Q: What is the Sun Software Express Program for Solaris all about? A: The Software Express Program for Solaris allows our customers to get the latest features and technologies as they are integrated into the Solaris Operating System for both the SPARC and x86 platforms. This program delivers the very latest work-in-progress code base from our Sun Development team in monthly intervals. Each follow-on release will be a full build containing the latest features and technologies integrated into the software at the end of each development cycle. For more details, see the Sun Software Express Program web site. Q: How much does the program cost? A: It is free for non-commercial use. There is also a subscription program for $99 year, which allows for commercial use and other program benefits such as online support, the ability to submit bugs, and more. Find more details on the Software Express for Solaris web page. Q: One thing I have not seen in the CD ISO Images for Solaris Express is the SunScreen Firewall bundle. I saw Sun announce that Solaris 10 will have an Enterprise class firewall. Is SunScreen going to be integrated into Solaris 10 or is something else going to replace it? A: Solaris 10 will have an Enterprise class firewall included called Solaris IP Filter. It is the industry standard and will replace SunScreen. The first release of Solaris IP Filter (in Solaris 10) will be via Solaris Express 02/04 available in the week of Feb. 23rd. Q: Do you plan to continue Solaris Express after Solaris 10 is released? Will it start from the beggining - just after Solaris 10 is released? A: Yes, Solaris Express will continue. It's like a magazine regardless of the development train behind it. Since all of the Solaris builds (roughly bi-weekly) are accumulative, it's not "a start from beginning", it will be built on top of all of the existing features & bug fixes. Q: When can we expect Solaris Express 64-bit for Opteron? A: Good question. It will be this summer. Unfortunatley I can not promise you a fix date yet. Q: Where can I get documentation for features (I am particularly interested in N1 Grid Containers) included in the latest Solaris 10 release? Are related man pages included in the OS distribution? Are there any PDFs (like on docs.sun.com) available ? A: All documentation is available on docs.sun.com. In addition, when we release special features like DTrace & N1 Grid Containers via Software Express for Solaris, we also make available Answerbooks and other related documentation on Bigadmin for public consumption:
And yes, manpages are included in the OS distribution. Q: Is Solaris IP Filter based on Darren Reed's IP Filter? A: Darren Reed was on contract with Sun when we developed Solaris IP Filter. Sun Employees and Darren made changes together to open source IP Filter, and all of the changes are integrated both in Solaris IP Filter and open source IP Filter. Q: Will the Java Desktop System be included with Software Express? A: Both the current Solaris Express (S10 code base) and Solaris 9 08/03 & after have GNOME 2.0 with only very slight difference in look and feel from the one in JDS. In addition, Solaris Express is the first product under Software Express. We are heading the direction to ship all Sun software in this fashion. Q: When will ZFS be available in Solaris Express? A: ZFS will likely be available in the second half of this (2004) calendar year. Q: Will ZFS be included in x86 release of Solaris 10 as well? A: Yes, ZFS will be available on SPARC and x86 platforms at the same time. Q: Shall we expect to see all of the features of Trusted Solaris in Solaris 10 or will Trusted Solaris continue to be a separate product? A: Trusted Solaris 10 will continue to be a separate product offering military grade security on top of Solaris 10.
Q: What about SSL - are you going to provide OpenSSL or another SSL solution in Solaris 10?
A:
Likely both. Q: When will some of the more intriguing features of Solaris 10 (such as Zones, ZFS, etc.) make it into Solaris Express?
A:
Zones will be released the week of 23rd in Solaris Express 02/04. ZFS will likely be in the second half of this (2004) calendar year. Here are some other "intriguing" features you might be interested in:
Q: Solaris IP Filter will replace SunScreen for packet filtering, but what about the additional stuff bundled with SunScreen such as Network Data Encryption for VPN? A: VPN stuff is pretty much handled by IPSec/IKE in Solaris 9 today and also in Solaris 10. SunScreen SKIP's functionality is included in SunScreen 3.2, but no 'client' product for SKIP. SKIP no longer exists and thus even in SunScreen 3.2 we support both SKIP and IPsec/IKE at the same time. Q: Will there be features coming up in Solaris Express that will only be available for Solaris SPARC, not Solaris x86 ( excluding the upcoming 64-bit Opteron support)? A: Most basic features in Solaris are for both SPARC and x86, however, due to the lack of drivers for x86, customers on x86 hardware might not be able to take advantage of certain features in Solaris Express as early as on SPARC. Some of these features include:
Q: What is the point of the free download program for Express? It seems to generate a lot of noise in community forums with people complaining that the "free beer" they've been given by Sun isn't optimally chilled (i.e. no access to the release notes, no bug submission). It also encourages violation of the license agreement because free downloaders inevitably provide their feedback in open forums. BTW I think the $99 Express subscription is a great program and I am ecstatic to read that other product groups in Software will be adopting it. A: Thanks for the input. I am glad to hear you like the $99 offering. Who in the market has been continuously providing free beer with full service? We have made the development codes for Solaris Express free. For those who want to take advantage of this in a non-commercial environment, this is somewhere to get started. The "support", however, is a different matter. The $99 we charge is not for revenue, but only to cover our cost of developing the full doc. setting up dinners/lunches for customers with the architects, and sustain the personnels to triage the bugs... etc. So to answer your question of the "point" for the free download: we welcome everyone to use Solaris; meanwhile we also want to recover our cost for support. Q: What is your estimated performance improvement from FireEngine over the existing platform? A: The performance improvement from FireEngine is about 45% over Solaris 9 on SPARC, and 20%-30% over Solaris 9 on x86 platform. Q: Can I run Solaris Express on my Ultra 2? It has dual 200mhz cpu's... not sure if the 200mhz limit stated in the requirements is per CPU or per machine. (By the way the machine has 384megs of RAM and dual fast/wide SCSI). A: Systems containing 200MHz or lower UltraSPARC-I processors boot 32-bit kernel by default. Therefore when we remove 32-bit kernel, it makes logical sense to EOL sun4u, UltraSPARC-I 167Mhz and 200MHz platforms support. Those processors will be almost 10 years old when Solaris 10 ships. This includes all Ultra-1 workstations, as well as the Ultra-2 box you have, as these platforms shipped with UltraSPARC-I processors at or slower than 200MHz. Q: If I buy the $99 subscription version, do I still need to accept the monthly license? A: Yes, you still need to accept the monthly license. We clear open source and 3rd party copy rights monthly, and put a different license on line before each release. Even though some months' licenses might tend out to be the same as the past month's, depending on the amount of new codes get checked in for each release, in theory, the license to use is changing by month. Q: When can we expect SDP over Infinibad in Solaris Express? Or for Oracle 10g... A: Full SW support for IB, except for SDP, is in Solaris Express(10/03, b_42) and will be in Solaris 10 RR. SDP will be in an update release of Solaris 10 at round Q4 2004. The IB SW support includes the industry standard components: IPoIB, SDP, SRP and uDAPL. It also includes a driver for the Mellanox Tavor HCA, which is used by Topspin and the other IB HW vendors. We will have a driver for the new Mellanox Arbel chip once they shake the bugs out of the silicon. We are working with MDE and Topspin to enable customers to get IB hardware and use the IB SW in Express and S10 with a wide range of sun systems. All the SW comes with Solaris except the Subnet Manager, which comes with and runs in the Topspin switch. |
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