I just noticed that the Sun/Oracle Ultra 27 is no longer listed on the Desktops section of Oracles products page. This is a shame because I’m quite pleased with mine.
This sends a couple of messages:
- Oracle doesn’t think Solaris/OpenSolaris is viable on the workstation
- Oracle can’t deliver low margin hardware (the prices on these boxes skyrocketed after the acquisition)
It could be a purge while they bump to a new model featuring 6-core Xeons. Yet more than likely, another victim of the merger.
Yes, Sun/Oracle is now completely out of the workstation business. I called and talked to the local salespeople, wanting to buy one, but it’s gone forever. There will be no follow-on product. I told them they were tearing down the on-ramp in terms of people getting acquainted with their products, but apparently that’s not a consideration for them.
@Anon,
Well, chalk that up as another PR failure. By itself, some product or software cancellations would be understandable after acquisition but coupled with the closure of OpenSolaris, the Android lawsuit, and general brain drain of smart people Sun used to employ..
I’m completely disillusioned with this company and will avoid their products at all costs in my personal and professional work.
I really LOVED the ultra 27 for all its engineered details (fan boost at boot time, bee-grid face, extra large fans, easy opening and part removal, etc.) and Linux compatibility (drivers…).
I am really sad to see them discontinued (I found your site when looking for information about how to find one more to buy).
I used a SUN ultra 27 loaded with Solaris 10 and Ubuntu 8.1 to develop a FREE Web Application Server with ANSI C scripts:
http://gwan.ch/
G-WAN is just much faster than anything else (Apache, IIS, Nginx, Lighttpd, etc.) and its (full) ANSI C scripts put to shame all others (PHP, Java, C#, etc.).
Since ORACLE discontinued my Solaris (and SDK tools) support 3 months after I bought it from SUN, I am not sure I will spend the thousands of $ they asked me to just get the patches that would make the development tools run (they currently crash).
Shame. G-WAN will stay on Linux, where I can make my own tools.
Next machine? Maybe Apple. Very expensive (as compared to the SUN ultra 27) but at least it looks good -and Apple will not cut the supply.
Pierre.
Any recommendation for a hardware alternative to run Solaris on the desktop?
HP or Lenovo still make decent workstations. Just check to make sure that drivers exist for the major components.
I think Oracle alternative for desktop
is using Sunray stateless clients and Oracle servers.
Pity, as I was going to restart java development now that I’ve redeployed home.
Well, Oracle can keep their beans, as I’d be forced to purchase one of their servers and clients to develop.
I’ll buy their equipment at their going out of business sale.