The Latest on Oracle’s Intentions for the Sun Hardware Portfolio

For the past two months Oracle has been conducting a series of Sun Welcome Events around the world, kicking off first in the US at the beginning of March. Last week was Sydney Australia’s turn and IDEAS analysts attended the event to get an update of the latest news.

Although the format had similar content to previous events around the world, much has happened since the beginning of March and so where applicable, the content had been updated to reflect the latest situation. Of particular interest was the presentation on the new Sun Hardware Portfolio. This was interesting because it provided timely updates on recent news and included a broad overview of the full picture regarding Oracle’s intentions, from a single source.

The presentation began by addressing what were seen as the three biggest rumours that have been circulating.

1. Oracle plans to get out of the hardware business
2. Oracle will exit the SPARC business
3. Oracle is not committed to the x86 business

Oracle says that none of these are true and that the company is increasing investment in many cases. On the x86 rumours, it was pointed out the fact that the Exadata offering, which the company has been using as an example of where Oracle is headed in terms of vertically integrated products, uses x86 technology, and so why would the company be planning a exit from that market segment.

So what exactly does Oracle have in mind across the server and storage product portfolio?

Servers

UltraSPARC

• In the 2H 2010 Oracle plans to release the 3rd generation UltraSPARC T3 processor and systems supporting it in the Sun SPARC Enterprise Systems with Chip Multi-Threading (CMT) technology.
• The UltraSPARC T3 will double the number of processor cores to 16, up from the current 8-core support
• The processor will also include improved floating point and security measures
• Other processors beyond the UltraSPARC T3 are on the public roadmap including one with a new core aimed at improving application performance
• Oracle is also aiming to focus on bringing systems to market that scale beyond the current maximum of 4-sockets

SPARC64

• On SPARC64, it was noted that Sun and Fujitsu have brought three generations of the SPARC64 processor architecture to market to date via the Sun SPARC Enterprise Servers.
• And a fourth generation processor is on the roadmap in next 12-15 months
• There are currently no publicly available details beyond this point at this time, but a spokesperson said that Oracle continues to work with Fujitsu on how the two companies will design systems past that point.

x86

• It appears that the company may focus on Sun x86 servers using only the Intel processor architecture.
• If true, (and there has been no formal announcement yet) this would be a big turnaround from the birth of Sun’s ‘Galaxy’ x86 offerings, which at that time ran exclusively on AMD Opteron processors. IDEAS speculates that is probably a reflection of how Intel has been able to turn things around of late, especially with its latest generation Nehalem family of server processors it has brought to market in phases over the past 12 months.
• Oracle plans to focus efforts on developing solutions that will run enterprise workloads, so x86 4-socket and 8-socket platforms are areas where we can expect to see development occurring.
• The current X4100 and X4200 series systems are key components of Exadata offering and so the company will continue to invest in this product set.
• The 2200 series is very much in Sun’s High Performance Computing (HPC) space and so it will continue to innovate around this product set.
• The company also sees the opportunity for Flash technology to help optimise the platforms and so this will be a development focus area as well.
• Oracle will focus its x86 operating system innovation around Solaris and Oracle Enterprise Linux (OEL), where it has control of the operating system.
• However, the company was still committed to heterogeneous environments and will continue to support the use of, and certify, other versions of Linux.
• It will also support Windows and VMware on those platforms.
• However, IDEAS observes that Oracle’s new support service, Oracle Premier Support for Systems includes coverage of Oracle Solaris, OpenSolaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM. So, as it stands at the moment, although customers will be able to run other Linux distributions, Windows and VMware on Sun Oracle Hardware, Oracle will not be providing direct customer support for those.

Blades

• Blades will continue to be a platform focus area for Oracle
• The main focus being on x86 and T-series blades

Telco Netra

• Oracle remains committed to the Telco space with its separately branded Netra range of servers.
• Again, the focus being on the UltraSPARC T-series and x86 solutions
• The recently released Sun Blade 6000 Netra version was cited as an example of the commitment in this area.

Storage

As for storage, Oracle remains committed to develop and deliver a comprehensive portfolio of storage products, both disk and tape based.

6000 Series

 Oracle is continuing to work with LSI and thus will continue to develop the 6000 Series.

9000 Series

• Prior to this event Sun had announced plans to exit the 9000 Series business, for which it had been in partnership with HDS. The company still has the product as part of its portfolio for sale until the end of June, with deliveries up until September, at which time it will exit the business.
• It will continue to support customers on support contracts beyond that date until their contract completion.
• In the Q&A portion of the presentation an Oracle spokesperson was asked whether Oracle had plans to fill the hole left by the 9000 Series. The answer was not with an alternative new offering. Instead, it is Oracle’s intention to look to the 6000 or 7000 Series for solutions where previously the company may have offered a 9000 Series.

7000 Series

• A key focus area for Oracle will be its 7000 Series open storage, or unified, platform, which supports direct attached storage (DAS), network attached storage (NAS) and storage area network (SAN) configurations.
• In fact, with the 7000 Series being a platform that Oracle ‘owns’,  unlike the 6000 and 9000 series where it has worked in partnership, IDEAS expects Oracle will put a lot of effort into developing this product line, because this is where it has most scope to tightly integrate around the vertical stack from hardware to software.

Archive Tape

• Given Oracle’s indirect investment of StorageTek technology through Sun’s 2005 acquisition of StorageTek, it was confirmed that Oracle is committed to this market segment going forward.
• In fact, products in the tape area will maintain the StorageTek brand.
• It was confirmed that Oracle continues to work with the industry standard LTO consortium to develop tape products using that technology.

Flash

• It is a similar story to the server commitment to Flash technology, where Oracle will be looking to innovate around storage with Flash. This is seen as a key technology in which to invest research and development dollars, because of the potential step change improvements that can be achieved in performance and environmental benefits.
• Existing technologies using Flash include the Sun Flash Accelerator F20 PCIe Card and the Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array.

Full coverage of the current Oracle Sun hardware offerings, including details on feature, performance and pricing are available via Competitive Profiles from Ideas International.

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Comments

[Gary Burgess]

OpenSolaris is mentioned in the 'Oracle Hardware and Systems Support Policies' document.

http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/hardware-systems-support-policies-069182.pdf

Under the heading 'Oracle Premier Support for Systems' on page 5, it says the following:

“For Sun servers, this support applies to the following system software: Oracle Solaris, OpenSolaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux, and Oracle VM.”

[Gleb Sitnikov]

>However, IDEAS observes that Oracle’s new support service, Oracle Premier Support for Systems includes coverage of Oracle Solaris, OpenSolaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM.
I didn't see OpenSolaris included yet. Where did you get it?