Oracle Solaris Reviews

I manage a wide range of systems, from low-end to high-end, including Super Clusters, totaling around 250 physical and virtual systems.

Solaris Zones and Containers are my favorite features.

The primary drawback with this product is the lack of version updates. Despite my association with Oracle, I find it a concern that they are persisting with version 11.4 without transitioning to version 12. Updating to a new version would convey a sense of innovation and progress, even if they are incorporating numerous enhancements, fixes, and security measures.

I have been working with it for more than twenty years.

The stability of the system is incredible; once installed, it remains stable unless modifications are made.

Its scalability is a key feature. Whether it's functioning as a virtual assistant or handling various tasks online, the system allows for easy adjustments, additions, or removal of resources, making it highly scalable.

Occasionally, when there's a support call, there might be instances where we don't receive immediate technical assistance. However, based on my extensive experience in support, I understand that solutions can be delivered promptly. Overall, Oracle's support is reliable and effective, I would rate it nine out of ten.

Positive

I hold certifications from IBM and am MSP UX certified. I've worked extensively with SCO Unix and began my career with various Unix systems, including the black. Despite having experience with a range of Unix systems, I decided to focus on Solaris due to its diverse opportunities.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The current setup with hardware devices involves a higher cost, but the performance is top-notch.

The platform is highly efficient and stable, offering a straightforward toolset compared to others. One notable advantage is its simplicity; where other operating systems might require four or five commands, Solaris typically accomplishes the same task with just one command. I would rat it nine out of ten.

We use it as customers, integrators, and resellers.

Our primary use case is for mission-critical systems.

Solaris' performance and reliability for running databases and applications is very good.

One of the main advantages is the rock-solid reliability. It works. The stability is very good. It has a very good track record in the data security database.

A valuable feature is the file system it has, ZFS. It does check on old data which enables us to be able to rely on the date that's written on the discs. We know the data is correct because when you read the data, you can verify the checks of the data itself.

One of the drawbacks is Oracle itself. Oracle has its good and bad they are not putting resources into the development. 

I have been using Oracle Solaris in different formatations since around 1986.

I have used Oracle Solaris for applications, especially to install and run the applications.

I like the solution's from a cost perspective. Also, it's pretty stable on Azure, considering that we cannot use it on IEX. So, for that, Oracle is available.

I don't want to receive any updates on Oracle. The aforementioned detail can be considered for improvement.

I have been using Oracle Solaris for a few years.

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten since we haven't faced any issues. I find it pretty stable on Linux.

We have a different team for contacting Oracle's technical support.

I have used other solutions, but it comes under the platform team, and they are the ones who interact with Oracle's technical support. I cannot comment on the performance because they are interacting with the tech support of other people. So for us, it's more on the application.

Regarding the setup, if you say the application, it is pretty easy.

The solution can be deployed on Linux, Oracle, or Azure and not on IEX.

For me, it works fine. I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.

The primary use case of this solution is for the installation of the Oracle Database and further monitoring and managing.

The most valuable feature is the ease of setup.

The solution is pricey and can be improved by lowering the cost.

I have been using the solution for almost three years.

The solution is stable as long as you apply the patches and upgrades as recommended by the vendors.

The solution is scalable.

The technical support is on point and is always helpful.

Positive

Previously to using this solution I used Linux and Microsoft.

The initial setup was straightforward with the help of Oracle documentation and took one day.

The implementation was completed with the help of a vendor.

The solution is expensive and is based on an annual fee.

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Unlike most Oracle products which are complex to set up this solution can be deployed with the help of the Oracle documentation for a UAT or IST integration case environment purpose.

There are over 60 people using the solution in our organization.

If cost is not an issue I recommend the solution.

We are using Oracle Solaris for an external data center. We switched to Oracle Solaris because we outsourced Oracle to a third party and they went from Oracle Linux to Solaris because of license issues with Oracle Linux. We had to then go over as well for some functionality reasons, such as to do hard partitioning. We were able to minimize the number of CPU cores available for Oracle Linux which help save money because we did not have to pay full price.

We do not use Solaris in general terms because we are end-users, we are an application service provider. We have an external party that delivers us an Oracle database and the platform underneath the Oracle database is agnostic to us. We do not care about it as long as we have an Oracle database running. My team, which are technicians, is completely not involved in the Solaris platform. We just have an Oracle database running where a third party takes care of it, and they choose Solaris because of license issues.

When we switch over to Solaris it was not easy because we had some troubles with the performance. Solaris is from Oracle and you would expect that it would run flawlessly, but we had some issues in sizing the previous Linux environment to the Solaris environment.

I have been using this solution for approximately one year.

The stability of the solution is good.

Oracle Solaris is scalable. However, this depends on the hardware that is running in the environment but this is not the fault of the solution if the hardware is not adequate.

Our standard platform is VMware and Oracle Solaris runs fine on VMware, but if you have VMware running on it, you do not get support.

I have used Oracle and Red Hat Linux previously.

The initial setup is straightforward.

If you have a 20 or 30-core CPU underneath Oracle, they expect you to pay for all the cores, although the VM only has assigned a couple of them. They are very difficult license-wise and that is the reason why we went to Oracle Solaris. We were presented this option by our external advisor to prohibit extensive Oracle Linux costs.

We have a lot of government organizations here in Holland leaving Oracle. It is not a bad solution, it is a perfect solution because we have used it for more than 25 years and have never lost one record. It is technically a good solution, but the licensing and sales issues, people are really annoyed about and many Dutch organizations are going over to other solutions. For example, Postgres databases or EnterpriseDB, which is a commercial version of Postgres. They are more cost-efficient if you speak to sales teams.

The price is not good and needs to improve. What was surprising to us was that our Oracle databases run better with fewer resources on Linux than they did on Solaris. We found that strange because if Oracle brings out the new version of their database it is almost always firstly brought out on their own platforms, such as Solaris. You would expect that Solaris would work the best. However, in our case, it did not, there is something wrong with the resources in Solaris.

I have evaluated the Postgres database and Enterprise database.

I would prefer Linux then Oracle Solaris because it is more open. If you are in a commercial environment, then use a commercial Linux version, not a free version. We have seven customers using Red Hat, the support is very good, and there are hardly any issues.

I will not recommend Solaris because of the attitude of Oracle, what we have experienced in the database, how they handle licenses, and legally. They are not a company that is fair and are very aggressively trying to get money. However, they provide a solid solution.

I rate Oracle Solaris a nine out of ten.

We are using the solution for multiple purposes. We are using it, for example, for our local environment, and we are using it for our core banking. We even use it for our database and a lot of other things.

The reliability of the solution is excellent.

The security has been very good overall.

We've found the solution to have good availability.

The backup capabilities are quite good.

The solution has proven to be quite stable so far.

The product can scale.

The solution is 100% free to use. It doesn't cost a company anything as it's embedded in the hardware.

I haven't had any big issues with the solution. Largely, I've been very happy with it. 

Sometimes we get stuck for security reasons. There's an issue with either the filing or use management. However, largely it just comes down to a lack of experience and over time, users get the hang of it. 

It would be helpful if the solution offered backend management. In the 11.4 version, Oracle added a management console. It would be great if we maybe had a user management tool to go with it.

I've been using the solution for a long time. It's been about 11 years. It's over a decade at this point.

The stability has been very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable.

The solution can scale, however, it depends on the need. Whenever we require an extension we go for that.

Our whole IT department is currently on the solution.

We're quite satisfied both with technical support and the product itself. Support, for example, is responsive, however, we have a very low number of calls with Oracle due to the fact that we find this application very stable.

We have a pretty complex environment and therefore had a pretty complex setup.

You don't have to pay a licensing fee. The solution is free to use. It's bound with the hardware.

We are just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Oracle.

I would 100% recommend the solution to other organizations. The solution has been quite reliable and secure. For an enterprise environment, it's a great product.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Zones and resource allocation through capping and project is my favourite feature.

Lately, I have been using ZFS and I absolutely love it, but I didn't get much of a chance to explore it fully in a production environment.

This product performed wonderfully with my banking client, where I participated in implementation of virtualization through Solaris zones and then capping CPUs. We integrated zones with VCS clusters. It provided unmatchable stability, high availability, scalability and the best tunable performance.

We used it on M series, X series or the latest T series. It gave great reliable performance on all of the hardware.

I believe it's a great product and its latest versions are also really good. However, I believe Oracle is not utilising its full potential by restricting it best performance with Oracle hardware. Even though it can be run on SPARC, as well as Intel hardware, the problem lies with the way Oracle chooses to promote it. They are always saying that it performs best with Oracle hardware. They should understand current demand for open source and publish white papers for its performance on Intel hardware. And they must change their stratergy with Dell, HP and other blade server manufacturers and enable them to use Solaris and promote Solaris.

Also, they should promote Oracle Solaris with open source tools like HANA, Hadoop, Puppet, Chef, and Ansible. Meanwhile, they can continue to develop and promote their in-house competitive products as well.

To summarise, I feel the main issue lies with their promotion and sales strategies, and also their relations with competing hardware vendors and database/application vendors.

I have used Solaris for more than 8 years, almost all of my career, with all of my clients.

I have done many deployments, migrations and so on with Solaris or to Solaris, and I never faced a problem where I would have received a response from Oracle/Sun support that it was not possible. The product and its features work almost exactly as promised and the documentation available for the product.

Yes, I have seen bugs like zoneadmd hanging, or a zone getting stuck in a shutting down state, but they usually don't happen during deployments or planned activities.

Experience with Sun support was absolutely fantastic, but it deteriorated a little when Oracle support took over.

Most of the environments used Solaris, and we upgraded from Solaris 8/9 to Solaris 10.

In my experience, we mostly moved up from older hardware running Solaris 8 to Solaris 10 on new hardware. Complexities came in the form of an upgraded version of Veritas Cluster and volume manager or storage migration. Solaris itself didn't create any issues at OS level.

We mostly did implementation through in-house teams.

The most important thing is to have a sufficient downtime window and application or database support teams to be available to verify immediately.

I don't have much of an idea about pricing, but it should be decoupled from SPARC architecture.

Even though nowadays, I am using RedHat Linux, in my environment, I miss Solaris a lot.

Trust Solaris. It is still better than Linux in many ways.

The solution can be used to run some applications on your PC. 

Oracle Solaris's operating system is good. 

The scalability of the solution can be improved. 

I have been using Oracle Solaris for ten years. 

Oracle Solaris is highly stable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

The solution is scalable. Three people are using the solution at present. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

The technical support is helpful and the response time depends on the severity of the problem. 

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes three hours time.

The deployment can be done in-house. 

The solution is free to use. 

I recommend using this solution. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten.