Platform Certifications FAQ

The Sybase Platform Certification Site contains certification information for select Sybase products. More products will be added to this site in the near future.

FAQ:

1. What does "certified" mean?
2. Does certified also mean supported?
3. What types of Certifications exist?
4. Which platforms are considered for certification/support, which are not considered for certification?
5. If I find a certification entry for ASE 15.0 on a particular operating system version, does this certification also cover 15.0.1, 15.0.2 and other subsequent releases?
6. Are Sybase products supported on virtualization machines such as VMWare, Xen and MS Virtual Server / Windows Server Virtualization?
7. Which LTO Tape devices does Sybase support with Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) and Sybase IQ?
8. Are Sybase products supported on Sun UltraSPARC T1 (Niagara CMT) processor and the Sun Fire T1000/2000 server family?
9. Does ASE run on a Fabric7 System as described at http://www.fabric7.com/_pdfs/fabric7-architecture-whitepaper.pdf?
10. Does the certification on MS Windows and Windows XP operating systems cover the corresponding European "N" editions of these operating systems?
11. Are Sybase products certified also on Linux Operating Systems which are not explicitly listed on the Platform Certification website - such as CentOS?

1. What does "certified" mean?

"Certified" means that a product runs on a specific platform environment.
At the present time, most certification efforts are focused on operating system environments with some active storage devices subjected to the certification process. Other hardware, including CPU and machine type, follow the rules for implied certifications (please see details below on implied certifications).
As vendors offer new releases of operating systems, storage devices and hardware architectures, Sybase products are validated and certified on these new platforms.

2. Does certified also mean supported?

Yes, "certified" means supported by Sybase.
Customers who have a Support Agreement with Sybase get support from Sybase Customer Service centers if they are running Sybase products on a "certified platform". The support level is equal to the support we provide for any Sybase product specifically developed and built for a platform.
Products or platforms which have reached their End of Life (EOL) are usually not immediately removed from the list of certified products. Please visit Sybase's Support Policies for support information on older software.

3. What types of Certifications exist?

There are three main types of certifications: Test, Implied and Paper.

Test Certification

This is the most common type of certification. In this type of certification, a set of test suites is run to validate and test the product on the operating system and/or hardware environment. This testing ensures the operational functionality in the environment. Any new product releases, any new releases of existing products, any products ported to a different operating system or any products to be supported on a new operating system version undergo this validation, unless the certification falls under the categories "implied certification" or "paper certification."

Implied Certification

There are 2 types of implied certifications:

a) When a version of ASE is certified on a specific operating system version, all subsequent releases of ASE in the same version family are considered certified on that operating system version. In general, if ASE 15 is certified on Sun Solaris 10 (SPARC), then all subsequent releases of ASE 15.0.x including EBFs are considered certified on Sun Solaris 10 (SPARC).

b) If one vendor's operating system is run on hardware provided by another vendor, then Sybase will support users on the alternate hardware so long as the manufacturer guarantees it runs all binaries exactly as the original does. As long as this "binary compatibility" is valid any customer case should reproduce on the OS vendor's own hardware. If this reproduction ever fails the customer should open a case with the hardware vendor. Sybase does not have any responsibility for the platform specific problems. The platform specific problems are the platform owner's responsibility. If the problem is reproduced on a hardware explicitly certified by Sybase, then Sybase will fix the issue.

Paper Certification

This is a certification based on the technical evaluation of the operating system and/or hardware documents. Usually no certification tests are run for a paper certification, since it is based on technical documentation received from the Vendor of the O/S or H/W.

4. Which platforms are considered for certification/support, which are not considered for certification?

The decision to certify or not to certify a product on a specific platform depends very much on customer demand.

For most products these platforms will not be certified for future product versions: Sequent, Unixware, Sony, SCO OpenServer, Stratus VOS, Vax VMS, Unisys u6000, Data General 88K, ICL DRS 6000,OS/2. In most these cases End of Life of the corresponding product/platform combinations have either passed or have been announced.

If you wish to request certification of a specific platform environment, please call Sybase Technical Support or open a case via MySybase/Case Express.

5. If I find a certification entry for ASE 15.0 on a particular operating system version, does this certification also cover 15.0.1, 15.0.2 and other subsequent releases?

Yes, this falls under implied certification. When a version of ASE is certified on a specific operating system version, all subsequent releases of ASE in the same version family are considered certified on that operating system version, unless otherwise stated in the notes. In general, if ASE 15 is certified on Sun Solaris 10 (SPARC), then all subsequent releases of ASE 15.0.x including EBFs are considered certified on Sun Solaris 10 (SPARC).

6. Are Sybase products supported on virtualization machines such as VMWare, Xen and MS Virtual Server / Windows Server Virtualization?

Sybase does not explicitly test or certify products running in any virtualization system environment. However, Sybase will support Sybase products running on such environments as long as:

a) the virtualization machine environments is already officially certified and approved by the corresponding OS platform vendor;

b) the OS running in the virtual machine is already officially certified by Sybase (see Platform Certification Site at http://certification.sybase.com/ucr/search.do) Note, however, that if Sybase is unable to reproduce an issue, the customer may be asked to reproduce the problem running natively on the certified OS, without the use of such virtualization systems.

c) Please note that the extent of support does not cover performance. Sybase does not gurantee the performance for any sybase products running on virtual machines.

7. Which LTO Tape devices does Sybase support with Adaptive Server Enterprise (ASE) and Sybase IQ?

Sybase has tested and officially certified 4mm and 8mm tape drives for use with ASE database backup and IQ. Although many tape drive vendors have produced new hardware, Sybase has not tested or certified any of these. However, if you would like to use these newer drives, you may use them at your own discretion. Sybase recommends that you perform extensive testing before using such drives in a production environment. Should you encounter a problem with ASE database backup or IQ using one of these devices and you have a support agreement, you can log a case with Customer Services and Support and Sybase Engineering will try to resolve the issue.

8. Are Sybase products supported on Sun UltraSPARC T1 (Niagara CMT) processor and the Sun Fire T1000/2000 server family?

Yes, according to SUN, Niagara is a fully-compliant SPARC v9 processor (see http://www.sun.com/processors/throughput/faqs.html). Sybase products supported on Sun SPARC architecture are therefore supported on Niagara. Sun has tested Sybase ASE on Sun Fire T1000 server family w/ Solaris 10 operating system with greatly improved price performance compared to older Sun Fire V890 server family.

9. Does ASE run on a Fabric7 System as described at http://www.fabric7.com/_pdfs/fabric7-architecture-whitepaper.pdf?

ASE is certified against Operating System versions. So, the answer is YES, ASE and other Sybase products will run on Fabric7 hardware as long as the Operating System is certified to work with the Sybase product. Platform certification information can be looked up at http://upc.sybase.com. Special Note: At Sybase we have run ASE 12.5.x and ASE 15 against Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 on a 16-way AMD64bit Fabric7 machine without any issues.

10. Does the certification on MS Windows and Windows XP operating systems cover the corresponding European "N" editions of these operating systems?

Yes, it does, since the only difference is that the N editions do not include Windows Media Player and related technologies such as Windows Movie Maker - see http://www.microsoft.com for more information. Examples would be:

11. Are Sybase products certified also on Linux Operating Systems which are not explicitly listed on the Platform Certification website - such as CentOS?

Sybase does not perform certification on each individual Linux distribution. Linux certifications are done primarily on Red Hat and SuSE Linux. If a Vendor of another Linux distribution claims to be 100% compatible with a Linux Operating System which is officially supported by the Sybase product you are interested in, then please go to the Linux vendor to request their official statement of support and compatibility. Sybase will support the 100% compatible Linux OS and will fix issues provided Sybase can reproduce the problem on a Linux distribution explicitly certified by Sybase. However, if Sybase is unable to reproduce an issue the customer may be asked to reproduce the problem on the certified OS.