[csw-users] Why support Solaris 8 onwards?

[Anthony Cogan]

It's really a debate between us "old timers" Sys. Admins in the  
Enterprise vs. the newer "Linux" (I don't want to say kids, but), kids.

These people who run it at home or co-lo'd somewhere are used to  
upgrading/updating every 6-12 months with the newest and latest  
versions.

Whereas, I remember when I was doing some work at a large plane  
manufacturer, us Sys. Admins were bent because of Y2k testing.  We  
had some Solaris boxes at that time that had been up longer than  
Windows NT had even been released (mainly DNS/Utility server stuff),  
but we didn't want to reset our uptime. ;)

Anyways, in an Enterprise, you don't change just for the sake of  
changing, if it works, then you leave it alone, except for critical  
patches.

Now, like all of us "Old timers" have said, when something compelling  
causes us to upgrade we do.  I just built two servers for my wife's  
online business, a X2100 M2 and a X2200 M2, both running Solaris 10  
with a good number of zones and ZFS.  I have to say, Solaris 10 does  
have some darn nice features and will be the version I use for all  
new builds, but I still do not see a compelling reason to move off of  
Solaris 8.  For some odd reason too, I never have seen any reason to  
go to Solaris 9, I couldn't even tell you one feature in it that  
Solaris 8 didn't have.  Hmph.

I personally like to leave things running smoothly and reading my  
Dilbert or the latest BigAdmin article instead of upgrading, which  
always causes me about a week or two of fine tuning / debugging.

My .02 from this old timer.

On Sep 16, 2007, at 8:41 AM, James Lee wrote:

> On 14/09/07, 22:41:50, Ben Taylor <John.B.Taylor at Sun.COM> wrote  
> regarding
> Re: [csw-users] Why support Solaris 8 onwards?:
>
>>>> I was wondering why blastwave supports solaris 8 & above, and  
>>>> not 10
>>>> and above?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> Because people including myself have Solaris 8 systems.
>>>
>>>
>> you like working on really slow systems?
>
> No I don't.  I don't like working on fast systems either (is vi
> at 3GHz with 4 cores any more fun?).  More importantly I don't like
> working on systems that don't need fixing.  In fact I don't really
> like working but you didn't write to talk about work ethics.
>
> Are you suggesting that Solaris 8 is somehow "really slow" whereas
> Solaris 10 isn't?  Or a "really slow" system with Solaris 8 updated
> to Solaris 10 will no longer be "really slow"?  I think not.
>
> I'm not against S10 and my new installs have been S10 but for
> existing systems the logic is:
>     Does S8 support all my services?  Yes.
>     Will it cost me money to update existing systems to S10?  Yes.
>     Will I make more money with S10 installed?  No.
> Debate over.
>
>
>
>
> James.
>
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