I had missed that GlassFish v2 U1 (downloads) was supported on SUSE (Novell Website, Wikipedia). Here is the full list of supported platforms:

• Solaris 9 and 10 (SPARC, x86); 64-bit Solaris 10 (SPARC, x86) • RedHat Enterprise Linux 3.0 U1, 4.0 • SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1; 64-bit version • AIX 5.2, 5.3 • Windows Server 2000 SP4+, Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4+, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP Pro SP1+, Windows Vista

Refer to the Supported Platform section of the official documentation for details.

Alexis has just written a fairly detailed description of Sun's commercial support for GlassFish (via its SJS AS brand). This complements my earlier Overview and the commentary on how we Don't do Bait and Switch. Alexis writeup covers SLAs, phone support (complementing USERS@gf), knowledge databases and indemnification - for cases like this. The writeup also explains sustaining releases; recent interactions with users suggest these are poorly known so we may expand on them again later.

Check out Alexis' entry and, if interested, go and Purchase Support Online!

As explained in this wiki page, support for the AIX operating system is one of the major goals. Some people have offered testing on AIX. If you're interested in testing it as well, AIX nightly downloads are here.

YES! You can finally buy commercial Subscription-Based Support for Sun Java System Application Server 9.1, Sun's distribution of GlassFish v2. And it should work with your credit card globally! The link is HERE. Do let us know if there encounter any problems. A big Thank you! to John. You would not believe how long we have been trying to make this happen.

The support story for GlassFish is quite common in Open Source projects: a USERS mailing list provides Community Support, and companies, like Sun, provide Enterprise-Level Support. Sun's commercial support includes support services (phone and email access, knowledge database), and access to a regular stream of patch releases that provide qualified builds with the latest bug fixes. These patch releases start after a final / stable public release has happened; for example, we are readying the 3rd update patch since the latest public GlassFish v1 in December (GF v1UR1p1).

All these update patches are based on source changes that are pushed through to the public source repositories together with other changes, which means that when a new public final / stable release is done all the bug fixes will be included. This is a common arrangement for commercial support, and companies like Covalent have been doing it for years.

So, how do you buy commercial support for GlassFish from Sun? If you have a contact with Sun's sales, you could ask them. In any case, you can also just go to the electronic store for your contry; in the case of the US, the link is here. If you follow the link you will get to the page to buy support for Sun Java System Application Server PE 9.0, which is just Sun's name for the distribution of GlassFish; the only difference is the installer (there should be a clear reference to GlassFish in the page; we will fix that). You will see two support offers. Standard gives you 12/5 support; Premium is for 24/7 with interoperability support.

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Now, the video. I have a soft spot for Castellers; not just am I from Barcelona but I really like the community built and egalitarian messages. Shown is the first 3 de 10 (3 people in the base rising 10 high) in the history. Going this high can only be done with a very large support base; in this case a pinya, folre i manilles. And, as it is not unlikely, when going very high, you run the risk of falling down, and the support is so you don't get hurt...

A nice follow-up on the GlassFish Support Story from two weeks ago. One of the readers of Tim's blog asked for support for the V1 UR1 release and, after some checking, the answer is positive. This is good, and reproduceable for later similar releases. Check the Comment in Tim's blog. The App in question sounds like an interesting one so I asked for more details - it would make for a nice GlassFish adoption story.

There are many reasons why Sun is supporting Open Source community projects like GlassFish, including System Sales and rapid Java EE 5 Platform Adoption, but plain Revenue is also important. Revenue comes from multiple sources including training and support, and Tim just wrote a blog explaining his inside view on Sun's commercial support of our distribution of GlassFish: SJS AS 9.0.

The support plans for SJS AS 9.x from Sun are being updated as I type, but a good start is this page on Sun's overall Software Service Plans and the move focused Developers Services Page. Or feel free to contact me or other Sun engineers and we will direct you to the right place.

There is a 50% discount on Sun's Developer Expert Assistance Service (program, announcement) which now also supports the Java EE 5 SDK with SJS AS 9.0 (Project GlassFish). This is one of a series of promos that includes also a hardware discount of up to 35% on Ultra 20 Workstations. There are also several training offers, but I'll do a separate highlight on those.

The photo is from the 100 city tour, which included Barcelona, which has significant center of the Casteller activity.