Oracle has launched new SPARC M8 based servers.

There are rumors that the SPARC M8 will be the “end of the line” for the SPARC architecture (due to the recent mass layoffs of Solaris software and SPARC hardware developers at Oracle) but these rumors have yet to be confirmed.

Oracle has released updated documentation covering up to current versions of the SPARC processor.

The latest iteration of the tech, the Sparc M7, is due to launch sometime next year – although exact dates remain vague – and to hear Ellison tell it, it’s “the most important thing we’ve done in silicon, maybe ever.”

Ellison pins Oracle’s hopes on cloud… and Sparc

Ellison: Sparc M7 is Oracle’s most important silicon EVER

Oracle reveals 32-core, 10 BEEELLION-transistor SPARC M7

Oracle will soon be announcing that it’s discontinuing development of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Sun Ray software and hardware, and Oracle Virtual Desktop Client product lines.

https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/important_information_about_oracle_desktop

http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-to-halt-development-of-sun-virtualization-technologies-7000018028/

This YouTube video documents the final shutdown of a SunFire 280R server with 3,737 (10.24) years of continual uptime.
It beats my personal record of almost two years on a Solaris machine, and more than six years on a Cisco switch.

Sun is renaming its x86-based server products to get rid of the “Fire” moniker.
Systems will be known as “Sun Server”, “Netra Server”, or “Sun Blade”.
You can see a table here.

According to the End-of-Feature Notices, Solaris 11 is dropping support for older “legacy” SPARC hardware:

Support for legacy systems that have included the UltraSPARC I, II, IIe, III, IIIi, III+, IV and IV+ processor architectures (as reported by the Solaris ‘psrinfo -pv’ command) has been removed. All Oracle SPARC Enterprise M-Series Servers and Oracle SPARC T-Series Servers will continue to be supported.

Note: Oracle Solaris 10 will continue to be a supported operating system for these affected platforms as per the current Oracle lifetime support policy.

This ITWorld article describes how “Oracle logged $773 million in server sales during the quarter, up from $681 million the year before”, apparently the first time an increase in Sun hardware has been reported since the third quarter of 2007.

Oracle and Fujitsu have announced the new SPARC Enterprise M3000 server, using the SPARC64 VII+ processor.

Thanks to donations from supporters and people whose websites I host, the hardware for the new ohno.mrbill.net server is in place and the Comcast Business Class line with static IPs was installed yesterday. The current server will remain in-place until the end of the year, giving me plenty of time to migrate content without having to rush. I will also be hosting two “machines” (converted to VMs) for a friend on this system; he has paid for a good part of the hardware and is paying for the Comcast installation fee in exchange.

Antec Sonata Proto case, Corsair VX450 power supply, Gigabyte motherboard, AMD Athlon II x4 640 CPU, 8GB RAM, and pairs of WD Caviar Blue 250G and Caviar Green 1TB drives each mirrored in a RAID-1 configuration.

Oracle has announced new Sun SPARC Enterprise-T systems at Oracle Openworld in San Francisco.

Highlights of the new systems:

• SPARC T3-1B: single-socket 16-core CPU @ 1.65Ghz, blade, up to 128G RAM
• SPARC T3-1: Single-socket 16-core CPU @ 1.65Ghz, 2RU form factor, up to 128G RAM, eight or sixteen 300G 2.5″ SAS drives
• SPARC T3-2: Dual-socket 16-core CPUs @ 1.65Ghz, 3RU form factor, up to 256G RAM, up to six 300G 2.5″ SAS drives
• SPARC T3-4: Quad-socket 16-core CPUs @ 1.65Ghz, 5RU form factor, up to 512G RAM, up to eight 300G 2.5″ SAS drives

According to this post by Joerg Moellenkamp, Oracle Premier Support for Solaris on HP servers is once again available, with purchase options through HP and directly from Oracle as well. HP’s Solaris Support Matrix is here.

It seems a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth could have been avoided if someone at Oracle had just said “We’re reworking the OEM agreements, give us a month or two.”

According to this Register article, IBM is ceasing sales of Solaris 10 on its x86-64 hardware as of August 27th. It is not clear at this time whether Oracle has pulled IBM’s OEM license (as it did with HP), or if IBM is making this change on its own. Dell is now the only remaining third-party vendor of Solaris on x86 hardware.

Oracle has announced some new x86 servers and other hardware.

* The X4800 is an 6RU 8-socket Xeon 7600 system with up to 1TB of RAM and 4 or 8 CPUs.
* The X4470 is a 3RU 4-socket Xeon 7500 system with up to 512GB of RAM and up to 4 CPUs.
* The X4270M2 is a 2RU 2-socket Xeon 5600 system with up to 144G of RAM and two CPUs.
* The X4170M2 is a 1RU 2-socket Xeon 5600 system with up to 144G of RAM and two CPUs.

Also announced were new blade CPU cards, network expansion modules, and the 1U Sun 72port 10G Ethernet switch.

According to this Heise Online article (in German), new machines using the Xeon 5600 and 7500 CPUs will be announced next week by John Fowler, Sun Vice-President of Systems.