"In the
leap-forging game that is continuously played in the brutally competitive
commercial-server arena, Solaris 8 surges ahead to capture the overall lead for
UNIX operating-system functions. "
--From "2001 UNIX Function Review", completed by
D.H. Brown Associates
Solaris 8 offers data center-class reliability,
availability, and serviceability, at a fraction of the cost of a mainframe.
Solaris 8 leads strongly in the RAS area, offering several
functions not yet available from competitors,
particularly in the Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) and Partitioning
categories. Other built-in features include live upgrade,
automatic dynamic reconfiguration, hot relief, hot diagnostics, IP
network failover and balancing, UNIX file system logging, and remote
console. These features enable you to maximize uptime and increase
availability to services.
- Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) allows system administrators to add,
change, and remove system components -- such as memory and CPU boards,
I/O controllers, network interface cards (NICs), disk drives and other
SCSI devices -- without shutting down the system. Solaris 8
platform is the only Unix OS that can arbitrarily add and remove CPUs
online. Dynamic Reconfiguration minimizes planned downtime as well as
outages -- a requirement in today's Internet driven business world.
- Dynamic Domains is the only UNIX partitioning
function that enables system administrators to divide a server running
Solaris software into several partitions, allowing multiple applications to
run in isolated environments on a single server. Resource allocation across
individual domains can be done on the fly, without rebooting any of
the partitions, driving down cost and increasing time saving. All
other UNIX solutions require rebooting of the affected partitions after
reconfiguration.
- Resource Configuration Manager (RCM) provides a standard API that
allows applications to adjust online to changes in the configurations of the
domain and optimize application use of available resources, such as
processors and memory. Reconfiguration can be automated through scripting.
Key software packages, like Oracle 9i, already utilize the Resource
Configuration Manager.
Solaris leads in Directory and Security Services,
offering the most complete support for directory services. With Solaris 8,
security is easy to deploy and manage - many frameworks and products are
either incorporated or available via free download.
- iPlanet[tm] Directory Server (LDAP v.3), the Directory Server
provides users and system administrators with a current, global reference to
all network resources.
- Single sign-on authentication provides the Kerberos client-side
infrastructure, an addition to the pluggable authentication module (PAM)
framework, and utility programs that can be used to secure RPC-based
applications, such as NFS service.
- The IP Security Architecture (IPSec) provides protection for IF
datagrams. The protection includes confidentiality, strong integrity of the
data, partial sequence integrity, and data authentication. It
protects against IP spoofing, and is a core technology for building
virtual private networks over the Internet. In a future release of the
Solaris 8, Sun will add IPSec protocol support for the new IPv6 protocol
stack.
Solaris software was originally
designed with the Internet in mind. TCP/IP, the central Internet
protocol, has been at the core of Solaris networking for more than 15 years.
Through its time-tested design, the Solaris platform delivers stability and
predictability for business-critical applications.
- Support for Internet Protocol (IP v6): Solaris is one of the
early adopters of IPv6, which uses 128-bit address fields, extending the
number of available IP addresses. It greatly increases the functionality and
compatibility to meet the huge increase in Internet devices in the future.
- Java Technology: Sun's Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE)
technologies are becoming the standard for Internet-delivered
applications. The Solaris Operating Environment leads the industry as
the premier, mission-critical platform for deploying Java technology-based
applications. Java technology is tightly integrated into the Solaris 8
operating environment, and can leverage its multithreaded capabilities to
deliver the scalability, performance, and stability needed for enterprise
applications.
- Application support: Solaris is a Unix standard. It
is widely supported by application software. Nearly 3,000 software packages,
giving customers a broad array of leading-edge applications. The database
leader, Oracle makes its database for Solaris. These strengthen the Solaris
8 platform's position as the leading Operating Environment for customers.
- Linux compatibility: Solaris 8 has the ability to actually run
existing Linux binaries natively. In addition, many tools and utilities that
ship with Linux distributions are on the Solaris Software Companion CD.
- Price: Sun is selling more workstation and server
than any competitors because it offers acceptable performance and
reliability at a reasonable price. Thus Solaris 8 Operation System, which
comes with the Hardware, domain the Unix operation system market.
- Open Source: Sun make Solaris source code available
under its "community source" license. Under this plan, for noncommercial
applications, the source code can be used for free. It makes Solaris more
popular among engineering students. Sun has the strongest following in
schools. Java and Solaris's network capabilities are well known to
engineering students in college and university. When they graduate and enter
the corporate world, they preach the Sun message.
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