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Peter Karlsson - PeerSpot reviewer
System specialist at Savecore
Reseller
Top 5
The performance and reliability for running databases and applications are very good
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the main advantages is the rock-solid reliability. It works. The stability is very good. It has a very good track record in the data security database."
  • "One of the drawbacks is Oracle itself. Oracle has its good and bad they are not putting resources into the development."

What is our primary use case?

We use it as customers, integrators, and resellers.

Our primary use case is for mission-critical systems.

What is most valuable?

Solaris' performance and reliability for running databases and applications is very good.

One of the main advantages is the rock-solid reliability. It works. The stability is very good. It has a very good track record in the data security database.

A valuable feature is the file system it has, ZFS. It does check on old data which enables us to be able to rely on the date that's written on the discs. We know the data is correct because when you read the data, you can verify the checks of the data itself.

What needs improvement?

One of the drawbacks is Oracle itself. Oracle has its good and bad they are not putting resources into the development. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Oracle Solaris in different formatations since around 1986.

Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Reseller
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RajanChauhan - PeerSpot reviewer
Information Technology Service Delivery Manager at LTIMINDTREE
Real User
Top 5
A cost-effective and stable solution to install and run applications
Pros and Cons
  • "Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten since we haven't faced any issues."
  • "I don't want to receive any updates on Oracle"

What is our primary use case?

I have used Oracle Solaris for applications, especially to install and run the applications.


What is most valuable?

I like the solution's from a cost perspective. Also, it's pretty stable on Azure, considering that we cannot use it on IEX. So, for that, Oracle is available.


What needs improvement?

I don't want to receive any updates on Oracle. The aforementioned detail can be considered for improvement.


For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Oracle Solaris for a few years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten since we haven't faced any issues. I find it pretty stable on Linux.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?



How are customer service and support?

We have a different team for contacting Oracle's technical support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used other solutions, but it comes under the platform team, and they are the ones who interact with Oracle's technical support. I cannot comment on the performance because they are interacting with the tech support of other people. So for us, it's more on the application.


How was the initial setup?

Regarding the setup, if you say the application, it is pretty easy.

The solution can be deployed on Linux, Oracle, or Azure and not on IEX.


What other advice do I have?

For me, it works fine. I rate the overall solution a ten out of ten.


Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Oracle Solaris
January 2025
Learn what your peers think about Oracle Solaris. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: January 2025.
831,265 professionals have used our research since 2012.
IT Project Manager at Awash International Bank
Real User
Monitor and manage your Oracle Database
Pros and Cons
  • "The most valuable feature is the ease of setup."
  • "The solution is pricey and can be improved by lowering the cost."

What is our primary use case?

The primary use case of this solution is for the installation of the Oracle Database and further monitoring and managing.

What is most valuable?

The most valuable feature is the ease of setup.

What needs improvement?

The solution is pricey and can be improved by lowering the cost.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using the solution for almost three years.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is stable as long as you apply the patches and upgrades as recommended by the vendors.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable.

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is on point and is always helpful.

How would you rate customer service and support?

Positive

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Previously to using this solution I used Linux and Microsoft.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup was straightforward with the help of Oracle documentation and took one day.

What about the implementation team?

The implementation was completed with the help of a vendor.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is expensive and is based on an annual fee.

What other advice do I have?

I give the solution a nine out of ten.

Unlike most Oracle products which are complex to set up this solution can be deployed with the help of the Oracle documentation for a UAT or IST integration case environment purpose.

There are over 60 people using the solution in our organization.

If cost is not an issue I recommend the solution.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1346454 - PeerSpot reviewer
KYC Quality Assurance at a financial services firm with 10,001+ employees
Real User
Easy to set up, good database support, but other products have better flexibility
Pros and Cons
  • "This product handles databases well; they run on top of the operating system."
  • "This product is not as flexible as other similar solutions on the market today."

What is our primary use case?

We primarily use Solaris for compute storage. It is a server product that runs databases.

Our current equipment that Oracle Solaris runs on is approximately five years old and I only deal with it occasionally. This is a legacy product for us now and times have moved on.

What is most valuable?

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

What needs improvement?

This product is not as flexible as other similar solutions on the market today. Times have moved on and there are newer operating systems that are better to use and more compatible with current technology.

For how long have I used the solution?

I began working with Oracle Solaris between 15 and 16 years ago.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

This is a stable product.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We've moved to other products recently, so scalability is no longer an issue for us. That said, the legacy version was slightly fixed.

We had approximately 25,000 end-users in some form or another.

How are customer service and support?

We used to deal with technical support for this product. However, because it's older and things have not been changing, we have not had any recent experience with them.

How was the initial setup?

When we were installing this product, it was straightforward. We haven't installed one in a while. It used to be maintained by our network team but as it's now a legacy product for us, we do not have dedicated staff to take care of it.

What about the implementation team?

We were implementing this product with our in-house team.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

There are no licensing fees but you can opt to pay for support.

What other advice do I have?

The suitability of this product depends on the use case. There are other products that are more flexible and better to use these days. It was stable, so I would recommend it for some cases but more often than not, we wouldn't use it anymore.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
reviewer1632822 - PeerSpot reviewer
Service Manager at a tech services company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Stable, scalable, and easy installation
Pros and Cons
  • "The stability of the solution is good."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

We are using Oracle Solaris for an external data center. We switched to Oracle Solaris because we outsourced Oracle to a third party and they went from Oracle Linux to Solaris because of license issues with Oracle Linux. We had to then go over as well for some functionality reasons, such as to do hard partitioning. We were able to minimize the number of CPU cores available for Oracle Linux which help save money because we did not have to pay full price.

We do not use Solaris in general terms because we are end-users, we are an application service provider. We have an external party that delivers us an Oracle database and the platform underneath the Oracle database is agnostic to us. We do not care about it as long as we have an Oracle database running. My team, which are technicians, is completely not involved in the Solaris platform. We just have an Oracle database running where a third party takes care of it, and they choose Solaris because of license issues.

What needs improvement?

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using this solution for approximately one year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability of the solution is good.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Oracle Solaris is scalable. However, this depends on the hardware that is running in the environment but this is not the fault of the solution if the hardware is not adequate.

How are customer service and technical support?

Our standard platform is VMware and Oracle Solaris runs fine on VMware, but if you have VMware running on it, you do not get support.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

I have used Oracle and Red Hat Linux previously.

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

If you have a 20 or 30-core CPU underneath Oracle, they expect you to pay for all the cores, although the VM only has assigned a couple of them. They are very difficult license-wise and that is the reason why we went to Oracle Solaris. We were presented this option by our external advisor to prohibit extensive Oracle Linux costs.

We have a lot of government organizations here in Holland leaving Oracle. It is not a bad solution, it is a perfect solution because we have used it for more than 25 years and have never lost one record. It is technically a good solution, but the licensing and sales issues, people are really annoyed about and many Dutch organizations are going over to other solutions. For example, Postgres databases or EnterpriseDB, which is a commercial version of Postgres. They are more cost-efficient if you speak to sales teams.

The price is not good and needs to improve. What was surprising to us was that our Oracle databases run better with fewer resources on Linux than they did on Solaris. We found that strange because if Oracle brings out the new version of their database it is almost always firstly brought out on their own platforms, such as Solaris. You would expect that Solaris would work the best. However, in our case, it did not, there is something wrong with the resources in Solaris.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

I have evaluated the Postgres database and Enterprise database.

What other advice do I have?

I would prefer Linux then Oracle Solaris because it is more open. If you are in a commercial environment, then use a commercial Linux version, not a free version. We have seven customers using Red Hat, the support is very good, and there are hardly any issues.

I will not recommend Solaris because of the attitude of Oracle, what we have experienced in the database, how they handle licenses, and legally. They are not a company that is fair and are very aggressively trying to get money. However, they provide a solid solution.

I rate Oracle Solaris a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

Private Cloud
Disclosure: My company has a business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer: Partner
PeerSpot user
Shafiq Khan - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior Manager IT Operations at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Real User
Top 10
Great security and reliability with responsive technical support
Pros and Cons
  • "The backup capabilities are quite good."
  • "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."

What is our primary use case?

We are using the solution for multiple purposes. We are using it, for example, for our local environment, and we are using it for our core banking. We even use it for our database and a lot of other things.

What is most valuable?

The reliability of the solution is excellent.

The security has been very good overall.

We've found the solution to have good availability.

The backup capabilities are quite good.

The solution has proven to be quite stable so far.

The product can scale.

The solution is 100% free to use. It doesn't cost a company anything as it's embedded in the hardware.

What needs improvement?

I haven't had any big issues with the solution. Largely, I've been very happy with it. 

Sometimes we get stuck for security reasons. There's an issue with either the filing or use management. However, largely it just comes down to a lack of experience and over time, users get the hang of it. 

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.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for a long time. It's been about 11 years. It's over a decade at this point.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The stability has been very good. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's very reliable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution can scale, however, it depends on the need. Whenever we require an extension we go for that.

Our whole IT department is currently on the solution.

How are customer service and technical support?

We're quite satisfied both with technical support and the product itself. Support, for example, is responsive, however, we have a very low number of calls with Oracle due to the fact that we find this application very stable.

How was the initial setup?

We have a pretty complex environment and therefore had a pretty complex setup.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

You don't have to pay a licensing fee. The solution is free to use. It's bound with the hardware.

What other advice do I have?

We are just customers and end-users. We don't have a business relationship with Oracle.

I would 100% recommend the solution to other organizations. The solution has been quite reliable and secure. For an enterprise environment, it's a great product.

I'd rate the solution at a nine out of ten.

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Diego E. Aguirre - PeerSpot reviewer
Diego E. AguirreOracle ACE - Specialized in Systems Technologies at Telecom Argentina
Real User

Ufsdump is the best for backup, I agree.

Diego E. Aguirre - PeerSpot reviewer
Diego E. AguirreOracle ACE - Specialized in Systems Technologies at Telecom Argentina
Real User

@Evgeny Belenky , yes, it's a built'in backup tool, and it comes from older releases of solaris, and its very useful for example to backup the os.
to restore use ufsrestore

PeerSpot user
it_user491505 - PeerSpot reviewer
Assistant Vice President - (Unix) at a tech services company with 10,001+ employees
Consultant
Zones and resource allocation through capping and project is my favourite feature.

What is most valuable?

Zones and resource allocation through capping and project is my favourite feature.

Lately, I have been using ZFS and I absolutely love it, but I didn't get much of a chance to explore it fully in a production environment.

How has it helped my organization?

This product performed wonderfully with my banking client, where I participated in implementation of virtualization through Solaris zones and then capping CPUs. We integrated zones with VCS clusters. It provided unmatchable stability, high availability, scalability and the best tunable performance.

We used it on M series, X series or the latest T series. It gave great reliable performance on all of the hardware.

What needs improvement?

I believe it's a great product and its latest versions are also really good. However, I believe Oracle is not utilising its full potential by restricting it best performance with Oracle hardware. Even though it can be run on SPARC, as well as Intel hardware, the problem lies with the way Oracle chooses to promote it. They are always saying that it performs best with Oracle hardware. They should understand current demand for open source and publish white papers for its performance on Intel hardware. And they must change their stratergy with Dell, HP and other blade server manufacturers and enable them to use Solaris and promote Solaris.

Also, they should promote Oracle Solaris with open source tools like HANA, Hadoop, Puppet, Chef, and Ansible. Meanwhile, they can continue to develop and promote their in-house competitive products as well.

To summarise, I feel the main issue lies with their promotion and sales strategies, and also their relations with competing hardware vendors and database/application vendors.

For how long have I used the solution?

I have used Solaris for more than 8 years, almost all of my career, with all of my clients.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

I have done many deployments, migrations and so on with Solaris or to Solaris, and I never faced a problem where I would have received a response from Oracle/Sun support that it was not possible. The product and its features work almost exactly as promised and the documentation available for the product.

Yes, I have seen bugs like zoneadmd hanging, or a zone getting stuck in a shutting down state, but they usually don't happen during deployments or planned activities.

How are customer service and technical support?

Experience with Sun support was absolutely fantastic, but it deteriorated a little when Oracle support took over.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Most of the environments used Solaris, and we upgraded from Solaris 8/9 to Solaris 10.

How was the initial setup?

In my experience, we mostly moved up from older hardware running Solaris 8 to Solaris 10 on new hardware. Complexities came in the form of an upgraded version of Veritas Cluster and volume manager or storage migration. Solaris itself didn't create any issues at OS level.

What about the implementation team?

We mostly did implementation through in-house teams.

The most important thing is to have a sufficient downtime window and application or database support teams to be available to verify immediately.

What was our ROI?

I don't have much of an idea about pricing, but it should be decoupled from SPARC architecture.

What other advice do I have?

Even though nowadays, I am using RedHat Linux, in my environment, I miss Solaris a lot.

Trust Solaris. It is still better than Linux in many ways.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user517500 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user517500Works at a tech company with 51-200 employees
Real User

Nice article.

I agree to the fact that Solaris is much better than Linux since I've used both.

Ikh-Erdene Namsrai - PeerSpot reviewer
Senior System Administrator at Mongolian Mining Corporation
Real User
Top 5Leaderboard
Is very stable and has a great operating system
Pros and Cons
  • "Oracle Solaris's operating system is good."
  • "The scalability of the solution can be improved."

What is our primary use case?

The solution can be used to run some applications on your PC. 

What is most valuable?

Oracle Solaris's operating system is good. 

What needs improvement?

The scalability of the solution can be improved. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have been using Oracle Solaris for ten years. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Oracle Solaris is highly stable. I rate the stability a ten out of ten. 

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. Three people are using the solution at present. I rate the scalability an eight out of ten. 

How are customer service and support?

The technical support is helpful and the response time depends on the severity of the problem. 

How was the initial setup?

The initial setup is straightforward. The deployment takes three hours time.

What about the implementation team?

The deployment can be done in-house. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

The solution is free to use. 

What other advice do I have?

I recommend using this solution. I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Oracle Solaris Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.
Updated: January 2025
Buyer's Guide
Download our free Oracle Solaris Report and get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions.