We use Oracle Solaris to develop and support our VDCF (Virtual Datacenter Cloud Framework) management software. Several virtual machines (LDoms and Zones) are used on SPARC and x86 Servers.
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We use Oracle Solaris to develop and support our VDCF (Virtual Datacenter Cloud Framework) management software. Several virtual machines (LDoms and Zones) are used on SPARC and x86 Servers.
We are able to deploy new environments very quickly and securely. Using the virtualization features, we can migrate the environments very flexibly between our servers.
Solaris includes two virtualization solutions: LDoms for SPARC and Solaris Zones. Both solutions can be combined to create private clouds. Solaris Zones is ideal to separate applications and to migrate from older to current hardware. LDoms is very efficient because it uses the hardware hypervisor of the SPARC servers.
Both technologies increase Security, because they separate the applications from each other. Using the Security Compliance Framework we are sure the systems are setup properly
Patching without downtime would be nice.
Update 08/2021: Live Paching of Kernel is now available. We applied IDRs successfully on several servers.
More than 11 years now.
We had no issues with the stability.
Solaris is very robust and scalable. No issues so far scaling it.
Oracle offers a good online support portal called "My Oracle Support", which includes a big knowledge base. Because Oracle is a very large organization, it sometimes takes a bit too much time for support requests to reach the right support engineer.
Neutral
Used Solaris 10 before, but Solaris 11 is much easier and faster with patching.
Based on BootEnvironments and ZFS Solaris 11 always offers a failback.
The initial setup is straightforward. Oracle has in-depth admin manuals. To speed up deployments, we implemented our own deployment and management framework VDCF.
We implemented it with our in-house team based on Oracle's best practices documents. With virtualization, we recommend to first define a standard on how to deploy and then to deploy using that standard, avoiding any variation. There are so many options, but our favorite is the fully-virtualized LDom with applications installed into Solaris Zones.
When buying a server from Oracle, all the software is included -- OS, virtualization and patches. There are no hidden costs. We like the long life cycle of Solaris and the SPARC servers. There's no need to replace the hardware every two to three years, and we have a life cycle of five years and more.
Use deployment tools for automation and avoid doing everything manually. Deployment tools help to avoid errors and create a standardized environment.
I use openSUSE Leap as the base for the Kubernetes cluster we run in-house. We used the solution to set up a Kubernetes cluster for internal testing purposes, and it's running smoothly. I used the solution to integrate with K3s Kubernetes Distribution, which worked perfectly.
I use openSUSE Leap as the base for the Kubernetes cluster we run in-house.
The initial system setup or network configuration of the solution is not straightforward and can be improved. You have to go forward and back with several screens in the setup tool.
I have been using openSUSE Leap for 12 to 15 months.
The solution's stability and reliability are perfect, and the systems are up and running.
I rate the solution ten out of ten for stability.
Around 20 people in my department are using the solution.
I rate the solution an eight out of ten for scalability.
I have previously used CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and openSUSE Tumbleweed.
On a scale from one to ten, where one is difficult and ten is easy, I rate the solution's initial setup a seven out of ten.
Setting up the first server took me roughly two days. We created some Ansible scripts for the setup, which dramatically sped up the other two. Setting up the second and third servers took me around half a day.
openSUSE Leap is a free and open-source solution.
We use the solution's YaST (Yet another Setup Tool) for things we're not used to, but I prefer using a command line for general things. The software and hardware compatibility of openSUSE Leap are good compared to the operating systems we've used. Previously, we used a lot of CentOS, and we have had no issues with either of them.
The solution allows you to make an on-prem experience using Kubernetes. It's very easy to set up Kubernetes using the K3s distribution, which fits perfectly with an openSUSE Leap server.
Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.