Q: What is the procedure for determining the proper driver to use with an internal NIC card in a laptop?
I have reviewed many docs online including the standard faqs. The system is a Dell Lattitude C500/600.
A:
Depending on what point you are at is how you would approach such an issue.
If you are installing Solaris and answer 'Yes' to the question "Is this
system networked?" then Solaris will automatically set up the correct file
in /etc for your system to be networked. Provided your network device is
recognized by Solaris.
If you have just added a network card to your Solaris system you should do a
reconfiguration boot. I typically do it with this command as root:
touch /reconfigure ; reboot
Doing a 'prtconf -D' will show you what drivers have attached to the devices
in your system. If your new card is recognized you should have also seen a
message about it during boot, but that can be easy to miss. You would then
need to create /etc/hostname.
Both the driver name and instance number will be displayed by prtconf. The
instance number always starts at 0. For an elxl device it would look like:
/etc/hostname.elxl0
The problem with your system is that you are using a mini-PCI device that we
do not currently support. If I recall correctly it is a 3Com 3C556 network
device. I currently know of no driver that works for it. Someone told me
they got the elxl driver working by adding the device ID for it to the system,
but I have been told by 3Com that these are not compatible devices and I know
of several people that were not able to do the same thing.
I hope we will get 3Com to write their own driver in the future. They have
written Solaris drivers in the past.
Q: Can you comment on the possibility of Sun recompiling the Sparc OpenGL drivers for PCI-based 3d cards that Sun currently sells on Sparc?
A:
It is more than just a matter of recompiling the SPARC modules to get them
to run on Solaris X86. They would have to be made to work with the current
kdmconfig utility and we would have to document which cards OpenGL would
work with, etc.
The need for OpenGL by the Solaris X86 users is being evaluated and if there
is a large enough demand I am sure we will work on bringing it out. It may
also happen simply because we are committed to providing parity between the
SPARC and X86 platforms going into the future. In which case having the
capability may increase the demand for it.
We are looking at improving many aspects of our video support, so any
solution would probably have to address several aspects in addition to the
support of OpenGL.
If the need for OpenGL support is immediate I would suggest going to this
software vendor and evaluating their package:
Not only do they offer OpenGL support, but they have support for some video
devices Sun does not yet offer, plus support for multiple heads on a single
system and wheel mouse support. They offer a free download of their product
that has a limitted time license for you to test with before purchasing.
My hope is that in the future (and I am talking past Solaris 10 here) we will
have a common video framework for both SPARC and X86 that allows you to use
an identical card in either system. Ideally, if it is supported in one of
them it would be supported in the other. You would then have the same type
of functionality in either system with that card. That would be a major
change though and Solaris 10 is already too far along for that to happen, so
we will have to wait and see...
Q:
Does Solaris x86 support Xinerama?
Does Sun have plans for releasing SPARC versions of the drivers they already
developed for Solaris x86, such as iprb for Intel-based NICs, Adaptec SCSI cards
or video drivers ?
A:
At the moment we do not support Xinerama on Solaris X86, even with the
XFree86 Porting Kit. This kit only brings over the DDX modules. To get it
supported you would need to replace our X server (Xsun) with the XFree86 X
server. This would mean that you would lose Display Postscript, which is
only in Xsun. You can compensate for that by using GhostView, so it might
be worth it for you. Adding such support has been talked about, but only on
the most general level so far.
Some of our SPARC drivers will make it over to Solaris X86 shortly, but I do
not currently know of any plans to bring X86 drivers over to SPARC. The
video drivers (DDX modules) we use on Solaris X86 simply would not work on a
SPARC system, because the framework they run in is not the same on the two
platforms. The SCSI and NIC devices would be easier to get working and in
the future I think you will see that drivers are written for both platforms
in many cases.
A:
You can configure your video by running /usr/sbin/kdmconfig and choosing
another video resolution setting.
If you really wish to be daring you can go into the files in /etc/openwin
and modify them. This is necessary for some of the new video screen sizes
on newer laptops, because we are not setting them up to the full screen
size.
If you do try manual modifications like this the best way to test them is to
login via a network connection and manually invoke Xsun. The console should
be in text mode, obviously. If the screen display correctly then you have
succeeded in putting values in that work. If it fails you can always
terminate Xsun by hitting Control-C, which will restore you to text mode on
the console again.
Note that running kdmconfig will write over any manual changes you have
made, so be sure to save them in a seperate file. It should be kept in a
place that will be preserved even after doing an upgrade to a new version of
Solaris, like your home directory.
Q:
What is being done to reduce power consumption ofmulti-cpu systems such as Sun's V65/V60/LX50?
Heat is a major issue in the datacenter and Solaris x86 does not currently idle muli-cpu systems.
I had discussed it a while back with the kernel engineers and was told of
this RFE ID: 4762162 - Support for Symmetric Multi Threading (SMT)
This is what is being used to add support for the newer HyperThreaded CPUs.
They intend to do something similar, but that will be better able to work
with how threads are going to be scheduled within the kernel.
Another bug that probably applies is: 4749669 - Pentium IV pause optimization
This is a change to how you code for delay loops in P4 systems. It works as
before for earlier Intel CPUs, but tells the P4 that it specifically is in a
tight loop. I am not sure if that helps on a Xeon, but it probably does
some type of power saving on a laptop with a mobile CPU.
Since our V60x and V65x systems will be using HyperThreaded Xeons you should
see this solution fairly soon, but I do not know specifically when it will
be put into Solaris X86.
Q:
What work is being done to improve Solaris support for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI)?
I see in eeprom(1M) that Sun supports disabling ACPI, but the S9 release notes don't indicate when one might need to do that.
A:
A lot of work has gone into it lately. I think the next update due out in
the July/August timeframe will greatly reduce, but not eliminate, some of
the ACPI issues we have seen in the past.
Part of the problem is that the ACPI specification is being interpretted in
different ways by different manufacturers. We took a strict line on how to
interpret it and reported any discrepancy. That is the cause of most of the
ACPI messages you see during installation.
But ACPI is the future for X86 systems, like it or not, so we have been
updating our code to be more lenient in what it allows. More work needs to
be done after this next update, but I think by the time Solaris 9 has it's
final update we will be in good shape. Which means Solaris 10 will also be
able to properly handle what ACPI throws at it by the time it is released.
Be aware that we have found mistakes in ACPI info presented to Solaris X86
by various BIOSes. So it is always worthwhile to consider upgrading to the
most recent BIOS from a manufacturer, as it may fix an ACPI issue you have
been experiencing.
The typical cases where you want to disable ACPI are:
A device that is reported as being recognized is not reading or writing.
This can be caused by incorrect interrupt information being reported by
the ACPI info Solaris is using. It can be either a BIOS or a Solaris
bug, but disabling often resolves it.
A device conflict is reported for a device and the device fails to work.
This is typically because the Plug-N-Play and ACPI info differ in what
they report for the device. Usually it does not affect Solaris, but I
have seen it cause Solaris to create duplicate devices (floppy or IDE
controllers and serial ports are what I have seen personally). Disable
ACPI *and* do a reconfiguration boot to remove the duplicate device node
usually fixes this problem. I would only do this if you run into an
actual problem though. Otherwise, ignore device conflict messages.
You disable ACPI by using eeprom to set acpi-user-options to 0x2:
eeprom acpi-user-options=0x2
To enable it you set it to a value of 0x0 (default):
Q:
Which software could be used in order to access the Solaris GUI on Windows?
I normally uses telnet but the problem is I cant access Admintool, DiskTools etc.
A:
A package that is widely used within Sun is Reflection X:
I have found it to be superior in many ways. I especially like the fact
that I can disconnect and when I call in next time my session is right where
I left off. That is great for when you are on the road and it is virtually
instant in getting that suspended session back.
Unfortunately, it requires a daemon process to run on the host computer and
they currently only have a SPARC version for Solaris. I mention it hoping
there will be some demand by people asking for a Solaris X86 version as well.
If you do a search on Google (or your favorite search engine) I am sure you
will see some discussions of the views on these and probably other packages
like them. See which one best suits your needs. Use a trial version if
one is available for download and give it a test drive. I am sure you will
find one that you can use.
Q:
Are there any plans to have Linux binary emulation similar to FreeBSD for
Solaris x86? Where source code is available, said feature isn't really
necessary. However, there are a lot of binary packages that run on Linux and
Solaris SPARC but not for Solaris x86.
A:
We do have a way to run Linux binaries on Solaris. It is called lxrun.
Q:
I want to upgrade my Solaris 8 x86 to Solaris 9 x86, but when I select the
upgrade option I am not able to upgrade my box and the installation terminates.
Can you tell me what are the pre-requisites for upgrading to Solaris 9 x86?
Also, where can I see my installation problem logs?
A:
This can be due to a few different reasons. Here are the requirements for
a SPARC system. An X86 system would be similar:
I did see a bug in another document that mentioned not having enough space
in /export could cause a problem. The reasons I typically see an upgrade
fail all have to do with lack of disk space in one form or another.
If the slices are too small Solaris will try and resize them for you. But
in order to do that it needs to have space to keep temporary copies.
If you are low on space try getting another disk installed and use format to
set it up for Solaris. Be sure to do a newfs after you fdisk and partition
the new disk... You wouldn't believe how many time I ... I mean other
people have forgotten to do that last step. I am not sure if it has to be
in your vfstab so it is mounted, but it won't hurt to put it there.
Now when you do an upgrade Solaris should have plenty of space. Just adding
an old 2GB doorstop drive (I am sure most of us have plenty of these smaller
drives laying around) will probably give Solaris enough space to work with.
I would also do the installation in character mode and not GUI mode. You
can do that by not configuring your display device at the start of the
installation. That way if it fails you have a better chance of seeing the
message as to why it failed. In GUI mode (and Solaris is not the only one
guilty of this) the message sometimes disappears when either the window is
deleted that had the message or it exits from GUI into character mode. I
hate it when that happens!
You might want to check the other installation guide sections for ideas.
Remember: http://docs.sun.com is your friend!
Q:
Just looked on BigAdmin and Sunsolve and you know it isn't easy to find anything on
the difference between patches and MU's. Or at least a statement on what is
different between the two.
I've always thought the MU's and cluster patches were the same. The only thing
I'm thinking that MU's incorporate new features within the current release. Am I
wrong about that?
A:
Actually, you are both right and wrong about that. First some background as
to what we are talking about here.
MU stands for Maintainence Update.
These have come out as a way to patch existing Solaris system to bring them
up to the same level as if you had installed the equivalent Solaris Update.
Cluster patches are a cluster of recommended patches that were available for
public download by anyone, but in a single cluster for ease of installation.
Starting with Solaris 8 we started putting in new features for Solaris with
some, if not all, of the various Solaris Updates that were released. In the
previous versions of Solaris any new features were made to wait until the
next version of Solaris. It was decided that this put needed features off
for too long a time in many cases, hence the change in policy.
Now when you get a cluster patch or an MU and apply it to an earlier version
of that Solaris release there may be things it has patches for that you did
not install.
For example, with Solaris 9 Update 3 (Solaris 9 4/03) you now get Netscape
7.0 in the package. A previous version would only have had the Netscape 6.0
version installed. So the MU3 package might have patches for the Netscape
6.0 from previous versions, but it will not install Netscape 7.0 on your
system. Similarly future MUs will not add Netscape 7.0 and patches for it
will be skipped.
Cluster patches work in a similar fashion. They both check first for the
presence of the software to be patched. If it is not there the patch is not
applied. This is also needed because you may not have installed all of the
packages that were available to be installed.
The only way to get new features that come out with an update is to do an
Upgrade installation of your system using the new release of Solaris. You
see a feature comparison of the Solaris Updates here to get a feel for what
might come out in an Update release:
Note that at the moment there are no MUs for Solaris 9 X86. This is partly
because we only started shipping it with what was for SPARC Update 2
(12/02). So this last release would have been the first time we could have
released an MU for Solaris 9 X86, but the process was not in place early
enough for that to happen. There has even been talk of doing away with MUs
and just having cluster patches. We will have to wait and see on that, but
I wanted to give an explanation of why you may see SPARC MUs on
solarissolve.sun.com and not and X86 MUs for Solaris 9.
One other benefit of MUs has been that patches that were not available for
free were typically included as part of the MU. With cluster patches you
would only get freely downloadable patches. If they do away with MUs (and
at this point your guess is as good as mine) I expect all patches will be
made freely available so they can be included in cluster patches to give the
same functionality as we have now with MUs.
Q:
More and more x86 boxes are coming with integrated nvidia video cards these days.
Is Sun going to partner with nVidia any time soon to get their Unified Driver Architecture
driver ported over to Solaris
(the kernel driver that Nvidia has already ported to linux and freebsd)?
A:
If that driver will not fit into the scheme for our XFree86 Porting Kit then
I am not sure there is much we can do. It sounds like this is more than
just the normal DDX driver from your description.
At this time we have not talked to nVidia, since all the products Sun has
plans for use video devices we already are supporting.
Unfortunately, nVidia and ATI seem to be in a technology war of video device
supremacy. I keep seeing them play a game of leapfrom in the press articles
I have been reading with every new release. Because of this they no longer
publish the source for their XFree86 DDX modules, but instead release only a
binary version.
I would suggest this strategy. For any video device manufacturer that is
producing binary-only XFree86 drivers for their new cards that you want
supported on Solaris, contact them and request that they also provide a
binary version for Solaris X86. Give them this pointer to our porting kit:
This will allow them to know that there is a demand for their product on
Solaris X86 and a way for them to use the code they have already written to
provide a solution for their customers. For an XFree86 DDX module it should
basically be a simple recompile on a Solaris X86 system with the source
version of the XFree86 Porting Kit for Solaris X86 installed on it. That is
not much more effort or cost to them once they already have an XFree86 DDX
module for Linux available.
They can even use the same development system if they follow the method that
is described for doing a Linux & Solaris X86 multi-boot system here:
If there are issues with getting their code working on Solaris X86, as this
new nVidia driver might have, we can certainly work with them through our
developer technical support organization. They are there to help ISVs and
IHVs develop products for Solaris:
Note that all new Solaris X86 video support is planned to be done using the
XFree86 model from now on. The only exceptions would be where a minor change
is needed to an existing older driver. So we want to get more XFree86 device
support in Solaris and will work with manufacturers of video devices to make
that happen.
Q:
How about full APM support in Solaris x86?
e.g: When will it be possible to check the remaining time of a laptop battery?
Does Sun plan to port hardware openGL support to Solaris x86?
How about Xinerama?
Xsun in Sparc full supports this X extension, but the same is not true for x86 version why?
How about cardbus support for laptops?
Currently is only possible to use a cardbus pcmcia by using thirdy
party drivers from lynnsoft.
A:
I have already answered the questions about OpenGL and Xinerama in earlier
posts, so I will skip those two. Basically the answer is not now, but we
probably will in the future. See above answer.
As for APM I saved a very interesting discussion on that from last year when
we were working feverishly on getting Solaris 9 for X86 ready. It was a very
interesting discussion about the confusing state of power management for X86
systems.
To summarize the discussion APM is basically dead and has been replaced by
ACPI. Some laptops support both, but the APM is not working as well as the
ACPI, probably because current Redmond OSes prefer to use ACPI so it has not
been properly tested using an older OS that uses APM. Linux has problems in
this area and we have not really supported power management in Solaris X86 up
to this point.
So ACPI is the current standard that should be considered if we are to do
this, not APM. One of the messages mentions that there are two methods to
use for checking battery status, but only one will likely be implemented on
any particular machine. Don't you just love "standards"?
Right now Lynnsoft is the only solution and I don't know of any plans to add
it to Solaris. There has been some discussion of improving the existing
PCMCIA support using a couple of changes circulating internally, but that
would only enable non-cardbus cards like a modem card. You would still need
cardbus support from Lynnsoft for something like a 100Mb network card.
Q:
How do you mount UFS file system in linux (i.e entry for /etc/fstab)?
A:
Sorry, but at the moment there is no way to mount a UFS slice from Linux
that I am aware of. We have not documented how our filesystems are
organized on the disk publicly. Although this might be an interesting
personal project for someone at Sun to do they would not be able to publish
it in source form without permission, since it would be documenting how it
works.
Personally, I wish it was publicly documented so that Partition Magic could
be made to resize my Solaris partitions as easily as it does other partitions!
However, I already looked and they do not support such a device either. The
only D-Link device they support is the DFE-650 and that is on SPARC, not
X86. But it is worth contacting them to see if they will support it.
If someone has found a driver for a device that you wish to use this is the
best place to look. Anyone using Solaris X86 can document how to use a
device that Solaris might not normally support and they should include the
directions on where to get any driver you might need. This site is really
for Solaris 9, but you can still find information that would apply to
Solaris 8 as well.
Use these sources to determine what hardware you should buy that will be
able to work with Solaris. We have never claimed to be able to run every
single piece of hardware out there and we never will. No single OS can, not
even Microsoft.
Q:
I have two network cards in my Compaq Evo P4 1.6 GHz PC.
One network card is good old 3Com 3c905-TX XL and the other one is an
Intel Pro 10/100 VM Network Connection.
My OS is Solaris 9 OE, the 3Com card I can configure without any problem
and its working fine.
But I cannot configure the Intel NIC.
I tried create the files manually and plumb the card but no hope. I would like to keep both cards
working at the same time in different subnets. One is for internet and one is
for local network.
A:
There are some newer Intel Pro/100 devices out there are we have yet to test
with them and add their IDs. You can try adding them yourself and see if
the current iprb driver works with your device. Your should do a prtconf
command with the -pv option. Redirect the output to a file and view it with
an editor or the more command, because it generates a lot of output.
Here are some IDs listed in RFE that we know we need to test for:
iprb "pci8086,1031" (by far the most prevalent)
iprb "pci8086,1032"
iprb "pci8086,1038"
Add your alias to /etc/driver_aliases, touch /reconfigure, and reboot to
test. If you want to be even more thorough you should add a line to the
file:
/boot/solaris/devicedb/master
This is where device descriptions are kept. The format is fairly obvious
and you can simply copy and existing iprb entry and change the device IDs to
be the ones for your device. You would then change the text description of
it.
But remember that if you do this you are using a driver that has not been
tested with this device. I have had very good results with the iprb driver
working correctly, but new devices can have quirks. One problem we had with
iprb devices a couple of years ago was that they went "to sleep", because
they would drop into power saving mode. A new version of the driver was
needed that knew how to disable that feature.
So just be aware that you may run into problems doing this. And be sure you
are using the correct device ID! There are two PCI IDs that get displayed
by prtconf and some systems now set every device to the same ID for one of
them. If you use that ID number your system will be hosed! In the case of
Intel all device IDs should start with "8086," followed by a unique 4-digit
number.
You can read more about PCI IDs (and find out which IDs mean what) here:
Q:
I would like to touch the desktop side. You mentioned performance issues Sparc
vs. i386. You also mentioned support issues on the other hand, if using hardware
and software from different suppliers. The problem I found was mainly the Sun
support for Solaris x86. There is software, like Forte SMC where the x86 line is
either discontinued or at least behind.
If the x86 line is equal, will we see revivals of these software lines anytime
soon (we heard of Oracle's promise for IA32 based Solaris systems).
A:
A valid question. The basic answer is that all our software product (where
appropriate) will be available on SPARC, X86, Linux, and even *gasp*
Windows. I gave an example earlier of how things may end up being brought
into sync between deliveries of software on the two platforms, but I will
recap here. Basically there are two choices:
Delay the next version until all platforms can be delivered at the same time.
Deliver what is currently being developed and deliver for all platforms in the next version or update.
With time-to-market being so critical many development groups within Sun are
probably going to opt for #2 here. That way they get their product out into
the market where it can make money. They can then plan and schedule for the
extra effort of adding Solaris X86 into the mix for the next release.
One of the main goals going forward is to try and deliver products in sync
with the (roughly) quarterly delivery of the Solaris Update schedule. Just
about any product that is tied to or runs on Solaris should be trying to do
this from now on. It will make it simpler for administrators to know they
can update everything at once and that this product will run on that version
of Solaris. So this is setting some specific time goals for our software
products that they can not afford to miss.
A second issue is that we went through some reductions in staff the past
couple of years. That was one of the reasons Solaris X86 was put on hold,
so that the people doing Solaris X86 work could be used to contribute in
other places where Sun was earning better revenue. So in some cases there
simply is not extra staff (and hardware) to bring to bear on developing and
later supporting what amounts to and extra platform. This also makes #2 the
better option for many groups at Sun.
The final deciding factor is somewhat related to my previous one. Where
will we get the most bang for our buck? Right now Sun is selling X86
hardware for the first time in it's history. But what type of hardware are
we selling?
Servers.
So the best place to staff up and work hard to bring Solaris X86 product to
the market is in development and server products. So that is primarily what
you will see coming out first. The Orion software stack is fully committed
to being available on Solaris X86. They ended up skipping the version of
the Forte products that was already shipping when we shipped Solaris X86
12/02, because bringing out an X86 version would have delayed the next
version which is needed for Solaris 10 and was already well under way.
So you will see a new version of Forte (now Sun ONE Studio) available for
download for Solaris SPARC *and* X86 here now:
There will be no Studio 7 for Solaris X86. I can only assume there will be
similar missing versions for some other products followed by a future
simultaneous release of the following version.
StarOffice 6.1 seems to be going through this right now. I would guess,
and this is just a guess on my part since I can't fortell the future, that
when StarOffice 6.2 comes out we will again have Solaris X86 there. In the
meantime I hope any genuine bugs fixed in StarOffice 6.1 make it into a
patch for the Solaris X86 StarOffice 6.0 version, because I do use it a lot.
Q:
I want to install Solaris 9 x86 on a machine with a Ultra ATA/133 controller.
Does Solaris 9 X86 have drivers for it? I am able to boot from the install CD,
but I don't see any drives.
The IDE controller is a add-in board. It is the Promise Ultras133 TX2.
A:
So the answer for this case is the Promise controllers are not supported.
As far as I am aware all the add-in IDE controllers are slightly different
than the standard built-in motherboard controllers. Because of this we do
not currently support them with our ata driver. However, we are looking
into making contacts with them to see about adding support for their
products in the future. Certainly Promise is a common enough device that
we would like to be able to support it.
As always it helps if users of Solaris make requests of the manufacturer
of the hardware, so they are aware of the demand for it. That makes it
much easier for us to approach them about writing drivers or sometimes it
will prompt them to approach us first about adding Solaris support.
There are links there for Patch Manager and PatchPro. Patch Manager 1.0
is available for Solaris 2.6 to Solaris 8 for Solaris X86 and SPARC. The
PatchPro is currently only available as a SPARC binary for Solaris 9. A
new version is supposed to be coming out shortly for Solaris 9 X86 as well.
In the meantime the X86 community also has another script that will do
this for you. Some think it is even better than the one provided by Sun,
but I will leave that up to your judgement:
Q:
I am new to Solaris and it is my understanding that I can put the Solaris x86 OS on a laptop. My plan is to install this on a laptop and then use this as a "play" system so I can work on my Solaris skills.
Is this a good plan?
A:
It is if you have the right kind of laptop. Every one of those systems is
a bit different. You may think you have the same model as someone else, but
when you look at the drivers it needs you find out your video driver may be
different, the network device is not the same, and so on.
Whether you have an existing laptop or are planning on buying on for this
purpose you should look at these web sites to get a good idea of what you
will need to do to get it running:
Start with a little research on laptops known to work with Solaris:
I have mentioned all of these at one time or another in earlier posts, but
laptops require you to do a lot of research. Having them all in this one
message will help anyone contemplating installing Solaris X86 on any system.
Now here is a great place for research into links for Solaris X86 topics:
The only requirement is that you belong to that Yahoo group. It is a great
place to get support from the user community. Plus myself and other people
from Sun frequent that group.
Q:
How can Sun convince users to use Solaris x86 after it dropped it over a year ago or has the damage been done? Even though we all knew there was a market for it and now Sun knows.
A:
Sun never dropped Solaris X86. It was always available for shipping. The
download was stopped for a while and brought back at the urging of the
Solaris X86 community for a cost of $20 which was designed to allow it to
be self-sustaining.
When Sun was in cost-cutting mode they looked at the downloads of Solaris
X86 and all that was seen was expenses with no income. They probably would
have done the same for the SPARC version too, but that version was downloaded
less frequently and so was less of an expense.
The same thing happened with the development team. New development was
suspended as people were moved around to teams where product was producing
the most revenue. There are other products that were actually cut, as
opposed to merely being put on hold as Solaris X86 was.
At the time it was still up for evaluation as to whether it should be made
a permanent cut or restarted. The response from the community as well as
many of Sun's larger customers showed there was definately a demand for it.
One that Sun had not been properly exploiting, as a matter of fact.
That is why you see the one big difference now that should help to tell you
that Solaris X86 is here to stay. Sun is selling hardware for it!
This better aligns with how our sales force is setup to sell product, it
gives us some defacto reference platforms for Solaris X86, and it is just
what many companies want to buy in these times of tighter budgets. It helps
us have a better price distribution offering to meet the needs of customers.
You will see our Solaris X86 hardware offerings grow over time. But we are
also certifying OEM hardware platforms again, which had also been suspended.
That gives you other options if what Sun offers does not fit your immediate
needs.
Previously Sun did not want to deal with X86 hardware. One reason was that
it was such a price-competitive business. We can hardly compete against a
large company like Dell that ships nothing but that kind of hardware to the
masses. Plus the majority of it was designed for desktops with servers a
small part of the marketplace.
Now X86-based servers are much more common and we have the two concepts of
SunONE and Orion. Now we have value add for our hardware that makes it a
lot easier to compete on price. Sure you can go out and buy a Dell system
at a good price, but to put Solaris X86 on it with Orion and/or SunONE is
going to cost you extra. If you buy directly from Sun you get it all in
the same price and you only have to deal with one vendor for both hardware
and software problems.
It took the combination of the software stack to make it reasonable for Sun
to go into the lower-margin world of X86 hardware. Because now we have some
value add that is worth something to the customer.
I hope that helps convince you that Solaris X86 is back to stay and that it
is better than ever!
