[Qemu-devel] QEMU suitable for mission critical applications?

[Qemu-devel] QEMU suitable for mission critical applications?

[Felix Oxley]

Hello,

I have a an (almost) EOL factory planning system running on Solaris
Sparc which I would like to move to intel (and preferably virtualise)
in order to avoid having to maintain the Sun system and backup system.
The text based cobol application runs on this system: SunOS gplan 5.9
Generic_118558-35 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-1500. It is not feasible
to recompile the application to x86.

Therefore I am looking for alternative solutions. I heard of
Transitive QuickTransit, however since being purchased by IBM I do not
believe this is being marketed.

Would QEMU be suitable for this task? Would I be able to get commercial support?

Thanks for your advice.

Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU suitable for mission critical applications?

[Stefan Hajnoczi]

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Felix Oxley <felix@oxley.org> wrote:
> I have a an (almost) EOL factory planning system running on Solaris
> Sparc which I would like to move to intel (and preferably virtualise)
> in order to avoid having to maintain the Sun system and backup system.
> The text based cobol application runs on this system: SunOS gplan 5.9
> Generic_118558-35 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-1500. It is not feasible
> to recompile the application to x86.
>
> Therefore I am looking for alternative solutions. I heard of
> Transitive QuickTransit, however since being purchased by IBM I do not
> believe this is being marketed.

Right.

> Would QEMU be suitable for this task? Would I be able to get commercial support?

I think it will be difficult to get commerical support for QEMU SPARC.
 How well QEMU runs sun4u I'm not sure.

Personally, I would leave it running untouched since there isn't a
low-risk solution.  Perhaps others on the list have more information
but I wanted to reply in case no one else does so you'll at least have
something to go by.

Stefan

Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU suitable for mission critical applications?

[Blue Swirl]

On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Felix Oxley <felix@oxley.org> wrote:
>> I have a an (almost) EOL factory planning system running on Solaris
>> Sparc which I would like to move to intel (and preferably virtualise)
>> in order to avoid having to maintain the Sun system and backup system.
>> The text based cobol application runs on this system: SunOS gplan 5.9
>> Generic_118558-35 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-1500. It is not feasible
>> to recompile the application to x86.
>>
>> Therefore I am looking for alternative solutions. I heard of
>> Transitive QuickTransit, however since being purchased by IBM I do not
>> believe this is being marketed.
>
> Right.
>
>> Would QEMU be suitable for this task? Would I be able to get commercial support?
>
> I think it will be difficult to get commerical support for QEMU SPARC.
>  How well QEMU runs sun4u I'm not sure.

Not very well yet. For running a single application, it could be
possible to develop a Solaris user emulator to run only the
applications under x86 Solaris.

> Personally, I would leave it running untouched since there isn't a
> low-risk solution.  Perhaps others on the list have more information
> but I wanted to reply in case no one else does so you'll at least have
> something to go by.

Used Sparc hardware is not very expensive either.

Re: [Qemu-devel] QEMU suitable for mission critical applications?

[Felix Oxley]

Thank you all for your responses.
It appears that it would be wise to continue to maintain Sun hardware.

On 12 June 2011 22:51, Blue Swirl <blauwirbel@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 2:19 PM, Stefan Hajnoczi <stefanha@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Wed, Jun 8, 2011 at 11:08 AM, Felix Oxley <felix@oxley.org> wrote:
>>> I have a an (almost) EOL factory planning system running on Solaris
>>> Sparc which I would like to move to intel (and preferably virtualise)
>>> in order to avoid having to maintain the Sun system and backup system.
>>> The text based cobol application runs on this system: SunOS gplan 5.9
>>> Generic_118558-35 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-1500. It is not feasible
>>> to recompile the application to x86.
>>>
>>> Therefore I am looking for alternative solutions. I heard of
>>> Transitive QuickTransit, however since being purchased by IBM I do not
>>> believe this is being marketed.
>>
>> Right.
>>
>>> Would QEMU be suitable for this task? Would I be able to get commercial support?
>>
>> I think it will be difficult to get commerical support for QEMU SPARC.
>>  How well QEMU runs sun4u I'm not sure.
>
> Not very well yet. For running a single application, it could be
> possible to develop a Solaris user emulator to run only the
> applications under x86 Solaris.
>
>> Personally, I would leave it running untouched since there isn't a
>> low-risk solution.  Perhaps others on the list have more information
>> but I wanted to reply in case no one else does so you'll at least have
>> something to go by.
>
> Used Sparc hardware is not very expensive either.
>