Misreading of Oracle Page Leads to Widespread Speculation 
Oracle says it has not issued an end of life for OpenSolaris, writes eWeek’s Chris Preimesberger. Speculation began when a Feb. 24 posting on the Oracle Website entitled “End of Service Life Status for OpenSolaris Operating System” appeared, which addressed general policies involving the service life of a product.
Updated Tools to Intelligently Manage Identity Portfolios
New versions of Sun Role Manager software and Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition have been announced. Version 5.0 of Sun Role Manager software offers a 360-degree view of assigned user access to data and applications, enabling more intelligent governing. Version 7.0 of Sun Directory Server Enterprise Edition improves performance by more than three times and improves authentication and modification performance by 60 percent, Sun reports.
Increases Maximum RAM Support to 256GB Per Node
New configurations for the Sun Storage 7410 offer six-core AMD Opteron processors for up to 256GB RAM per node. The Assemble-to-order (ATO) option provides a choice of three base configurations consisting of a fixed number of processors and RAM. With this announcement, Sun plans an end of life for the existing configurations using the four-core AMD processors.
Production Expected to be Discontinued by October’s End
Sun will be discontinuing the Solaris Express Community Edition (SXCE) and intends for its end of life (EOL) to be complete by the end of October. This move is part of a consolidation of how OpenSolaris and Solaris are distributed. In an announcement, Sun’s OpenSolaris Product Manager Glynn Foster indicated that Sun does plan on continuing the bi-weekly release schedule, but will move towards producing native Image Packaging System (IPS) packages of the latest Solaris packages, allowing users to upgrade from an existing release or pre-release.
Get up to 16 of the 8 Gbps Fibre Channel Host Ports
New features have been announced for the Sun Storage 6780 and Sun Storage 6580. These include eight to sixteen 8 Gbps Fibre Channel Host Ports, legacy tray support and support for 448 drives. Along with this announcement, Sun reported that it is retiring specific low volume Sun Storage 6140 and Sun Storage CSM200 DC & AC configurations.
Refreshing of Product Lines with Latest Technologies Triggers EOL
Select standard configurations and options for Sun Fire X4140, X4240, and X4440 servers have reached their end of life, as have the Sun Blade X6240 and X6440 with Solaris/Java Enterprise System preloaded and some Sun Startup Essentials options.
Next-generation 6580 and 6780 Controller Modules Recommended Replacements
The Sun Storage 6540 controller modules with 8 GB and 16 GB of cache have reached their end of life (EOL); however, the Sun Storage 6540 controller modules with 4 GB of cache will still be available. The last order date is set for July 17, 2009; last ship date for October 16, 2009; and end of service life for October 16, 2014.
Upgrade Programs Available for Competitive and Sun Servers
The Sun Netra 1290 Server and its options are being retired. The server has met the tier 1 minimum lifecycle of 3 1/2 years. Hence, Sun has scheduled a last order date for October 14, 2009; last ship date for April 14, 2010; and end of service life for April 14, 2015. There are no direct or easily substituted replacements for the Sun Netra 1290 server. It is recommended that customers give consideration to the Sun Netra T5440 and X4450.
Orders to Stop at the End of July
The Solaris 9 Operating System has reached its end of life (EOL) as Sun announced that the last order date for this Unix version will be July 31, 2009. Consequently, the last ship date will be October 30 of this year and end of service life on the same day just five years later (October 30, 2014).
Applies to UltraSPARC T2, T2 Plus & Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000, M5000, M8000, M9000 Servers
Sun is retiring two different products: the 73 GB, 10,000 RPM, 2.5 inch SAS disk drives for UltraSPARC T2 and T2 Plus Chip Multithreading (CMT) servers and the 73GB disk drive options on Sun SPARC Enterprise M4000, M5000, M8000, and M9000 servers.
