Action Identity Blog

 

Over the past year, we’ve covered several Oracle technologies and have covered many Oracle University classes. Ranging from Oracle OIM, OAM, and other identity and access management products, today we have the pleasure of featuring a guest blogger from GCA to discuss the newest features in Oracle’s newest release, Solaris 11. Oracle Solaris 11 the newest version of the traditional Solaris operating system.  It includes many upgrades and additional features.

Here are some of the most significant changes (in case you were living under a rock since October):

Installation

This is perhaps the biggest change from Solaris 10 to Solaris 11: The way Solaris is installed in the first place. Over time, the old System V package manager and patching system has become quite a burden, so it just had to be re-written: IPS (Image Packaging System)

There are 3 distinct ways to install Solaris 11:

LiveCD (Graphical installer), Text-based installer (for SPARC), and Automated Installation.

Installations include:

        •       A modern, network-based, finely-granular package manager called IPS.

        •       No more patching, just updates of existing packages.

        •       A new, powerful concept for root file systems: Boot environments.

        •       Everything is neatly integrated with ZFS.

        •       Automated Installation is a replacement for traditional JumpStart

        •       Backward-compatibility with existing System-V packages.

 

Storage

Solaris 11 comes with a brand new version of ZFS, including two new major, much anticipated features: Deduplication and Encryption that add to its efficiency and security. ZFS is now supported (and it's the default) for root file systems.

 

DTrace Enhancements

Solaris 10  DTrace included more than 30,000 probes for your observing events and gathering performance data in ways never seen before.  With Solaris 11, DTrace extends to the whole stack: With a total of 77982 (and counting) probes allowing you to observe and monitor absolutely anything in the operating system or running applications.

 

Security

Similarly to DTrace and ZFS, the new security concepts from Solaris 10 have been enhanced in Solaris 11. Most notably, root is no longer the all-powerful user (though you can still make it so if you want), but just a role. This introduces accountability to the way sysadmins handle root passwords: No more anonymity by "just becoming root for a while".

 

Networking

Solaris 11 introduces the concept of "virtual networking" -- within a host. Solaris 11 users can enjoy limitless network virtualization including virtual NICs, virtual switches and routers, a built-in load-balancer and including full resource management.

This means that all the components of a standard "physical" network topology can now be mimicked inside a single host allowing much more finely-grained controls and connection methodologies to be used.

 

NOTE:

Hardware Platforms

Traditional SPARC platforms do not support Solaris 11:

UltraSPARC I, II, IIe, III, IIIi, III+, IV and IV+ processor architectures  will continue to use Solaris 10 and earlier. All Oracle SPARC Enterprise M-Series Servers and Oracle SPARC T-Series Servers will be supported on Solaris 11.

 

 

Action Identity invites you to visit GCA.net for more information on Oracle's Solaris solution. If you have questions, feel free to leave a comment below or contact GCA for further information. 

Action Identity specializes in business solutions involving technologies such as Identity and Access Management solutions. We are more than a technology company. We provide our customers with the strategic thinking, architectural vision, investment control, and practical solutions that save money, return value to the lines of business, and holistically implement solutions to preserve operations typically impacted by change and modernization. To learn more about us, visit our website. If you’d like to speak with us directly, please click here. 

 

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