Natrinsic is proud to announce the immediate availability of Solaris support services!
Ever since Oracle decided to sunset future development and support of the Solaris Operating System, there has been a steady decline of Solaris support expertise available to the enterprise market. Natrinsic, with its considerable Solaris expertise, has decided to roll out a new support offering to support the large and passionate Solaris customer base.
As reported in September of 2017, Oracle made it clear to the market that they were no longer committed to the Solaris OS when they decided to close down the Solaris Development team, and lay off the majority of their staff. This sent a shockwave through the SPARC-Solaris customer base, given that there is an estimated 37,000 customers using the operating system. In the four years since this announcement, there has been a steady decline of Solaris support expertise available to the enterprise market.
Natrinsic now offers end-to-end Solaris support, administration, and architectural services ranging from short-engagement projects to annual managed services agreements. We bring world-class administration and support to your Solaris server and network environment.
The Natrinsic engineered systems teams are accustomed to working with all Solaris releases ranging from Solaris 2.5.1 to Solaris Release 11, across the entire Oracle Engineered Systems family of appliances, including (but not limited to), Exadata and SuperCluster.
At a high level, Natrinsic offers the following support services to our Solaris customers:
When it comes to Solaris support, nothing can replace hands-on experience. What could give you more confidence than to find some of your favorite (former) Oracle engineers are leading our Solaris support team?
Perry West joined Natrinsic in the summer of 2021 and serves as our Director of Engineered Systems Support (ESS). He sums up his enthusiasm for the Solaris OS:
“I started working with the Solaris when it was called Solaris 1 (The Roadmap) SunOS 4.1.3, and I haven’t looked back. The thing that I love about Solaris is how well it scales from the small to the very large and everything in-between. It is the best at fault management and mitigation, better than anything else out there." - Perry West
He brings over 30 years of Solaris and engineered systems support to Natrinsic, having spent the past 5 years as a Global Technical Lead with Oracle.
Paul Anderson joined our team in 2020 and is our Senior Director of Engineered Systems Support. His most recent previous experience working within Oracle Corporation as a principal support engineer. He brings great hands-on experience with Oracle data warehouse offerings (e.g., Exadata, SuperCluster & ODA), and the Solaris Operating system. Paul has been working with the Solaris OS (and its various other incantations) since XXX.
“For me, what makes Solaris unique is the maturity of the Operating System. I particularly enjoy placing applications/databases on the OS, and helping clients outperform with Solaris. What a product!" - Paul Anderson
Part of the reason we love Solaris so much is because of the ability to establish a secure environment against external threats. While that is good for Security, it also means that this task often proves to be a scary proposition for most customers due to the design and configuration needs that have to be accounted for.
In addition, patching is a widely known challenge for many customers due to the complexity and required knowledge base. Our approach to patching is based on Oracle's best practices and lessons learned, which ensures that Natrinsic will be able to prepare for your patching needs and respond to any unforeseen difficulties, helping you sleep better at night.
One thing that becomes difficult changing from version to version of Solaris is how patching is performed. There is a great difference in utilities and their use. Each one needs to be considered differently.
Upgrading is also a special consideration. How was the programming done to support an application or database? Solaris pthreads? POSIX threads? What other facilities may, or may not, exist? All of these questions can be quantified and a testing plan put forward prior to an upgrade to show the migration path.
Given our 30+ years of collective Oracle engineered systems support experience, it's natural to expect that a number of SuperCluster customers will be looking for assistance with their Solaris environment. We have good news for you on this front:
1. We support Solaris on SuperCluster.
Solaris and SuperCluster present unique challenges. As an Engineered System you need to understand that it is not just Solaris or Linux or Mellanox Infiniband or the ZFSSA but the relationship between them all plus the Oracle software stack that has been incorporated to take advantage of all the components, and what that means when it comes to how when and in what order it all needs to be accomplished. Solaris and Solaris SuperCluster have differences, along with two interesting caveats, the PDOM and the I/O Domain. While the PDOM can be used on certain hardware, the I/O Domain is only resident on a SuperCluster. We provide the experience and knowledge base that you need for planning or maintaining these differentials in your platform.
2. SuperCluster appliance support coming soon!
Much like our existing Exadata support service, Natrinsic plans to roll out a fully managed service solution for Oracle SuperCluster customers later this year. For all of our SuperCluster support customers who subscribe to our gold-level service, Solaris OS support is included!
If you would like to discuss how Natrinsic’s Engineered Systems team can help your organization, we would love to hear from you.
Please contact us via https://www.natrinsic.com/ or call +1 800-891-2190 to learn more.