We had a customer using an application on a customer platform, the supplier wanted funding from the customer to re-write the application to another Unix. Sun recommended to use Dtrace to find the areas that could be improved and help the ISV move from Solaris 8 to Solaris 10. However, the application supplier said that it would take too much work/money etc, it would cost less to re-write to another unix.

However, the OEM wanted the binary compatability value offered by Sun and to exploit Sun's multi-core chip technologies. So when the customer officially requested that the ISV work with Sun to determine if the application could be moved to Solaris 10, we discovered some interesting hidden agendas. Sun together with the supplier very quickly found areas in the application code for improvement at a fraction of the time and cost of a port to another platform. Application performance was improved by an order of magnitude, 10 x faster and qualification onto Solaris 10 was not a problem. Costs of taking the Solaris 8 binary compatible code, tuning it with Dtrace and moving to Solaris 10 were a fraction of re-writing to another platform. So beware, people may want funding to move applications to platforms, then ask for more money later to support a myriad of kernels. However, with Dtrace they can improve performance dramatically and shorten the time to qualify Solaris 8 & 9 apps onto Solaris 10. Buyer beware, the reason for not moving to the latest release of Solaris may not be technical.

By the way we also consolidated several servers runing this application onto one M5000 using Solaris containers to run many virtualised instances of the application. Ended up with nearly 100's of applications running on one server. The customer could now reduce the number or racks that they needed to.

Carzy world, moving applications from Solaris 8 to Solaris 10 is easy and you can consolidate your servers at the same time. Madness where will it all end. One big computer.

Make sure that all ISV's and application providers know the benefits of a faster time to market and reduced development costs that Solaris and Dtrace can bring them. Costs too much to qualify on Solaris 10, what a red herring. Make your application faster with minimum investment, use those Dtrace features. It is the developers best friend, I wish I had such a tool when I was a programmer.

The moral of the story is; All end users, ask your application suppliers or Sun to validate application qualification to the latest release of Solaris with Dtrace.

Why does this remind me of some builders when you are renovating your house. When they say "that will cost you", in reality it is a much simpler job. Maybe that is why the DIY business is so profitable.