Sun Acquires CFS/Lustre, Becomes Windows OEM

anzha writes "Sun Microsystems announced today that they are acquiring Cluster File Systems Inc. CFS owns the intellectual property related to and develops the open source file system known as Lustre." Relatedly Sun has also signed an agreement with Microsoft to be a Windows OEM. "Sun and Microsoft will work together to ensure that Solaris runs well as a guest on Microsoft virtualization technologies and that Windows Server runs well as a guest on Sun's virtualization technologies. Sun and Microsoft will work together on a support process for customers who are using the virtualization solutions. This joint commitment to customers ensures that Windows and Solaris will provide a solid virtualization experience."

Problem

[BloodyIron]

Is this a problem?

I dont see one...

Step one

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, there's the 'embrace'. Ready for the 'extend'?

Interesting

[El Lobo]

Interesting that with all these deals everybody is (as always, duh) critisizing Microsoft for "Extending and Embracing", but almost anybody is failing to see that it is in reallity THE OTHER PARTS who are trying to get some oxygen by teaming with the big guy. It's a SYMBIOSIS, people when everybody involved gets something good for them. And in the end, the winners are we, the users, because if we left the ********funny ideologies********* aside, nothing wrong have come with peace and understanding. Ever.

What I want from Sun

[Colin Smith]

The FASTEST most powerful machines I can fit in my datacentres.

Simple.

 

The Catch.

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft seems to be making a lot of buddy buddy partnerships for compatibility recently. The novell one made me think they're going to try pulling something, but now they're going for Sun? Hmmm, maybe M$ actually is trying to actually fix its interoperability issues? Theres got to be a catch here somewhere.

Yeah there's a catch alright. The "catch" is that there's fixing to be a Democrat in the whitehouse come January of 2009. And there's also going to be Democrat party controlled both houses of congress. And Microsoft knows there's nothing they can do to prevent this inevitability from coming, and the certain revival of the anti-trust court actions which they were able to weasel out of any effective punishment for nearly a decade under the Republican administration. Microsoft is now building up what they hope will be seen as a plausible defense against that. MS may be evil, but they're certainly not stupid.

uh huh

[SolusSD]

A solid virtualization experience for both OSs. I'm sure that's what MS is after.

Re:sun the innovator

[QuantumRiff]

Sun has containers.. Sun is also working on other virtualization stuff.. Lets say I need a Solaris box for my DB, and a Windows server for my App.. Do I buy a $10k sun box for the DB, and a $5k box for windows, both with different hardware, warranties and contracts to keep track of, etc, or do I buy a $15k box, put Solaris on it, and Run windows under a VM? Keep in mind that i still need a license to run windows in the VM, so I would rather buy it all from the same company for support and simplicity. Now, after this, do I pay $ for VMWare, or do I use the free Solaris VM software (that sun signed this contract today for), allowing me to spend $15k+$ on the server, and get even more performance... (or just spend less money). Now, I get more bang for the buck, Better hardware performance, and One vendor to go to for ANY Problem on the system! That does sound like innovation (when innovation is defined as not throwing the customer all over the place, pointing fingers at the "other" company, while your critical systems are down!)

Ah Yes...

[Greyfox]

The SGI Maneuver. Let us know how that works out for you. History has a short memory of the also-rans. Will anyone know who Sun was in a decade?

The big UNIX vendors blew it. They rested on their laurels when they should have been improving the system and researching new ways for people to interact with computers. Soon only IBM will be left and I think they're too smart and too well diversified to die that way. They adapted their business model as deftly as a company of several hundred thousand possibly could.

I think Apple is the UNIX company of the future. They've shown that they can put a pretty face on UNIX. You don't even have to know that it is UNIX. Their nifty little devices run UNIX and interact with people in very unique ways. They didn't take that long to develop, either. A fraction of the time the big UNIX vendors wasted sitting around arguing about "standards" and deriding PCs as "toys."

I'm just glad that if another UNIX vendor goes under, more or less, I still won't have to program for Microsoft platforms.

Re:Fighting off Linux?

[setagllib]

This may be difficult for some to understand, but Linux and projects like it don't need to make money, because they make wealth. Any improvement to a Linux system potentially improves the lives (and consequently productivity, efficiency, etc.) of its primary and secondary users, that is, the ones sitting on Linux machines and even the ones sitting on client machines accessing Linux servers. In general, you don't have to pay for the update, so you get it more or less free.

IBM, Red Hat, etc. know that this model is great for them, because Linux systems are developed collaboratively by pretty much the whole planet, to varying degrees. The companies get improved software for free, and improve it themselves as well, and fuel the ecosystem that makes it all practical. And at all steps along the way, everybody benefits. Even Microsoft couldn't survive in a true Microsoft monopoly, because, well, have you ever *used* a Windows Server?

Re:Hmmm

[FrozenFOXX]

No doubt about a catch. I don't wanna sound like a anti-MS-troll or anything but their track record isn't all that great; a little paranoia would probably be a good thing "just in case." I'm not an expert but I'd imagine if they were trying to "pull something" then it'd be trying to soften up the community to the idea of making more things work FOR Microsoft products without giving anything back, kinda like what I'm told happened between the Wine group and Transgaming. I could be wrong, who knows but MS?

Re:So what? Sun is not what they used to be.

[walterbyrd]

> What did SUN ever do that was amazing?

Although nothing special by today's statndards: NFS, NIS, and Java, were innovative, and important technologies, at the time.

Unrelated topics actually.

[Jacques Chester]

It's a pity these two topics were smooshed together because they have very little to do with each other.

The Windows thing is obvious. Sun sell Opteron boxes and it helps their marketing if they're an official Windows OEM.

The filesystem stuff is much more interesting. It seems to me that the Lustre purchase is to fill a gap in the ZFS firmament: distribution. ZFS as it currently exists only works on single computers. The natural next step is to allow simple clustering. I imagine they did the old buy-vs-build weighoff before deciding to buy an existing clustering fs technology.

It may also be that Lustre is the subject of patents that might be useful to own were -- just a hypothetical here -- a NAS/SAN company were to start a lawsuit regarding ZFS.