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Sun Offering Optimized AMP Stack On Solaris

Posted by kdawson on Tue Feb 13, 2007 03:24 PM
from the LAMP=~s/L/S/ dept.
Sun Microsystems PHP Programming Software Apache
tbray writes "This is your friendly local Sun corporate drone reporting that we're going to be building and optimizing and DTrace-ing and shipping and supporting the AMP part of LAMP (details here). I think that basically the whole tech industry, excepting Microsoft, is now at least partly in the AMP camp."
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Sun Offering Optimized AMP Stack On Solaris 50 Comments More /

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  • Will Sun also be rolling out energy drinks for server admins?

  • The job isn't finished yet, until all of...(NICE!) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by linuxbaby (124641) * on Tuesday February 13 2007, @03:28PM (#18002380)
    Great quote from TFA:

    The job isn't finished yet, until all of Apache and MySQL and PostgreSQL and PHP and Python and and Ruby and Rails are in the package, all optimized for Solaris, all stuffed with DTrace probes, and all with developer and production support available. It won't be long.
  • We're going to be building and optimizing and DTrace-ing and shipping and supporting the AMP part of LAMP (details here).

    I love lamp.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ryanov (193048)
      Do you really love lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it [on Slashdot]?

  • Yeah but... (Score:2, Funny)

    by dasOp (781405)
    How about an optimizied, Dtraced and -l"-froot" free telnetd?
    • A fix for telnetd is now available for free download from sunsolve.sun.com [sun.com] e SPARC patch is 120068-02 or later and X86 patch is 120069-02.

      In any case, it's probably best to disable telnetd with svcadm disable telnet Better yet, next time you install or upgrade use the "reduced networking profile" which has most services disabled (not ssh).

        • Get Some Clues - One, Perhaps Two (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Smackintosh (1009941) on Tuesday February 13 2007, @06:23PM (#18005070)
          The answer is in the form of a question: do you have any clue as to what you're talking about?

          I'm being completely serious here.

          Anyone who knows anything about the IT marketplace will know that of the UNIX-variant operating systems (yes, that includes Linux), Sun Solaris has quite a significant share. In fact, a good deal of the professional UNIX admins out there prefer Solaris over the other choices, and again, that includes Linux.

  • Meanwhile... (Score:4, Funny)

    by linguae (763922) on Tuesday February 13 2007, @03:37PM (#18002520)

    ...Microsoft is announcing an optimized ISA (IIS Server, SQL Server, ASP.NET) Linked List on Windows Vista(TM). More details to follow.

  • THIS [oseao.com] is an amp stack. /dundee

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by hotdip (804898)
      dude, that looks like a half-stack to me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by MooUK (905450)
      That? Pah, two heads and a single cab is NOT a big amp stack. One of the more successful of the local bands here uses a two-speaker-cab bass amp that's as tall as me, and a band we had play one of the gigs I run a few weeks ago uses one that's even taller.

      Not that the size of the amp tends to make much positive difference to the sound when done properly.

  • Yawn.... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by CodeShark (17400) <ellsworthpcNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday February 13 2007, @03:44PM (#18002680) Homepage
    Seriously....since I don't really want to use Sun hardware or Solaris, tell me again, why would I want to leave the "L" (Linux) out of the Apache/MySql/Php stack? Especially given the fact that most of the security and bug fixes --at least for Php and MySql -- which pop up are first dealt with in the Linux end of the stack.


    Seems to me that this is not so much News as it is "snooze..."

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by gstoddart (321705)

      Seriously....since I don't really want to use Sun hardware or Solaris, tell me again, why would I want to leave the "L" (Linux) out of the Apache/MySql/Php stack?

      The same reason anyone wants to run Sun hardware -- sheer size, (preceived) reliability, as well as a vendor you think you can trust who sells good support packages.

      As much as Linux has been really making inroads into the core UNIX market by using commodity hardware, at some point, that big honking Sun server which they promise to have someone on s

      • Re:Yawn.... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by m0rph3us0 (549631) on Tuesday February 13 2007, @03:59PM (#18002910)
        For us we doubled the performance on our db by switching from RHEL4 to Solaris 10. The support for Solaris 10 is less than for RHEL4

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by nuzak (959558)
          Hell, I more than doubled my performance on my filesystem-heavy loads going from RHEL4 to RHEL3. The syscall overhead went through the roof in EL4, even with SELinux off. I got tired of trying to compile a kernel (hey vendors, would it kill you to ship a config that doesn't panic when I compile using it without changing anything?) so I just retrograded. The next move will most likely be lateral, to another vendor.
    • You can use Solaris on almost any modern hardware. Actually, most of Sun's hardware nowadays is built on top of AMD (and soon Intel) CPUs.

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Doctor Memory (6336)

        most of Sun's hardware nowadays is built on top of AMD (and soon Intel) CPUs
        Nope, most of their stuff still runs on SPARC. They're selling their new Niagra-based systems as fast as they can crank them out, and they still ship a healthy number of UltraSPARC boxes too. They do have a lot of AMD-based stuff, but they're still predominantly a SPARC vendor.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by oojah (113006)

          They're selling their new Niagra-based systems as fast as they can crank them out

          Well no kidding they're seriously tasty. I know if I won a ton of money that's what I'd get.

          Cheers,

          Roger

    • Lamp?

      what if I run freebsd (I do, actually).

      AMP are for the layers above the o/s, silly. the o/s below it matters less and less (in theory).

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Kadin2048 (468275)
      I don't think there's any real reason to, if you're familiar with Linux ... Sun would like people to use Solaris, and they have some interesting administration tools, and of course they'll sell you a support contract and might be more "PHB compatible" than many Linux vendors, but I've yet to see any good comparisons.

      A while back there were some interesting comparisons of SQL performance on Darwin/Mac OS X versus Linux, under controlled conditions on similar hardware; it would be interesting to see a Sun-AMP

      • Re:Yawn.... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by gstoddart (321705) on Tuesday February 13 2007, @04:19PM (#18003288) Homepage

        A while back there were some interesting comparisons of SQL performance on Darwin/Mac OS X versus Linux, under controlled conditions on similar hardware

        Ah, but remember -- Sun can sell you a machine which goes well beyond the whole 'similar hardware'.

        If they can sell someone an optimized, supported, and enterprise-class piece of hardware which is basically turnkey, and can fill the job of being your web-facing front-end, there will be companies for whom this is a very good idea.

        What Sun can sell you is the higher end for which there is no way you could build it with a commodity PC. Enterprise customers have enterprise hardware needs, and enterprise mindsets. Being "PHB Compatible" is a valuable thing in business, cause if things go to shit, you have someone who can come in and make things go again.

        Sun isn't trying to get the hobbyist shop; they're targeting higher end companies with bigger budgets who want reliability.

        If for nothing else than they're going to support the AMP stack, I have to commend Sun on this decision. This can only be good for those parts of the stack, and it won't really hurt Linux in any way -- this is complementary. This will have the effect of giving PHBs an option which uses Apache, MySQL, and PHP/PostgressSQL (whichever it is). I don't see this as being a 'lose' for the OSS people.

        Why is Slashdot so pathologically opposed to someone buying a computer and operating system, even if it makes sense for their business goals?

        Cheers

        • Why is Slashdot so pathologically opposed to someone buying a computer and operating system, even if it makes sense for their business goals?

          Because, as one long dead poet named John Donne wrote:

          No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, an

          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by squiggleslash (241428)
            Sun sells computers that use a GPL'd CPU, and run a SDDL'd operating system (which will probably move to GPLv3 when that's released.) What's proprietary about it again?

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by nadamsieee (708934)

      Seriously....since I don't really want to use Sun hardware or Solaris, tell me again, why would I want to leave the "L" (Linux) out of the Apache/MySql/Php stack? Especially given the fact that most of the security and bug fixes --at least for Php and MySql -- which pop up are first dealt with in the Linux end of the stack.

      Solaris is a pretty darn good product. And if Sun starts providing full time support for the "AMP" part of the stack, you can probably bet that bug fixes for Solaris won't be far behind

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Soong (7225)
      But, I want to drop the "MP", oh, and the L. I'll run my MacOS Apache PostgreSQL Servlet webapps, woo, go MAPS!

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      why would I want to leave the "L" (Linux) out of the Apache/MySql/Php stack?

      DTrace, zones, ZFS. Then throw in the Sun StorageTek Availability Suite [opensolaris.org] and Solaris Cluster [sun.com] for fun: both are available as free downloads (AVS is open source (or will be soon)) or with upto 24x7 support.

  • Those of us who have some fairly big Sun iron would love to see this happen post haste. That would take some of the hodge-podge out of a few systems that I work on/with. Trying to ditch the Oracle license fees is a GoodThing!

  • Postgres Migration (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Doc Ruby (173196) on Tuesday February 13 2007, @03:58PM (#18002906) Homepage Journal
    I wish there were a simple tool I could run that would analyze a LAMP install and migrate it to Postgres instead of MySQL.

    I don't want to get into a holy war about the relative merits: we already use Postgres, we will not support two database systems, we are not switching from Postgres to MySQL. MySQL might be good for others, but not for us.

    But we do get these LAMP apps that come bundled with MySQL. Usually they don't use any MySQL specific features that Postgres (and maybe moving some functions across the app/DB boundary) can't directly support. So I'd like to get a LAMP -> LAPP migrator that will automate the switch. Leaving optimizations for after the switch, to be performed by other (Postgres) tools or programmers/DBAs. The open source of these two DBs, and the open source of all these LAMP apps, should make migration between them accessible.

    I'm sure there are lots of people like me. Where's the tool that makes the open source as good for migrating among these programs as creating them from scratch?

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheNinjaroach (878876)
      Better programing of these LAMP packages will end the need for a LAMP -> LAPP migration tool. When the database connections are abstracted properly it becomes fairly trivial to swap out DB backends without changing much, if anything of the application itself.
      • Indeed, if you're using the Perl DBI or one of the better PHP DB libraries along with SQL that's not in a nonstandard dialect, you can pretty much edit the config to say 'MySQL' or 'Postgres'. I'm sure the other languages approach this if not matching it.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by Furry Ice (136126)
        I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that you've never actually maintained a large application that supported more than one database. It's not the most difficult problem to solve in the world, but it's pretty far from trivial at times. SQL may be standardized, but no one implements the standard.

        Sometimes, you end up having to have a different schema for the different databases because of optimizations that one supports and the other doesn't. For example, modeling trees in Oracle can be done with the C
  • This would be Sun getting-around-to optimising the 2nd rate web server package they offer. Customers demand it, so Sun offers it, but they'd rather sell you a Java Servlet based web server. (Dunno if Sun has a preferred SQL DB to go on the far side of those JDBC connections, but I prefer PostgreSQL to MySQL.)

  • Dtrace (Score:3, Interesting)

    by starseeker (141897) on Tuesday February 13 2007, @05:56PM (#18004700) Homepage
    I have a feeling Dtrace probes might be a big, big win here - if they instrument it as they have the Solaris system itself that level of performance tuning integrated into the entire software stack may allow for some Really Impressive payoffs.

    On the high end, bottlenecks are something to really watch for and identify, and Dtrace is an excellent tool for that sort of activity. This will be very interesting to watch.

    Also, if Solaris DOES go GPLv3, the immediate availability of a superior SAMP stack that is GPL could turn a lot of heads, and may even displace some LAMP systems quickly and painlessly.

  • I think that basically the whole tech industry, excepting Microsoft, is now at least partly in the AMP camp
    I think that basically you haven't worked in enough segments of the tech industry.

    Java is big in the finance industry because: 1) it's not subject to a monopoly, and 2) there's still somebody to sue when something goes wrong.

  • How is this different from their already-available CoolStack, which I'm already running on my T2000?

    http://cooltools.sunsource.net/coolstack/ [sunsource.net] ...they don't really explain it.

  • Just because AMP is all you know about... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Marcus Green (34723) on Wednesday February 14 2007, @04:23AM (#18009316) Homepage
    "basically the whole tech industry, excepting Microsoft, is now at least partly in the AMP camp"

    Go to any job site of your choice.

    Do searches on
    apache
    mysql
    perl or PHP

    Then do searches on
    Oracle
    Java

    Allowing that most Java development is on the server side, try to draw a conclusion. Are these people spending good money advertising these jobs because they are using the technologies?. Is the whole tech industry, except Microsoft at least partly in the AMP camp or just the tiny bit that you are familiar with?

    • Re:The "AMP Camp"??? (Score:4, Informative)

      by CodeShark (17400) <ellsworthpcNO@SPAMyahoo.com> on Tuesday February 13 2007, @03:51PM (#18002786) Homepage
      Ummm, no.... A perfectly tuned, very very expensive MS stack blows the doors off the average LAMP stack.


      But spend the same amount of money on the LAMP stacks, and you get can high availability plus database replication, load balanced multiple application servers, plus the bandwidth, and probably most of the programming expense, pepsi and pizza a team could could consume -- per year.


      Seems to me that ASP and Java are the tired stacks. Not LAMP & Ruby.

      • Re:The "AMP Camp"??? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by m0rph3us0 (549631) on Tuesday February 13 2007, @04:04PM (#18003020)
        What makes the MS stack shine, is the developer tools. Try debugging through from the webserver to the webservices, debug the XSLT, down into the database and into the stored procedures in LAMP.

        If you could do it it would take at least 5 different applications running on different machines. There is nothing like being able to watch a particular users request flow right through the whole system. Yeah it takes a few minutes to setup all the watch conditions on production hardware, but in DEV it is just beautiful.

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            by gbjbaanb (229885)
            Its not that you *have* to do that amount of debugging, but that you *can*. I suppose it does matter if you have several teams that write different tiers of a n-tier architecture (we've done that - web monkeys wrote the front end to a specified API, DBdevs write stored procedures. Poor application programmers get the blame when anything goes wrong, and poor system/middleware devs have to then find out who's right (or wrong as is the case). So being able to debug all the way through is rather handy.

            Really -
          • If you need to use an interactive debugger at all, I find YOUR competency suspect.
      • Remember that the original article was about SAMP stack - and the amount of money you can spend on MS stuff pales into insignificance when you start buying Sun hardware!

        LAMP still easily give you the best price/performance.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbIII (701233)
        Failover and bare metal recovery are a lot harder with MS systems - do you really want to be adding to the downtime by waiting on hold to MS in India to get an activation code before you can set up a replacement machine? All other vendors have options to deal with licencing in this situation becuase they actually are ready for the enterprise.

    • Re:The "AMP Camp"??? (Score:5, Informative)

      by killjoe (766577) on Tuesday February 13 2007, @05:45PM (#18004590)
      "Yeah, because they have ASP.NET, which pretty much blows the doors off of most other things productivity-wise."

      As a ASP.NET programmer let me be the first one to say BULL FUCKING SHIT!!!.

      ASP.NET makes it easy to slap controls on a screen and bind them to a recordset. If that was the entirety of your programming efforts then it would be productive. In the real world that's like 10% of job or less. In the real world I have debugging, refactoring, building, deploying, testing, and a billion other tasks where visual studio gets in my way and windows itself throws up roadblocks the size of winnebegos.

      When you consider the the whole of the software development life cycle ASP.NET and visual studio are at the bottom of the stack.
    • So.... you... apparently... think... that the industry is going to settle on Vista + Apache/MySQL/PHP|Perl|Python on the server?

      That's cute.

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