Confused, as I see comments here that Oracle layed off every one... but then I still see Solaris developers tweeting, and now BLOGs about a new release coming soon? What’s the real story here?
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Don’t believe everything you read on anonymous internet trolling forums people.
But you still scavenge the site looking for information, don't you ?
And, I have seen rumours of "upcoming layoffs and apocalypse" to be false, but not information about discontinuing product lines, or executives departure. These 2 have been holding water.
Regarding Solaris, it's not going anywhere for next 3-5 years. Product lines, even after being cut, don't disappear overnight. It still beings close to half a billion dollars in sales every quarter per SEC filings. Infact, Oracle has started hiring in these areas as cuts have been a bit too deep , so no question of being immediately dead.
But will be interesting to see how customers react to "11.next" being their best bet and how many will abandon Solaris over next few years. Smart and agile customers will , others don't care don't want to know , and will be the job-security for current folks like us. Legacy stuff is hard to get rid of, so some pockets of the world will always have some version of on-site Solaris running - SPARC, Appliance or Eng Sys. (Remember , we sold SSC like hot cakes for a while in last 5 years) And as long as a fine balance between sustaining those customers with revenue and expenditure is maintained , Solaris should continue the path of OpenVMS or Tru64 or SCO.
Rip the king - Solaris !
If you don’t know what an ARC is, you’re lying about being in Solaris Engineering.
Not true. I am from services, not development, so PSARC is not something that is integral to me.
If you don’t know what an ARC is, you’re lying about being in Solaris Engineering.
If you’re claiming PSARC is disbanded, you’re lying.
Don’t believe everything you read on anonymous internet trolling forums people.
I think it's over. I don't know what ARC is, but my colleagues have stopped coming to office and do not even pretend thry are not looking for jobs. Solaris Eng.
You mean ARC ?
What is an arand why is it's closure significant.
I really doubt we would ever patch our own ZFS systems. Even if there is ever a Meltdown fix for x86 Solaris, I assume the I/O performance impact would make it a non-starter. Every I/O requisition will suddenly require an address space change. Not fun. And OCIC is already so under powered in terms of capacity, there is no way they have resources to spare.
Anyway, If you treat it like an appliance and it never runs code that you do not already completely trust, then it is probably OK.
The issue is that OCIC (I don't know anything about OCI) doesn't follow even the most basic security best practices. They have no concept of defense in depth and there are many other holes or other issues already they just don't care enough to fix. It adds up. A normal team investigates all issues and only holds off on fixing something if they have a really good reason. With OCI, their default is to not fix security issues unless there is a REALLY BIG political reason to fix it. With all the unmatched vulnerabilities and other security problems in OCIC, it would not surprise me at all to see someone use Meltdown on our unpatched ZFS storage as one step in a larger attack.
Can't be really dead, can it !? We have contractual obligations to our customer. The current workforce is minimum required to power through for next 5 or years, unless of course the current Customers abandon us.
But Spectre and Meltdown, wow ! I can't believe we are still silent. Well, I can take consolation in the fact that Intel got it wrong , and not good fix is around the corner from other vendors as of yet.
I wonder if anyone has insights into ZFS performance ? Because PDIT uses like thousands of them or so. They can't just replace everything with Pillar ?!
The ARCs are gone?!?
I guess the writing is on the wall.
It is either cloud, Windows or Linux.
After decades in a Solaris IT job, I am now working with Windows.
Scott was right then, and right now: Windows is a hairball
It is an annoying piece of closed source crap.
Retrain in cloud and Linux, is my advice.
I don't think it is fair to say that Oracle is blameless in the death of Solaris. One of the first things they did was kill off the OpenSolaris project, making it closed again. While that was certainly not the only reason Solaris died, it certainly did not help. Trying to sell a closed source OS in the age of Linux is a non-starter. And it's not because Linux is "free". Tons of our customers pay money to Red Hat for their RHEL systems. Customer's don't like being completely at the mercy of a single vendor, which is what they get with closed source software. No one wan't to be at the mercy of Oracle.
It's not a question of liking or disliking Oracle or Solaris. It's a simple question of profit and loss.
Solaris does not sell. Look at hardware revenues over last 2-4 quarters.
Engineered Systems orders have slowed down dramatically. And so has ZFSSA, the last bastion of Solaris (although on x86).
While people continue to argue if Solaris is dead or not, one thing is sure. My job depends on if I can retain current customers. And there is now way of knowing future plans of customers.
Engineered Systems will provide job to a few hundred over coming years, as customers will find hard to get off of it (remember mainframes ?). But , really , that's all.
Not the best and brightest are left behind, although it does add to my ego that I am still left behind after everyone is fired. Most of us are either too old or too lazy to look for other jobs. I sent out like 1800 applications, and received hardly 5 interests, and 3 of them are below my current pay.
It's not Oracle's fault that Solaris is dying slow death. AiX suffered same fate a few years back. Non-cloud OS are a thing of past, unless you are Android or MacOS developer.
Fujitsu will support SPARC after Oracle. Takers ? A fraction of customers.
Solaris 12 or 11.4 , the versioning does not matter. It's just a number. , Or name 11.next. while it's good to be release it for existing customers, how many are going to adopt ?
We shot ourselves in the foot by providing no upgrade capability in the past between 10 and 11. A large section of Sol10 users stopped , migrated to linix instead of living with the pain.
Further , which app developer do you think will develop for Solaris compatibility ? And why in the world will a new commercial customer buy SPARC, knowing it's EOL product line ? Some orders I see going out now are mostly the decisions taken by customers months and months back, before all this layoffs started.
I loved Solaris. We lost the race. Get familiarzed with Cloud, learn to speed it and move on.
Btw, I am discovering first hand. Industry outside has moved on very fast. Most of my skills are too niche. And I can't think of getting paid the same amount as I was in Oracle unless I relocate.
I don't blame Oracle as a company, some of my execs like the ex-VP who loved to fly around the world on pretexts ever week, and provided absolutely zero guidance to the team, and had off sites in French Alps, have gone. A combination of such unmanaged execs failed to provide direction when we needed to win the OS race. But now, we have lost it. Bow gracefully, thank your paymaster , and move on.
I know of this gentleman who has been looking for a job for past 1.5 years , nearly, and haven't found one. He is in his 50s, and his skills and salary levels are not desirable outside. I am worried how long I have to look.
Regarding layoffs, nothing more on plans as far as I know. But if existing customers abandon us this or next year, there would be no guarantees. Depends on how much stuff we are selling.
Nice marketing spin! Yep just spin the wheel...
Tell the three stooges in their ivory tower to stop finding great ways of shafting customers, partners and employees with crap support/products, high pricing and crap training. And lying to investors by manipulating numbers. Then "maybe" we stop being negative if you are lucky.
MODS - please ban this guy...
Old news
All ARCs have been disbanded. If you need any more of an idea that Solaris development is over then that's it.
Any attempt to convince me that Solaris is not dead will fail unless they fix Meltdown (Intel) and Spectre (Sparc and Intel). Any OS that doesn’t deliver needed security fixes is unusable, plain and simple.
The 11.4 beta is nothing more than a rehash of the S12 features that were in that gate for months and months now. None of the code in the beta is new. It's merely been bolted on top of the 11.3 carcass and thrown out the door. There are no engineers left on Solaris other than the few sustaining engineers who surf the web. It's dead, Jim.
You can't even write like a normal person any longer. You've been an Oracle hack for far too long.
Sol 12 was rolled into 11.next updates instead of entire OS releases and the download for beta is now here for 11.4 with support guaranteed until 2037
Who writes like that? A marketing or PR hack, that's who.
But you're totally not from Oracle HR.
Maybe your ex co-workers got laid off for that reason.
Sol 12 was rolled into 11.next updates instead of entire OS releases and the download for beta is now here for 11.4 with support guaranteed until 2037 -but nothing will be positive to you. And really the governments that use it are a bad examples?
Looks like your cup is half empty. Did you notice? But maybe you should get some other OS to use as a hobby.
Remember. not matter what you say some idiot will still post something bad about this next post please..ready..ready..where waiting....
Solaris 12 was also in beta. When will it be released? I wait that 11.4 won't be the same as Solaris 12.
The roadmap of the first totally not dead Operative System (VMS) is very clear and detailed: https://www.vmssoftware.com/pdfs/VSI_Roadmap_20171215.pdf
If you look the "roadmap" of second totally not dead Operative System (Solaris) www.oracle.com/assets/sparc-roadmap-slide-2076743.pdf it is only a vague "11.next". Oracle doesn't do any compromise.
It is a Hobby OS/SPARC= Expensive, insecure (when spectre patches will be released?), not support. Therefore not adequate for general use, it is the same a Hobby OS for people like it, and for they doesn't matter the profitability of their company. Actually Solaris/SPARC can have sense in some legacy applications.
It is a very bad example Government branches. The government is very big, surely they will have the first totally not dead operative system (VMS).
Note: Two of my co-worker (both ex Oracle because of laid offs), don't speak so well of Oracle as you speak.
And NO I am not from HR making a FAKE post!
Of course not! You are, like, TOTALLY NOT HR!!!
Here's another blog about a TOTALLY NOT DEAD operating system:
https://www.vmssoftware.com/updates.html
And Oh Look Nay Sayers...11.4 beta is just released to the public for download
https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/oracle-solaris-114-beta-released
What convenient timing for this thread.
Yes- that "Dead" , "Hobby" OS that companies around the world use for their missions critical servers -- including many Government branches ... is actually still being developed to it's next release.
What a bunch of morons who want to stay around this company to still work it even though they get : a handsome salary, fair raises, excellent benefits and still have a decent managerial environment to assist them.
And NO I am not from HR making a FAKE post!
But wait---the thread will not end here of course......
Let us wait for the next Idiot negative comment to be posted about all the bad news surrounding this. Over to you....
My understanding is that 11.4 is in beta.
Seeing some blog posts about 11.4, was it released?
https://talesfromthedatacenter.com/2018/01/solaris-11-4-a-secure-os-for-your-cloud/
http://www.snatchbrain.com/
They need to just open source the whole thing.
The remaining Solaris people need to pull their heads out of their asses and look around.
I was using Solaris in the mid-90s. That's over 20 years ago!
Why prolong what you are doing? If you are not waiting around for a package cause you want to retire, then get your sh-- together and get out.
If you leave on your own, you can make the case that you are interested in learning new technologies elsewhere when you are job shopping. If you wait to be laid off and you are not retiring, you are going to have to explain why you were so clueless and/or lazy to stay at Oracle, even though you knew you were working on something that is obsolete and soon-to-be-gone.
Friends don’t let friends work at oracle is THE BEST POST EVER. So true!
by: @RpEygVK-3yjz
And ....
Getting out of Oracle is the best thing you can do. If you were not laid off this time, there is always next time. This is going to go on for a long time as the management moves all the jobs to India or eliminates areas entirely.
Staying only adds more Oracle crap to your resume. If you are not planning on retiring soon, you >owe it to yourself to get out. You will be glad that you did.
Friends don't let friends work at Oracle!
by: @RpEygVK-3urw
Get your head out of your a$$ and pay attention!!
I'm not saying this to be cruel. I'm trying to help you. This is reality people. GET OUT!!!!
I work here and still see updates bi-weekly for the next Solaris release that the internal folks have updates to. Wonder why that is if it is so dead.
Yes they are available. By example you can buy a Amiga X5000 http://www.vincentperkins.com/AmigaNG/x5000.php http://www.a-eon.com/?page=x5000 , but it is the same as dead.
SPARC Solaris is a server for hobby, but not for serious person with conscience in its business.
Expensive, bad performance per core, bad support, not security patches and not future updates of its platform (surely amiga compatibles will receive more updates than the SPARC platform). There is to be very stupid for continue with this platform.
Note: I began with SunOS 4.1 25+ years ago.
Intel Solaris customers still waiting for that Meltdown fix. TICK TOCK!
Yes, at most 20% of Solaris Engineering remains. Maintenance only mode, minimum possible, does not a living operating system make. Sad but true.
That's what I call a dead parrot.
fighting for its survival
Doesn’t sound like any innovation is going to come out of this.
There are 300 people who are fighting for its survival. so do not assume it is dead
Oracle laid off around 80% of Solaris Engineering, not 100%. Don’t believe the people who tell you it was everyone – they’re exaggerating.
Sparc servers running Solaris are still available for sale by Oracle, and are available in the Oracle cloud. Yes, there were cuts but not as bad as some on this board would have you believe.