Sun xVM and Niagara 2, The Ultimate Virtualization Combo
Coupled with Sun xVM technology, these new servers make the ultimate virtualization combo. Imagine virtualizing your environment with 640 hardware threads running on ten Sun Blade T6320 blades in a compact 10 rack units - only 17.5 inches of space! How much rack space do you need today to run 640 Virtual Machines using your current virtualization platform? Still running Solaris 8 on older, power-hungry, servers? Don't worry, now with Solaris Containers you can keep running your Solaris 8 applications on any current UltraSPARC powered server from Sun, including the new Sun Blade T6320. When run on the Sun Blade T6320, each Solaris 8 container can have its own IP instance, extending the blazing fast performance of the built-in 10 Gbit networking to your older Solaris 8 applications, not to mention your current Solaris 10 apps. With Sun xVM technology, your Solaris 8 applications can also benefit from previously Solaris 10 only features like Predictive Self-Healing and ZFS. I bet hosting companies like Joyent can't wait to get their hands on these new UltraSPARC T2 powered servers.
You can read more Sun blogs on our new servers from other Sun engineers.
Finally, I have received many requests of when can one actually download and try out the Solaris 8 container software. Right now, our official target is to have the download available on October 22. I will post a link to the download site as soon as it is available, but for starters you can get Solaris 10 today, install it, and get ready to run your Solaris 8 container on October 22.
Slight correction: you've always been able to run Solaris 8 applications on Solaris 10 and SXDE. What Project Etude does is allow you to run Solaris 8 applications in a zone that looks and feels just like a Solaris 8 installation, while running on an S10 kernel instead. This provides a lower-risk S8->S10 migration strategy for customers who don't want to take the plunge and for those whose applications depend on EOFed and removed S8 user-land features.
Posted by Nico on October 11, 2007 at 01:29 PM PDT #
Nico,
Thanks for the slight correction. You are absolutely correct. In fact, Sun's binary compatibility guarantee, described at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/guarantee.jsp guarantees that if an application runs on Solaris 2.6, 7, 8 or 9, it will run on Solaris 10, even if it has not been recompiled for Solaris 10. As you state, Etude makes a Solaris 10 container look and feel more like a complete Solaris 8 environment and further lowers the risk of moving to Solaris 10.
Posted by Marc Hamilton on October 11, 2007 at 01:41 PM PDT #
This is nice to know. Thanx
What would be equally nice to know is if we can run a 2.6-kernel based Linux in one of those as well. I'd prefer SuSE9 and RHEL4, but I'm sure others may have other preferences.
Is there a date for such a thing to be officially supported, assuming I have a SuSE or RHEL license to run the SW?
Thanx
--Vijay
Posted by Vijay Tatkar on October 17, 2007 at 12:22 PM PDT #
If you want a 2.6 kernel, Ubuntu supports running in an LDOM, that is much cheaper (aka free) than buying RHEL or SuSe license.
Posted by Marc Hamilton on October 17, 2007 at 10:35 PM PDT #