 ExodusYour Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth |
Exodus
Premium Member
2014-May-2 11:57 am
Need to broaden my knowledge: SolarisI'm an AIX/Linux Administrator. I feel like I've got a pretty good handle on these operating systems. I can handle most any flavor of Linux thrown at me for enterprise needs and I have no problems handling AIX4 through 7, physical or virtual.
I'd like to expand my knowledge base a bit, based on what I'm seeing on industry needs. It looks like people have been asking for a lot of hybrid knowledge since I'm seeing a large trend for people to migrate from proprietary unix systems to Linux x86 systems to take advantage of the same VMware x86 architecture that most organizations run their Windows environment off of as well.
Basically, I need to learn Solaris, but I already understand other variants of Unix. I'm hoping for something that could get me up to speed rather quickly. Any suggestions? I'd like to learn HP-UX as well, but I have no access to an HP-UX environment and no immediate need to learn it. |
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 BranoI hate Vogons
MVM
join:2002-06-25
Burlington, ON
Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-AC-PRO
Ubiquiti NanoBeam M5 16
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Brano
MVM
2014-May-2 3:06 pm
How about putting one into VM and start playing with it ... » www.oracle.com/technetwo ··· teId=opn |
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ExodusYour Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth |
Exodus
Premium Member
2014-May-2 3:29 pm
I have access to federally regulated production solaris boxes if I want to log on with root and mess around with. Thanks.
(Seriously, thanks. I'll load a copy in a VM on my laptop at some point.) |
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 leibold
MVM
join:2002-07-09
Sunnyvale, CA
ZyXEL P-663HN-51
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to Exodus
Shouldn't be too difficult: just forget all the proprietary bits IBM added to Unix to create AIX and you are pretty close to Solaris already  Like most commercial Unix flavors Solaris has a mixed heritage of System V and BSD Unix (with Sun having made reasonable choices while picking from the two options). Just go through the common administration steps: - OS clean install - OS update/upgrade - add / remove software packages - create / modify / delete user accounts - configure networking - ... and you will soon feel at home on Solaris. |
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to Exodus
make sure to look at ZFS and solaris containers. Both very cool technologies IMHO. Along with a vm, Oracle most likely has some Oracle By Example (OBE) tutorials you can run through. I've found these to be quite nice. |
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ExodusYour Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth |
to leibold
How about Logical Volume/Disk Management? That's pretty big for my area. |
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leibold
MVM
join:2002-07-09
Sunnyvale, CA Netgear CG3000DCR
ZyXEL P-663HN-51
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These days this probably means you should look into ZFS (which didn't exist yet when I last used Solaris).
For other filesystem types, logical volume management in Solaris is done with Online DiskSuite a.k.a. Solstice DiskSuite a.k.a. Solaris Volume Manager. |
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 drewRadiant
Premium Member
join:2002-07-10
Port Orchard, WA |
to Exodus
DoD runs on Solaris... good choice.
Depending on which company you're working for these days, they often have subscriptions to skillport/fedvte/safari books online and there's so_much_to_read on those sites. |
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 timcuthBraves Fan
Premium Member
join:2000-09-18
Pelham, AL |
to Exodus
The best 12 years of my career were as an Oracle DBA on Solaris systems. They even gave me Solaris workstations for my remote desktops. I worked on quite a few other UNIX systems, but Solaris was my favorite.
Tim |
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 dennismurphyPut me on hold? I'll put YOU on hold
Premium Member
join:2002-11-19
Parsippany, NJ |
to Exodus
Solaris is very much alive and well. I've got customers making major Solaris investments and very happy with the performance they're getting from SPARC T5/M6 + Solaris 11.
Don't waste your time learning HPUX. I love UX, but it has no future. There are some things UX does that are way beyond the rest of the pack, but it's being taken out to the woodshed and shot. A damned shame.
Stick to Solaris and AIX. |
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ExodusYour Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth |
Exodus
Premium Member
2014-May-5 9:29 am
That's kind of what I figured. I was even thinking about putting HPUX in the title, but I realized that HPUX is largely dead. Every HPUX environment seems to be getting migrated somewhere else. I still see Solaris going and I've got a large exposure to AIX where I'm at.
The big thing I see is a lot of people getting off of some of the legacy Unix systems and moving to Linux. I work for an outsourcing company and I'm seeing companies all over the country attempting to move to Linux during their next refresh. Some of them are doing it for the expense, some of them are doing it because the infrastructure is "up to par" now with x86/VMware. Some are doing it for all of the above.
Either way, I think I just need enough Solaris to get by, but I'm definitely seeing the future is Linux. |
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dennismurphyPut me on hold? I'll put YOU on hold
Premium Member
join:2002-11-19
Parsippany, NJ |
said by Exodus:That's kind of what I figured. I was even thinking about putting HPUX in the title, but I realized that HPUX is largely dead. Every HPUX environment seems to be getting migrated somewhere else. I still see Solaris going and I've got a large exposure to AIX where I'm at.
The big thing I see is a lot of people getting off of some of the legacy Unix systems and moving to Linux. I work for an outsourcing company and I'm seeing companies all over the country attempting to move to Linux during their next refresh. Some of them are doing it for the expense, some of them are doing it because the infrastructure is "up to par" now with x86/VMware. Some are doing it for all of the above.
Either way, I think I just need enough Solaris to get by, but I'm definitely seeing the future is Linux. What's happening to HP-UX makes me sad. It really was (and still is) a great Unix for the enterprise -- many features that were way, way ahead of their time. Some are being ported to Linux (i.e. ServiceGuard), some kernel changes - large memory footprints, ultra-scalable SMP ... all good stuff. Once you start running 256-processor Superdomes, it's hard to go back to dinky 2-socket Linux servers. As for Solaris... I go against the current grain, but I think it has a long, bright future. Especially if you've got any investment in Oracle software; Solaris is a no-brainer. The entire Oracle-on-Oracle message really resonates. I have customers who have made tremendous investment in SPARC SuperClusters and are getting some incredible performance and reliability out of them. They are very, very happy, and it's a big growth area for them. They just refreshed their Solaris cloud environment onto T5-8, and we're looking at M6-32 servers to consolidate and simplify other parts of the infrastructure. It's good stuff, I swear. Now, with Solaris 11.2 having OpenStack baked in... well, that's huge. Makes DBaaS for private cloud a simple reality for them. Needless to say, I'm a fan. I still think Linux has a lot of growing up to do. Sure, it works, but rigorous change management, patch management, binary compatibility are still immature compared to {Solaris, AIX, HPUX}. The fact that I can take binaries that ran on Solaris 2.4 and drop them on a Solaris 11 server and they run 100% without change... that's pretty powerful stuff for a large enterprise. You can't do that with Linux. |
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ExodusYour Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth |
Exodus
Premium Member
2014-May-5 9:49 am
I think the reason why I see Solaris falling behind is that even Oracle has Oracle Enterprise Linux and their prized Exadata systems are running on a Linux platform. Maybe they're trying to diversify their platforms, but it seems like a lot of companies now have a choice. Do they need a Power-780 System? Do they need a Superdome? Or can they run on some x86 platforms for the bulk of their work for a fraction of the cost? It doesn't mean that those other Unix platforms don't have a place, it's that they aren't the only option when they were pure overkill for the last several decades. |
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dennismurphyPut me on hold? I'll put YOU on hold
Premium Member
join:2002-11-19
Parsippany, NJ |
said by Exodus:I think the reason why I see Solaris falling behind is that even Oracle has Oracle Enterprise Linux and their prized Exadata systems are running on a Linux platform. Maybe they're trying to diversify their platforms, but it seems like a lot of companies now have a choice. Do they need a Power-780 System? Do they need a Superdome? Or can they run on some x86 platforms for the bulk of their work for a fraction of the cost? It doesn't mean that those other Unix platforms don't have a place, it's that they aren't the only option when they were pure overkill for the last several decades. Overkill is relative. A SPARC Supercluster is basically a set of SPARC T5-8's with Exadata storage cells attached. Best of both worlds... we're getting some crazy performance out of them. We're also seeing TCO numbers that are actually *better* for SPARC than x86, based on the size of the workload. Sure, for "light" workloads, x86 does better, but if you have a need for large scale (my customer has over 100m customers), then a single SPARC is more cost effective (not to mention operationally efficient) than a farm of Linux boxes. Also makes consistency and reliability a much easier target to hit. Granted, I've got a slight bias (I mean, of course my customer uses Linux too, but my heart is in enterprise UNIX) but I definitely see room for the big boxes over the long term. Even growth - the investment Oracle is making in SPARC is big time. They're spending like drunken sailors on R&D, and we're starting to see the fruits of it ... buckle up - it's going to be a wild ride - just wait till you see what's next ..... |
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ExodusYour Daddy
Premium Member
join:2001-11-26
Earth |
Exodus
Premium Member
2014-May-5 10:10 am
From my perspective, it's why I'm trying to keep diversified. It's not unreasonable to have skillsets for Solaris, especially when I'm already pretty well-versed with AIX and Linux. I figure, this'll carry me in my career no matter what direction everyone goes.
Thanks for the conversation. I enjoy hearing about the direction of the Unix world, especially people's thoughts on where it's going over the next 10 years. |
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 MaxoYour tax dollars at work.
Premium Member
join:2002-11-04
Tallahassee, FL |
to leibold
said by leibold:Shouldn't be too difficult: just forget all the proprietary bits IBM added to Unix to create AIX and you are pretty close to Solaris already And anything GNU specific. I run into problems quite frequently where things that I'm used to doing under GNU/Linux don't work on Solaris. On case in point the -r switch in grep. |
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 TiraelBOHICA
Premium Member
join:2009-03-18
Sacramento, CA |
to dennismurphy
said by dennismurphy:The fact that I can take binaries that ran on Solaris 2.4 and drop them on a Solaris 11 server and they run 100% without change. While that is great in short term, long term backwards compatibility tends to cause the code to get all type of crazy. I don't speak from experience, more from listening to others I know in the industry. This is also from a programmers perspective (not so much a sysadmin), so it may be slightly biased. Do you think Solaris will suffer similar issues in the future from code bloat (and issues related to that)? |
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dennismurphyPut me on hold? I'll put YOU on hold
Premium Member
join:2002-11-19
Parsippany, NJ |
said by Tirael:said by dennismurphy:The fact that I can take binaries that ran on Solaris 2.4 and drop them on a Solaris 11 server and they run 100% without change. While that is great in short term, long term backwards compatibility tends to cause the code to get all type of crazy. I don't speak from experience, more from listening to others I know in the industry. This is also from a programmers perspective (not so much a sysadmin), so it may be slightly biased. Do you think Solaris will suffer similar issues in the future from code bloat (and issues related to that)? Hasn't been an issue in the almost 25 years Solaris has been around, or the 30+ since SunOS. Binary compatibility is a Big Deal. That's not to say APIs and such don't change; but being able to migrate between releases without being forced to change matters a lot in the enterprise. I've personally had several systems where the developer went out of business, and we were left with no source code. Being able to migrate from, in this case, Solaris 2.5.1 to 8 was tremendous. We were able to modernize the infrastructure, support the business growth and buy us time to find an alternative. |
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