Bye bye Sun

[n0cmonkey]

(links taken from email on SAGE mailing list)
http://www.oracle.com/sun/index.html
http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/media/presskits/2009-0420/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2...04/20/oracle_buys_sun/
http://developers.slashdot.org...pl?sid=09/04/20/128246

I wonder how this will affect MySQL. Hopefully with a mass migration to Postgresql.

I guess the hardware side of Sun (SPARC in particular) might be on shaky ground.

Is there any benefit to this?

 

[VinDSL]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I wonder how this will affect MySQL. Hopefully with a mass migration to Postgresql.

"Hopefully" they'll leave MySQL alone and just change the moniker to 'Oraclesql'...

Kind of ironic... Sun being taken over on Hitler's Birthday, no?

 

[Crusty]

Saw the headlines this morning before I got to work, I've been a user of mysql for some time now and my companies infrastructure is built off of it. The only mysql specific features we use are replication and InnoDB. Replacing the storage engine shouldn't be a problem as I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives that offer the same features(foreign keys and transactions) but I don't know about replication. Can postgresql be setup in a master-master setup? What about with multiple slaves off of each master?

One of the thinks that always irked me about mysql was the lack of any sort of decent user/permission management feature, last I checked it was a PITA to use any sort of LDAP(or equivalent) with mysql... does postgresql offer anything better?

As far as the benifit to Oracle, hasn't sun been offering their servers with Oracle on it for years now anyways? I'm guessing this would help streamline their products.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Crusty
Saw the headlines this morning before I got to work, I've been a user of mysql for some time now and my companies infrastructure is built off of it. The only mysql specific features we use are replication and InnoDB. Replacing the storage engine shouldn't be a problem as I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives that offer the same features(foreign keys and transactions) but I don't know about replication. Can postgresql be setup in a master-master setup? What about with multiple slaves off of each master?

What replication solutions are available?

Though "replication" is a single term, there are several technologies for doing replication, with advantages and disadvantages for each. Our documentation contains a good introduction to this topic at http://www.postgresql.org/docs...high-availability.html

Master/slave replication allows a single master to receive read/write queries, while slaves can only accept read/SELECT queries. The most popular freely available master-slave PostgreSQL replication solution is Slony-I.

Multi-master replication allows read/write queries to be sent to multiple replicated computers. This capability also has a severe impact on performance due to the need to synchronize changes between servers. PGCluster is the most popular such solution freely available for PostgreSQL.

There are also commercial and hardware-based replication solutions available supporting a variety of replication models.

One of the thinks that always irked me about mysql was the lack of any sort of decent user/permission management feature, last I checked it was a PITA to use any sort of LDAP(or equivalent) with mysql... does postgresql offer anything better?

LDAP authentication

To pull off ldap authentication, you need to replace 'md5' with

:ldap "ldap://server/dc=domain,dc=local;DOMAIN\"

Where server and domain are both pretty self explanatory. This is all one user reporting on this feature had to do to accomplish ldap authentication. They use this method for all network addresses in the 192.168.x.x range, and md5 for localhost, so that it can use a username that doesn't exist in ldap for backups. This way only the server itself can initiate backups on the superuser account.

Other than that, it beats me. I'm a very basic user.

As far as the benifit to Oracle, hasn't sun been offering their servers with Oracle on it for years now anyways? I'm guessing this would help streamline their products.

It's another piece of the puzzle oracle will have to deal with. They aren't really a hardware company, but now they have to manage hardware distribution, design, creation, etc. And despite the fact they recompile redhat, they aren't really an operating system company.

It'll be interesting to see how java turns out too.

EDIT:for readability?
EDIT2: If you know anything about databases, this might be helpful. I'm more confused now.

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

Originally posted by: Crusty
Saw the headlines this morning before I got to work, I've been a user of mysql for some time now and my companies infrastructure is built off of it. The only mysql specific features we use are replication and InnoDB. Replacing the storage engine shouldn't be a problem as I'm sure there are plenty of alternatives that offer the same features(foreign keys and transactions) but I don't know about replication. Can postgresql be setup in a master-master setup? What about with multiple slaves off of each master?

What replication solutions are available?

Though "replication" is a single term, there are several technologies for doing replication, with advantages and disadvantages for each. Our documentation contains a good introduction to this topic at http://www.postgresql.org/docs...high-availability.html

Master/slave replication allows a single master to receive read/write queries, while slaves can only accept read/SELECT queries. The most popular freely available master-slave PostgreSQL replication solution is Slony-I.

Multi-master replication allows read/write queries to be sent to multiple replicated computers. This capability also has a severe impact on performance due to the need to synchronize changes between servers. PGCluster is the most popular such solution freely available for PostgreSQL.

There are also commercial and hardware-based replication solutions available supporting a variety of replication models.

One of the thinks that always irked me about mysql was the lack of any sort of decent user/permission management feature, last I checked it was a PITA to use any sort of LDAP(or equivalent) with mysql... does postgresql offer anything better?

LDAP authentication

To pull off ldap authentication, you need to replace 'md5' with

:ldap "ldap://server/dc=domain,dc=local;DOMAIN\"

Where server and domain are both pretty self explanatory. This is all one user reporting on this feature had to do to accomplish ldap authentication. They use this method for all network addresses in the 192.168.x.x range, and md5 for localhost, so that it can use a username that doesn't exist in ldap for backups. This way only the server itself can initiate backups on the superuser account.

Other than that, it beats me. I'm a very basic user.

Sounds promising, I'll add their docs to my reading list. I would completely forgo mysql if I could get a working LDAP solution in postgresql. Managing a couple of servers isn't a big deal... but when you have a dozen or so to keep track of it's far easier with something like LDAP.

As far as the benifit to Oracle, hasn't sun been offering their servers with Oracle on it for years now anyways? I'm guessing this would help streamline their products.

It's another piece of the puzzle oracle will have to deal with. They aren't really a hardware company, but now they have to manage hardware distribution, design, creation, etc. And despite the fact they recompile redhat, they aren't really an operating system company.

It'll be interesting to see how java turns out too.

EDIT:for readability?

While I agree that Oracle isn't in the hardware business... don't you think buying Sun puts them into the hardware business? Sure now they have to manage that part too... but it's not like Oracle is just buying the name from Sun, they get their assets too .

Honestly, I don't know much about Oracle or Sun to really have any sort of educated opinion though, mostly just guessing here

 

[n0cmonkey]

While I agree that Oracle isn't in the hardware business... don't you think buying Sun puts them into the hardware business? Sure now they have to manage that part too... but it's not like Oracle is just buying the name from Sun, they get their assets too .

If Sun's hardware business was doing that well it would have taken more money to buy them.

Honestly, I don't know much about Oracle or Sun to really have any sort of educated opinion though, mostly just guessing here

Isn't uneducated speculation the fun part of discussions like this?

 

[Crusty]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey

While I agree that Oracle isn't in the hardware business... don't you think buying Sun puts them into the hardware business? Sure now they have to manage that part too... but it's not like Oracle is just buying the name from Sun, they get their assets too .

If Sun's hardware business was doing that well it would have taken more money to buy them.

Perhaps the combination of having one company deliver the whole solution from hardware and storage to software will be more attractive! Although I don't see why anyone likes Solaris, I still have nightmares of KDE locking up on logout

Honestly, I don't know much about Oracle or Sun to really have any sort of educated opinion though, mostly just guessing here

Isn't uneducated speculation the fun part of discussions like this?

:thumbsup:

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Crusty
Perhaps the combination of having one company deliver the whole solution from hardware and storage to software will be more attractive! Although I don't see why anyone likes Solaris, I still have nightmares of KDE locking up on logout

Solaris isn't bad, in its environment. I have fond memories of a Sunfire 4800 with more CPUs than I have computers, and more memory than I had storage at the time. It was an oracle/application server. Not the fastest machine out there, but definitely nice.

Now with ZFS and Zones Solaris 10/Open Solaris seems like a reasonable system.
There was a time when Solaris was the most scalable system out there. Linux and FreeBSD are doing pretty well right now, but there is a lot of Solaris knowledge and skills out there so it won't be going away for a while.

Plus a lot of old Solaris installations are still in use (think .gov). If they haven't moved on yet, this buy-out won't change things. It'll be around forever.

 

[Schadenfroh]

I wonder if they will prevent JDBC for anything other than Oracle in Java.
I also wonder about what will happen to mySQL.

IBM would have been my first choice if they were to be bought.

 

[n0cmonkey]

IBM would have been an interesting fit. They're both solutions companies, and Sun's line could have been migrated into IBM's offerings.

 

[degibson]

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I guess the hardware side of Sun (SPARC in particular) might be on shaky ground.

I wonder if Oracle might sell Sun's hardware side? Its a big waste to just shut it down.

 

[Nothinman]

I wonder if they will prevent JDBC for anything other than Oracle in Java.
I also wonder about what will happen to mySQL.

Both are open source so worst case is that Oracle/Sun stops distributing and supporting them. But they'll still exist.

I wonder if Oracle might sell Sun's hardware side? Its a big waste to just shut it down.

They wouldn't be able to shut it down, I'm sure Sun has hardware support contracts that extend into the next 10-20 years.

 

[MrChad]

Originally posted by: degibson

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I guess the hardware side of Sun (SPARC in particular) might be on shaky ground.

I wonder if Oracle might sell Sun's hardware side? Its a big waste to just shut it down.

Isn't that where most of Sun's revenue comes from? Seems silly to sell it or shut it down.

There were a few comments from the Slashdot post stating that Oracle runs pretty well on Sun hardware; Oracle may be well-positioned to sell super fast database appliances that run on top of Sun hardware.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

I wonder if they will prevent JDBC for anything other than Oracle in Java.
I also wonder about what will happen to mySQL.

Both are open source so worst case is that Oracle/Sun stops distributing and supporting them. But they'll still exist.

I wonder if Oracle might sell Sun's hardware side? Its a big waste to just shut it down.

They wouldn't be able to shut it down, I'm sure Sun has hardware support contracts that extend into the next 10-20 years.

But they can cut development of new systems.

 

[n0cmonkey]

More links:
http://cuddletech.com/blog/pivot/entry.php?id=1033 <- interesting blog post from a Sun fan. Seems to think SPARC might not be dying.

Haven't read these yet, but I will:
http://www.cio.com/article/490...nse_of_Sun_s_Hardware_
http://www.cio.com/article/490...ner_in_Sun_Oracle_Deal
http://www.cio.com/article/490...uld_Merge_Under_Oracle

EDIT: Really messed those links up...

 

[Genx87]

This was a few years in the making.

 

[degibson]

Originally posted by: MrChad

Originally posted by: degibson

Originally posted by: n0cmonkey
I guess the hardware side of Sun (SPARC in particular) might be on shaky ground.

I wonder if Oracle might sell Sun's hardware side? Its a big waste to just shut it down.

Isn't that where most of Sun's revenue comes from? Seems silly to sell it or shut it down.

There were a few comments from the Slashdot post stating that Oracle runs pretty well on Sun hardware; Oracle may be well-positioned to sell super fast database appliances that run on top of Sun hardware.

Maybe. It'd be a pretty aggressive move. Not a lot of software likes SPARC over x86.

 

[Gooberlx2]

So....if Oracle was working on BtrFS (somewhat recently in to linux kernel as experimental) and Sun's Solaris has ZFS. Will the projects merge and allow for an accelerated and mature implementation of zfs/butrfs in Linux?

Here's hoping.

 

[Nothinman]

So....if Oracle was working on BtrFS (somewhat recently in to linux kernel as experimental) and Sun's Solaris has ZFS. Will the projects merge and allow for an accelerated and mature implementation of zfs/butrfs in Linux?

Here's hoping.

Don't hold your breath. That would require that they relicense all of ZFS under a GPL-compatible license which even if it would be possible (no idea if all of the OpenSolaris contributors that have touched ZFS would agree to it) it'll take a long time.

 

[n0cmonkey]

Originally posted by: Nothinman

So....if Oracle was working on BtrFS (somewhat recently in to linux kernel as experimental) and Sun's Solaris has ZFS. Will the projects merge and allow for an accelerated and mature implementation of zfs/butrfs in Linux?

Here's hoping.

Don't hold your breath. That would require that they relicense all of ZFS under a GPL-compatible license which even if it would be possible (no idea if all of the OpenSolaris contributors that have touched ZFS would agree to it) it'll take a long time.

If those contributors even own the code they wrote.

There was some speculation that Oracle could be taking the best parts of Solaris and porting them to Linux (I'm assuming under an acceptable license).

 

[Nothinman]

If those contributors even own the code they wrote.

Yea, I don't know if Sun made them sign something that grants Sun full ownership of their code or not.