Sun Microsystems Inc. has lived up to its promise made earlier this year to include an open-source database with its Solaris 10 operating system.
The Santa Clara, Calif., company announced in mid-November that the PostgreSQL Global Development Groups open-source PostgreSQL database will be available as a downloadable add-on for OpenSolaris later this month and will be integrated into Solaris 10 in the first half of next year.
However, Sun is not stopping at offering just one open-source database for Solaris 10. “While PostgreSQL is the first open-source database to be included for now, others will be included going forward,” Glenn Weinberg, vice president of Suns operating platforms group, said last week.
Sun will also continue to work with the PostgreSQL community to take advantage of technologies in Solaris 10, such as predictive self-healing, Solaris Containers and Solaris DTrace (Dynamic Tracing), he said. “We also want to be clear about the fact that this is not Suns PostgreSQL but PostgreSQL running on Solaris. We do not plan to diverge from that in any way,” said Weinberg.
Josh Berkus, a member of the PostgreSQL Core Team who is based in San Mateo, Calif., said the team is looking forward to collaborating with Suns engineers on both optimizing PostgreSQL on Solaris and improving PostgreSQL performance in general. “Solaris reputation for reliability and scalability [makes] it a very desirable platform for expanding the PostgreSQL user base into new and larger enterprises,” Berkus said.
John Loiacono, Suns executive vice president of software, stressed that Oracle Corp. had been told of Suns plans to include PostgreSQL before the Redwood Shores, Calif., company announced it had chosen Solaris 10 as its preferred development and deployment platform. “While we at Sun would have liked to use an open-source database from Oracle, that did not happen,” Loiacono said.
Sun has also integrated Solaris ZFS (zettabyte file system), the new 128-bit file system with error detection and correction capabilities, into OpenSolaris. The new file system will be fully integrated into Suns branded Solaris in the May quarterly update.
The company has been testing ZFS with customers over the past two years, Loiacono said, adding that its reliability, self-healing and data protection features will bring enormous changes and benefits for users.
In addition, Sun plans to integrate Solaris Containers for Linux Applications, a feature that allows organizations to run Red Hat binaries unmodified in Containers on Solaris 10, into OpenSolaris by years end and into Solaris with an update next September. This will allow customers to consolidate multiple environments onto a unified platform and leverage Solaris, while preserving application compatibility with internally developed or off-the-shelf Linux applications, Loiacono said.
The next update of Solaris 10, which will be made available next month, will include support for a wide range of systems, including the recently announced “Galaxy” servers and the Sun Update Connection.
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