Solaris Operating System - Data Sheet

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Solaris 10 Operating System: Innovation matters — increase business efficiency and lower costs

Enterprises are under tremendous pressure to do more with less, roll out new business services faster, fit more servers into the same space, and comply with new regulations, all while their budgets are shrinking and headcount is frozen. Can an operating system really help you address these issues and turn IT into a business advantage? The answer is yes, with the Solaris™ Operating System.

The Solaris OS is the strategic platform for today's demanding enterprise. It's the only open operating system that has delivered proven results, running everything from mission-critical enterprise databases to high performance Web farms, from large-scale SMP systems to industry-standard x86 systems from HP, IBM, Dell, and Sun.

For customers facing challenging business and technical requirements — such as lowering costs, simplifying system administration, and maintaining high service levels — the Solaris 10 OS is the ideal cross-platform choice. Its innovative, built-in features deliver breakthrough virtualization and utilization, high availability, advanced security, and industry leading performance to meet these stringent requirements — all at a great price.

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Table of Contents

Key Highlights
Ten things to know about Solaris 10 OS
For business, industry, and developers
OpenSolaris participation
Development tools
Solaris 10 technologies
Performance

Security
Networking
Platform choice
Interoperability
Learn More

Key Highlights

The Solaris™ Operating System meets and exceeds expectations for:

Virtualization: Optimize resource utilization to deliver predictable service levels with Solaris Containers

Networking: Attain near-wirespeed throughput with the open, programmable Solaris networking stack

Security: Implement a secure foundation for deploying services with Solaris leading-edge security features

Availability: Increase uptime with Predictive Self Healing

Ten things to know about Solaris 10 OS

Great Product
The constant demonstrated innovation within the Solaris OS pays off by delivering benefits that can save companies time, hardware costs, power and cooling, while preserving investments in software and training. In short: innovation matters, because it saves you money.
Great Price
Solaris 10 support pricing is 20% to 50% lower than equivalent support from other open OS vendors. No-cost end user licensing lowers barriers to entry, while overall efficiency lowers costs of operation.
Open Source
The Solaris OS code base is the foundation of the OpenSolaris™ open source community (visit opensolaris.org). In addition, the Solaris OS includes the leading Web 2.0 open source packages, ready to run and optimized for the over 1,000 x64 and SPARC system platforms supported by Solaris 10.
Application Compatibility — guaranteed
The Solaris OS delivers binary compatibility from release to release and source compatibility between SPARC® and x86 processors; with the Solaris Application Guarantee backing it, it's something you can count on. And for the ultimate in conversion ease, use Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 Containers on Solaris 10, a “Physical to Virtual” way to quickly and easily run your existing application environments on the latest SPARC systems.
One Solaris — same features on hundreds of systems
With a single source code base, the Solaris OS runs on x86 and SPARC and processor-based systems — and delivers the same features on all platforms. You can develop and optimize applications on the Solaris OS for use on over 1000 system models from leading vendors such as Sun, HP, IBM, and Dell.
Designed to run securely all the time
The leading-edge security features in the Solaris 10 OS help you reduce the risk of intrusions, secure your applications and data, assign the minimum set of privileges and roles needed by users and applications, and control access to data based on its sensitivity label. Solaris 10 has been independently evaluated at EAL4+ at three Protection Profiles, one of the highest levels of Common Criteria certifications.
Designed for observability
Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) technology makes it fast and easy to identify performance bottlenecks, especially on production systems. System administrators can use this to troubleshoot even the most difficult problems in minutes instead of days; developers can use it to optimize applications, with significant performance gains possible — real-world use has yielded increases up to 50 times previous performance.
Designed for Virtualization
Solaris 10 has powerful virtualization features built in at no additional charge. With Solaris Containers, you can maintain a one application per virtual server deployment model while consolidating dozens or even hundreds of applications onto one server and OS instance. Share hardware resources while maintaining predictable service levels; increase utilization rates, cut system and licensing costs while gaining the ability to quickly provision and move workloads from system to system. Logical Domains and Xen-based paravirtualization support add even more virtualization flexibility.
Designed for high availability
Predictive Self Healing is a key feature in the Solaris 10 OS that helps you increase system and service availability. It automatically detects, diagnoses, and isolates system and software faults before they cause downtime. And it spans the full range from diagnosis to recovery on SPARC, AMD Opteron™ and Athlon, and Intel® Xeon® and Core Duo processor-based systems.
Designed for performance
The Solaris 10 OS has set over 244 price performance records since its release, unleashing even more power from existing applications. Download the latest Sun™ Studio compilers and developer tools to bring even greater performance to your applications.

For business, industry, and developers

The Solaris 10 OS offers the technology, flexibility, and versatility you need to get down to business immediately, whether you're a small developer, a large enterprise, or anything in between.

OpenSolaris participation and OS release

More than an open source project, OpenSolaris is also a community, a Web site for collaboration — and now provides a supported, leading edge release every six months. The OpenSolaris release is available at opensolaris.com, and Solaris source code, downloads, developer tools, mailing lists, user groups, and events are all available at opensolaris.org. OpenSolaris technology features a single source base for SPARC and x86 platforms. It includes the key innovations delivered in the Solaris 10 OS, as well as providing access to new technologies as they're being developed. The OpenSolaris project and release provide a low-risk option for evaluating emerging OS technologies, plus an excellent opportunity to participate in shaping the direction of the Solaris OS.

Development tools

Developers need integrated, ready-to-use tools that are compatible with all the environments in which they must deploy applications. With that in mind, Sun includes popular software tools from the free and open source world and complements them with access to key Sun developer technologies like the Sun Studio compilers and tools and unique Solaris 10 utilities such as DTrace.

Solaris 10 technologies

With the Solaris OS, you get compelling new features that your applications can take advantage of immediately with few, if any, changes. Binary and source compatibility with previous releases also helps make it easier to move to Solaris 10 from earlier releases of Solaris.

DTrace

System administrators, integrators, and developers can use the dynamic instrumentation and tracing capabilities in the Solaris OS to see what's really going on in the system. Solaris DTrace can be safely used on production systems — without modifying applications. It is a powerful tool that gives a comprehensive view of the entire system, from kernel to application, even those running in a Java™ Virtual Machine. This level of insight reduces the time for diagnosing problems from days and weeks to minutes and hours and ultimately reduces the time to fix those problems.

Solaris Containers

Solaris Containers is an OS-level virtualization technology built into the Solaris 10 OS. Using flexible, software-defined boundaries to isolate software applications and services, this breakthrough approach allows multiple private execution environments to be created within a single instance of the Solaris OS. Each environment has its own identity, including a discrete network stack, separate from the underlying hardware, so it behaves as if it's running on its own system — making consolidation simple, safe, and secure.

By dynamically controlling application and resource priorities, businesses can define and achieve predictable service levels. System administrators can easily meet changing requirements by quickly provisioning new Solaris Containers or moving them from system to system or disk to disk within the same system as capacity or configuration needs change.

Containers can be patched in parallel, increasing speed by up to 300% on systems with multiple containers configured. This also raises the bar on the number of containers that can be realistically run on a system. Containers also offer the ability to emulate other environments, prior Solaris releases, such as Solaris 8 and Solaris 9, as well as support for Linux applications

In addition to Solaris Containers, Sun also offers Logical Domains (LDoms), a hardware partitioning technology that allows multiple instances of the Solaris OS to run on a single Sun CoolThreads™ server.

Solaris ZFS

The Solaris ZFS file system is designed from the ground up to deliver a general-purpose file system that spans from the desktop to the datacenter. Anyone who has ever lost important files, run out of space on a partition, spent weekends adding new storage to servers, tried to grow or shrink a file system, or experienced data corruption knows the limitations of traditional file systems and volume managers. Solaris ZFS addresses these challenges efficiently and with minimal manual intervention.

Predictive Self Healing

Predictive Self Healing is an innovative capability in the Solaris 10 OS that automatically diagnoses, isolates, and helps you recover from many hardware and application faults. As a result, business-critical applications and essential system services can continue uninterrupted in the event of software failures, major hardware component failures, and even software configuration problems.

Solaris Fault Manager continuously monitors data relating to hardware and software errors. It automatically and silently detects and diagnoses the underlying problem and can automatically take the faulty component offline on SPARC, Intel Xeon, and AMD Opteron processor based systems. Easy-to-understand diagnostic messages link to articles in Sun's knowledge base to help clearly guide administrators through corrective tasks requiring human intervention.
Solaris Service Manager (SMF) creates a standardized control mechanism for application services by turning them into first-class objects that administrators can observe and manage in a uniform way. These services can automatically be restarted if they're accidentally terminated by an administrator, fail as the result of a software programming error, or interrupted by an underlying hardware problem.

Performance

Optimizing performance and efficiency in Solaris 10 is the result of many factors: underlying technologies, system configuration and utilization, tools, applications, and system tuning. An enhanced networking stack minimizes latency and offers improved network performance for most applications out of the box.

With DTrace, you can delve deeply into today's complex systems when troubleshooting systemic problems or diagnosing performance bottlenecks — in real time and on the fly. Additional built-in technologies that help deliver increased application performance include:

High-performance networking stack
Filesystem performance
Tools and libraries
Multiple page-size support (MPSS)
Memory placement optimization (MPO)

Security

Security is more than a mix of technologies; it's an ongoing discipline. Sun understands this and continues its 20-year commitment to enhancing security in the Solaris OS. Solaris User and Process Rights Management plus Solaris Containers enable the secure hosting of hundreds of applications and multiple customers on the same system. Administrators can use features such as Secure by Default to minimize and harden the Solaris OS even more. Additionally, Solaris Trusted Extensions provides true multi-level security for the first time in a commercial-grade OS, running all your existing applications and supported on over 1,000 different system models.

Verify your system's integrity by employing Solaris Secure Execution and file verification features
Reduce risk by granting only the privileges needed for users and processes
Simplify administration and increase privacy and performance by using the standards-based Solaris Cryptographic Framework
Secure your system using dynamic service profiles, including a built-in, reduced-exposure network services profile
Control access to data based on its sensitivity level by using the labeled security technology in Solaris Trusted Extensions

Networking

Exponential growth in Web connectivity, services, and applications is generating a critical need for increased network performance. With the Solaris 10 OS, Sun meets current and future networking challenges by significantly improving network performance without requiring changes to existing applications. The Solaris 10 OS speeds application performance via the Network Layer 7 Cache and enhanced TCP/IP and UDP/IP performance. The latest networking technologies, such as 10-Gigabit Ethernet and hardware off-loading, are all supported out of the box.

Additionally, the Solaris 10 OS supports current IPv6 specifications, high availability, streaming, and Voice over IP (VoIP) networking through extended routing and protocol support — meeting the carrier-grade needs of a growing customer base.

Platform choice

The Solaris 10 OS is optimized for Sun and third-party systems running 64-bit SPARC, AMD, and Intel processors. This makes it possible to create horizontally and vertically scaled infrastructures and offers the flexibility to easily add compute resources. The OS runs on hardware ranging from laptops and single-board computers to datacenter and grid installations, while serving applications ranging from military command-and-control systems to telecommunications switch gear and stock trading.

Interoperability

The Solaris 10 OS provides interoperability from the desktop to the datacenter across a range of hardware systems, operating platforms, and technologies, making it the ideal platform for today's heterogeneous compute environments. Not only does it interoperate with both Linux and Microsoft Windows, it also supports popular open source applications and open standards such as Universal Description, Discovery, and Integration (UDDI); Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP); Web Services Description Language (WSDL); and eXtensible Markup Language (XML).

Source and binary compatibility for Linux applications and interoperability with Microsoft Windows systems
Includes Perl, PHP, and other widely used scripting languages
Includes Apache, Samba, sendmail, IP Filter, BIND, and other popular open source software
Supports Java application development and deployment with the Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) and Java Platform, Standard Edition (Java SE)
Includes authentication support for LDAPbased directory servers and Kerberos-based infrastructures

Learn More

Learn more about the Solaris 10 OS.

Give it a try. A free, Web-based training course is available.

Make the move to Solaris.