According to Glenn Weinberg, vice president of Sun's operating platforms group, the Solaris 10 Operating System is Sun's "most significant release yet." The Solaris 10 OS has been in development for two and a half years, and beta releases of the system met with glowing reviews from the technology media and Sun customers who gave the system a trial run.

The OS's mid-November 2004 release was also important for manufacturers, as the software meets many of the industry's key technical requirements, including low cost and high stability, performance, and security, says network architecture engineer Neil Fortell.

"The manufacturing industry demands high-performance computer systems: highly scalable systems that can ramp up and down in real time as needed, systems that can run custom and commercial applications, and systems that are highly secure while still allowing information to be shared easily," says Fortell.

"Granted, every business is also concerned with the above issues. But Solaris suits the specific needs of the manufacturing business so well it might have been designed specifically for this industry."

A Significant Advantage

At a Sun Network Computing event held in New York City, Jonathan Schwartz, Sun's president and chief operating officer, pointed out that Sun is the only systems vendor that sells its own operating system. This, said Schwartz, is one of Sun's significant advantages over Dell, Hewlett-Packard, or IBM, all of which rely on Microsoft Windows or commercial versions of the Linux operating system.

"Since Sun is designing the software infrastructure for its own hardware, we can ensure that both software and hardware are finely tuned to enable our systems to handle performance-intensive applications and workloads," said Schwartz at the event. "Sun is simply the best choice for customers who need high-performing servers to run their most demanding enterprise applications."

Companies that have been craving high performance but are holding off on trying the Solaris OS because of cost issues need not wait any longer.

"Solaris was always a highly capable operating system, but it was perceived by some to be a bit too pricey because, for example, it didn't run all that well on the very popular and inexpensive x86 servers," says Fortell. "But Sun's done a great job of tuning Solaris 10 to run beautifully on less expensive servers with AMD's 64-bit, x86 Opteron processor. Companies should know that if hardware cost was an issue in adopting Solaris, it's now a nonissue."

The Solaris 10 OS is also far more compatible with other operating systems, as well as a broader array of applications. And features that the Solaris OS is already known for, such as built-in solutions that keep a network up and running without the need for human monitoring and intervention (formally known as Predictive Self-Healing), have also been upgraded and enhanced in the latest version.

Layers of Protection

The Solaris OS is best known for offering advanced security features, both in the standard version and in Trusted Solaris, a highly secure version of the operating system intended for the military and other users with extremely sensitive data.

Now many of the security features of the Trusted Solaris OS have been incorporated into Solaris 10, an initiative that began with Solaris 8. During an open house discussion at Sun's Burlington, Massachusetts, offices, Paul Sangster, senior Solaris security architect, detailed the security improvements in the Solaris 10 OS. "It's all about adding extra layers of protection," Sangster said.

Those extra layers include strong cryptographic services to keep data from falling into the wrong hands as it travels across networks, advanced user rights management capabilities to enforce security policies across the enterprise, an enhanced IP filter to control what data is being sent where, and N1 grid container technology, which enables users to share information easily and securely.

N1 grid container technology allows IT administrators to create up to 4,000 secure, fault-isolated software partitions, each with its own IP address, memory space, file area, host name, and root password. Within each container, people can securely share data and run applications, and whatever happens in the container cannot affect security across the entire system.

"Containers solve a real problem that many industries struggle with," says network design and security consultant Fred Gorskin. "The point of networks is to share data between coworkers and often partners, but you can't just fling open the doors of your network and share everything with everybody. N1 containers are a solution that's as close to perfect as we're likely to get. They tightly control access to much of the system while allowing open access to specific parts of it."

People and Policies

User rights management features in the Solaris 10 OS enforce policies and permissions automatically across the network, eliminating the need for users to struggle with a hodgepodge of authentication standards that are scattered across the system.

"Solaris 10 also will, to a great extent, limit the potential damage to the system from malicious hackers, viruses, spyware, and all the other Internet nastiness," according to security researcher Bill Abrams. "Solaris 10 even enhances the security of all the other applications that the server is running, since it doesn't let attackers or malicious code enter the network.

"After previewing the system, I think Solaris 10 is the only modern operating system available for companies that need to run high-performance, reliable networks," says Abrams.