Overview

Support for Desktop Athena Solaris is scheduled to end on July 1, 2009.

This document details the #rationale for ending this support, the #timeline for the End of Life activities, and what to do if you are a Solaris user dealing with this End of Life.

Timeline:

When students arrive on campus in August 2009, there will be no Athena Desktop Solaris systems in the Athena general use clusters.

July 1 2009 is the sunset date. On that date:

• IS&T will discontinue offering Athena Desktop Solaris updates.

• IS&T will begin removing the Solaris Desktop systems from general use Athena clusters.

What this means to existing Athena Desktop Solaris customers:

• Solaris will not be available in Athena general use Clusters, so if you teach with a Solaris only application, you need to migrate.

• Since IS&T will not be offering updates, Departments, Labs and Centers with Athena Desktop Solaris systems will need either to migrate off Solaris, or to develop their own system update procedures.

Dialups currently run Solaris. cut-over to Linux: Currently in planning stage.

Rationale:

• Sun desktop hardware has been falling in popularity over time both at the Institute and in the wider marketplace.

• The range of software options on Linux now vastly exceeds that available on either SPARC or x86 Solaris, often at lower cost and with higher performance. Almost all Open Source and commercial applications are now offered initially on the Linux platform, and only later if at all on other UNIX platforms. We are starting to see vendors discontinuing Solaris support, and this trend is likely to continue.

• To balance use of MIT resources, The Athena Release Team has focused on the Linux future to the exclusion of Solaris legacy. Athena Desktop Solaris has been in a mode of "Critical security, bugfix and Linux feature sync" for the past 2 years.

• The Athena Hardware Renewal process has followed a policy of reducing the Solaris Desktop footprint on campus for the past 3 years.

• The efficiencies achieved in re-architecting the Athena environment on the Linux platform cannot be extended to Solaris systems without substantial additional expense and effort.

• Offering support of a second platform beyond x86 Desktop Athena Linux has costs that can be saved if the platform is fully de-commissioned.

• The recent, dramatic shifts in the economy make it more important than ever to quickly reduce costs and streamline services provided to the Athena community. Moving to a one-platform Linux environment will go a long way towards achieving these essential goals.

Bottom Line: While IS&T recognizes that there are a few customers who require desktop Solaris, it is no longer cost effective to support this platform institutionally as an Athena platform. We're going to shut it down.

What to do:

APPLICATIONS Solaris-only applications that will cease to be available on Athena:

• ArcInfo: (geographic information system) - now available in the Win.MIT.edu clusters.
• FrameMaker - This will no longer be available. Migrate documents to OpenOffice and Microsoft Office.
• Acrobat distiller - This will no longer be available. Use word processor's built-in PDF output configuration.

HARDWARE Faculty members with Athena desktop Suns should switch to Athena Linux systems. If only a Sun will do, you can buy directly from Sun but you will need to do your own system administration.

COURSEWARE Faculty members who require Solaris because of Solaris-only Athena software: Work with OEIT to migrate to alternatives.