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Modernize Your Data Center by Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 Data Modernization—Why and How . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versus SPARC/ Oracle Solaris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4Summary and Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7

The Case for Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server

White PaperData Center Modernization

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Data Center Modernization White PaperThe Case for Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Data Modernization—Why and HowTo stay competitive often requires modernizing your data centers. A “modern” data center infrastructure allows you to take advantage of new, ongoing innovations and to:

Reducedatacentercostsbydecreasingsoftwarelicensing,maintenanceandhardwarecosts

Increaseutilizationofdatacenterresourcesbyconsolidatingresources,implementingcloudcomputingandsupportingapplication/workloadmobility

Improveperformanceandenergyefficiencybyusingnewhardware

Increaseresponsivenesstoaddressmarketchangesmorerapidlyandimprovebusinessagility

ReducecorporatecostsandimproveemployeeproductivitythroughstrategiessuchasBYOD(bringyourowndevice)

Improvesecurityandmanagementbyaddressinganygapscausedbyincreaseduseofmobiledevicesforbusiness

Supportanewwaveofapplicationsincludingnewsolutionsformobiledevices,cloudcomputing,BigDataandsocialmedia

Where do you start? Perhaps the two most important areas of data center modernization are implementing virtualization and choosing the “right” operating system/hardware server platforms. Virtualization enables you to consolidate multiple workloads often running on individual servers onto signifi-cantly fewer virtualization host servers, reducing data center expenditures substantially. Virtualization also leads to flex-ible networks and enables you to move compute resources, whatever they are, to better respond to demand. Without virtualization your speed in provisioning and de-provisioning resources is greatly constrained.

Modernize Your Data Center by Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server Discover how migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server can provide you with greater innovation and flexibility and lower costs in your data center—now and in the future.

The selection process must take into account not only features of both the operating system and the hardware platform on which it runs, but the ability of the platform to enable and support your future business requirements.

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Selecting an operating system/hardware server platform for your data center has long-term consequences. The selection process must take into account not only features of both the operating system and the hardware platform on which it runs, but the ability of the platform to enable and support your future business requirements.

Historically, SPARC/Solaris has been the most frequently chosen platform for data center infrastructure because of superior SPARC server performance and Solaris’ robustness. This included a strong scale-up story, packaged business applications such as ERP and CRM from various vendors, high-end database offerings and superior out-of-the-box availability with development around extending availability through preemptive management and hot replacement/no-reboot solutions.

Today, however, SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms are ag-ing, and support and maintenance contracts are expensive. Various user surveys* indicate that Oracle’s support is di-minishing despite increasing support costs. SPARC server performance has also suffered, especially on a per-core ba-sis. In addition, ISVs are dropping support for applications on SPARC/Oracle Solaris. This lack of innovation limits your ability to take advantage of many new technologies, such as virtualization, cloud computing and new storage technolo-gies that reduce costs and make you more responsive to market changes.

What is the alternative? Until recently, x86 servers running Linux lacked the performance, RAS (reliability, availability

and scalability), scale-up capabilities and workload man-agement of the large SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms used to run mission-critical, back-end database applications. But that is no longer the case.

Today, the price, performance and reliability of industry stan-dard x86 servers have improved to the point where they can meet and exceed the capabilities of SPARC/Oracle Solaris. In other words, the reasons to continue buying SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms have become less and less compelling. As a result, enterprises are migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/Linux platforms running new multi-core, scale-up x86 servers such as the HP DL980 Xeon 7500 series servers and x86 AMD and Intel servers from IBM such as the IBM System x3690.

In fact, for many corporations, migrating legacy SPARC/Oracle Solaris systems such as SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/Linux is the centerpiece of data center modernization. The reason is that many of the innovative ideas used to modern-ize data centers are built around Linux and x86 servers, and virtually none of them are associated with SPARC/Oracle Solaris. Migrating to or staying with SPARC/Oracle Solaris limits your ability to modernize your data center and totally locks you in to Oracle.

What’s more, over the past decade, in addition to RAS, cer-tain features/technologies already available in RISC/UNIX—some hardware, some software—were included in x86/Linux so it could compete on at least even terms with RISC/UNIX platforms in the lucrative back-end mission-critical data base application tier. So these features/technologies no longer can be used by RISC/UNIX vendors to differentiate their so-lutions from x86/Linux. This is especially true of x86 /SUSE Linux Enterprise platforms.

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* See:http://gabrielconsultinggroup.com/gcg-press-room- mainmenu-50/279-oracle-survey-implications-of-the-new-oracle.html http://itic-corp.com/blog/2011/02/itic-reliabiity-survey-oracle-users-anxiousangry-over-service-support-slippage www.computereconomics.com/custom.cfm?name=articlePrint.cfm&id=1597

Today, the price, performance and reliability of industry standard x86 servers have improved to the point where they can meet and exceed the capabilities of SPARC/Oracle Solaris.

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Data Center Modernization White PaperThe Case for Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versus SPARC/Oracle SolarisTable 1 below provides a detailed comparison of the features and technologies available in x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SPARC/Oracle Solaris.

Table 1: Comparison of Features/Technologies Available in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and SPARC/Oracle Solaris

Technologies SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)

File system

Ships with a number of different file systems from which to choose, including Btrfs, Ext3 (default for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), Ext2, ReiserFS, XFS (open source version) and OCFS2. Each has advantages and disadvantages. See: http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-storage_sd_draft/filesystems.html A file system comparison table is located at: https://www.suse.com/de-de/products/server/technical-information

ZFS is the default file system in Oracle Solaris. It is a mature file system as long as you are using it on Oracle Solaris for SPARC.

Predictive self-healing

This functionality requires hardware support to be fully effective. SUSE is working with all major hardware vendors, especially IBM and Intel, to optimize integration of the hardware and the operating system. Proactive notification. Technologies such as MCELog help administrators to get informed early about upcoming hardware issues that might impact the stability of the operating system and the applications.

Automatic mitigation of software/hardware errors. Admin notifications, isolation/deactivation of faulty components and guided repair.

Dynamic tracing framework

SystemTap. A scripting language and tool for dynamically instrumenting running production Linux operating systems. Today, there is little difference in the functionality between SystemTap and DTrace.

Dtrace. A comprehensive dynamic tracing framework created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and application problems on production systems in real time.

Security/ certification

Common Criteria Certification EAL 4+ Upcoming FIPS certification for the openSSL module.

Common Criteria Certification EAL 4+ Solaris Trusted Extensions

Virtualization

Interoperability with leading hypervisors: SUSE Linux Enterprise Server directly supports Xen and KVM, and VMware ESX runs on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. All three support Linux and Windows as guests on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server virtualization hosts.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server can be run as a guest operating system in virtual environments created using VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.

Linux Containers (see next page) is another virtualization technology.

Oracle-only virtualization solutions: Oracle Solaris Containers permit one application per virtual server in a container with Oracle Solaris as the only guest operating system.

Oracle VM Server for SPARC runs specifically on SPARC T-Series servers and enables consolidation of software stacks running only on SPARC T-Series servers

Dynamic System Domains are designed specifically for SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers. They provide electronically isolated partitions

Oracle Solaris for SPARC is limited to virtualization technologies designed only for SPARC/Oracle Solaris and can’t interoperate with common virtualization technologies such as Xen, KVM, etc.

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Technologies SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)

Containers

Linux Containers (LXC) is an operating system-level virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems (containers) on a single control host. LXC relies on the Linux kernel cgroups functionality that became available in version 2.6.24, developed as part of LXC. In principle, both Linux Containers and Oracle Solaris Containers are similar. They are virtualization technologies at the application level, so they are “above” the operating system kernel. Unlike hypervisor-based virtualization, they do not add an additional software layer.

Oracle Solaris Containers is an implementation of operating system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems. An Oracle Solaris Container is the combination of system resource controls and the boundary separation provided by zones that act as completely isolated virtual servers within a single operating system instance.

Clusters

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 SP 2 with High Availability Extension lets you implement mission-critical Linux clusters using OCFS2, a shared-disk, POSIX-compliant generic cluster file system. Service Pack 2 offers new functionality that makes it even easier to set up and use the integrated suite of robust, open-source clustering technologies in SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server supports other cluster products, including Veritas Cluster Server and HP Serviceguard.

Oracle offers, with Solaris Cluster, a high-availability cluster product that does not include a cluster file system. If needed, a cluster file system can be purchased from Veritas and will be supported by both Oracle and Veritas. Supported Solaris Cluster configurations are predominantly found on hardware from Oracle. Support when using hardware from other vendors is extremely limited. Scalability clustering is not available for Oracle on the operating system level. Selected applications, like Oracle RAC, offer scalable clustering on the application level. Oracle offers scale up solutions only for its SPARC hardware platform.

Hardware platforms supported

x86, x86-64, POWER, Itanium, IBM mainframe SPARC

Cloud computing

SUSE Cloud is built on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and is based on the popular OpenStack project. SUSE Cloud is also integrated with SUSE Manager and SUSE Studio™ to provide management and application development for SUSE Cloud as well as other cloud platforms. Various third-party cloud management tools, such as Aeolus and ConVirt, are also available to manage SUSE Cloud-based clouds. SUSE Cloud interoperates with other cloud platforms built around OpenStack. SUSE Cloud runs on various Linux platforms and is integrated with Cisco’s Unified Computing System (UCS).

Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure—only used with an Oracle hardware/software stack. It is missing some components needed to build real private clouds, e.g., automation, self-service portals, etc. Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure is strictly an Oracle-customer-only cloud platform and is optimized for Oracle software applications. It interoperates with no other cloud technology without considerable effort.

RAS

Combination of new multi-core, scale-up AMD/Intel hardware married with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server compares favorably with SPARC/Oracle Solaris with respect to RAS. RAS can no longer be used to differentiate SPARC/Oracle Solaris and x86/ SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

SPARC/Oracle Solaris is arguably the leading RISC/UNIX platform for RAS.

ISV enthusiasm

ISV enthusiasm for X86/SUSE Linux dramatically exceeds that for SPARC/Oracle Solaris. ISVs use Linux as the development platform and port to SPARC/Oracle Solaris only if there is sufficient demand. 10,000+ ISV applications certified to run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Over 800 Oracle applications certified to run on x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Only 25 percent of Oracle application customers are currently Oracle server customers because Oracle applications are run primarily on Linux and Window platforms.

SPARC/Oracle Solaris used to be the leading development platform, but because its market share is dropping at a fast pace, ISVs port from x86/Linux to SPARC/Oracle Solaris only when absolutely necessary.

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Data Center Modernization White PaperThe Case for Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Technologies SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)

High Performance Computing (HPC)

Linux dominates the Top500 List of the world’s largest super-computers with 94 percent of the supercomputers running Linux. And SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is running on many of them. HPC business applications, referred to as “crossover” HPC applications, also run on x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. High performance computers running crossover applications are smaller than the supercomputers. They are oriented toward companies such as financial service companies that have applications that would take 12 – 15 hours to run on a small office computer, but can run in 10 – 15 minutes on a small high performance computer in a cluster format using commodity x86 servers.

SPARC/Oracle Solaris does not have a single system on the Top500 List, and its performance on a per-core basis has dropped significantly below that of x86 multi-core servers running Linux. SPARC/Oracle Solaris can be used to run crossover applications. The primary considerations for customers are the cost of the SPARC T-Series servers, application availability on SPARC/Oracle Solaris and the poor per-core performance of SPARC servers.

Innovation No contest: x86/Linux is at the center of innovation for technologies used to modernize data centers.

SPARC/Oracle Solaris innovation is focused only on Oracle stacks and is done only by Oracle.

Cost

A fraction of the cost of SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms. The big difference is in the higher cost of SPARC servers and their support and maintenance. Because the per-core performance of x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is often 2x faster, you get big savings on application licensing because you need fewer cores (and sockets) to run applications. Also, using small footprint x86 multi-core, scale-up servers versus mainframe size M – Series SPARC servers results in space and cooling savings.

SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms are more expensive, and the 2x performance advantage of x86/ SUSE means you need fewer cores and sockets to run applications, resulting in software licensing cost savings.

Performance

A clear winner on performance tests, especially the SPEC core performance benchmarks.

x86/ SUSE Linux Enterprise Server on SPEC benchmarks clearly outperforms SPARC M-Series servers by a factor of 2x or more on a per-core basis, and because it requires fewer cores, is significantly less expensive. Oracle does not provide any new SPARC T-Series SPEC benchmarks.

Big Data support

SUSE has been heavily involved in Big Data with partners such as Teredata, SAP (with SAP HANA), IBM, Cloudera, Hortonworks and others. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server supports the open Hadoop framework for processing Big Data. SUSE also provides the SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension to run multiple clusters for Big Data processing.

Oracle’s Big Data efforts (Oracle Big Data Appliance) are focused only on Oracle Linux for x86 rather than on SPARC/Oracle Solaris.

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Summary and ConclusionAs late as 2005–2006, SPARC/Sun Solaris was the most fre-quently chosen platform for data center infrastructure. Its value came from the performance of SPARC servers and Solaris’ robustness including excellent RAS capabilities, a strong scale-up story for back-end mission-critical database ap-plications, high ISV enthusiasm, innovation leadership, high performance computing and more. Its installed base size exceeded the combined size of HP’s HP-UX’s and IBM’s AIX’s installed base.

Yet this description of SPARC/Sun Solaris fits x86/Linux to-day much more than SPARC/Oracle Solaris. Many of the tech-nologies that provided advantages for SPARC/Sun Solaris have been implemented on platforms such as x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

However, while SPARC/Oracle Solaris still has excellent RAS capabilities and is a formidable competitor with Linux for the back-end mission-critical database applications market, it is now viewed as:

Lackingthetechnology,interoperabilityandinnovationnecessarytomodernizedatacentersinthefaceofnewtechnologiessuchascloudcomputing,BigData,mobiledevicesandsocialmedia

Havingpoorpercoreperformance Havingcostlyhardwareandhardwaremaintenancealong

withdeterioratingsupport Havinghardware-influencedvirtualizationthatworksonly

withSPARC/OracleSolarisplatforms,providingalmostnointeroperabilitywithothervirtualizationsoftware

HavingrapidlydroppingISVenthusiasm Creatinglock-in

As a result of the limited options, lock-in and higher costs of SPARC/Oracle Solaris today and tomorrow versus the in ter-operability, openness to innovation and lower costs of x86/SUSE Enterprise Linux Server:

x86/SUSELinuxEnterpriseServerisanexcellentplatformforreplacingyourmorecostly,lowerperformingSPARC/OracleSolarissystems.

x86/SUSELinuxEnterpriseServerisanexcellentplatformformodernizingyourdatacenter.

Many of the innovative ideas used to modernize data centers are built around Linux and x86 servers, and virtually none of them are associated with SPARC/Oracle Solaris.

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