Solaris 10 Update 9 Is Here!
There are A LOT OF UPDATES in this latest version of Solaris 10, many of which will drive people to retrieve the free download!
Get Your Summary...
Some people want a management level view, want to read the document, or just want a technical take on it. Here is your selection:
- (Updated 2010-09-10) Oracle's John Fowler releases a video presentation on Update 9!
- Oracle released a Key Features & Benefits document in PDF format.
- A complete listing of features is located on sun docs web site or PDF version of the book.
- Joerg Moellenkamp blogged a summary of features.
- George Wilson describes some ZFS Logging Enhancements in video!
From a Network Management perspective, there are a few features which look very interesting:
- SPARC Solaris Install Time Updates
Vendors will now be able to provide SPARC device drivers separate from regular releases.
I personally wonder whether this will be beneficial to ISV communities to provide integration software on top of SPARC Solaris in the TelCo Market, so Network Management platforms can be delivered "on a disk" with minimal configuration. - Zone Virtualization Updates
Upgrading zones by attaching them to an upgraded Global Zone gets better support: update a host in a cluster, move the zones to that new host, and run the "zoneadm attach -U" to update those zones which were newly attached to the global zone.
Migration of a physical Solaris 10 machine into a Zone with support for the HostID in Update 9 will allow more network management platforms to be virtualized while still retaining their licensing features. - Oracle VM for SPARC (LDOM's) Update
For Network Management platforms not certified to run in Zones (there are a few system calls which are not available), then these updates will be of interest to you.
People should avoid vendors which take business down this route because they refuse to support Zones. - ZFS Enhancements
There are substantial enhancements to the ZFS subsystem. Triple Parity RaidZ is now available, log devicperformance tuning [especially for databases], log device removal, mirror splitting & cloning, and recovery tools for power-off crashes of system using cheap drives (which don't really report reality when a transaction is supposed to be committed.) [This last category is especially useful for dealing with large performance management data sets cost-effectively.] - iSCSI Enhancements
Some more tuning options, performance enhancements, and remote booting capabilities. Once again, great for Network Managment, especially deploying remote Solaris probes. - Crypto Enhancements
The AES encryption engine in newer Intel processors is now supported, providing similar functionality in Intel Solaris to the crypto accelerator support traditionally only seen in the UltraSPARC T processor family under SPARC Solaris. - Power Management Enhancements
Power Managment enhancement in select DRAM chips, RAID cards, and overall OS under the Intel architecture. This makes your network managment center cooler with Solaris. - Enhanced Hardware Support
Enhancements for HP and Dell platforms for Intel Solaris. Additional gigabit ethernet card support. A variety of Infiniband enhancements. Fault Management Support for newer AMD processors. - Freeware Enhancements
Newer versions of Firefox, Thunderbird, and other applications. Configure Network Management devices from older web browsers is often difficult, newer web browsers are ALWAYS welcome!
Oracle SHOULD take the Solaris Web Client more seriously. A Web Browser is a SECURITY item, not a "freeware" item. Configuring thousands of remote devices from a Windows platform is a risk that a business should never take since Windows spyware could be capturing the information critical to securing a network infrastructure. Moving this type of work to Solaris infrastructure is MUCH safer alternative than using an MS Windows web browser.
Happy Network Managing!
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