Solaris has been the number one UNIX operating system for over 25 years, and while it might not spring to mind as the enterprise OS of choice today, there are many reasons why it still rates very highly by users. Most enterprises are using Oracle Solaris in their business somewhere, but if you are considering a data centre modernisation project, looking to simplify your virtualisation environment, moving to the cloud or are running critical Oracle databases and applications, then Solaris should be your number one choice.
Why Oracle Solaris?
Well, with every new release of Solaris, Sun and now Oracle, have always ensured backwards compatibility to protect your investment in existing applications. In fact, Oracle even offers an application binary guarantee to ensure you can run legacy applications on the latest infrastructure.
In many publicly available reviews Oracle Solaris is hailed as a stable, scalable and super speedy platform. It has been designed with the enterprise and their needs in mind and offers advanced security features on premises and in the cloud, with anti-malware protection from the hypervisor to the application. Oracle Solaris is cloud ready and natively uses ZFS, having been developed by Sun in the early 2000’s, is still in operation and still one of the most popular features. The zones or containers are also commended for being lightweight and simple, so, what are the downsides?
The Future of Oracle Solaris
The biggest issue surrounding Solaris is its image and the speculation around its future and longevity. If customers aren’t sure that their investment is future-proofed, they will be wary about investing. To counter this Oracle have guaranteed that they will deliver binary compatibility until 2034 at least, so any current and future investment will be secure for a minimum of 14 years, and doubtless much longer.
Specialist Skills and Resources
Another issue faced by users is that because Oracle Solaris is a proprietary OS, with different and unique commands to those used to administer other Linux systems, it requires additional skills which may make it more difficult to recruit and retain experienced technical expertise. A quick trawl online Indeed found 209 current jobs requiring Solaris skills, which suggests an immediate skills shortage in this technology. It can even be tricky for organisations to find outsourced support services that have the necessary skills. Not every MSP or IT Support firm has the expertise to best manage an Oracle Solaris environment.
WTL is a Solaris and Linux specialist, with the skills and knowledge required to support all customers’ heterogeneous environments, both on and off premises. We don’t just keep the lights on with your Oracle databases, Solaris and SPARC infrastructure, we optimise your environment, proactively managing your whole estate, improving service levels, efficiencies and availability, driving down costs and suggesting ways of making even more savings.
We also offer a Solaris Heath Check that is designed identify and address configuration, updates, security, and performance problems you might be experiencing.