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HP, Red Hat chase Solaris shops

Dead Oracle OEM contract backlash

Server maker Hewlett-Packard and commercial Linux juggernaut Red Hat have teamed up to help shops using Oracle's Sparc/Solaris platforms make the jump to Linux-based x64 iron.

While the two companies did not say so, the migrations services being offered today through HP Services are no doubt a reaction to Oracle's spiking of HP's Solaris OEM agreement last month. Under that agreement, HP was able to bundle Solaris on its ProLiant rack and blade servers and sell Solaris support contracts, much as it does for Microsoft's Windows, Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Red Hat's Enterprise Linux.

Oracle never said why it killed HP's OEM contract - as far as El Reg can ascertain, Dell and IBM still have viable OEM contracts for Solaris, as does Fujitsu.

The Sparc/Solaris migration services that the two companies have cooked up are being offered through HP's Migration Center, a consulting practice that is part of its Technology Services division within the Services Group that has migration practices to help customers on IBM Power AIX, AS/400 and Power-i, and mainframe servers as well as its own DEC Alpha and PA-RISC customers move to HP ProLiant (x64) or Integrity (Itanium) iron.

The basic rhythm of migration is to bring in HP to do an assessment of what you have and where you might go, then come up with a migration plan, execute it, and then provide ongoing support for the new hardware and software platform. Pricing is as vague as the scope of work, and as with most services companies, prices are rarely discussed.

The same holds true for the two new services being announced today by HP and Red Hat through the HP Migration Center. The HP-Red Hat Migration and Planning Service specifically moves Sparc/Solaris shops to ProLiant servers using Red Hat's Enterprise Linux operating system and Enterprise Virtualization hypervisor, which is based on the open source KVM hypervisor controlled by Red Hat.

The HP-Red Hat Virtualization Planning Service, the second new offering announced today, is about tuning the performance of virtualized KVM infrastructure and locking down its security; it does not seem to be limited to Sparc/Solaris customers, but is rather a more generic service aimed at those who want to use the Red Hat stack to build a public or private cloud.

These two services are being rolled out in the United States today, and the plan is to have them rolled out globally by the end of 2011. ®

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