Oracle Solaris Reviews

Our primary use case is the storage of logged information from several IoT devices.

We have found the performance features, some partitioning features, compression features, storage features, and the PL/SQL language features to be very valuable.

The administration features are also very useful.

The product is very expensive. 

The Solaris code is open, and the documentation is accessible to all, not only to registered users. Also, the documentation does not support some solutions, and there are no other options.

I've been using this solution for nine years.

Oracle Solaris is stable and reliable.

The initial setup can be complex if you don't have a lot of experience. The deployment can take anywhere from days to months.

It is a very expensive product.

This product is stable, has good documentation, lots of solutions, a big community, and good support. Oracle Solaris is a good product, but it is expensive.

Therefore, I would rate it at eight on a scale from one to ten.

I used Oracle Solaris in business. There are customers that need to backup their Oracle Solaris servers. I would help integrate a solution, such as Veeam, which has an agent for Solaris to backup the Solaris operating system.

Oracle Solaris was the preferred operating system for their customers to run their databases on and to get the best performance. It performs well with Oracle applications. Additionally, there are some features inside that are called zones which are Linux containers.

Oracle Solaris is a Unix-based operating system. People used to call it Slowaris because it was very slow. However, they have different CPU architectures. You can use Solaris also on a normal server x86. Additionally, they have their own CPU architecture, which is called Oracle SPARC architecture. I believe before Oracle was using Oracle Linux, they were using Oracle Solaris for their customers who are using Oracle databases. This was because it was more optimized for the hardware built for it. It has good performance for the database only. However, if you take it out of the Oracle applications, it will not do well compared to other operating systems, such as Linux or even Windows can have better performance.

I have been using Oracle Solaris for a couple of months.

I have used Oracle Linux.

You either buy Oracle Solaris to install it on your hardware, or you get the hardware. Most of the people making the right decision would get the hardware with the SPARC-based architecture.

I did the installation of Oracle Solaris in a lab at home. I did some very small tests. It installs similar to a Linux or Unix installation, they all have the same procedure. It was not complex for me but it would be for others without experience.

I did the implementation of the solution.

This solution needs a license to use it.

If you downloaded Oracle databases you could use this solution but there are better solutions, such as Oracle Linux. Linux has proven to be better performance than Solaris in many aspects. If you approach Oracle and ask them, which one you should use Oracle Solaris or Oracle Linux, they would say Oracle Linux.

I rate Oracle Solaris a seven out of ten.

It is used for Oracle applications and Oracle Database.

It works well. It is very stable and very good. 

It is also very safe. It cannot be easily infected by viruses or attacks.

It is not easy to use. It doesn't have a user-friendly interface. It should be easy to use. We are planning to move from Solaris to Linux because Linux is more flexible and user-friendly. Its installation should also be easier. 

Solaris also needs specific hardware to work well, which is another reason why we are moving to Linux. It should be more flexible in terms of hardware. It should have better integration with other hardware platforms.

I have been using Oracle Solaris for ten years.

It is very stable. We didn't have to do any maintenance on it.

It is scalable. We have approximately 120 users.

We are also using Windows Server 2012.

Its installation is not easy. It was installed a long ago. It didn't take a long time.

We get external support for installation, implementation, or maintenance. They have a team of three or four technical people.

Its licensing is on a yearly basis.

I would recommend this solution. It is stable and safe but not easy to use. It is very good for Oracle applications.

I would rate Oracle Solaris a seven 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.

Clients mainly use the solution as a database operating system in many environments. Most who are using it are financial institutions, telecoms, or companies in the energy sector. 

Of late the most valuable feature is virtualization. They have attained virtualization and it's quite simple to create the Oracle Solaris zones.

The solution is quite powerful.

Oracle Solaris is great due to the fact that it actually is meant for high-end servers. 

The high availability is great. You can clone and you can do quite a number of things with them. There's also the ZFS File system which is very good. Is one of the best file systems that there is.

Most of the product is still command-line, despite the fact that they've got a graphical user interface in some areas. For some reason, core administration is still done via command-line.

The manufacturer can put most of those command-line environments into classical use like other operating systems. With Solaris the administration part is through command-line which may be difficult for some people who may not be used to that way of working.

Currently, there are two variants, there's SPARC and there's x86. I would have wanted a scenario where they're all just one product.

I would have loved if the clustering data was a bit simpler. Currently, the clustering data is a product on its own. It would be great if there was higher availability data with that.

I've been an Oracle Solaris consultant for over 20 years.

This is the most stable operating system compared to other operating systems that I know. If you look at it, it's rarely attacked by viruses and it rarely fails due to its reliable hardware. SPARC is normally very stable.

It rarely fails. Even if it fails, it gives you a lot of warnings in the logs. The log warnings are very clear. If you follow along you really get to the crux of the matter. 

When it comes to scalability, it's even more scalable than other competitors given the fact that it's a high-end operating system.

It ranges from one single processor to over a hundred cores. It's a very scalable operating system. I'd say it's more scalable than any Linux and Windows environment - in vertical scaling, that is. The SPARC servers are extremely powerful. You can put a very huge database on it or even a very big application.

Oracle support is good. The only this is that it is expensive. At the end of the day, if you are on Oracle support you are sorted out quickly. They are very responsive and knowledgable. If you are not on Oracle support you have to support it yourself and figure out what the issues are without their assistance.

With Oracle, everything is together and it comes nearly with all the patches and it's really great. If you put it on Oracle hardware, everything is there and it still works with Oracle. Once it's in installed the only issues that may arise are performance issues, and that may be a configuration problem on your end. 

At the end of the day, Oracle support will support you, and they will sort you out. They normally release patches on a regular basis. It used to be a monthly basis, however, I think now it's a quarterly basis. Those patches can help you if there's a new hardware release, which is not on your old Solaris environment.

In the latest versions, the initial setup is not very complex. Solaris is normally of two variants. There is the SPARC variant and there is the Intel variant. 

With the implementation, the steps and procedures are very clear. You just install more if you're installing in SPARC or if you're installing it on an Oracle hardware.

It's very easy to install due to the fact that all the patches are there, unlike other products where you have to put apart from this other side of all these. With this solution, everything is there, so it's very straightforward. The implementation is very, very straightforward, and simple by the way.

This is a free product. It doesn't cost anything. What you can purchase is support. 

If you buy Oracle hardware it's supported free with the hardware. If you're putting it on non-Oracle hardware, that is when you buy the support license, which is also very reasonable. It is $1000 dollars per year, so it's not overly expensive. 

If you compare what it can do with how much Oracle charges for support, it's more or less free.

In our company, we don't use Oracle Solaris. As a person, I was employed as a Solaris System Administrator. I'm just a consultant. We don't use Oracle Solaris, because we're not big enough to use the solution ourselves. 

Overall, I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

I would highly recommend Oracle Solaris. It's a stable operating system and it's been around for a long time. If you're planning to have an Oracle Database, the best operating system for the Oracle Database is Oracle Solaris.

If anybody is implementing a new solution or a new environment and thinks of putting in Oracle Database, the first option would be Oracle Solaris, then they can look at other OSs like Windows and Linux.

I have worked for multiple large enterprise environments and one small environment.

I have touched every Solaris OS from 2.5.1 to Solaris 11.4. In my time, I have maintained Sparc 10 workstations and M8 servers, as well as everything in between.

Businesses I have worked for include Manufacturing (large SAP and Oracle DB shops), Outsourcing, Military, and Logistics companies.

I have extensive knowledge of how the OS performs and its capabilities.  

We were able to use zones to reduce the hardware footprint by seventy percent in my time at one company. Using zones, we're also able to automate our entire DR process, taking it from a twelve-hour Recovery time (with three people) to a forty-minute Recovery Time (with one person).

The ability to manipulate the zones and the files within the zones from a global OS provides us flexibility that no other virtualization can match.

The most valuable features are the Zones, ZFS, UAR, ABEs, pkg and the entire network stack.

I love the way you can create virtual NICs in the local zones and maintain all of your zpools in that local zone as well. The ability to use ABEs as a back-out for changes is invaluable.

The Unified archives for system-builds and OS backups, to be used in the event of a major issue, has also served us well. This capability has saved us countless hours of potential downtime during our change windows, as we were able to recover a host within five minutes.  

Marketing and communication efforts need to be improved. Many in this world think Solaris is dead or dying. This idea has to be stopped and even reversed in order for Solaris to regain market share. Solaris is one of the best OSs out there today, and everyone seems to think it's going away. If Oracle spent more time informing people of what they're doing WITH Solaris vs laying off their developers then we would see a lot more people adopting this superior OS.

This is one of the most stable Operating systems on the market.

Solaris is extremely scalable, both vertically and horizontally.

Oracle customer service is slow at times. I typically find my solution before they do. This is not to say they aren't helpful, rather I just have a better time finding answers than they do.

I did not work with another solution prior to choosing this one.

This solution is very straightforward and simple, even for a Linux admin.

This solution was implemented in-house.

Not sure I have ever put a number to it, but we save a lot of man-hours because we run Solaris.

Just look into it. You'll find that this is one of the lower-cost solutions out there. There is no OS licensing cost if you use their hardware and purchase hardware maintenance.

I did not evaluate other options.

I would suggest that you test it in your environment. Start small and see what it can do, and reach out to me for any help. You'll see it is a solid solution that more people should adopt.

We use Oracle Solaris to develop and support our VDCF (Virtual Datacenter Cloud Framework) management and monitoring 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.

I have been using the solution for more than 14 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'm a distributor who provides Oracle Solaris virtualization solutions to about 100 customers. I'm with the biggest distributor of Sun Microsystems. 

It's stable.

Solaris is not easy to use. It needs better GUI, UI, and configuration tools.

I've been using Oracle Solaris for 16 years.

Solaris is scalable because they have their own file system, like CFS.

Oracle support is getting better.

Installation is complex and it takes up to two days. To install and configure Solaris to meet the average customer's requirements takes two or three engineers.

Licensing for Solaris is normally on a yearly basis.

I would rate Solaris eight out of 10.