the New Solaris Migration?
For most of the 1990s - the term "Solaris
Migration" meant "migrating to Solaris" from another
operating system. Nowadays the new use of the term is mostly for migration
from Solaris to something else.
The main options can be divide
into 2 groups
- migrating to
another OS -
still hosted on SPARC such as Linux.
- migrating to another OS on another hardware
platform.
If you're migrating to reduce your
risk of being locked into a similar situation which now faces SPARC/Solaris
users then you may want to avoid solutions like HP's HP-UX, or IBM's AIX which
could be like jumping from the frying pan into the fire. But this new resource
page (created in October 2003) will include all options which are suggested to
the editor.
The migration process is not without risks. For example -
MigraTEC - a company which in 2001 announced with Dell that it was offering
automation software to move Solaris and other Unix applications to Microsoft
Windows and Linux - went bust in October 2003.
I was surprised to find
that articles on Solaris to Linux migration, which were previously on Linux
vendor
Red Hat's web
site have been removed. This is possibly because Red Hat is now a supplier to
Sun's x86 server business and doesn't want to upset an important customer.
The two companies concluded a number of cross promotion and distribution
agreements in 2003 related to Linux and Java.
Vendors and service
companies who are involved in Solaris to Linux, or Solaris to other types of OS
transitions are encouraged to contact the publisher by email with details of
their services. |
| . |
Red
Hat Simplifies Migration from Solaris to Linux
LINUXWORLD,
BOSTON - February 15, 2005 - Red Hat announced plans to extend the
functionality of Red Hat Network to manage software distribution and
configuration for systems running Solaris.
The cross-platform
support in Red Hat Network will ease the transition from Solaris to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Red Hat Network is the service which makes the management of
thousands of systems as easy as managing a single system. Featuring one-click
Provisioning, quick set-up and flexible implementation with a simple Interface,
Red Hat Network makes Linux deployable, scalable, and manageable. The Red Hat
Network Management Platform , which is being extended to support Solaris, allows
for increased management capabilities and scalability of Linux deployments in
the enterprise. The Management Module features functionality needed to help IT
organizations lower costs and increase productivity immediately, including
systems grouping, systems permissions, scheduled actions, systems search and
package profile comparison tools.
Customers with both Solaris and Red Hat Enterprise Linux deployed will
be able to leverage the benefits of a single, unified systems management system
with Red Hat Network. Customers will save time, money and administrative
resources. The complete transition to Red Hat Enterprise Linux is made simple
and pain-free with an established management system already in place.
"After realizing significant performance gains while being able
to cut costs, customers are asking how they can complete their company-wide
transitions from proprietary Unix to Red Hat Enterprise Linux," said Paul
Cormier, Executive VP of Engineering at Red Hat. "Red Hat Network for
Solaris makes the management of this transition efficient and cost effective."
Red Hat expects the Red Hat Network Management Module for Solaris to
be available by the end of the second quarter of 2005.
...Red Hat
profile
Editor's comments:- I doubt if Sun will lose much sleep
over Red Hat's new product. A much bigger problem for Sun is that after all
the hoopla about opening up Solaris x86 nobody in the commercial world
(including most Sun VARs) seems to care very much and enthusiasm for it is less
than for catching a cold. | |
| . |
Sun
Expands HP Away Program, Migrates 50 Customers
SANTA
CLARA, Calif. - November 10, 2003 - Sun Microsystems today took
significant steps to help end-of life Alpha/Tru64 customers by adding key
resources to the Sun HP Away migration program.
Six new
Migration Solution Providers-Datamatics, EvolveWare, IrisLogic, Transoft,
Treklogic and Relativity Technologies-will provide customers with automated
tools and professional services to assist in porting applications from
Alpha/Tru64 to a Sun environment.
In addition, two new ISVs, Ulticom
and Sysix, have joined the program. They will each bring their installed base
and a commitment to work with Sun to migrate these customers from Alpha/Tru64 to
Sun. Sun also announced today that the HP Away program, initially only available
in the U.S., has been extended to Europe, with plans to expand to the rest of
the world by the end of 2003.
To date, over 50 customers have opted to
migrate from HP's AlphaServer/Tru64 to Sun. The catalyst for this migration was
created when HP announced the end of life for the estimated 400,000 Alpha/Tru64
installed systems. HP is forcing customers to Itanium based systems, but despite
HP's best efforts Itanium has yet to gain broad industry support-either with
customers or ISVs.
See also:-
article:-
Out of the Alpha Frying Pan into the Sun Fire? - It ain't necessarily so |
| . |
|
|
 | |
New name for migrating old
Solaris apps off ancient hardware
Editor:- April 28, 2010 - AppZero has published a
whitepaper
which describes how their virtualiation tools can migrate old Solaris apps (2.X)
to Solaris 10 (pdf).
The authors say this enables users to run
apps much faster on modern supported hardware.
They've been
blogging about
Solaris migration since 2009.
The roots of this technology appear
to go back to
2004
- when it was launched as a migration tool - under the earlier company name -
Trigence.
Novell Automates Hardware Migration for Solaris 10
Waltham,
MA - July 14, 2009 - Novell today announced the addition of
physical-to-virtual migration support for Sun's Solaris 10 OS in the
latest version of PlateSpin Migrate.
"We expect PlateSpin
Migrate 8.1 to make it even easier for customers to take advantage of the power
and versatility of Solaris Containers," said Jim McHugh, VP of Data Center
Software Marketing at Sun. "Using PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 to perform
physical-to-virtual migration will also help minimize the risk of introducing
errors into new configurations and speed the completion of virtualization
projects."
PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 is available later this month priced at $1,495
for a one-time
Unix
license.
Solaris Migration - New Theme for SUSE 11
Editor:- March 17, 2008 - Novell
today announced its development plans for the next generation of its enterprise
Linux platform, SUSE Linux Enterprise 11.
Solaris
Migration is one of the 11 key themes listed in the press release about
this.
To eliminate the expensive lock-in that comes with traditional
UNIX installations, customers are migrating to Linux on multiple hardware
platforms. SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 will focus on meeting or exceeding
performance benchmarks of Solaris and providing best-in-market toolsets and
features from the kernel on up.
Novell anticipates that advances in the
Linux kernel and the supporting toolset will establish SUSE Linux Enterprise 11
as the industry-standard platform for UNIX migrations.
Novell will
focus on an upgrade to the latest Linux kernel (currently planned to be 2.6.27),
leading-edge storage management technologies such as the OpenAIS cluster
communication infrastructure, a fully POSIX-conforming cluster file system
(Oracle* Cluster File System 2) and distributed replicated block device (DRBD)
support.
Diagnostic and system management features such as improved
kernel instrumentation, enhanced crash dumping and hardware monitoring, and
support for embedded service processors are expected to distinguish SUSE Linux
Enterprise as a reliable and robust operating system for mission-critical
computing.
...Novell
profile
Transitive Demos Solaris/SPARC Apps on Intel Architecture
VMworld 2006, LOS
ANGELES, Calif. - November 7, 2006 - Transitive Corp today announced
the availability of a virtual appliance that provides an evaluation release of
QuickTransit for Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/x86-64 pre-installed within a VMware
Virtual Machine.
The virtual appliance provides data center managers with a quick and
easy evaluation of Transitive's innovative hardware virtualization solution by
allowing them to execute their Solaris/SPARC applications inside a VM on a
64-bit x86-based system, running either the free VMware Server or the high-end
VMware Infrastructure 3 platform. No software installation or configuration is
required.
The Transitive virtual appliance with QuickTransit for
Solaris/SPARC-to-Linux/x86-64 pre-installed within a VMware VM is a limited
offering available at no cost to qualified enterprise data center managers.
Solaris
Migration
Clerity Acquires Sun's Mainframe Rehosting
Business
Chicago, Illinois -
August 17, 2006 - Clerity Solutions, Inc. is pleased to announce the
acquisition of Sun Microsystems' mainframe rehosting business.
On
June 30, 2006, Clerity acquired the intellectual property assets and hired Sun
employees directly involved in the mainframe rehosting solution business. This
assures support and product continuity for all current and future Sun rehosting
customers worldwide.
Effective immediately, Clerity will directly market and license the
online and batch application execution environments known as MTP (Mainframe
Transaction Processing) and MBM (Mainframe Batch Manager) software, as well as
3270 Pathway, mainframe migration tools, and associated services. Supported
platforms include Sun Solaris, IBM AIX, HP-UX and Linux.
Clerity will
continue its collaborative alliance with Sun and will establish new
relationships with Sun's partners who are involved in the support of MTP/MBM.
Whether customers are looking to rehost, migrate and/or modernize
applications to meet new business demands, Clerity offers customers the means by
which to reduce costs, protect investments, and optimize data center
functionality.
...Clerity
profile, ...Sun
profile, Sun
VARs in the USA , Acquired
storage companies,
Solaris
Migration
Running SPARC / Solaris Apps on Intel
Hardware
Editor:- July 11,
2006 - an article today in ITJungle.com paints an interesting portrait
of a company called Transitive.
The company, which
designs emulation software, will soon launch a package which will run SPARC /
Solaris applications on Intel / Linux servers. ..read the article
Microsoft Publishes IDC Research on Unix
Customers' Attitude to Migration
Editor:-
March 23, 2006 - Microsoft today published an IDC report which
looked at issues related to Unix migration.
IDC interviewed 400
Unix/RISC customers about their attitudes to migration. The average interview
time was 30 minutes. It makes very interesting reading. The report says Sun is
the main target for migration and the clock is ticking. Here are some
extracts...
"Sun Solaris continues to be the most popular
Unix variant for Unix servers running Web infrastructure. While this is
not surprising given the dot-com success that Sun enjoyed in the late 1990s and
into 2000, it does continue to represent a challenge for Sun because
these workloads have been frequent targets for migration over the past five
years."
"IDC believes that the server life-cycle issues are
driving much of this change, because the systems in the Unix installed base
have aged in recent years, and this is compounded by the fact that many dot-com
era installations with Web enablement of business workloads, are coming of age
and will require replacement. In addition, many Unix/RISC servers were
deployed in preparation for Y2K and many of these systems are now
nearing the end of their useful life cycle." ...read
the article (pdf), ...IDC
profile,
Solaris
Migration Resources |
| . |
Sun Offers "Safe Haven" for HP's PA-RISC Users (Again)
Editor:- March
3, 2006 - I thought that maybe a month had flashed by without me noticing and
that it might actually be April 1st already - when I saw the following
phrase in an open letter this week from
Sun's
Scott McNealy to
HP's CEO and
President Mark Hurd.
"Solaris is a vendor-neutral OS..."
This was part of yet another new snake-oil charm offensive /
marketing
program aimed at HP PA-RISC users - which
Sun
announced earlier this week.
McNealy's letter helpfully proposes
that Sun and
HP should converge HP-UX
with Solaris 10.
My guess is that HP will not rush to accept this charitable offer.
HP's server business has been growing in revenue recently (unlike Sun's).
If we temporarily disregard the impact of anti-trust legislation which would
prevent this - then consider for a moment how Sun would react if it got a
hypothetical fantasy open letter from
Microsoft's
Steve
Ballmer - suggesting that Sun should migrate all its Solaris users onto
Windows?
For extra impact - Steve might want to borrow that phrase -
and remind Scott that "Windows is a vendor-neutral OS..."
Cynics might say that such a letter (from Steve) is superfluous - because the
user migration from Solaris to Windows is well underway. Windows has recently
overtaken all forms of Unix in
worldwide
server revenue according to a recent report by
IDC.
Joshing
aside, I much prefer Sun's former openly aggressive competitive style (as
exemplified in its dotcom
fantasy days) to the newer polite - but implausible style evinced in its
latest anti-HP campaign. ...read the
letter |
| . |
IBM
and Red Hat Launch New Sun Away Programs
IBM Claims over 3,000 Solaris
Customer Scalps
SOMERS,
NY - May 17, 2005 - IBM in conjunction with Red Hat today
announced the introduction of a Solaris-to-Linux server migration program that
includes a "Solaris to Linux Migration Factory," and additional
solutions and support offerings designed to help customers migrate from Solaris
to multi-platform Linux servers.
The service includes for the first time a pre-funded, pre-sales
migration assessment from IBM Systems & Technology Group for qualified
customers that will result in no charge to the customer for the
assessment, and will help them answer difficult questions and determine the
right migration strategy to Linux. Once the assessment is completed and the
customer decides they want to continue with the migration, then IBM's Migration
Factory is engaged.
IBM has completed more than 500 HP/UX and Solaris-to-AIX customer
migration engagements since early 2004 and is now bringing that knowledge and
expertise to an extended customer set focused on migrations to Linux with this
announcement. The service will enable customers in all industries to more
quickly migrate to a Linux environment, including those in the Wall Street and
financial services sectors.
IBM also announced today that another wave of 22 financial services
ISVs have committed to porting 48 Solaris applications to Linux on IBM's eServer
platform since last year, of which 33 are already available as of today. Last
year, IBM identified a total of 24 ISVs and 58 applications in interviews with
23 of the top Wall Street companies as the most critical applications to target
for Solaris-to-Linux porting. The adoption of Linux by formerly
Solaris-exclusive ISVs is expected to expand even faster with the recent
introduction of IBM eServer Application Advantage for Linux, also known as the
Chiphopper offering, the IT industry's first combination of support and testing
tools that is helping to deliver on the promise of a cross-platform Linux
solution for ISVs. Since its introduction in February of this year, the
Chiphopper offering has resulted in more than 100 new applications being
available on IBM eServers running Linux.
"A Solaris-to-Linux migration is nothing new at IBM. In fact,
since IBM began its Linux journey several years ago, we estimate that more than
3,000 of our approximately 12,000 Linux customer engagements have been
with customers moving from a Solaris environment to Linux," said Scott
Handy, vice president of worldwide Linux for IBM. "With volumes like these,
we really needed a factory approach. And based on our experience, the number-one
issue is that customers don't know just how easy a UNIX-to-Linux migration is,
which is why we are offering to cover the cost of the initial assessment for
qualified customers. The credibility of our migration specialists working with
real customers wanting to get to Linux, combined with our cost effective Linux
solutions and capabilities, usually results in a customer either embarking on a
successful migration with us or with one of our business partners."
"Enterprise migration from Solaris to Linux is inevitable.
Working with IBM we will make the transition from Solaris to Red Hat Enterprise
Linux as efficient and easy as possible," said Paul Cormier, Executive Vice
President of Engineering at Red Hat. "The Chiphopper and Migration Factory
programs offer clear concise plans to both customers and ISVs to make the move."
...Red Hat
profile, ...IBM profile,
Linux Portals |
| . |
HP
Lands More than 200 Sun Server Customers in Sun Eclipse Program - A Mere
Fleabite of an Irritant to Sun
PALO ALTO,
Calif. - September 21, 2004 -
HP today announced that in the past 18 months more than 200 customers
worldwide have chosen HP servers over Sun systems to help improve
agility in the datacenter and adapt rapidly to changing business needs.
By offering a portfolio of services and incentives with the broadest
industry standard-based server line, HP has gained new customers in financial
services, manufacturing, retail, aerospace, bioinformatics, telecommunications
and the public sector. In financial services alone, HP has won more than 40
significant deals from Sun Microsystems, Inc.
The 200 HP customer wins include Bank of Bolivariano of Ecuador,
Belkin Corp., Dynamic Net, Forbes.com and The University of Hong Kong.
"Numerous Sun customers looking for more choice, lower total cost
of ownership, better investment protection and a consistent long-term roadmap
have chosen HP for industry-standard enterprise solutions," said Mark
Hudson, vice president of marketing, Enterprise Storage and Servers, HP. "HP
is winning business from Sun by addressing critical customer needs, offering a
choice of operating systems and delivering the right technology at the right
price. In just the past three months, we've increased the number of migrations
to HP from Sun by 50%, moving customers to HP Integrity and ProLiant servers."
According to a 2004 META Group study, the top business drivers
prompting application replacement on Sun servers are the need for improved
agility and adaptability, which align closely with HP's Adaptive Enterprise
strategy.
The Sun Eclipse
Program, a comprehensive portfolio of services and incentives from HP, helps
Sun customers move to Adaptive Enterprise solutions. In the Americas, HP has
augmented the migration services it offers Sun customers with special incentives
and system trade-ins across its industry-standard servers, with the choice of
HP-UX, Linux or Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Other specific HP assurances to Sun customers in the Americas include
proof-of-concept and migration assistance for qualified customers, as well as
attractive incentives for education, mission-critical services, financing and
hardware trade-ins. HP also introduced a special introductory offer to qualified
Sun customers who are interested in HP's industry-leading blade solutions and is
offering incentives in proof-of-concept services to transition to the HP
BladeSystem infrastructure.
...HP profile
Editor's
comments:- I can cast some more light on the Sun Eclipse issue and its real
significance in the market. In October 2003 - I set up a resource page
Solaris
Migration - migrating away from Sun's OS - on the
SPARC Product Directory.
During the last 12 months, this has received only 1,522 pageviews out of 254,532
unique visitors - which is indicates a very low interest in this subject of 0.6%
of SPARC readers. So I don't think this is more than a fleabite of an irritant
to Sun's own marketers. |
| . |
Solaris
to HP Linux
PALO ALTO,
Calif. - October 3, 2003 - HP today announced a comprehensive
migration program to help move customers from Sun Solaris to HP's market-leading
industry-standard platforms running Linux.
The new sales and
service program offers customers at no cost a combination of assessment, porting
and migration services, valued at approximately $25,000, for moving applications
from Sun Solaris to Linux.
The program enables qualified customers to
take advantage of the cost savings of open source Linux and the power and choice
of industry-standard computing. HP's Sun migration program provides qualifying
customers in the Americas with a free assessment of porting and migration needs
for up to three applications; porting of one application at no charge; use of an
industry-standard HP ProLiant server for up to 30 days for proof of concept
testing; and an HP StorageWorks storage area network assessment at no charge to
improve storage utilization.
HP has established a hotline at +1 800 HP ASK ME (+1 800 472 7563) and
a Sun eclipse website for customers
to take advantage of this offer, which is available through Dec. 31, 2003.
...HP profile |
| . |
Solaris to
Linux porting guide - article by IBM
IBMers Malcom Zung and
Brian Thomson take a look at why you might want to port your application from
Sun Solaris to Linux, and present guidelines, suggestions, and resources to
help. ...IBM profile |
| . |
Solaris
to Microsoft Windows 2000
Microsoft has lots of resource pages and
articles on this subject
How to
Migrate Linux and UNIX Web Sites to Windows and Internet Information Server
- includes technical information and case studies of organizations which have
moved from Solaris to to Windows 2000.
How
to Migrate Your Platform Infrastructure to Windows from UNIX - includes
links to articles which compare the features of Solaris with Windows 2000 and
practical checklists for the migration process itself. ...Microsoft profile |
 | |
