects in any industry: customers, competitors and market trends. There is insight to gain and share in this role, so here is our take on Sun and Storage - Taylor Allis
Open Storage Support
I've received a lot of questions about the support for Open Storage from customers and competitors. And for good reason - if something isn't working the way you want it to, you need to know there is someone to count on for support. This is true for traditional products; and is even more critical when it comes to products that incorporate open source software.
I'll briefly explain Sun's support model around open source and Open Storage. This model is also evolving over time and will only get better...
Professional Services: Sun offers
architecture, development, implementation and management services for
Open Storage. Instead of writing about them here, I'll send you to this link.
Appliance & Hardware Support: Sun offers commercial versions of its Open Storage products, like the Sun Fire X4500, which comes with traditional support AND better storage economics. You can also purchase Sun hardware for Open Storage. These obviously come with the expected Sun support and service offerings. (Remember that in Open Storage, users can essentially build a storage controller out of a standard server to save cost and improve flexibility.)
Solaris Support: Sun's commercially available enterprise server O/S can be used as a storage platform in an Open Storage implementation. It is also critical to point out that Solaris and ZFS offer advanced storage services like point-in-time-copy, volume management, storage administration and data integrity features like copy-on-write, end-to-end checksumming and RAID. These are storage software features that typically reside in a storage controller or as an independent software application that has to be purchased separately. So it is important to note that when we are talking about Solaris (and OpenSolaris) - we are also talking about all the storage software features and services that come with it.
According to the Whitepaper, "OS Subscription Support Services: A Comparison of Sun and Red Hat" by the Crimson Consulting Group, Solaris support is comparable but better than Red Hat Enterprise Linux support. Read the paper for the detail; below are the high-level findings when comparing Solaris vs. Red Hat Linux support:
- Sun has a lower average price for annual support subscriptions - 16% lower per year, list.
- Sun has longer product lifecycle support - 7 years of support vs. 3 years for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (see diagram below)
- Sun has a larger support organization - 18x the support staff compared to Red Hat.
- Sun had a 27% lower total cost compared to Red Hat Enterprise Linux over a three-year period.
- Sun offers a commercial OS (Solaris) and an open source OS (OpenSolaris)
Customers who buy a Sun Server also get a free commercial Solaris RTU (right to use). So customers get integrated support for Sun hardware and software comparable to support from other enterprise server vendors like HP or
IBM.
OpenSolaris Support: Sun is leading the way in offering support for the open source version of its storage platform - OpenSolaris. OpenSolaris support also covers the storage applications embedded in the OS or file system. Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is similar to commercial software in that the community does not update the distribution directly (but instead provides input via feedback, bug fixes or contributions). Fedora is Red Hat's community-lead distribution of Linux. So it is important to note that while Red Hat offers RHEL support, it currently does not offer traditional support for Fedora (beyond community support). By contrast, Sun offers Solaris AND OpenSolaris support. This is truly unique.
Currently there are two OpenSolaris support subscriptions available - buy them here. These subscriptions support OpenSolaris running on Sun Servers AND multiple 3rd-party x64/x86 systems. OpenSolaris Subscription services include the:
- OpenSolaris Essentials Subscription: 24x7 telephone support, online technical support and bug escalation services
- OpenSolaris Production Subscription: 8x5 business hour and online technical support
If you are already a SunSpectrum System Plan customer, then OpenSolaris support is included with your System Service Plan. Also, if you have a Solaris Subscription you are automatically entitled to the OpenSolaris Essentials service - pretty good deal if you ask me...
OpenSolaris Community Support: So what about storage applications on OpenSolaris that are not part of the current OpenSolaris distribution/code base? What if I am a developer and create a NEW storage application from the open storage offerings available to me? This is where the Sun Developer Network (SDN) offers great support. Sign up to the Sun Developer Expert Assistance program for online support, technical assistance, code support, programming questions and diagnostic advice. (You can even learn fun stuff like how to build an OpenSolaris NAS box in 5 easy steps!)
So, Sun has more than 7,000 employees dedicated to service and support - not all dedicated to Open Storage of course (I wish), but dedicated to storage, servers, software (commercial and open source!) and everything in between. Sun's enterprise support offerings now cover open source software; and Sun has a strong and growing open source community that supports its open source initiatives worldwide. Sun offers direct services in 55 countries and services in 160 countries either directly or through partners.
So hopefully some support questions were answered above - if not, pls comment and we'll see if we can find an answer...
Posted at 12:36PM May 28, 2008 by Taylor Allis in Storage Intelligence | Comments[0]
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