Table of Contents page

Modernize Your Data Center by Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Data Center Modernization—Why and How . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 The Decline of SPARC/Oracle Solaris . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3Innovation Fuels the Rise of Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versus 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 Center Modernization—Why and HowStaying competitive in today’s market requires modernizing your data centers. Why? “Modern” data center infrastruc-tures allow you to:

Easilytakeadvantageofnewinnovation Reducedatacentercostsbydecreasingsoftwarelicensing,

maintenanceandhardwareacquisitioncosts Increasedatacenterresourceutilizationbyconsolidating

assets,implementingcloudcomputingandsupportingapplicationportability

Improveworkloadperformanceandloweroperatingexpensesbyusingnewer,morepowerfulyetenergy-efficienthardware

Increasebusinessagilitybyhelpingyouaddresstechnologyandmarketchangesmorerapidly

ImproveemployeeproductivitybysupportingstrategiessuchasBYOD(bringyourowndevice)

Improvesecurityandmanagementbyaddressinganygapscausedbyanever-changingITlandscape

Supportanewwaveofapplicationsincludingnewsolutionsformobiledevices,cloudcomputing,BigDataandsocialmedia

Where do you start? Perhaps the two most important areas to consider when modernizing your data center are imple-menting virtualization and choosing the “right” operating system/hardware server platforms. Virtualization enables you to consolidate multiple workloads, often running on individual servers, onto significantly fewer virtualized host servers, reducing data center expenditures substantially. Virtualization also leads to flexible networks and enables you to move compute resources, whatever they are, to bet-ter respond to changes in 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 Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server offers you greater innovation, better performance at a much lower cost, and a higher degree of ISV enthusiasm—now and in the future.

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.

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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.

The Decline of SPARC/Oracle SolarisHistorically, SPARC/Oracle Solaris has been the most fre-quently chosen platform for Internet-era data center infra-structure because of superior SPARC server performance and Oracle 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 manage-ment and hot replacement/no-reboot solutions.

Today, however, SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms are ag-ing, and support and maintenance contracts are expensive. Various user surveys1 indicate that Oracle’s support quality is diminishing despite ever-increasing support costs. SPARC server performance has also suffered, especially on a per-core basis. In addition, ISVs are dropping support for ap-plications on SPARC/Oracle Solaris. This lack of innovation limits your ability to take advantage of many new technolo-gies, such as virtualization, cloud computing and new stor-age technologies that reduce costs and help you be more responsive to market changes.

Innovation Fuels the Rise of LinuxWhat is the alternative? Until recently, x86 servers running Linux lacked the performance, RAS (reliability, availability

and serviceability), 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 RISC/UNIX platforms, including SPARC/Oracle Solaris.2

In other words, the reasons to continue buying SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms have become less and less com-pelling. 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, IBM System x3690 and Dell PowerEdge M910 and R910.

In fact, for many corporations, migrating legacy systems such as SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/Linux is the centerpiece of their data center modernization initiative. The reason is that many of the new, innovative technologies 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 effec-tively locks you into 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 ported to x86/Linux so it could compete on at least even terms with RISC/UNIX platforms in the lucrative back-end, mission-critical database application tier. Examples include error logging to notify the operating system for predictive failure analysis, dynamic CPU/memory migration, memory board hot add/remove,

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1 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

2http://docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_10x/io_106502/item_582322/ TT 12-188 HP Unix to Linux Migration revised.pdf

Today, the price, performance and reliability of industry standard x86 servers have improved to the point where they can meet or 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 Oracle SolarisTable 1 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 Oracle Solaris

Technologies SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (for x86) Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)

File system

Ships several different file systems, including btrfs, ext3 (default for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), ext2, ReiserFS, XFS (open source version) and OCFS2. Each has advantages and disadvantages. A file system comparison table3 can be found at: www.suse.com

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

Predictive self-healing

Requires hardware support to be fully effective. SUSE is working with all major hardware vendors, especially IBM and Intel, to optimize integration of hardware and operating system in this area. Supports proactive notifications. Technologies such as MCELog help administrators with early warning about upcoming hardware issues that might impact the stability of the operating system and applications.

Supports automatic mitigation of software/ hardware errors. Includes admin notifications, isolation/deactivation of faulty components and guided repair.

Dynamic tracing framework

Ships with 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.

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

Security/ certification

Meets Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance Level 4+ (EAL 4+). Is FIPS 140 certified for the openSSL module.

Meets Common Criteria Certification EAL 4+. Is available with Solaris Trusted Extensions, a set of security extensions incorporated in the Solaris operating system featuring a mandatory access control model.

Virtualization

Interoperable with leading open source and proprietary third-party hypervisors: SUSE Linux Enterprise Sever ships with Xen and KVM, and can be used to create virtual host environments that support Linux and Windows guests.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server itself is a supported guest operating system in virtual environments created using KVM, Xen, VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer.

Linux Containers (seenextpage) is another supported virtualization technology.

Supports Oracle-only virtualization solutions: Oracle Solaris Containers permit one application per virtual server in a container with Oracle Solaris as the only supported 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 cannot interoperate with common virtualization technologies such as Xen, KVM, etc.

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CPU hot add/remove, etc. These features/technologies can no longer be used by RISC/UNIX vendors to differentiate

their solutions from x86/Linux. This is especially true of x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise platforms.

3http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-storage_sd_draft/filesystems.html

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Technologies SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (for x86) Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)

Containers

Supports Linux Containers (LXC), 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. 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

Combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension, you can implement mission-critical open source Linux clusters using OCFS2, a shared-disk, and POSIX- compliant generic cluster file system. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server also is supported by other third-party cluster products, including Veritas Cluster Server and HP Serviceguard.

Oracle offers Oracle 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 supported by both Oracle and Veritas. Supported Oracle 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

Using SUSE Cloud, you can build and deploy private clouds within your firewall. SUSE Cloud is based on the popular OpenStack project, and is 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 private clouds. SUSE Cloud interoperates with other cloud platforms built around OpenStack. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is available through over 50 public cloud providers, like Amazon EC2, Google Cloud and Windows Azure.

Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure is typically only used with an Oracle hardware/software stack. It lacks some components needed to build real private clouds (automation, self-service portals, etc.). Strictly an Oracle, customer-only cloud platform, it is optimized for Oracle software applications. Considerable effort is required to integrate with other cloud technologies.

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. Today, 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.

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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 (for x86) Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)

ISV enthusiasm

ISV enthusiasm for x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise dramatically exceeds that for SPARC/Oracle Solaris. Increasingly, ISVs like SAP are using Linux as their development platform and porting to SPARC/Oracle Solaris only if there is sufficient demand. 10,000+ ISV applications are certified to run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, including more than 800 Oracle applications. 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 a 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.

High Performance Computing (HPC)

Linux dominates the Top500 List of the world’s largest supercomputers with 94 percent of them running Linux. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server runs on many of them. HPC business applications, referred to as “crossover” HPC applications, are also preferred on x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. High performance computer clusters running crossover applications are typically smaller than supercomputer clusters.

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 relatively lower per-core performance of SPARC.

Innovation

x86/Linux is at the center of innovation for technologies used to modernize data centers. Open access to source code encourages innovation, as does a vibrant, growing community.

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

Cost

x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a fraction of the cost of SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms, and is often 2x faster. You get big savings on application licensing because you need fewer cores (and sockets) to run those applications. Using small-footprint x86 multi-core, scale-up servers versus mainframe size M-Series SPARC servers results in savings in space and cooling.

The cost of SPARC servers and their support and maintenance is typically higher than for comparable x86 hardware. For example, the cost of an HP DL980 x86-64 server with 80 cores and fully loaded with disks, memory, etc. costs about US$195,000. The price for a low end SPARC-based M8000 server with eight cores is about US$290,000. A higher end M8000 price can reach more than US$1,000,000.

Performance

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a clear winner on performance tests, especially the SPEC core performance benchmarks. These benchmarks basically demonstrate CPU performance. They include SPECint, SPECfp, SPECint_rate and SPECfp_rate. A comparison of processor performance for most hardware vendors CPUs can be found at: www.spec.org When SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, running on Dell, HP and IBM x86 servers such as those mentioned earlier, are compared to Oracle Solaris on SPARC-based M4000 and M8000 servers, the SPEC benchmarks show that x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is, across the board, 2x faster than the SPARC-based servers and at a fraction of the cost.

SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms, such as the M series servers that run mission-critical applications, are typically much more expensive than x86/Linux platforms. The 2x performance advantage of x86/ SUSE Linux Enterprise Server means you need fewer cores and sockets to run applications on x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server systems than you do on SPARC/Oracle Solaris systems. Oracle does not provide any new SPARC T-Series SPEC benchmarks.

Big Data support

SUSE partners with a wide variety of Big Data technology partners such as Teradata, 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/Oracle Solaris was one of the most frequently chosen platforms for mission-critical data center infrastructure. Its value came from the performance of SPARC servers and Oracle Solaris’ robustness, including excellent RAS capabilities, a strong scale-up story for back-end, mission-critical database applications, high ISV enthu-siasm, innovation leadership, high performance computing and more. Its installed base size exceeded the combined size of HP HP-UX’s and IBM AIX’s installed base.

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

SPARC/Oracle Solaris is still a very good combination for back-end, mission-critical database applications, especially those applications where very high availability is a require-ment, albeit at a very high cost.

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

Havingpoorpercoreperformance Havingcostlyhardwareandsoftwaremaintenancealong

withdeterioratingsupport Havinghardware-influencedvirtualizationthatworksonly

withSPARC/OracleSolarisplatforms,providingalmostnointeroperabilitywithothervirtualizationsoftware

HavingrapidlydroppingISVenthusiasm Creatinglock-in

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

x86/SUSELinuxEnterpriseServerisanexcellentplatformforreplacingyourmorecostly,under-performingSPARC/OracleSolarissystems.

x86/SUSELinuxEnterpriseServerisanexcellentplatformformodernizingyourdatacenter.

x86/SUSELinuxEnterpriseServerofferstheaffordability,interoperabilityandinnovationnecessarytosupportmoderndatacentersinthefaceofnewtechnologiessuchascloudcomputing,BigData,mobiledevicesandsocialmedia.

Many of the innovative technologies used to run modern data centers are built around Linux and x86 servers, and virtually none of them are associated any longer with SPARC/Oracle Solaris.

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