Skip to content

OpenSolaris 2008.05 on EC2 - Why 32-bit only?

Since Sun and Amazon removed the limit on the number of OpenSolaris 2008.05 instances able to run on EC2, I’ve been curious - and a little bothered - by the fact that the 2008.05 AMI is 32-bit only. Curious because OpenSolaris shouldn’t have any issues running on a 64-bit EC2 instance (there are other 64-bit OpenSolaris AMIs available on EC2, after all), and a little bothered because there have been long-standing reports of trouble running Solaris on 32-bit architectures, which makes me hesitant to invest much effort in a 32-bit OpenSolaris EC2 environment.

Well, perhaps a 64-bit AMI is forthcoming - I think this is still a beta program - and perhaps Sun’s just trying to save us a buck or two, since the cheapest 64-bit EC2 instance is four times as expensive per hour as the cheapest 32-bit instance.

Post a Comment

Your email is never published nor shared. Required fields are marked *
*
*