New Patching Features in the Solaris 10 10/09 Release

last updated 2009-10-07

There are two important new patching features in the Solaris 10 10/09 release:

• Parallel Patching for Containers
• Turbo Charging Svr4 Packaging

Here's an overview of these features, plus links to where you can get more details.

Parallel Patching for Containers

The Solaris 10 10/09 release supports parallel patching of non-global zones. Prior to this release (or the availability of patch 119254-66 for SPARC platforms and 119255-66 for x86 platforms), the patchadd command would finish patching one non-global zone before patching the next.

Parallel patching can save a lot of time when you are patching systems with many zones.

Limitations

Two factors affect the maximum number of zones that can be patched in parallel:

• The number of online CPUs
• The value specified for num_proc in the /etc/patch/pdo.conf file (for more details, see the comments in /etc/patch/pdo.conf)

If you don't set the number of zones in the /etc/patch/pdo.conf file, sequential patching remains the default behavior.

If you set the number of zones in the /etc/patch/pdo.conf file, the global zone continues to be patched first, but then the non-global zones can be patched in parallel, leading to significant performance gains. Performance gains are dependent on a number of factors, including the number of non-global zones, the number of online CPUs, the speed of the system, the I/O configuration of the system, and so on.

Note: Because parallel patching is an enhancement to the normal patchadd functionality, you can subsequently remove patches using patchrm.

What's Involved

1. Specify the number of zones to patch in parallel by setting the value of num_proc in the /etc/patch/pdo.conf file.

2. Run the patchadd command.

For More Information

• System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers--Resource Management and Solaris Zones in the Solaris 10 System Administrator Collection:
  • Solaris 10 10/09: Zones Parallel Patching to Reduce Patching Time
  • Solaris 10 10/09: How to Patch Non-Global Zones in Parallel
• Posts in Gerry Haskins' Patch Corner blog:
  • Zones Parallel Patching Feature Now Available!
  • Zones Parallel Patching Versus Update On Attach: When to Use Which One?
• patchadd man page
• patchrm man page
• Zones Parallel Patching section of the BigAdmin Zones hub

Turbo Charging Svr4 Packaging

The Solaris 10 10/09 release supports turbo packaging, which is designed to significantly improve the performance of install, upgrade, Solaris Live Upgrade, and zone creation on the Solaris 10 OS.

For background on the turbo packaging feature, see these items on opensolaris.org*:

• Thread: Fasttrack for turbo-charging SVr4 package install. [PSARC/2009/173 FastTrack timeout 03/18/2009]
• Index of /caselog/PSARC/2009/173

Also see this post on Gerry Haskins' blog: Patches for "Turbo-Charging SVR4 Package Install" Are Now Available