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Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

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Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#31

Post by briansmith »

iigs wrote: post #22

I know that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but our experiences with Solaris at work seem to not be unusual. Over the past ten years Sun has NOT had their story straight on the availability of Solaris x86 ISOs and support patches (formerly packaged as X _Recommended bundles). While I could download x86 and install it when I was considering trying it out for an important but non-funded project (replacing authoritat…

RE: x86 support for Solaris: How recent was your experience?

Re: CentOS: I agree, I am considering "upgrading" from CentOS 5.2 to RHEL 5.2 to get support for some servers. If CentOS didn't exist then I wouldn't probably went with Debian or Ubuntu on those servers when I set them up, and then I'd be looking to get support from Canonical.

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#32

Post by patrickg-zill »

tptacek wrote: post #26
patrickg-zill wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only someone who hasn't actually USED zones would say that. Sun never said that zones were the ultimate in virutalization - which is why they are coming out with XVM (their Xen implementation, basically). I have made plenty of actual greenbacks with zones.

I've done more than "use" zones, but I'm not going to go into details; you can infer what you'd like from my background. On the other hand, you didn't actually make any arguments here. All you did was assert that I'd never used the zones feature, make a point about something unrelated to zones, and then say that you made money with zones. Nobody is disputing that there is money to be made selling people Solaris inste…

OK, I will expand on my original comment to give you a better idea of my perspective.

Zones are a useful tool because they provide the needed amount of separation (for me anyways) without a lot of overhead. They are portable to whatever the Solaris kernel is ported to (x86, x64, SPARC, and there is a PPC port being worked on).

A zone with /usr, /opt, etc. mounted read-only in the zone, is more secure (assuming no security holes to bypass the read-only property) than a non-zone Solaris system, yet it works exactly the same way. I can compile something in the global (root) zone and when installed under /usr it is available in every zone, and if there is a security hole that involves writing to e.g. /usr/bin/ping , it will fail.

Note that the kernel only loads one copy of each library, no matter how many programs reference or use it; this saves RAM compared to e.g. VMWare, and may reduce disk accesses if you have short lived processes as the library may already be loaded and resolved by the link editor.

You could duplicate this, of course, under any OS with a combination of NFS read-only mounts (loopback or over ethernet) and jails, although the administration overhead would be higher.

My reference to XVM (Sun's customized Xen) was to point out that if you don't like zones, you can still use "full" virtualization from Sun; it is not an either/or choice.

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#33

Post by iigs »

briansmith wrote: post #31
iigs wrote: post #22

I know that the plural of anecdote isn't data, but our experiences with Solaris at work seem to not be unusual. Over the past ten years Sun has NOT had their story straight on the availability of Solaris x86 ISOs and support patches (formerly packaged as X _Recommended bundles). While I could download x86 and install it when I was considering trying it out for an important but non-funded project (replacing authoritat…

RE: x86 support for Solaris: How recent was your experience? Re: CentOS: I agree, I am considering "upgrading" from CentOS 5.2 to RHEL 5.2 to get support for some servers. If CentOS didn't exist then I wouldn't probably went with Debian or Ubuntu on those servers when I set them up, and then I'd be looking to get support from Canonical.

The specific moment I'm referring to was in 2007. I believe it's still the case that you can not download patch clusters without a support account. I'd love to be proven wrong about this, though.

There was a previous time (circa 2002) when I was considering it for another company but they pulled the freely available x86 ISOs altogether. This lack of commitment on Sun's part means I can't trust the free stuff for test / low end, even if they started offering everything again today, because I no longer trust that they won't do the same thing again next week.

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#34

Post by tptacek »

briansmith wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're almost making an apples-to-oranges comparison here, albeit a comparison I begged you to make. Solaris Zones aren't virtualization. They're an isolation feature that tries to find all the shared kernel namespaces between applications to present the illusion of multiple machines. "Zoned" applications share a running kernel instance, and share a number of kernel namespaces that are not carefully isolated. VMWare…

As others have said, VMWare is virtualization and Zones is not. Solaris Zones provides a high degree of isolation that is sufficient for the vast majority of cases that Xen is being used for, with virtually ZERO runtime overhead, simple and fast configuration, and streamlined maintenence. If you need more isolation than Zones offers then you probably have to skip Xen and go with a fully virtualized solution like VMwa…

Things an enterprise gets with Xen/VMWare that they don't get with Zones:

* A security model that extends through the kernel

* A performance and resource sharing model that extends through the kernel

* Push-button migration

* Support for anything other than Solaris

* "Hardware"-level suspend/resume

* Centralized management

I can go on and on about the security implications of Zones (and Jails) --- I don't think this model is well thought-through. But on the feature-list alone, Zones (and Jails) are a pale shadow of what the "mainstream" OS's offer today.

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#35

Post by tptacek »

patrickg-zill wrote: post #32
tptacek wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've done more than "use" zones, but I'm not going to go into details; you can infer what you'd like from my background. On the other hand, you didn't actually make any arguments here. All you did was assert that I'd never used the zones feature, make a point about something unrelated to zones, and then say that you made money with zones. Nobody is disputing that there is money to be made selling people Solaris inste…

OK, I will expand on my original comment to give you a better idea of my perspective. Zones are a useful tool because they provide the needed amount of separation (for me anyways) without a lot of overhead. They are portable to whatever the Solaris kernel is ported to (x86, x64, SPARC, and there is a PPC port being worked on). A zone with /usr, /opt, etc. mounted read-only in the zone, is more secure (assuming no sec…

NFS is a great example of something that has subtle, bad security interactions with zones.

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#36

Post by briansmith »

tptacek wrote: post #34
briansmith wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As others have said, VMWare is virtualization and Zones is not. Solaris Zones provides a high degree of isolation that is sufficient for the vast majority of cases that Xen is being used for, with virtually ZERO runtime overhead, simple and fast configuration, and streamlined maintenence. If you need more isolation than Zones offers then you probably have to skip Xen and go with a fully virtualized solution like VMwa…

Things an enterprise gets with Xen/VMWare that they don't get with Zones: * A security model that extends through the kernel * A performance and resource sharing model that extends through the kernel * Push-button migration * Support for anything other than Solaris * "Hardware"-level suspend/resume * Centralized management I can go on and on about the security implications of Zones (and Jails) --- I don't think this…

What do you mean by "security model that extends through the kernel" and "A performance and resource sharing model that extends through the kernel"?

I don't believe that most people need the suspend/resume/migration feature. If you have a cluster that can handle system failure then you can easily migrate a zone the same way you would deal with a failed system.

Anyway, I agree that VMWare/Xen offers important features for pausing and moving running applications. I use those features of VMWare every day. But, most people will do very well with Zones because they don't need and won't use and didn't learn and don't want to pay for the extra features that VMWare offers.

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#37

Post by tptacek »

briansmith wrote: post #36
tptacek wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things an enterprise gets with Xen/VMWare that they don't get with Zones: * A security model that extends through the kernel * A performance and resource sharing model that extends through the kernel * Push-button migration * Support for anything other than Solaris * "Hardware"-level suspend/resume * Centralized management I can go on and on about the security implications of Zones (and Jails) --- I don't think this…

What do you mean by "security model that extends through the kernel" and "A performance and resource sharing model that extends through the kernel"? I don't believe that most people need the suspend/resume/migration feature. If you have a cluster that can handle system failure then you can easily migrate a zone the same way you would deal with a failed system. Anyway, I agree that VMWare/Xen offers important features…

Again: any Solaris kernel vulnerability likely allows a non-root zone to compromise the root zone. There are other real and potential problems with pretending that kernel security is just about the filesystem namespace and some additional access control on the process table, but "one kernel memory corruption bug costs you the whole server" is a simple enough security problem to get your head around.

VMWare does not have this problem --- you need both a kernel fault (not rare) and a hypervisor fault (quite rare) to take over a whole VMWare server.

You can say "most people don't need" the features Zones don't offer, but I see my clients using them, and expect they'd mention them immediately if asked why they use VMWare.

Very few people will do well with Zones, because very few people still deploy Solaris. The choice between shelling out for Sun gear and shelling out for ESX is a no-brainer.

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#38

Post by 131072 »

astine wrote: post #24
orib wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you pay for support, you get support. I doubt that there would have been much difference in your experience if you were paying for a support contract with one of the larger Linux distributors, like Redhat or Novell. Linux doesn't mean you're stuck without vendor support, although that's a common misconception. I don't know how Sun's support compares to the various commercial distros, but comparing an unsupported L…

This is true. What would be interesting however, would be a nice comparison of a supported Linux with a supported Solaris. Then again, when you've paid for Linux support, do what is price difference between it and Solaris then? Whit is the price difference between a supported Solaris install and a supported Red-Hat install? Is Red-Hat significantly cheaper? Does it's less restrictive licensing bring about an advantag…

Indeed, you can buy Linux support from Red Hat and other companies. But this rings hollow - they do not provide the level of support that Sun or Microsoft does - try getting them or anyone else to fix an obscure bug in the GNU linker, especially if you're not using their distro (even if you want to pay). If you think you're going to convince the likes of prickly GNU toolchain developers to prioritise the development or release of a patch your company depends on, guess again.

And those support contracts cost money, just like Sun/MS support contracts. And as soon as you start relying on software that isn't in their distro, you rapidly run into uncharted territory. The Linux meme of 'you can get support', is, I think, promoted mostly by people who haven't worked on critical IT systems, or have done so without understanding their responsibility.

That's not to say Sun's engineering is better than OSS (after all, we got their compiler to segfault as well as gcc, and my BSD/Apache shared hosting has had better uptime than my landline and TV for the last few years, and I'm sure many people want to set fire to the source code for NFS). Linux and other OSS provide the bulk of features that most people use. And you're probably better off with an unsupported apache server than some of the hideous commercial webservers that used to be around.

The bottom line is Sun charges a lot of money to mitigate somewhat nebulous risks that are hard to understand and communicate, and their OS has no killer features. They have also mastered the art of alienating potential enthusiasts. All of which put them on shaky ground. It is a shame, because platform diversity is one of the best defences of the internet as a whole.

(If you have access to dtrace, learn it. Understanding what it does and being able to use it will make you a better and probably richer developer).

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#39

Post by orib »

131072 wrote: post #38
astine wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is true. What would be interesting however, would be a nice comparison of a supported Linux with a supported Solaris. Then again, when you've paid for Linux support, do what is price difference between it and Solaris then? Whit is the price difference between a supported Solaris install and a supported Red-Hat install? Is Red-Hat significantly cheaper? Does it's less restrictive licensing bring about an advantag…

Indeed, you can buy Linux support from Red Hat and other companies. But this rings hollow - they do not provide the level of support that Sun or Microsoft does - try getting them or anyone else to fix an obscure bug in the GNU linker, especially if you're not using their distro (even if you want to pay). If you think you're going to convince the likes of prickly GNU toolchain developers to prioritise the development…

As I said, I have no clue on how Redhat's paid support compares to Sun's, although I know they hire lots of developers working on things throughout the entire stack, so I'm assuming that if you paid enough they'd set one of their developers on your problem. I'm not qualified to judge how helpful they are though.

Interestingly, I seem to have the entire opposite experience with unpaid support. If I asked nicely, I quickly got help about where to dig into the software and what to look for when fixing stuff. The programmers on the projects were quick to respond with requests for more information and suggested fixes, and often the problem was solved within a day or so. All I did was poke them on IRC.

No support contracts at all.

Re: Is Sun Solaris on its deathbed?

#40

Post by aagnihot »

Linux Foundation is funded by IBM, HP, Intel. So I guess its just an anti-sun attack. Its just a negative-PR. >>["The future is Linux and Microsoft Windows," says foundation Executive Director Jim Zemlin] Stop predicting...Start working!! Michael Dell once predicted similar thing about Apple. But look at where Apple is today!! And look at Dell!!
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