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Solaris 9 Operating Environment Glossary of Terms
Change management:
The ability to quickly provision (see also "Provisioning") or reprovision a server or group of servers with a complete software stack. Essential in being able to manage horizontally scaled server farms while maintaining the flexibility needed to respond quickly to changing business requirements.
Change Manager (Sun Management Center - Change Manager):
The new capability in Sun Management Center that enables rapid, aggregated change management of Solaris Operating Environment (Solaris OE) and application stacks, either locally or over the Internet, using Solaris Flash technology.
Cluster:
A tightly-coupled group of computers interconnected to provide high levels of availability and scaling. Sun's clustering solution is the SunPlex (see also "SunPlex"), comprised of Sun servers, Solaris OE, and Sun Cluster 3.0.
Configuration management:
Configuration management brings aggregated intelligence from Sun's installed base. It is the ability to set up policies for software configurations and manage the servers to those policies. It improves system availability while reducing the cost of administration.
Containers (Solaris Containers):
The Solaris technology for delivering Server Virtualization (see also "Server Virtualization"). Solaris Containers isolate software applications or services using flexible, software-defined boundaries. Containers are a software-based "shell" for running applications so they enjoy a high degree of isolation from other applications running on the Solaris OE. Containers uniquely deliver resource, security, and fault isolation while running under an instance of the Solaris OE, providing both manageability and efficiency. Solaris Containers increases resource (server) utilization with dynamic resource reallocation between containers and reduce management costs via server consolidation.
File systems:
Underlying methodology for arranging directories and files on the disk. Solaris OE, by default, uses the UNIX[R] File System or UFS, in which Sun has invested significantly to make it an enterprise-ready file system. However, many other file systems can run on the Solaris OE, such as the Veritas File System, also known as VxFS.
iChange:
Sun code name for Sun Management Center - Change Manager (see Change Manager, above).
LinCAT :
Linux Compatibility Assurance Toolkit used for verifying that applications written for Linux are portable and compatible with the Solaris OE.
N1:
A new direction in system and network management. N1 is the control plane for networked computing resources and operates at the network level. N1 is all about active management and is more than just monitoring. The key concept for N1 is the aggregation of individual servers into policy groups so that groups of servers providing the same service can be managed as a single entity.
Open Integrated Stack:
The concept of a stack of hardware and software (from the network all the way through the hardware, including the operating system, the middleware, and the applications), that is fully integrated but based on open standards. Because it adheres to open standards, Sun can deliver a stack that can be customized: Sun ONE components can be pulled out, and third-party products layered in. This assures maximum value, a "level playing field" for Sun partners, and offers customers a choice with regard to "best of breed" solutions instead of "vendor lock in."
Provisioning:
The act of loading a complete stack of software onto a server so it can begin to deliver services.
RBAC (role based access control):
A Solaris OE feature taken from the Trusted Solaris Operating Environment, RBAC enables an organization to assign or limit individual rights to perform specific operations. RBAC separates powers and controls the delegation of privileged operations to individual users, allowing the system manager to limit access to administration and partition root privileges among a group of administrators. RBAC minimizes the chance that any user will go beyond their realm of expertise and inadvertently - or intentionally - make a change that results in a system failure.
Server Virtualization:
The capability of partitioning a large server into smaller virtual servers so that it can effectively and efficiently take the place of many smaller servers. This enables IT departments to respond more quickly to changes in requirements while saving operational costs by reducing the number of actual systems being managed.
Services Platform:
The delivery of the Sun Open Net Environment (Sun ONE) open integrated stack (see also "Integrated Stack") in Solaris 9 OE on Sun hardware. The services platform is the platform for delivering services on demand in a networked world.
Solaris Provisioning Services:
The tools available with the Solaris OE for provisioning servers, starting with Solaris JumpStart (for automating the configuration of Solaris OE machines) to Solaris Flash (for archiving complete, "known good" configurations of the Solaris OE, middleware, and applications) to the Sun Management Center - Change Manager (see also "Change Manager").
SolCAT:
Solaris Compatibility Assurance Toolkit - A collection of tools and services which help customers and ISVs assure that their applications will run on the latest version of the Solaris OE. With SolCAT, developers using the Solaris OE can protect their investment by ensuring that the applications they write and have written will run on Solaris 9 OE and beyond.
SunPlex:
The complete clustered high-availability solution from Sun. By combining Sun servers, Solaris 9 OE, and Sun Cluster 3.0, Sun delivers a highly scalable and available general-purpose computing solution to customers worldwide. (See also "Cluster")
Sun Service Point Architecture:
Image of what the deployment world looks like today. Applications are typically deployed in a distributed N-tier fashion, with a web/front-end tier, application tier, and database tier, all of which are connected to the network through the service point. At Sun, we have said The Network is the Computer, now the computer is the network: a network of storage, network devices, computer and software elements all tied together.
WAN boot (Secure WAN boot):
The ability to boot and install Solaris 9 OE on an UltraSPARC® system in a remote location, securely, over the Internet, without local physical access to the machine (except to place it in position, connect the wires, and turn on the power).
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