News

posted on 06 May 2008 07:59

Sun has arranged with Amazon to have its OpenSolaris operating system, with the ZFS file system, available for use by Amazon cloud customers.

Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) offers Amazon-hosted computing services available across the Internet on a pay-as-you-go basis. The idea is that customers use Amazon's IT infrastructure and avoid the expense of having their own. Generally customers use the Linux O/S with EC2.

Solaris and ZFS are now selectable options on the Amazon web services platform. Sun has also added technical support services for its MySQL database running on EC2 and Linux. MySQL can be be downloaded for a variety of platforms, including EC2.

OpenSolaris ZFS delivers instant roll-back and continual check-summing capabilities that enable users to test their ideas virtually risk-free as their work is protected. OpenSolaris also includes Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) and the Image Packaging System (IPS) which increases installation speed and accuracy by providing better control of applications and dependencies, and offers easy-to-use systems management.

Rich Green, Sun's software EVP, said: "Support for OpenSolaris and MySQL on Amazon EC2 expands the reach and convenience for developers who want to quickly deploy their applications on the Web by taking advantage of Amazon Web Services. Sun aims to continue to offer additional options to use and deploy our open source platforms - covering the spectrum from small home-grown installations through to on-site data centers and hosted environments such as Amazon EC2."

The aim is to increase sales of Sun's hardware and support services as developers build applications using Sun's open source software. But the software built for EC2 will run on EC2 and won't be expected to result in Sun hardware sales directly. The hope is that the general rise in exposure to Sun's software will, indirectly, cause Sun hardware and support sales to rise.

Adam Selipsky, Amazon Web Services; product management and developer relations VP, said: "With OpenSolaris and MySQL technical support now available on EC2, developers and IT staff gain powerful platform and database options for building scalable and reliable applications on Amazon's cloud computing platform," not on Sun's computing hardware.

OpenSolaris on Amazon EC2 beta is currently available by invitation only. To request an invitation to join the program, visit www.sun.com/amazon.

^{[Paul Roberts, news editor.]}