I'd like to expand a bit on what Liam provided. We've been quite busy in the last several weeks getting our collective heads wrapped around the issue of supporting applications running on Solaris, when Solaris is deployed as a guest operating system in a virtualized environment, such as an LDoms guest, running under VMware, or with our upcoming xVM server virtualization on x64. In all those cases, we're fond of saying "It's just Solaris", meaning - all standard interfaces are supported (as defined by 'man -s5 standards'). Speaking for LDoms at least, most optional interfaces are currently supported too, and those that aren't are definitely on the roadmap for upcoming releases.
We (Sun) are planning a support policy completely familiar to most Sun customers, we're not done putting this together yet, but I'll tip our hand so you can see what we're up to... If the virtualization "platform" (lets say LDoms for instance) is listed on Sun's Hardware Compatibility List or HCL, then you have assurance that well behaved (i.e. uses standard interfaces) Solaris applications running on that "platform" will be fully supported by Sun under your Solaris support contract. (major hint - expect to see LDoms in the HCL shortly). We are also looking at a refresh of the Solaris 10 binary application guarantee to be more explicit about including virtualized platforms under that guarantee. We understand its impractical for vendors and ISV's to "re-qualify" or "re-certify" their applications on LDoms - and its totally unnecessary except for a very tiny fraction of infrastructure applications that don't use standard interfaces. Hope this helps. JF Relevant links are: http://sun.com/bigadmin/hcl http://sun.com/software/solaris/guarantee.jsp -- This message was posted from opensolaris.org
