Sun Microsystems has released Solaris 10 10/09 Operating System (OS). The company said that the new update provides new features, fixes and hardware support in an easy-to-install manner, preserving compatibility with over 11,000 third-party products and customer applications, including Oracle database and application software.
This release also includes enterprise-grade security features such as Solaris Trusted Extensions, and support for the built-in cryptographic acceleration features of Sun’s UltraSPARC CMT processors.
Sun Microsystems claims that Solaris 10 10/09 helps to increase business efficiency by simplifying the management of consolidated systems and provides several new features to help streamline the upgrade and patching process, especially on systems deploying large numbers of Solaris Containers.
The company further claims that Solaris 10 provides an automated framework for installing patches in single user mode, parallel patch installation of virtualised Solaris Containers, and speedups for SVR4 package installation, allowing system installations or upgrades to be up to four times faster than before.
According to the company, these improvements in consolidation management add to the built-in virtualisation features of the Solaris OS, which include: Logical Domains for running multiple Solaris guests on Solaris SPARC CMT systems; Solaris Containers, which allow up to thousands of isolated application guests in a single Solaris instance; and a comprehensive approach to networking and storage virtualisation for deployment in real world environments.
In addition, Solaris ZFS included with the Solaris OS, eliminates the need for customers to purchase and maintain a separate file system or volume manager to obtain enterprise-class data features. The latest release of Solaris ZFS in Solaris 10 10/09 integrates the ability to use solid-state flash drive technology for data caching and transactional applications.
The company added that the combination of the Solaris OS and the latest SPARC, Intel, and AMD processors deliver the scalability, performance, power efficiency and reliability demanded in enterprise datacenter.
Jim McHugh, vice president of datacenter marketing at Sun Microsystems, said: Sun continues to add significant capabilities to the Solaris OS, delivering sophisticated power management and performance for the datacenter and helping our customers protect their business continuity.
“With Solaris 10 10/09, installation, update and patch features have been enhanced to simplify system administration and reduce cost. Solaris provides customers with a greater degree of flexibility, while its new features deliver the best performance and power efficiency on systems using the latest SPARC, Intel and AMD processors.
