Leaving Oracle

I joined the Solaris Kernel Group in 2001 at what turned out to be a remarkable place and time for the industry. More by luck and intuition than by premonition, I found myself surrounded by superlative engineers working on revolutionary technologies that were the products of their own experience and imagination rather than managerial fiat. I feel very lucky to have worked with Bryan and Mike on DTrace; it was amazing that just down the hall our colleagues reinvented the operating system with Zones, ZFS, FMA, SMF and other innovations.

With Solaris 10 behind us, lauded by customers and pundits, I was looking for that next remarkable place and time, and found it with Fishworks. The core dozen or so are some of the finest engineers I could hope to work with, but there were so many who contributed to the success of the 7000 series. From the executives who enabled our fledgling skunkworks in its nascent days, to our Solaris colleagues building fundamental technologies like ZFS, COMSTAR, SMF, networking, I/O, and IPS, and the OpenStorage team who toiled to bring a product to market, educating us without deflating our optimism in the process.

I would not trade the last 9 years for anything. There are many engineers who never experience a single such confluence of talent, organizational will, and success; I’m grateful to my colleagues and to Sun for those two opportunities. Now I’m off to look for my next remarkable place and time beyond the walls of Oracle. My last day will be August 20th, 2010.

Thank you to the many readers of this blog. After six years and 130 posts I’d never think of giving it up. You’ll be able to find my new blog at dtrace.org/blogs/ahl (comments to this post are open there); I can’t wait to begin chronicling my next endeavors. You can reach me by email here: my initials at alumni dot brown dot edu. I look forward to your continued to comments and emails. Thanks again!

Posted on August 18, 2010 at 4:13 pm by ahl · Permalink
In: Fishworks · Tagged with: DTrace, Fishworks, Oracle, Solaris

40 Responses

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Written by TimC
on August 18, 2010 at 5:20 pm
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Wow, you guys are dropping like flies!

So Nexenta or Joyent?
Written by Sean
on August 18, 2010 at 6:22 pm
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I am actually wondering who would be next, Brendan or Roche?
- Written by UX-admin
  on August 18, 2010 at 8:51 pm
  Permalink
  
  Mike will be next.
  
  Just wondering how long before the ZFS team throws in the towel too.
  
  Something really really bad must be going on at ORCL. Managers must be really pissing engineers off.
Written by Przemyslaw Bak (przemol)
on August 18, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Permalink

Adam,
when you, Brian and others engineers are leaving Oracle we can expect that Solaris 11 is not going to be the next Solaris 10 (in terms of features and technical advantages). Is is going to be just another *nix. Very sad ….
Written by Tweets that mention Adam Leventhal's blog » Leaving Oracle -- Topsy.com
on August 18, 2010 at 7:49 pm
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Stephan Schmidt, Koen Vervloesem, Hacker News YC, Rene Gröschke, eBot and others. eBot said: Leaving Oracle – http://su.pr/1jwCh4 [...]
Written by Iain
on August 18, 2010 at 8:15 pm
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Thanks for the many interesting and in depth blogs over the years, it’s certainly enhanced my understanding of Solaris and the capabilities.

Best of luck whatever comes your way.
Written by Al
on August 18, 2010 at 8:23 pm
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Best of luck for the future Adam!
Written by Dave
on August 18, 2010 at 9:30 pm
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What Al and Iain said
Written by Michael Ernest
on August 18, 2010 at 10:31 pm
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It’s been a great pleasure reading your blog entries and reviewing your slide decks over the years, Adam. Wherever you land next, I hope you’ll keep it coming. Best wishes on your next venture!
Written by ahl
on August 19, 2010 at 1:36 am
Permalink

@TimC none of the above!

@Sean and UX-admin we’ll see. My money’s not on Mike though — Oracle will at least retain one third of the original DTrace trio

@Przemyslaw Well there will never be another Solaris 10; that release was a rare gem. There are a bunch of good folks working on Solaris 11, and I’m sure it will be a solid product.

@Iain, Al, Dave, and Michael Thanks!
Written by TimC
on August 19, 2010 at 2:48 am
Permalink

Interesting So when will the announcement be made?

And I’d argue there won’t be another Opensolaris, THAT was a rare gem. Solaris 10 was nice, but the progress made over the last several years with Opensolaris was rather stunning IMO.
Written by Twitted by jasonh
on August 19, 2010 at 4:02 am
Permalink

[...] This post was Twitted by jasonh [...]
Written by Tobi
on August 19, 2010 at 7:39 am
Permalink

http://twitter.com/cperciva/status/21085691559
Written by Adam Leventhal leaves Oracle : Andrade
on August 19, 2010 at 7:49 am
Permalink

[...] Leventhal is one of the three authors of Dtrace, a dynamic tracing facility in Solaris 10. In this post he announces that August 20th is his last day in [...]
Written by Nigel Smith
on August 19, 2010 at 8:45 am
Permalink

Adam, this looks like a good opportunity to thank you for the excellent work you have done on (Open)Solaris, and to wish you continued success in the future.
Written by Frederik
on August 19, 2010 at 10:53 am
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Adam, me to would like to thank you for all the innovation you brought us. And more important that we could actually see how it was done and learn something from it by opening the source. (I know that was not your decision)
Perhaps you could contribute to the various “open” solaris projects currently really taking off or FreeBSD for that matter.
Best of luck to you.

Please mail me regarding a project that could use your help.
Written by Frank Ch. Eigler
on August 19, 2010 at 12:08 pm
Permalink

Good luck, Adam.
Written by Patrick Finch
on August 19, 2010 at 12:39 pm
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Oracle seems to be bleeding talent. All the very best for your next move – I look forward to hearing all about it.
Written by anonymous supporter
on August 19, 2010 at 2:00 pm
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Let’s go Linux!
Written by Andy
on August 19, 2010 at 2:42 pm
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Good luck Adam, I understand believe me lots of us including me have found greener pastures since Oracle’s takeover, Andy
Written by TimC
on August 19, 2010 at 3:51 pm
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One other thing… the front page of dtrace.org still links back to your sun blog. Perhaps it could be updated to this one?
Written by Devon O'Dell
on August 19, 2010 at 4:41 pm
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Hey Adam, was great to know you in the heyday of OpenSolaris — I’m sure it’s slightly bittersweet, but I wish you the best in your upcoming ventures!

–dho
Written by Rich Teer
on August 19, 2010 at 5:11 pm
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Another one bites the dust… Happy trails, and thanks for all your contributions to [Open]Solaris the last few years.
Written by Mark Mayo
on August 19, 2010 at 6:57 pm
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Good luck Adam, and thanks for all the fish!
Written by links for 2010-08-19 « that dismal science
on August 19, 2010 at 7:32 pm
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[...] Adam Leventhal's blog » Leaving Oracle (tags: oracle google solaris) [...]
Written by Graham
on August 19, 2010 at 9:46 pm
Permalink

Hi Adam,
best wishes for the future.
I was wondering whatever happened to the BP rewrite feature for ZFS. I guess Oracle had other priorities. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll be pushing that code to the gate before you go? Ha Ha
- Written by ahl
  on August 19, 2010 at 9:53 pm
  Permalink
  
  Hey Graham,
  You gotta bug Matt Ahrens — that was never on me.
Written by Sid Wilroy
on August 20, 2010 at 2:04 am
Permalink

I wonder if Rickey C. Weisner is still there? I had hoped the acquisition by Oracle would breath new life into SUN; but the realization seems to be the demise of SUN engineers hard work.
Very disappointing..
Written by The Observation Deck » The liberation of OpenSolaris
on August 20, 2010 at 4:49 am
Permalink

[...] talent has been indisputably and irrevocably broken — as most recently demonstrated by the departure of my former colleague, Adam [...]
Written by DTrace, Illumos e Google. Cosa pensa veramente Oracle? | bruno trani dot info
on August 20, 2010 at 8:42 am
Permalink

[...] in luglio. Al momento rimane ancora al lavoro il solo Mike Shapiro del trio originale. Nell’articolo in cui parla della sua partenza, Leventhal, descrive gli ultimi anni in Sun come eccezionali per il [...]
Written by DTrace, Illumos e Google. Cosa pensa veramente Oracle? | Giovanni Raco
on August 20, 2010 at 10:00 am
Permalink

[...] in luglio. Al momento rimane ancora al lavoro il solo Mike Shapiro del trio originale. Nell’articolo in cui parla della sua partenza, Leventhal, descrive gli ultimi anni in Sun come eccezionali per il [...]
Written by » DTrace, Illumos e Google. Cosa pensa veramente Oracle?
on August 20, 2010 at 11:00 am
Permalink

[...] in luglio. Al momento rimane ancora al lavoro il solo Mike Shapiro del trio originale. Nell’articolo in cui parla della sua partenza, Leventhal, descrive gli ultimi anni in Sun come eccezionali per il [...]
Written by Richard Bruce
on August 20, 2010 at 3:06 pm
Permalink

Adam, I wish you all the best on your future endeavors. Discovering ZFS and finding your blog posts inspired me to become an Opensolaris fan and subsequent Fishworks supporter in our enterprise. The changes over the past year are saddening. Hopefully the dispersed Sun talent will find ways to continue to create amazing things.
- Written by ahl
  on August 20, 2010 at 5:59 pm
  Permalink
  
  Richard, I was so pleased to read your comment. Stay tuned for me, Bryan, and the rest of the ex-Sun folks to create some more useful stuff for you!
Written by Robert Milkowski
on August 20, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Permalink

Hmmm… big loss for Oracle, great win for your new employer!

Hopefully you will be still working on Solaris one way or the other.

All the best!
Written by Dave McDorman
on August 21, 2010 at 4:32 am
Permalink

Adam,

This is *not* a surprize… If not for Fishworks you’d have done this several years ago.

So, I can’t wait to see who snaps you up or who you link up with to create something amazing…. again.
Written by Danhua Shao
on August 21, 2010 at 6:22 am
Permalink

Hi, Adam,

Thanks for your valuable helps on my NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 DTrace project. (You are busy in Fishworks at that time). Hope to see our name on some amazing projects in near future.
Written by Chris Mellor
on August 22, 2010 at 8:30 am
Permalink

Adam,
Best wishes for the future and thanks for all your feisty, illuminating and authoritative comments to me in the past about Fishworks, Solaris and ZFS.
Chris Mellor,
The Register.
- Written by ahl
  on August 23, 2010 at 6:06 am
  Permalink
  
  @Chris And thank you for the steady stream of articles; I’ll be all the most interested as an outsider
Written by Adam Leventhal's blog » Joining Delphix
on August 24, 2010 at 5:19 am
Permalink

[...] I wrote about last time, I’ve left Oracle. What I was looking for in my next gig was technology that excites me, excellent management, and a [...]