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16.January.2007 - Innovation is transforming the Internet, creating a richer environment for the Web-based applications and services that are now vital to the enterprise. But creating an infrastructure that supports those increasingly important applications and services requires an operating system that delivers mission-critical security, scalability, and reliability. In a series of updates announced today, Sun demonstrated that the Solaris OS, long recognized as the ideal choice for the enterprise, is now the strategic choice for emerging Web applications and services. Sets New Standards for Security, Virtualization, and Performance
The updates announced today enhance the efficiency, safety, and reliability of the Solaris OS, and provide unparalleled benefits for data management and business continuity. Solaris 10 is the only operating system robust enough to deliver the enterprise-class security, reliability, support, and compliance companies need for Web-based applications and services. And it does so at a lower cost and across more x64/x86 platforms — 735 and counting — than any other OS on the market.
“ Today is the latest in a series of blockbuster new feature announcements that have included virtualization, security, clustering, and performance enhancements — making the Solaris OS ideal for building secure, scalable, and affordable Web-based applications and services. ”
— Tom Goguen, vice president of Solaris Marketing for Sun Microsystems
Massively Scalable, Highly Available
As the only operating system proven to scale from widely available, industry-standard x86 servers to massively scalable, highly available enterprise-class servers, the Solaris OS is the strategic platform of choice for enterprises looking to leverage Web-tier infrastructure to deliver services and solutions. This new version of the Solaris OS is ideally suited for running Web-based applications and services. It's open and free, and it ships with more than 180 of the latest third-party open source packages, including Apache, Samba, and Tomcat, precompiled and ready to run. And unlike alternative open source options, Sun Solaris customers are fully indemnified, enabling their developers to freely innovate. Deploys at Half the Cost of Red Hat
"The Solaris OS is a mature, stable platform that provides the latest technology while maintaining the value of companies' software investments," says Tom Goguen, Sun's vice president of Solaris Software. "It's the only operating system that combines robust, enterprise-class security, scalability, compliance, and business continuity features with the cost, accessibility, and community-support benefits of open source. In addition, Solaris 10 gets Web deployments up and running quickly with no-cost licensing, low-cost hardware, and a set of enterprise-class support subscriptions that cost half as much as Red Hat." What's New in Solaris
The update released today delivers several new features that continue to improve the built-in advanced security, virtualization, and high-availability technologies of the Solaris OS. These include:
The Most Secure OS on the Planet
Although popular, commercial, open source operating systems may provide good functionality, they don't necessarily ensure enterprise-class security. The Solaris OS provides unparalleled security features to secure your enterprise from the kernel all the way to the application layer. With the newly integrated Solaris Trusted Extensions, the latest update to the Solaris OS merges the highest levels of security with the benefits of open source, so you can confidently address government regulation and industry compliance requirements. Trusted Extensions provides labeled security, which allows you to enforce strict access controls based on data sensitivity as well as ownership. Now you can specify a security policy on any object in the OS, be it a user, a document, a device, or a piece of a data such as a consumer's credit card information. For example, the Solaris OS will not allow a user to print a document labelled "confidential"on a printer that has been labelled for "public" documents only, or to copy "internal use only" files to "public" drives or disks (i.e. removable media). Also new is Secure by Default Networking, which sets the default behavior to disable non-essential network services. Running this feature instantly reduces your risk of exposure on the Internet without losing normal outbound communication functionality, for example, browsing the Web and using email. Certified by Common Criteria
Already the most secure OS available, this update to the Solaris OS is currently undergoing an independent security evaluation through the Common Criteria Certification process. When completed, S10 OS will have achieved an evaluation assurance level (EAL4+) for the following profiles; Controlled Access (CAPP), Role-Based Access Control (RBACPP), and Labeled Security (LSPP). This means Solaris 10 OS is proven at the highest levels of security for a commercial OS. In addition, Sun also announced that the Solaris OS 3/05 was recently awarded Common Criteria Certification at the highest levels for an OS, helping to assure customers that their mission-critical systems are running on a secure, well-protected platform. Ideally Suited For the Web Tier
The Solaris OS also delivers superior availability, business continuity, and disaster recovery capabilities via the newly integrated Solaris Cluster. Solaris Cluster both improves the availability of software services and protects against downtime by eliminating the server, storage, network, interconnect, OS, and applications as potential points of failure. The latest version includes support for Live Upgrade and Single-Step Upgrade, which eliminate downtime during a cluster upgrade. Also, new configuration wizards make it easier to deploy the cluster software and help eliminate system configuration errors. "Solaris Cluster is not only about server availability. It's about application availability. We're ensuring availability from the kernel to the user level, meaning that the OS, the server, the application, and the content are always available for businesses," says Peder Ulander, Sun's vice president of Software Marketing. Improved Virtualization Capabilities
OpenSolaris and the Solaris OS with its next update offer the broadest set of system virtualization features in the industry. Solaris Containers is a virtualization technology imbedded in the Solaris OS that lets you consolidate applications like Web servers or application servers on a single machine. Using Containers you can safely drive server utilization rates as high as 80 percent. With the new capabilities included in the latest update to the Solaris OS, you can now clone, migrate, and rename Containers on your system. For example, you can create a "master copy" of a fully configured Web server and then create identical clones on the same machine, or migrate them to another machine as business needs demand. Also new is the ability to configure security privileges on a per-container basis. This lets you loosen or tighten the level of security on containers according to specific application and environment situations. "Solaris Containers running in conjunction with the "Least Privilege" security technology in the Solaris OS provide the most secure platform on the planet for running commercial and open source applications such as Apache and Tomcat. These new Containers features make it even easier to create and deploy Web services in response to varying load conditions, allowing companies to maximize the utilization of their server hardware," explains Goguen. This release also includes Logical Domains, an additional virtualization technology, which enables customers to dynamically provision and run up to 32 OS instances on each UltraSPARC T1-based system. Logical Domains and Containers work together seamlessly, making it possible to run Solaris Containers inside each Logical Domain. The combination of the two lets you use the most effective virtualization technology for each application. Sun will continue to add breakthrough virtualization technology to the Solaris OS, including the open source Xen Hypervisor, a paravirtualization technology that presents a software interface to virtual machines. Open Solaris OS already supports Xen Hypervisor, and it will be available soon in the Solaris OS. Other Enhancements
This new release of the Solaris OS also provides enhancements to the ZFS file system, Solaris Predictive Self Healing, and Network Layer 7 Cache, which will make your Web applications run faster and more reliably than ever before. It also includes the latest versions of Sun Java System Application Server Platform Edition 8.2 and Sun Java System Message Queue Platform Edition 3.7. The improvements to ZFS enable even easier storage and file system management and higher levels of data protection. Solaris Predictive Self Healing is now integrated with the Sun Fire X4500's SATA disk drives to provide advance warning and mitigation of disk failures. The Network Layer 7 Cache implements an HTTP cache for Web sites, which speeds up the response time of Web servers. OpenSolaris: Open to Innovation
OpenSolaris is an open source project sponsored by Sun and based on the source code for the Solaris OS. The two-year-old OpenSolaris community is the nexus for collaboration, conversation, source downloads, events, and developer tools, and is the basis for future versions of the Solaris OS. In fact, developers wanting to see what's cooking in the Solaris kitchen can just download the OpenSolaris source and use it to create exciting, innovative products. What's more, developers are encouraged to contribute code. OpenSolaris features all the key innovations delivered in the Solaris OS — DTrace, Containers, Predictive Self Healing, and ZFS. Plus, it has over 18,000 community members, 41 user groups, and multiple distributions, such as Nexenta. OpenSolaris has also won the prestigious Codie award for Best Open Source Solution. Save With New Solaris OS Support Plans
No matter whether you run the Solaris OS UltraSPARC or an x64/x86 system from HP, Dell, IBM, or Sun, you can get full, enterprise-class support from Sun. Also announced with the latest update to the Solaris OS are competitively priced support programs — about half the cost of equivalent offerings from Red Hat. Sun's new subscription plans for the Solaris OS are a one-stop shop for product and services, including full indemnification plus binary and source code compatibility. These plans — Solaris Basic Subscription, Solaris Standard Subscription, and Solaris Premium Subscription — include the expert support you expect from Sun. Costs range from developer focused $49 per-incident support to the customized site-wide Solaris Everywhere Plan, which offers fair, flexible coverage for any system running the Solaris OS across any machine. Hats Off to Solaris Makes it Easy to Migrate
Regardless of what business you're in and what kind of Web applications and services you're running, the Solaris OS makes the safest, most strategic choice when it comes to selecting an operating system for both enterprise and emerging applications. New programs, such as Hats Off to Solaris and the Web Tier Advantage Program, make the move to Solaris as painless as possible, with tools, documentation, and services to help ease migration and deliver long-term peace of mind with Sun. For more information, please visit www.sun.com/solaris |
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