White Paper

Data Center Modernization

The Case for Migrating from

SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server®

Table of Contents page

Modernize Your Data Center by Migrating

   from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux
   Enterprise Server. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Data Center Modernization—Why and How . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
The Decline of SPARC/Oracle Solaris. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Innovation Fuels the Rise of Linux. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versus Oracle Solaris. . . . . . . 4
Summary and Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Data Center Modernization White Paper
The Case for Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Modernize Your Data Center by

Migrating from SPARC/Oracle
Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux ®

Enterprise Server
Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE ®

Linux Enterprise Server offers you greater innovation,

better performance at a much lower cost, and a higher
degree of ISV enthusiasm—now and in the future.
Data Center Modernization—Why and How
Staying competitive in today’s market requires modernizing
your data centers. Why? “Modern” data center infrastruc-
tures allow you to:
Easily take advantage of new innovation
Reduce data center costs by decreasing software licensing,
maintenance and hardware acquisition costs
Increase data center resource utilization by ­consolidating
assets, implementing cloud computing and supporting
­application portability
Improve workload performance and lower operating
­expenses by using newer, more powerful yet energy-
efficient hardware
Increase business agility by helping you address technology
and market changes more rapidly
Improve employee productivity by supporting strategies
such as BYOD (bring your own device)
Improve security and management by addressing any gaps
caused by an ever-changing IT landscape
Support a new wave of applications including new solutions
for mobile devices, cloud computing, Big Data and social
media
Where do you start? Perhaps the two most important areas
to consider when modernizing your data center are imple-
menting virtualization and choosing the “right” operating
system/hardware server platforms. Virtualization enables
you to consolidate multiple workloads, often running on
individual servers, onto significantly fewer virtualized host
servers, reducing data center expenditures substantially.
Virtualization also leads to flexible networks and enables
you to move compute resources, whatever they are, to bet-
ter respond to changes in demand. Without virtualization
your speed in provisioning and de-provisioning resources is
greatly constrained.
Selecting an operating system/hardware server
platform for your data center has long-term
consequences. The selection process must take
into account not only features of both the operating
system and the hardware platform on which it runs,
but the ability of the platform to enable and support
your future business requirements.

2
Selecting an operating system/hardware server platform for
your data center has long-term consequences. The selection
process must take into account not only features of both
the operating system and the hardware platform on which
it runs, but the ability of the platform to enable and support
your future business requirements.
The Decline of SPARC/Oracle Solaris
Historically, SPARC/Oracle Solaris has been the most fre-
quently chosen platform for Internet-era data center infra-
structure because of superior SPARC server performance
and Oracle Solaris’ robustness. This included a strong scale-
up story, packaged business applications such as ERP and
CRM from various vendors, high-end database offerings
and superior out-of-the-box availability with development
around extending availability through preemptive manage-
ment and hot replacement/no-reboot solutions.
Today, however, SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms are ag-
ing, and support and maintenance contracts are expensive.
Various user surveys1 indicate that Oracle’s support quality
is diminishing despite ever-increasing support costs. SPARC
server performance has also suffered, especially on a per-
core basis. In addition, ISVs are dropping support for ap-
plications on SPARC/Oracle Solaris. This lack of innovation
limits your ability to take advantage of many new technolo-
gies, such as virtualization, cloud computing and new stor-
age technologies that reduce costs and help you be more
responsive to market changes.
Innovation Fuels the Rise of Linux
What is the alternative? Until recently, x86 servers running
Linux lacked the performance, RAS (reliability, availability
__________
1 See: http://gabrielconsultinggroup.com/gcg-press-room-
mainmenu-50/279-oracle-survey-implications-of-the-new-oracle.
html
http://itic-corp.com/blog/2011/02/itic-reliabiity-survey-oracle-
users-anxiousangry-over-service-support-slippage
www.computereconomics.com/custom.cfm?name=articlePrint.
cfm&id=1597
2 http://docs.media.bitpipe.com/io_10x/io_106502/item_582322/
TT 12-188 HP Unix to Linux Migration revised.pdf
www.suse.com
and serviceability), scale-up capabilities and workload man-
agement of the large SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms used
to run mission-critical, back-end database applications. But
that is no longer the case.
Today, the price, performance and reliability of industry stan-
dard x86 servers have improved to the point where they can
meet and exceed the capabilities of RISC/UNIX platforms,
including SPARC/Oracle Solaris.2
In other words, the reasons to continue buying SPARC/
Oracle Solaris platforms have become less and less com-
pelling. As a result, enterprises are migrating from SPARC/
Oracle Solaris to x86/Linux platforms running new multi-
core, scale-up x86 servers such as the HP DL980 Xeon 7500
series servers, IBM System x3690 and Dell PowerEdge M910
and R910.
In fact, for many corporations, migrating legacy systems such
as SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/Linux is the centerpiece of
their data center modernization initiative. The reason is that
many of the new, innovative technologies used to modern-
ize data centers are built around Linux and x86 servers, and
virtually none of them are associated with SPARC/Oracle
Solaris. Migrating to or staying with SPARC/Oracle Solaris
limits your ability to modernize your data center and effec-
tively locks you into Oracle.
What’s more, over the past decade, in addition to RAS, cer-
tain features/technologies already available in RISC/UNIX—
some hardware, some software—were ported to x86/Linux
so it could compete on at least even terms with RISC/UNIX
platforms in the lucrative back-end, mission-critical database
application tier. Examples include error logging to notify the
operating system for predictive failure analysis, dynamic
CPU/memory migration, memory board hot add/remove,
Today, the price, performance and reliability of
industry standard x86 servers have improved to
the point where they can meet or exceed the
capabilities of SPARC/Oracle Solaris.
3
Data Center Modernization White Paper
The Case for Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

CPU hot add/remove, etc. These features/technologies can their solutions from x86/Linux. This is especially true of x86/
no longer be used by RISC/UNIX vendors to differentiate SUSE Linux Enterprise platforms.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server versus Oracle Solaris

Table 1 provides a detailed comparison of the features and technologies available in x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and
SPARC/Oracle Solaris:

Table 1: Comparison of Features/Technologies Available in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and Oracle Solaris
  Technologies SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (for x86) Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)
 File system Ships several different file systems, including btrfs, ext3 ZFS is the default file system in Oracle Solaris. It is a mature,
(default for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server), ext2, ReiserFS, ­reliable and scalable file system as long as you are using it on
XFS (open source version) and OCFS2. Each has advantages Oracle Solaris for SPARC.
and disadvantages.

A file system comparison table3 can be found at: www.suse.com

 Predictive Requires hardware support to be fully effective. SUSE is working Supports automatic mitigation of software/ hardware errors.
self-healing with all major hardware vendors, especially IBM and Intel, Includes admin notifications, isolation/deactivation of faulty
to optimize integration of hardware and operating system in ­components and guided repair.
this area.

Supports proactive notifications. Technologies such as MCELog

help administrators with early warning about upcoming hardware
issues that might impact the stability of the operating system
and applications.
 Dynamic tracing Ships with SystemTap, a scripting language and tool for
framework ­dynamically instrumenting running production Linux ­operating
systems. Today, there is little difference in the functionality
­between SystemTap and DTrace.
 Security/ Meets Common Criteria Certification at Evaluation Assurance
certification Level 4+ (EAL 4+).
Is FIPS 140 certified for the openSSL module.
 Virtualization Interoperable with leading open source and proprietary
third-party hypervisors:
 SUSE Linux Enterprise Sever ships with Xen and KVM,
and can be used to create virtual host environments that
­support Linux and Windows guests.
 SUSE Linux Enterprise Server itself is a supported guest
­operating system in virtual environments created using
KVM, Xen, VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and
Citrix XenServer.
 Linux Containers (see next page) is another supported
­virtualization technology.
Includes Dtrace, a comprehensive dynamic tracing framework
created by Sun Microsystems for troubleshooting kernel and
­application problems on production systems in real time.
Meets Common Criteria Certification EAL 4+.
Is available with Solaris Trusted Extensions, a set of security
­extensions incorporated in the Solaris operating system featuring
a mandatory access control model.
Supports Oracle-only virtualization solutions:
 Oracle Solaris Containers permit one application per virtual
server in a container with Oracle Solaris as the only supported
guest operating system.
 Oracle VM Server for SPARC runs specifically on SPARC
T-Series servers and enables consolidation of software stacks
running only on SPARC T-Series servers.
 Dynamic System Domains are designed specifically for SPARC
Enterprise M-Series servers. They provide e
­ lectronically isolated
partitions.
 Oracle Solaris for SPARC is limited to virtualization technologies
designed only for SPARC/Oracle Solaris and cannot interoperate
with common virtualization technologies such as Xen, KVM, etc.

3 http://doc.opensuse.org/products/draft/SLES/SLES-storage_sd_ Continued on next page

draft/filesystems.html

4
  Technologies SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (for x86)
 Containers Supports Linux Containers (LXC), an operating system-level
virtualization method for running multiple isolated Linux systems
(containers) on a single control host.
LXC relies on the Linux kernel cgroups functionality that became
available in version 2.6.24. In principle, both Linux Containers
and Oracle Solaris Containers are similar. They are virtualization
technologies at the application level, so they are “above” the
operating system kernel. Unlike hypervisor-based virtualization,
they do not add an additional software layer.
 Clusters Combined with SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability
­Extension, you can implement mission-critical open source
Linux clusters using OCFS2, a shared-disk, and POSIX-
compliant generic cluster file system.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server also is supported by other
third-party cluster products, including Veritas Cluster Server
and HP Serviceguard.
 Hardware platforms x86, x86-64, POWER, Itanium, IBM mainframe
supported
 Cloud computing Using SUSE Cloud, you can build and deploy private clouds
within your firewall.
SUSE Cloud is based on the popular OpenStack project, and
is integrated with SUSE Manager and SUSE Studio™ to provide
management and application development for SUSE Cloud as
well as other cloud platforms.
Various third-party cloud management tools, such as Aeolus
and ConVirt, are also available to manage SUSE Cloud-based
private clouds.
SUSE Cloud interoperates with other cloud platforms built
around OpenStack.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is available through over 50
public cloud providers, like Amazon EC2, Google Cloud and
Windows Azure.
 RAS Combination of new multi-core, scale-up AMD/Intel hardware
married with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server compares favorably
with SPARC/Oracle Solaris with respect to RAS. Today, RAS can
no longer be used to differentiate SPARC/Oracle ­Solaris and
x86/ SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
www.suse.com
Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)
Oracle Solaris Containers is an implementation of operating
system-level virtualization technology for x86 and SPARC systems.
An Oracle Solaris Container is the combination of system resource
controls and the boundary separation provided by zones that act
as completely isolated virtual servers within a single operating
system instance.
Oracle offers Oracle Solaris Cluster, a high-availability cluster
­product that does not include a cluster file system. If needed, a
cluster file system can be purchased from Veritas and supported
by both Oracle and Veritas. Supported Oracle Solaris Cluster
­configurations are predominantly found on hardware from
Oracle. Support when using hardware from other vendors is
extremely limited.
Scalability clustering is not available for Oracle on the operating
system level. Selected applications, like Oracle RAC, offer scalable
clustering on the application level. Oracle offers scale-up solutions
only for its SPARC hardware platform.
SPARC
Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure
is typically only used with an Oracle hardware/software stack.
It lacks some components needed to build real private clouds
(automation, self-service portals, etc.).
Strictly an Oracle, customer-only cloud platform, it is optimized
for Oracle software applications.
Considerable effort is required to integrate with other cloud
­technologies.
SPARC/Oracle Solaris is arguably the leading RISC/UNIX platform
for RAS.
Continued on next page
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Data Center Modernization White Paper
The Case for Migrating from SPARC/Oracle Solaris to x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
  Technologies SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (for x86)
 ISV enthusiasm ISV enthusiasm for x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise dramatically
exceeds that for SPARC/Oracle Solaris. Increasingly, ISVs like
SAP are using Linux as their development platform and porting
to SPARC/Oracle Solaris only if there is sufficient demand.
10,000+ ISV applications are certified to run on SUSE Linux
Enterprise Server, including more than 800 Oracle applications.
Only 25 percent of Oracle application customers are currently
Oracle server customers because Oracle applications are run
primarily on Linux and Window platforms.
 High Performance Linux dominates the Top500 List of the world’s largest
Computing (HPC) ­supercomputers with 94 percent of them running Linux.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server runs on many of them.
HPC business applications, referred to as “crossover” HPC
­ pplications, are also preferred on x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise
a The primary considerations for customers are the cost of the
Server. High performance computer clusters running crossover
­applications are typically smaller than supercomputer clusters.
 Innovation x86/Linux is at the center of innovation for technologies used to
modernize data centers. Open access to source code encourages
innovation, as does a vibrant, growing community.
 Cost x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a fraction of the cost of
SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms, and is often 2x faster. You get
big savings on application licensing because you need fewer
cores (and sockets) to run those applications.
Using small-footprint x86 multi-core, scale-up servers versus
mainframe size M-Series SPARC servers results in savings in
space and cooling.
 Performance SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a clear winner on performance
tests, especially the SPEC core performance benchmarks. These
benchmarks basically demonstrate CPU performance. They
include SPECint, SPECfp, SPECint_rate and SPECfp_rate.
A comparison of processor performance for most hardware
vendors CPUs can be found at: www.spec.org
When SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, running on Dell, HP and
IBM x86 servers such as those mentioned earlier, are compared
to Oracle Solaris on SPARC-based M4000 and M8000 servers,
the SPEC benchmarks show that x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server is, across the board, 2x faster than the SPARC-based
servers and at a fraction of the cost.
 Big Data support SUSE partners with a wide variety of Big Data ­technology
­partners such as Teradata, SAP (with SAP HANA), IBM,
­Cloudera, Hortonworks and others.
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server supports the open Hadoop
f­ ramework for processing Big Data. SUSE also provides the
SUSE Linux Enterprise High Availability Extension to run
multiple clusters for Big Data processing.
6
Oracle Solaris (for SPARC)
SPARC/Oracle Solaris used to be a leading development platform,
but because its market share is dropping at a fast pace, ISVs port
from x86/Linux to SPARC/Oracle Solaris only when absolutely
necessary.
SPARC/Oracle Solaris does not have a single system on the
Top500 List, and its performance on a per-core basis has dropped
significantly below that of x86 multi-core servers running Linux.
SPARC/Oracle Solaris can be used to run crossover applications.
SPARC T-Series servers, application availability on SPARC/Oracle
Solaris and the relatively lower per-core performance of SPARC.
SPARC/Oracle Solaris innovation is focused only on Oracle stacks
and is done only by Oracle.
The cost of SPARC servers and their support and maintenance is
typically higher than for comparable x86 hardware. For example,
the cost of an HP DL980 x86-64 server with 80 cores and fully
loaded with disks, memory, etc. costs about US$195,000.
The price for a low end SPARC-based M8000 server with eight
cores is about US$290,000. A higher end M8000 price can reach
more than US$1,000,000.
SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms, such as the M series servers
that run mission-critical applications, are typically much more
expensive than x86/Linux platforms.
The 2x performance advantage of x86/ SUSE Linux Enterprise
Server means you need fewer cores and sockets to run applications
on x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server systems than you do on
SPARC/Oracle Solaris systems.
Oracle does not provide any new SPARC T-Series SPEC
benchmarks.
Oracle’s Big Data efforts (Oracle Big Data Appliance) are focused
only on Oracle Linux for x86 rather than on SPARC/Oracle
Solaris.
Summary and Conclusion
As late as 2005–2006, SPARC/Oracle Solaris was one of the
most frequently chosen platforms for mission-critical data
center infrastructure. Its value came from the performance
of SPARC servers and Oracle Solaris’ robustness, including
excellent RAS capabilities, a strong scale-up story for back-
end, mission-critical database applications, high ISV enthu-
siasm, innovation leadership, high performance computing
and more. Its installed base size exceeded the combined size
of HP HP-UX’s and IBM AIX’s installed base.
Yet this description of Oracle Solaris fits x86/Linux today,
much more than SPARC/Oracle Solaris. Many of the tech-
nologies that provided advantages for SPARC/Oracle Solaris
earlier have been implemented on platforms such as x86/
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.
SPARC/Oracle Solaris is still a very good combination for
back-end, mission-critical database applications, especially
those applications where very high availability is a require-
ment, albeit at a very high cost.
Many of the innovative technologies used to run
modern data centers are built around Linux and x86
servers, and virtually none of them are associated
any longer with SPARC/Oracle Solaris.
www.suse.com
However, while SPARC/Oracle Oracle Solaris still has excel-
lent RAS capabilities and is a formidable competitor with
Linux for theback-end, mission-critical database applications
market, it is now viewed as:
Having poor per core performance
Having costly hardware and software maintenance along
with deteriorating support
Having hardware-influenced virtualization that works only
with SPARC/Oracle Solaris platforms, providing almost no
interoperability with other virtualization software
Having rapidly dropping ISV enthusiasm
Creating lock-in
As a result of the limited options, lock-in and expected higher
costs of SPARC/Oracle Solaris today and tomorrow versus
the interoperability, openness to innovation and lower costs
of x86/ SUSE Enterprise Linux Server:
x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is an excellent platform
for replacing your more costly, under-performing SPARC/
Oracle Solaris systems.
x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is an excellent platform
for modernizing your data center.
x86/SUSE Linux Enterprise Server offers the affordability,
interoperability and innovation necessary to support modern
data centers in the face of new technologies such as cloud
computing, Big Data, mobile devices and social media.
7
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