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Sun Microsystems Inc. will distribute and support the open-source Postgres database with its Solaris Operating System, company officials said on Thursday, adding that Solaris ZFS, the new 128-bit file system with error detection and correction capabilities, will be integrated into OpenSolaris and Suns branded Solaris 10 in the May 2006 update.
Sun also announced 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 year end and into Solaris with the September 2006 update.
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, John Loiacono, Suns executive vice president of Software, said in a media teleconference today.
With regard to the ZFS file system, Glenn Weinberg, vice president of Suns operating platforms group, said the company had been testing the file system with customers over the past two years, adding that its reliability, self-healing and data protection features would bring enormous changes and benefits for users. It also supports large data-spaces and up to 128-bits.
With the Postgres open-source data base, Sun is working with the PostgresSQL community to take advantage of technologies in Solaris 10, such as predictive self-healing, Solaris Containers and Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), he said.
“We also want to be clear about the fact that this is not Suns Postgres, but Postgres running on Solaris. We do not plan to diverge from that in any way and will continue to work with the Postgres community,” Weinberg said.
Sun intends to distribute Postgres for Solaris 10 this month and integrate it into Solaris 10 in the first half of 2006, Weinberg said, adding that while PostgreSQL was the first open-source database to be included, others would be included going forward.
Josh Berkus of the PostgreSQL Project Core Team said they looks forward to collaborating with Suns engineers, both in optimizing PostgreSQL on Solaris, and improving PostgreSQL performance in general.
“Solaris reputation for reliability and scalability make it a very desirable platform for expanding the PostgreSQL user base into new and larger enterprises,” he said.
The recent move by Oracle to select Solaris as its preferred open source 64-bit development and deployment environment, combined with Suns support for Postgres, confirmed Solaris 10s position as the leading platform for hosting high-performance, mission-critical database solutions, Loiacono said.
Oracle was informed of Suns plans to include Postgres before the recent deal was announced and, while Sun would have liked to use an open-source database from Oracle, that did not happen, Loiacono said.
On the application front, there were now some 1,200 applications for the Solaris 10 platform, but this was still a work in progress and was a long journey, he said, adding that some 450 non-Sun hardware platforms also now supported Solaris 10.
The next update of Solaris 10, which will be made available in December, will include support for a wide range of systems, including the recently announced Galaxy servers and the SunUpdate Connection, which gives ready access to the latest Solaris 10 fixes and features over the network.
“The update will integrate support for new systems, increased network performance and improved memory management functionality.
“The update will also include the Grub Boot Loader, which speeds the adoption of new x86 hardware platforms and peripherals and makes it easier for us and our OEMs to support even more hardware platforms,” Weinberg said.
Sun is also actively participating in the Xen project, an open-source community developing new virtualization technologies that allow multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a single hardware system.
“Xen also makes it possible to migrate an operating system environment to another hardware system quickly and easily with almost no downtime. Virtualization helps maximize the use of high-performance hardware and speeds server consolidation,” Weinberg said.
Additionally, Sun intends to make Xen support for Solaris 10 available to the OpenSolaris community in December.
Editors Note: This story was updated to include information and comments from a media teleconference.