With adoption in over 50,000 businesses and institutions, Oracle Solaris has clearly established itself as the world leader in UNIX-based operating systems. Oracle Solaris includes many unique and innovative technologies that are not commonly available in other operating systems, such as Oracle Solaris ZFS, Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), predictive fault detection, built-in virtualization, and advanced security.
As a result of a broad strategic alliance between Oracle and Intel, Oracle Solaris has become widely deployed on Intel-based x86 systems from a variety of different hardware vendors. Intel has embraced Oracle Solaris as a mainstream UNIX operating system for enterprise-class, mission-critical systems based on Intel Xeon processors.
While Intel Xeon processor-based systems from any hardware OEM can be certified to run Oracle Solaris, Oracle has engineered Oracle Solaris to provide additional benefits when running on Oracle x86 systems. A primary example of this is the Oracle Solaris Fault Management Architecture (FMA). Developed and enhanced over the past decade, Oracle Solaris FMA is composed of a set of diagnosis engines that process raw error events from the hardware and provide an automated and intelligent method for problem diagnosis.
As a result of Oracle’s partnership with Intel, Oracle Solaris FMA was instrumented with diagnosis ability for DIMM and CPU correctible errors and fault detection for PCIe errors. Oracle Solaris also has the ability to offline individual processor strands, retire individual pages of memory and cease using problematic I/O devices.
While Oracle Solaris FMA is a built-in feature of the operating system, its capabilities can vary dramatically based on the server on which it is running, as is shown in the figure below:
Figure 1. Complete Oracle Solaris FMA capabilities are only available on Oracle x86 systems.
When running on Oracle x86 servers, Oracle Solaris automatically detects the presence of Oracle Integrated Lights Out Manager (Oracle ILOM), the embedded service processor that is part of every server from Oracle, and establishes a high speed connection between the two which allows both Oracle Solaris FMA and Oracle ILOM to have total visibility into the health of the entire system. Oracle’s x86 systems are the only Intel-based systems in which the service processor and Oracle Solaris are tightly integrated. As a result, organizations running Oracle’s x86 servers have the flexibility to choose how they want to monitor their servers, which simplifies their management infrastructure.
Oracle has also engineered Oracle Solaris FMA to provide special serviceability features when running on Oracle x86 systems. When a component fails in any of Oracle’s x86 servers, Oracle Solaris FMA will diagnose the problem and specify the failed component using the same nomenclature as the slot/component identification label silkscreened on the chassis. To further help in identifying and locating faulted components, when Oracle Solaris diagnoses a fault, a fault message is sent to Oracle ILOM, which in turn lights the appropriate fault indicators. Both of these allow for easier and faster service, enabling technicians to quickly restore services that were brought down by a fault.
Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR) is a secure, scalable, customer-configurable software solution for Oracle hardware products that resolves problems faster by providing automatic service request generation and priority service request handling for specific faults. If a fault is detected, the ASR software automatically creates a service request with the My Oracle Support portal. By automatically including the component part number in the service request to Oracle, Oracle ASR makes ordering replacement parts very simple. While non-Oracle hardware vendors have their own technologies for communicating problems back to their respective support organizations, those technologies are not tightly integrated with Oracle Solaris. Having a set of software and firmware components that have all been engineered and tested together is the only way to ensure accurate diagnosis of problems.
Oracle’s x86 systems are the best x86 platforms for Oracle software. Only Oracle provides customers with an optimized hardware and software stack that comes complete with choice of operating system, virtualization software and cloud management tools – all at no extra charge. Oracle’s optimized hardware and software stack has enabled a 10x performance gain in its engineered systems and has delivered world-record benchmark results. Oracle offers a wide range of Intel Xeon processor-based servers to suit the needs of enterprise class application that are required to conduct day-to-day operations:
| Product Name | Features | Primary Application |
| Sun Blade X4-2B | Two-socket blade module based on Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family | Compute node for clustered computing and virtualization needs in a blade form factor |
| Sun Server X4-2 | Two-socket 1RU server based on Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family | Compute node for clulstered computing and virtualization needs |
| Sun Server X4-2L | Two-socket 2RU server based on Intel Xeon processor E5-2600 v2 product family | Storage node for large internal storage capacity needs |
| Sun Server X2-4 | Four-socket 3RU server based on Intel Xeon processor E7-4800 product family | Consolidation node for efficient use of resources with high-performance and large memeory availability |
| Sun Server X2-8 | Eight-socket 5RU server based on Intel Xeon processor E7-8800 product family | SMP node for scale-up computing |
Figure 2. Oracle x86 system portfolio
Oracle Solaris runs better and smarter on Oracle x86 servers. By engineering Oracle Solaris to work with Oracle’s x86 hardware, Oracle has engineered unique features that bring value to organizations that are looking to run their mission-critical applications. The advanced fault management and serviceability features, as well as improvements to installation and system management, make Oracle x86 systems the best hardware choice for running Oracle Solaris.
Pierre Lessard is a Principal Product Manager in Oracle’s Systems Group, focusing on x86 servers. He spent the last fifteen years at Oracle in Operations and Engineering, working on both SPARC and x86-based systems.
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