Everything is a Freaking DNS problem - solaris

Dear Oracle,

Kris Buytaert — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 21:00:41 +0000

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post titled Dear IBM , I was too late .. I was on holliday last week when people started sending me text messages , such as .. "Game Over MySQL , Long live Ingress" or "No Eclipse for IBM", etc ...

I had ideas regarding the future of certain Sun products at IBM, now the game has changed .. it'ss how they will live on at Oracle :)

Similar Questions arise .. like indeed the future of MySQL, the future of Solaris etc ...

So regarding the future of MySQL , I don't worry at all, on the contrary ..
Oracle tried buying mysql before they already have Innodb .. they didn't kill it .. the MySQL offering is complementary to the Oracle offering, now they can tackle both markets.
And as already mentionned when writing my IBM letter ..

As for MySQL, Jeremey has some good insights.. the fact that different prominent MySQL folks have left Sun will only push the MySQL development model towards more openness.
And towards an even more Redder RedHat alike model, we already have the first CentOS alike rebuilds of MySQL , so a distribution model based on the same kernel with different feature sets or focus indeed might be the future.

Further there's what Monty Said ... hang on ... nobody mentions the fact that some core PostgreSQL people are on Sun's payroll how's that going to turn out ?

A more interresting discussion is the future of Solaris one.. Oracle has always had an eye for Solaris.. one day it is their most important platform, the other day they tell the world Linux is their prime development platform, it often was a matter of who was quoted.

As for Unbreakable Oracle did a smart thing.. they learned that they should build a full operating system themselves but , so why should they want to do that with Solaris ?

LinuxWorld has an article where oracle states their idea about Linux :
"
What we are working to do in the data center ... is to make Linux the default for the data center OS," Screven said in a speech at the Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit in San Francisco. "We want there to be no question"

They suggest a merger between Solaris and Linux is a potential alternative .. so what do we need to merge .. you'd say ZFS and DTrace ..,but do we really need ZFS ?
There has been a lot of writing already about BTRFS being the next big filesystem, maybe it could make ZFS obsolete, maybe it couldn't ..

I got no clue on what's going to happen with OO.org .. so I`m really going to keep an eye on that one ..

In my opinion the real loser in this deal .. HP .. they don't have a full stack to play with .. They have the hardware, some management and monitoring software soon to be obsolete but no Operating System, no Database, no Appserver, no Apps. So what's their next move going to be ?

Oh and if you really want to talk figures Larry Augustin has a good take on it ... the idea that Oracle could sell off some parts to Hitachi EMC etc, get MySQL and Sun for Free ... then quietly wait for RedHat .. to get Jboss who knows :)

PS. I already blogged about the impact of the acquistion on the Virtualization area over at Virtualization.com

How Sun Will be rescued

Kris Buytaert — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 10:41:43 +0000

I probably ranted a bit too much on the marketing push that Sun has been trying to make into the Open Source community.
The economical situation isn't really perfect so Sun does deserve some credit too.

Yesterday Techcrunch published an exclusive interview with Jonathan Schwartz on the future of Sun and how Sun will be rescued .

[YouTube Movie Embedded]

More details are here

Why did sun really buy MySQL ?

Kris Buytaert — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:29:50 +0000

To save Solaris from a certain death ?

Reading Planet MySQL the last couple of hours I'm trying really hard to convince myselve the Solaris offensive there is not orchestrated.. but I can't.
It might ofcourse be the fresh MySQL users that Sun brought in on their platform that started out blogging but hey .. I`m paranoia right :)

Are they really trying to get at least a fraction of the MySQL community on Solaris. Do they really think they can ? Yes they lost a zillion of Solaris customers that were running a proprietary database to MySQL on Linux users ,, but why would they want to move back to a semi proprietary setup ?

According to Linuxjournal Alan Cox seems to think that ZFS is the only thing that is keeping Solaris alive. I don't think DTrace was a bigg mass tool that would convince the crowds to suddenly move to an other operating system.

So is Sun trying to Lock In a community ? Other people would call it a Jail, altough I wouldn't consider this particular type of jail a Luxury one :)

Why can't Sun just drop the whole idea of building its own OS and contribute more , they are slowly learning in some other fields , but in the Operating System field they still haven't realised they should up the fight ... but then again .. I overheard someone say recently "The best fights to watch, are the ones that can't be won anymore .."

So just remember .. the L in LAMP still stands for Linux,

How many Solaris engineers does it take to configure bonding ?

Kris Buytaert — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:05:33 +0000

Dear Chhandomay fun thing you mention Formal Training.

Let me tell you about the bigger picture. Bort documented how it was implemented for further references. We were indeed force fed a Solaris storage solution we didn't want to.. the main reason why we didn't want it because we are an All Linux shop and we didn't want the hassle of having to master another operating system. So we agreed on integrating the Solaris box if we didn't have to manage it and if it were just another black box managed by a 3rd party supplier , one with inhouse Solaris Experience, and that's where the story starts.

By the time the first Solaris/Storage expert came to deliver the box and had configured it according our "we need bonding" requirement we had noticed sever packet loss on those interfaces. Not unlike something we had seen before with a misconfigured bonding in Linux.

We mailed back and forth with the supplier a couple of times in order to figure out the correct configuration , none of their internal staff (you know Formally Trained Solaris people) could help us .. it seemed as if they had never heard about network bonding. So our supplier decided to escalate it internally and found a guy abroad that was supposed to get the thing up and running.

Almost a week after our complaints about packetloss they showed up. The next guy had more solaris experience.. however he still needed about 3 hours and the documentation next to him to get the thing working.

So Bort blogged about it .. as seemingly none of those formally educated Solaris People in the Belux know about it... and the non formally trained Linux people just happen to think it's a no brainer.

So how many Solaris Engineers does it take to configure bonding ? Well.. 3-4 .. not counting the Accountmanagers that need to be standing next to the machine watching over the shoulders of the techpeople.