Hello, we don't use SPARC systems in production and never had to deal with Oracle support. So I wonder if we could ask a few basic questions before probing any deeper. We are a small software startup company and would like to support any customers running SPARC Solaris. We can obtain a few old EOL SPARC systems which would be isolated from the rest of the network and mainly used for testing/certifying our software on Solaris. There is no need for ongoing support nor security patches, hence Solaris CBE may be sufficient. However it would be nice to update the ILOM firmware to the most recent version available from Oracle, as these systems are decommissioned and may be running older firmware releases not compatible with latest version of Solaris. At the moment it does not make much financial sense to invest into new SPARC systems.
What options do we have with regard to EOL SPARC systems? Oracle seem to provide firmware updates with support contracts, however we have not yet reached out to anyone to find out how this works. Are there short term support contracts that we could purchase just for the firmware updates? Can anyone provide recommendations before we talk to Oracle support?
Thanks.