Sun to certify it's servers for Ubuntu?

[Daniel Mons]

Karl Goetz wrote:
> Speaking personally, SPARC is the only gear sun produces that interests
> me. I'm not remotely interested in their rebadged AMD's.
> i cant reasonably coment about the amount of solaris in use - i dont
> move in those circles :)
>

My main focus is on cluster building for software primarily focussed 
with high end 3D and film production (render software like Houdini 
Mantra, Pixar Renderman/PRMan, Apple Shake, etc).  The only 
commonly-supported platform for a lot of the technologies is x86, which 
means if you want to build a multi-purpose render farm, that's the 
architecture you need to implement.

Additionally, cheap processor density is the main desire for most 
studios, with an emphasis on fast turn around on hardware refresh. 
Hardware installs last no longer than 18-24 months for most.  Clusters 
are usually built per-project, and sold off quickly after.  For that 
niche industry, x86 still makes the most sense both financially, and 
from an application support point of view.  Plus Sun's line of Xeon 
blades are an easy way to squash 16 x86 cores into a very small space (2 
blade slots holding 4x quad core Xeons), and expand at will.

> Not sure what you mean - there is no longer 'off the shelf' support for
> Ubuntu's latest LTS (unless it comes later)

Which is precisely the point I'm making.  The idea that a time may come 
when I could buy a tier-1 piece of hardware from a manufacturer like 
Sun, bundled with Ubuntu and MySQL, and top to toe support all from the 
one vendor is quite a pleasant one.

No, it doesn't exist right now.  Yes, I'd like it to exist. With Sun 
cosying up to Ubuntu (and vice versa), it may exist one day, and that 
makes me a happy puppy.

A shining example is the recent HP/RedHat support agreements.  As well 
as working in 3D/film, I also work for a high end 
financial/superannuation group (sleep?  what's that?) who currently have 
all of their large number crunching gear on PA-RISC and HP-UX.  They are 
in the process of switching everything over to HP built x86 and RedHat, 
and now HP have chosen to support RedHat directly.  They have trained 
RedHat support people and engineers on staff, so that for the customer 
any support issues regarding the box is handled by one location, and the 
back-and-forth between software and hardware vendors is minimised.

I personally am excited to see a day when Sun may offer the same thing - 
in house Ubuntu support for their servers.  Again, it makes buying kit 
easier, and it also appeases CIOs when you can assure them that no 
matter what goes wrong with the box, it will take just one phone call to 
one vendor find someone who can help you, regardless if it's software or 
hardware at fault.

-Dan