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Sun Microsystems Microsoft Operating Systems Software

Sun Acquires CFS/Lustre, Becomes Windows OEM 138

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the new-toys-to-play-with dept.
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."
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Sun Acquires CFS/Lustre, Becomes Windows OEM More

Sun Acquires CFS/Lustre, Becomes Windows OEM

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  • Problem (Score:2, Insightful)

    by BloodyIron ( 939359 )
    Is this a problem?

    I dont see one...
    • I don't think it's a problem, just news. Novell already has a deal with Microsoft related to Xen, to provide a compatibility layer allowing Xen guests to run on Microsoft's hypervisor, and vice versa. As to the OEM thing, I thought they were already one; they've been boasting for about a year that Sun workstations and servers are the only one you can by that are certified to run Solaris, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, or Windows.

      • Well, FWIW I won't buy Novell any more (Score:4, Interesting)

        by HiThere ( 15173 ) <charleshixsn.earthlink@net> on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @05:49PM (#20580491)
        That should be qualified. If it's under GPL3 I might consider it safe to buy. Otherwise I wouldn't and don't. I've striped SUSE off my systems, because I don't trust what they might upgrade me with.

        Before you accept any reassurances from Novell, actually READ the published parts of their agreement with MS. Its reassurances are trash, garbage, worthless. And *THAT'S* the part they weren't too ashamed to reveal.

    • As just a flat statement, it's not a problem. It is a reason to be wary.

      OTOH, if Sun releases something under the GPL, it's under the GPL, and therefore trustworthy. Especially if it's under the GPL3.

      Still....if it isn't under the GPL3 I'm going to scrutinize the terms of the agreement with extra care, and refuse to accept questionable clauses. This is something that should be done anyway, but it's more important when a company has an agreement with MS whose terms I don't know.

  • Step one (Score:1, Insightful)

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

  • Hey, it worked for SGI... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @04:17PM (#20579345)
    oh wait....

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      On the other hand - it did work for the SGI exec responsible for this. Rick Belluzzo [wikipedia.org] not only killed Irix and MIPS at SGI, he then went on to kill HPUX and Pa_RISC at HP -- before getting the President/COO job at Microsoft. He didn't last long there, though - so it seems that job was more a reward for his services at SGI and HP, rather than for anything he brought to Microsoft.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by vought ( 160908 )
        Rick B is in charge of this?

        Good lord, my faith in the Valley's ability to weed out the weak is really shaken. This guy is a moron.

        On the other hand, I can see this being a good fit for Sun on a certain level. Where I work, the fact that Macs now run Windows "if needed" has bought them a lot of mindshare. If the same thing happens in datacenters, maybe Sun can sell more hardware.

        On the other hand, this may just be a gift to Dell and other Windows Server vendors in the future. I understand the value of runni

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Fweeky ( 41046 )
          "can't see why someone with the need for Sun's heavy iron to plop Windows on there just to run Exchange, for example"

          Um, Sun do make some pretty cheapo systems too. It might not make a huge amount of sense to put Windows on a 32 core X4600M2 but I expect they sell 40x as many dual and single socket systems it'll feel perfectly at home on.

          • Re: (Score:1)

            by grigori ( 676336 )
            Or they might run 20 or 30 or 50 of those Windows copies on that 4RU 4600. Or bunches of copies on their blades. Or fewer on !RU boxes. Depends on what you need. IMO a reasonable bunch of choices.
    • OK, not exactly this, but they attempted to straddle the fence. It failed last time.

      It was the Roadrunner 386i, which came out in 1988. It was a 386 system running SunOS (or was it Solaris by then? I forget) with a daughter board and co-processor to run DOS (not Windows, IIRC). I know, because I developed applications on it! The best part was that the beta release of the OS (bundled with their wonderful FORTRAN compiler!!!!) came on a stack of floppies several inches thick. Took a while to IPL or upgr

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by linumax ( 910946 )
      It works for IBM and HP.

  • Ars Technica coverage (Score:5, Funny)

    by Nimey ( 114278 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @04:19PM (#20579365) Homepage Journal
    http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20070912-sun-to-sell-windows-server-boxes.html [arstechnica.com]

    Notice the so-funny-yet-true chart towards the bottom.
    • The FASTEST most powerful machines I can fit in my datacentres.

      Simple.

       

    • Attention: Not 1998. (Score:5, Informative)

      by fm6 ( 162816 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @07:22PM (#20581421) Homepage Journal
      The author of that article knows jack. We (I'm the documentation lead for a couple of Sun x64 boxes) have been selling and supporting Windows servers for some time. We have a fair number of people working on Windows-related software, QA, support, and documentation (including me). We've even contributed some source code to a couple of open-source products in order to make them work better on Windows.

      What we haven't been doing is selling servers with Windows pre-installed, or providing install discs with our drivers already on them. We couldn't do these things without an OEM agreement. Now we can. That will mean less work for me and various other Sun people, and (much more important) fewer headaches for our customers.

      Next time I see Jonathan Schwartz (no, we don't know each other, but we eat in the same cafeteria) I'll have to resist the urge to prostrate myself. I just hope he's working on similar deals with our other OS partners.

      Don't get me wrong, I love Solaris. It's a beautiful OS. We'll always support it. (In fact, the x86/x64 version is a lot better supported than it was 8 years ago.) But our job is to meet our customers needs, not force our favorite technology down their throat.

      Get it through your heads, folks: the Sun-Microsoft feud is over. And good riddance. It was bad for both companies.

      • Don't get me wrong, I love Solaris. It's a beautiful OS. We'll always support it.... But our job is to meet our customers needs, not force our favorite technology down their throat.
        This customer requests Solaris hosts that can authenticate natively to an Active Directory domain. Yesterday would be a good delivery date.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by fm6 ( 162816 )
          I work on the hardware side, so I'm in no position to address that issue. I am curious as to what you mean by "native" authentication.

          In any case, I suspect "yesterday" is not feasible. There's lots of stuff Sun should have done, but just at the moment we're concentrating on what we will do.
          • Centrify is a great product; but, I don't need a "fleet carrier group" solution --most people don't. Installing the SUMWsmb package and configure-fiddling is a "good enough" solution for most; but can be perilous. By native authentication, I mean the SUNWsmb/kerberos/foo preconfigured in a single installation package. This installation will include binaries such as

            dsadd computer foo so I can add the host(s) to the domain.

            dsquery foo foo foo so I can lookup domain items

            ...and all the other ds commands

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by fm6 ( 162816 )
              You make some good points. I think there are two main reasons for the issues you describe. First, there's the obvious problem that we're just beginning to outgrow: the attitude that our own technology is so superior, we don't really need to interoperate. (Of course, Microsoft has the same problem, but it's easier for them to get away with it.) Hence Sun's past half-assed support for everything that wasn't pure Solaris-on-SPARC. Fortunately, management now realizes how dumb that it.

              Second, there's the simple

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Macka ( 9388 )

          This customer requests Solaris hosts that can authenticate natively to an Active Directory domain. Yesterday would be a good delivery date
          In that case, what you need is Centrify [centrify.com]. I saw a presentation and demo of it 6 months back and it was really neat.

        • http://docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/817-0547/eyaks?l=en&a=view&q=samba [sun.com]

          You need to make sure all the SUNWsmb* packages are installed, then enable/configure libnss_winbind, pam_winbind and kerberos to talk to your AD.

          It's a little tricky to set up but pretty straightforward if you know all your AD details.

          What would be nice is some management tools that automate it but we can dream, right?
    • This chart depicts how Sun used to be. But since Schwartz became Sun's CEO in April 2006, the company has been actually very focused on its goals (opensourcing its OS, CPUs, languages, increasing R&D, etc). Of particular interest is how Schwarts made the point in one of its recent blog entries [sun.com], that his company is the perfect example of how you can make money from opensource products (since he became CEO, Sun has become profitable):

      We did this while driving significant product transitions, going after n

  • Hmmm (Score:4, Interesting)

    by scubamage ( 727538 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @04:20PM (#20579371)
    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.

    • Fighting off Linux? (Score:2, Interesting)

      by HerculesMO ( 693085 )
      Linux makes a lot of inroads against MS in the enterprise market.. maybe they are just trying to offer the best of both worlds, while maintaining the competitive nature of Sun and their own history, against the 'brand' of Linux that actually makes no money whatsoever. IBM makes money, Novell makes money.. Linux as a brand doesn't really make money at all, does it?

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by setagllib ( 753300 )
        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 mo
        • you hit the point that Linux does not make money for developers but wealth for users. The REAL Microsoft monopoly is on mindshare that they (or somebody) need to be paid (however small) to make computers work. While lots of companies are "embracing" Linux most are using it as a "fad" to sink you into their products more.. never giving you the things you really need (like drivers) trying to bring "free" to their side. Microsoft is trying to get "free" under control so people don't think they can use compu
      • Linux makes a lot of inroads against MS in the enterprise market..

        I know this is the conventional wisdom around those parts, but it doesn't seem to be the case: here [informationweek.com] is an article that indicates the share of both Windows and Linux servers growing in businesses, while Unix usage dropped dramatically. And in related news, another recent article here [enterprise...ervers.com] shows IIS 6 making inroads against Apache. So Sun's decision does make economic sense.

    • I am sure there is a hidden agenda. M$ is up to something, with Novell partnership as well. Maybe Microsoft Linux is coming and Sun wants in for the server hardware sales? Maybe punishment for Dell offering Linux as HP is also getting in the act. Or just perhaps a realization that a real server runs xNIX.

      What if Microsoft bought Sun and Novell?

      This of course this is just conjecture. But one thing is for sure, M$ is up to something.

      Or maybe as the old saying goes, keep your enemies closer...

    • Microsoft has pulled something with the novell deal, scaring biz into getting "safe" open source software.

      This agreement with Sun seems relevant for image more than substance. If MS or Sun virtualization didn't work well with most popular OSs, people would choose another one which is more flexible. They have no dominant position to exploit in the virtualization market.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by nurb432 ( 527695 )
      There is a catch, and i guarantee its in Microsoft's favor.

      We will find out soon enough, im afraid.

    • The Catch. (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @04:56PM (#20579817)
      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.
      • It seems that the facts disprove your theory: http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/summary.asp?ID=D000000115 [opensecrets.org] In the past 4 years Microsoft has been giving more to Democrats than Republicans. In fact they gave almost twice as much in 2004 to Democrats as they did to Republicans. In 1992 they gave 4X as much to the Dems. In 1996 they gave 2X as much to the Dems.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by hey! ( 33014 )
          Not to disparage your admirable cynicism, your post doesn't actually contradict the idea that MS is ... concerned about Democrats holding two branches of government.
          • You are correct. In fact, it seems to me that Microsoft's contributions correlate pretty well with the party in power or about to be in power. In 2004 the handwriting was on the wall that the Democrats were going to take over the House and possibly the Senate, so they cranked up their donations to Democrats. In 1992 and 1996 when Clinton was on the ascendency they also gave more to Democrats. So on balance it looks like they do the smart thing and try to butter up whoever is in charge.
      • > Democrat party

        Democratic Party.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by FrozenFOXX ( 1048276 )
      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?

  • Talk about timing (Score:5, Funny)

    by tb3 ( 313150 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @04:26PM (#20579457) Homepage
    So Sun got themselves a Cluster File System and a Cluster Fuck System on the same day?

  • Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)

    by El Lobo ( 994537 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @04:27PM (#20579461)
    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.

    • Sadly... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by jd ( 1658 )
      That is completely bogus much of the time. Take-overs are rarely in the interest of the company being taken over, even when the board approves it. Money talks louder than pride of craftsmanship. It has done for centuries. It's not going to change.

      Now, let's consider what Sun gets out of Lustre. This is clearly competition against Polyserve's take-over by HP, as there simply aren't any other rivals to Luster that Sub could have been threatened by. By all accounts, however, Polyserve's products were superio

      • GFS is so dead and beyond the grave that only zombies use it.

        Is that a typo for CFS, or are you really saying that about GFS, global file system?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by jd ( 1658 )
          I'm saying that about GFS, the global file system which has a horrible track record (corrupting disks across entire networks was the most dramatic I've heard). It may be in the kernel, but it gets precious little maintenance and those I have discussed it with (primarily users) have preferred almost anything else - even (gasp!) NFS - to using GFS. Of the major users I've encountered with heavy-duty networked filesystem arrangements, they use Lustre or Polyserve. That is the the entire list of what they are w

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by JerkBoB ( 7130 )
            Of the major users I've encountered with heavy-duty networked filesystem arrangements, they use Lustre or Polyserve. That is the the entire list of what they are willing to stomach. The alternatives aren't even close. Both have been bought out by companies with histories of ditching those product lines that were any good, making it frighteningly likely that neither alternative will survive for much longer.

            The nice thing about Lustre, though, is that it's Open Source. True, Sun may decide to start offering

    • but almost anybody is failing to see that it is in reality THE OTHER PARTS who are trying to get some oxygen by teaming with the big guy

      I doubt they're failing to see it. I think they're calling it what it is - abuse of monopoly. If the only way you can stay afloat and keep breathing is to team up with someone that will inevitably use the 'partnership' to crush you, something is unfair.

      Nobody's saying these smaller companies had an option, they're just pointing out the point at which they took the "certain death" option.

  • Running SunOS Under Windows VM? Holy Crap!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by ackthpt ( 218170 ) *

      Running SunOS Under Windows VM? Holy Crap!

      No doubt, this looks arse-backward to me too. Where once the world was run on operating systems neatly tailored to their hardware, we have pretty well gone the direction of a Jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none OS bodged into a nearly infinite combination of hardware, which means its rarely optimised for the hardware, you usually guess at a lot of things before you give up and say, 'feck it, it's good enough' and as a result of the fine fit it often goes tits up w

  • On this path they'll be another Gateway or Dell.

    • Many of the best technical people at Sun have already left. The same happened to SCO too. Is Sun another SCO in the making (a once-good company that just runs out of steam and decomposes) or can they turn it around?

      Sun has no brand presence amongst the Windows faithful so it is very difficult to see them making an effective box business.

    • Who both have windows server boxes, as well as linux and high-end unix and mainframe products. These guys are trying to be an end-to-end provider of servers, software, storage, and middleware. Sun was cutting themselves out of a big chunk of business. Champion whatever cause you like, but there aren't very many data centers without windows servers in them. From the point of view of the sun salesman, you can either have a machine room full of suns and HPs, or you can have a machine room full of suns and suns

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by ToasterMonkey ( 467067 )
        Sun seems to want to use Linux and now Windows to get their foot in the door and offer other services/hardware.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by weicco ( 645927 )

          News at eleven: non-non-profitable company wants to make money. Kent Brockman reporting.

  • Whether this make business sense, only time will tell. As a money-losing Sun investor, I sure hope so. As a two-decade Sun purchaser, it's hard to see this as the sort of innovation for which Sun was once known.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by QuantumRiff ( 120817 )
      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. No
      • For this kind of thing, you would probably run Xen, rather than use a Solaris container. Containers don't provide a different kernel; you can use them to run virtual Linux environments because Solaris has Linux ABI support, but that's it. You would, instead, be more likely to use Xen. Fortunately, Solaris runs as a Xen Domain 0 guest (as does Linux and NetBSD 4).

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjr.cc ( 760528 )
      Agree'd.

      The sun x86 boxes are really quite nice unto themselves, but its not the "Sun" i grew up with and that is a bit disappointing. Ironic when you look back and think they almost canned x86 solaris at v9/8.

      The E class servers they used to make where briliant, i still know places using e450's, e[3456]500 and even e[3456]000. Such a pity they couldnt have continued the way they were going. Thats not too say they've killing their e-line and unix, far from it but the things you used to expect from sun in th
  • Apple doesn't make its own virtualization software, but even for the purposes of BootCamp, would this be an option for them? Letting me buy my next tower with both OS' preinstalled and working well together would save me enough hassle that I'd pay for it.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by polyex ( 736819 )
      C'mon what are you talking about? You can buy a Mac from Macmall.com a major Mac reseller if you so desire with windows tax firmly in place. But you already knew that didnt you Mr. Troll?

  • It makes sense for Sun (Score:5, Informative)

    by brennz ( 715237 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @04:37PM (#20579603)
    They have some nice boxes [sun.com]. I'm sure some admins would like to run Windows on them.

    I'd like an X4600 so I could throw VMware ESX on it
    • Actually, my knee jerk response was something along the lines of WTF?!

      Then I realized they were just trying to make it possible for customers to run instances of Windows Server in a virtual machine, so they can run that one or two must have Windows apps. This gives Sun control of the hardware, the software, and makes them the service/support provider, all in one package. It also allows Sun the opportunity to migrate Microsoft customers, once they already have Sun hardware and Solaris in-house.

  • And the verdict is... (Score:5, Funny)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @04:55PM (#20579813) Journal
    Let's see here. It's a Wednesday, and the date is an even number in a month with 30 days. On the other hand, the moon is just past new, Britney Spears' performance at the VMAs bombed, and oil broke $80/barrel today.

    Clearly Sun is EVIL on /. today.

    • Sorry, it's Sun that's Schizophrenic (Score:5, Interesting)

      by walterbyrd ( 182728 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @05:18PM (#20580127)
      Yes techies flip-flop on their opinion of Sun. But, that is because Sun flip-flops on Sun's strategies, and opinions, like mad.

      Penguine suit McNeally *loves* linux. Then sun joins with scox to kill Linux. Then sun tells us that only sun linux is legal. Then sun tells that linux is great - but only as a desktop, not a server. Finally sun tells us that linux is java.

      Sun's official opinions on msft, and on x86 technology, have been equally schitzo. One day sun curses msft as an evil company, with crap technology, the next day, sun is msft's biggest bestest buddy in the whole wide world. One day sun sneers at all things x86, the next day sun is releasing x86 solaris - then sun is cranking out x86 windows boxes.

      So when sun stops flip-flopping on everything, maybe people will stop flip-flopping on their opinions about sun.

      • One day sun sneers at all things x86, the next day sun is releasing x86 solaris

        Hrm? Sun has had quite a number of x86 products for quite a long time. Solaris x86 was originally released in 1993 with Solaris 2.1, and it's still available 14 years later. Granted, there have been a few release of Solaris that haven't had x86 versions available, but that has mainly been because, when forced to prioritize, Sun made it clear its primary priority was SPARC.

        Sun's willingness to use x86 processors, incidenta

  • I guess when faced with a runaway monopoly there is not much left that you can do other than sell your competitors software to make a buck.

  • uh huh (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SolusSD ( 680489 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @05:00PM (#20579883) Homepage
    A solid virtualization experience for both OSs. I'm sure that's what MS is after.
  • In the 1990s, Sun was awsome. Sun created amazing technologies, and set the standards. Now Sun just provides commodity products and services. If Sun wants to be another winbox maker, so what. Frankly, it suits Sun.

    These days, Sun is more interested in cutting costs, than developing cutting-edge technology.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kwerle ( 39371 )
      Really, not trolling.

      What did SUN ever do that was amazing? They made some good, big hardware. What else?

      I happen to like a lot about Java, and made a living coding in it for a bunch of years, but I won't ever code in it again if I can avoid it. For all that, I think Java was a lucky fluke, and they have mostly let it rot since 1.1.

      And I hear that ZFS is real cool, though I have yet to experience it - and I've used a netapp fileserver and thought it was wonderful. OK, that's 2 things I'm giving them som

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by walterbyrd ( 182728 )
        > 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.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by kwerle ( 39371 )
          Although nothing special by today's statndards: NFS, NIS, and Java, were innovative, and important technologies, at the time.

          I agree with NFS and NIS, and I'd certainly forgotten those. Though I think they had their birth in the 80's, and some parent specified 90's.

          Thanks.
      • You are a coder. Typical.

        Today's data centres could not exist without the ideas that Sun promoted vigorously in the 90s (the network is the computer).

        Binary compatibility across all their SPARC based offerings (the same binaries can run in a personal workstation or laptop or in a supercomputer).

        Centralized naming services (NIS, NIS+), descentralized file services (NFS) included implementations sharing device drivers across networks (RFS, now sadly deprecated).

        Modular, scalable, servers (predating Google's
        • You are a coder. Typical.

          Yup.

          Today's data centres could not exist without the ideas that Sun promoted vigorously in the 90s (the network is the computer).

          Having spent time in the UC system in the late 80's with various vaxxen, BSD on sundry hardware, IBM equipment, etc, I'd have to disagree. There were some SUN workstations around, but that's what they were used for: workstations. I always thought "the network is the computer" to be short-sighted and misguided. The computer is the telephone (iPhone is a
    • WTF are you smoking?

      Today's SUN products clearly outshine, outperform, and outrun the products of the 90s.

      Just to name a few...

      Software:
      Solaris 10
      ZFS
      Containers
      DTrace

      Hardware:
      X4500 - Cheapest 12/24/36 TB system with most reliable filesystem available.
      T1000/T2000 - Best web services systems currently available - from any vendor.

  • One thing that has struck me is that Joanthan Schwartz appears to be a friendly guy. Why would a company that big need friends?! Poor economy? Lack of direction and ideas? Or, even larger enemies? Or the threat from Linux? Hmmm... Wonder if a dinner with Linus Torvalds would have made a difference here.

  • I tried to grabe the lastest source and their cvs server listed on their wiki page is down. The article didn't mention the GPL at all. Is Sun keeping lustre under GPL?

  • Ah Yes... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Greyfox ( 87712 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @05:48PM (#20580489) Homepage Journal
    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.

    • Um, Sun was working and is working with Apple today. A friend of mine who works at Sun is looking for a new laptop. There are 3 offered. 1 Toshiba, and 2 Apple Macs. My friends and I were trying to convince him to go for the Mac. Problem is he has a lot of Solaris Demo's to give and the Mac is not quite as Solaris friendly.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by samkass ( 174571 )
      They didn't take that long to develop, either.

      Only, what... 20 years or so of development... NeXTstep came out in the late 80's.

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

      You'll almost certainly have Java still available to you whether or not Sun goes under, now that it's open source.

    • In the early 90s, before NT had a foothold, UNIX could have taken over the server market.

      The problem was: which UNIX? The major vendors gave lip service to integrating standards, but actually the majors were more interested in protecting their own turf. So you couldn't write a program for one UNIX, and expect it to run on another. Supporting the product would have been another huge headache. Also, UNIX was very expensive.

      Microsoft stepped in and solved the problem.

      JMHO.
      • So Microsoft solved server OS fragmentation by introducing yet another incompatible OS to the market? Somehow I think NT's successes came from various other reasons.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Alioth ( 221270 )
      If only the Unix vendors really HAD rested on their laurels - they didn't - the Unix family squabbled amongst itself and in doing so failed to notice Windows taking a huge chunk of their market share in servers, and Linux taking the other huge chunk of their server market share - until it was far too late and they were either going bust, taken over, or forced to exit the market.

      The whole thing about SCOX is almost just the internicine squabbling continuing in what's left of the Unix-alike community, which h

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rhys ( 96510 )
      Linux Vendors (RedHat, SUSE, etc) are the UNIX of the future, not Apple. I'm speaking as someone who's used OS X in a large, heavy-utilization, production environment. Actually, to be specific, the plan was to use OS X, but that didn't work so we used Linux (on spare itanium hardware -- yuck). Then we got convinced to try OS X again and after about a year of troubles we kicked back to Linux (on Sun x86 hardware!) and it has been smooth sailing since.

      Also speaking from a datacenter perspective, Sun has unusu
    • By the way, you can come outside now. There never was an Apocalypse......it is safe. And they have medication for your hairy hand.....

    • A fraction of the time the big UNIX vendors wasted sitting around arguing about "standards" and deriding PCs as "toys."

      Yeah, because vendor lock-in is way more fun! And don't think it won't happen the moment Apple gains control. They've already avoid all things open as much as possible: their office tools don't support ODF, Mail.app uses a proprietary format for storing email, the list goes on.

      Moreover, what is this UNIX you speak of. The UNIX I know, mainly consists of 3 parts:

      • A brand name
      • A collection

  • In other news (Score:3, Funny)

    by Nazlfrag ( 1035012 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @08:18PM (#20581907) Journal
    Botnet creators announced that they would work together with Sun to utilise their new Microsoft capabilities to the fullest extent.

  • Unrelated topics actually. (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Jacques Chester ( 151652 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @09:14PM (#20582351)
    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.
    • It's there in black-and-white in the press release: "As previously announced in July 2007, Sun also plans to deliver Lustre servers on top of Sun's industry-leading open source Solaris ZFS solution".

  • Well, this'll be a total clusterfsck. (Score:3, Funny)

    by seebs ( 15766 ) on Wednesday September 12, 2007 @09:22PM (#20582429) Homepage
    Oh, come on. It was inevitable.
  • anyone know if it's possible to run lustre on linux ppc? OSX just plain sucks as does XSan and we need to do something with these expensive xserves other than sit there and look like works of art. Their NFS performance is terrible compared to much slower linux systems on much slower processors and they crash because of bugs in the O/S (confirmed by apple support).
  • Just have concern with "OEM". I thought its about all OEM car parts [alloemcarparts.com] but it's really not. Anyway, thank you for this. Goodluck to everyone.
  • Since everybody beat up on Novell for doing an interoperability deal with Microsoft, I'm waiting for the Solaris fans to beat up Sun for becoming a Windows OEM just because there's money in it.

    Where's Stallman?

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