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Oracle Solaris pros and cons

Vendor: Oracle

4.3 out of 5

49 reviews
94% willing to recommend

731 followers

Pros & Cons summary

Oracle Solaris is designed for high-end server performance and database optimization, offering robust backup capabilities and built-in virtualization. Known for its exceptional stability and scalability, it supports effective hardware utilization. However, it requires specific hardware and is more complex to use compared to Linux. High costs and sometimes inaccurate memory usage figures are noted drawbacks. Users suggest unifying the SPARC and x86 variants for better flexibility.

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Prominent pros & cons

PROS

Oracle Solaris is designed for high-end servers and offers excellent performance, particularly with Oracle applications.

It includes robust backup capabilities, particularly incremental backups that enhance data protection.

Oracle Solaris offers built-in virtualization, reducing the need for additional hypervisor licenses.

Features like Solaris Zones and Containers provide effective resource partitioning and optimization of hardware utilization.

Oracle Solaris is known for its high availability, robustness, and excellent database hosting capabilities.

CONS

Currently, there are two variants, SPARC and x86, which complicates the user experience as they are not unified into one product.

Solaris requires specific hardware to work well, lacking flexibility in terms of hardware integration.

Oracle Solaris does not perform as well outside of Oracle applications, showing better performance for databases but not for other operating systems.

Oracle Solaris code is open and documentation is accessible to all, but the documentation does not support some solutions and provides no alternatives.

Package management in Oracle Solaris could be improved, especially when compared to Linux.

Oracle Solaris Pros review quotes

reviewer1301145

CEO at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Sep 27, 2020

Oracle Solaris is great due to the fact that it actually is meant for high-end servers.

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reviewer1632822

Service Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 31, 2021

The stability of the solution is good.

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DF

Infrastructure as a Service Manager

Jul 25, 2019

The ability to manipulate the zones and the files within the zones from a global OS provides us flexibility that no other virtualization can match.

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Learn what your peers think about Oracle Solaris. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.

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Network Administrator at Mzansi Security and Fire

Mar 8, 2024

The product's initial setup phase was easy.

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Marcel Hofstetter

Oracle ACE Director "Solaris " / CEO / Enterprise Consultant at JomaSoft

Aug 19, 2024

We are able to deploy new environments very quickly and securely. Using the virtualization features, we can migrate the environments very flexibly between our servers.

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Senior Manager IT Operations at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 1, 2021

The backup capabilities are quite good.

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reviewer1053252

Technical Presales Consultant/ Engineer at Ingram Micro

Aug 2, 2021

Oracle Solaris was the preferred operating system for their customers to run their databases on and to get the best performance. It performs well with Oracle applications. Additionally, there are some features inside that are called zones which are Linux containers.

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reviewer2088135

Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees

Nov 15, 2023

Solaris Zones and Containers are my favorite features.

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reviewer1346454

KYC Quality Assurance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Dec 29, 2021

This product handles databases well; they run on top of the operating system.

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Sr. Manager - System Analyst (Datacenter Infrastructure) at Sohar International

Feb 3, 2023

We like that the virtualization is built in, so you don't have to spend extra money on buying licenses for a hypervisor.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 28)

Oracle Solaris Cons review quotes

reviewer1301145

CEO at a computer software company with 11-50 employees

Sep 27, 2020

Currently, there are two variants, there's SPARC and there's x86. I would have wanted a scenario where they're all just one product.

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reviewer1632822

Service Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees

Jul 31, 2021

When we switch over to Solaris it was not easy because we had some troubles with the performance. Solaris is from Oracle and you would expect that it would run flawlessly, but we had some issues in sizing the previous Linux environment to the Solaris environment.

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DF

Infrastructure as a Service Manager

Jul 25, 2019

Oracle customer service is slow at times.

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Free Report: Oracle Solaris Reviews and More

Learn what your peers think about Oracle Solaris. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: December 2024.

824,053 professionals have used our research since 2012.

Network Administrator at Mzansi Security and Fire

Mar 8, 2024

The tool is quite complex and difficult for anyone trying to use or study it.

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Marcel Hofstetter

Oracle ACE Director "Solaris " / CEO / Enterprise Consultant at JomaSoft

Aug 19, 2024

Patching without downtime would be nice.

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Senior Manager IT Operations at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees

Apr 1, 2021

It would be helpful if the solution offered backend management. In the 11.4 version, Oracle added a management console. It would be great if we maybe had a user management tool to go with it.

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reviewer1053252

Technical Presales Consultant/ Engineer at Ingram Micro

Aug 2, 2021

I believe before Oracle was using Oracle Linux, they were using Oracle Solaris for their customers who are using Oracle databases. This was because it was more optimized for the hardware built for it. It has good performance for the database only. However, if you take it out of the Oracle applications, it will not do well compared to other operating systems, such as Linux or even Windows can have better performance.

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reviewer2088135

Infrastructure Specialist at a financial services firm with 11-50 employees

Nov 15, 2023

The primary drawback with this product is the lack of version updates.

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reviewer1346454

KYC Quality Assurance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees

Dec 29, 2021

This product is not as flexible as other similar solutions on the market today.

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Sr. Manager - System Analyst (Datacenter Infrastructure) at Sohar International

Feb 3, 2023

If it could support other file systems, it would be better.

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Show 10 more reviews (out of 26)

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Product Categories

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Operating Systems (OS) for Business

Popular Comparisons

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Ubuntu Linux vs Oracle Solaris

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