For Sun customers, upgrading to Solaris 10 is very much a 'no-brainer', and for several very good reasons. To start with, it's faster than any previous Solaris implementation, with a slick new IP stack just one of many performance enhancements. Plus it’s a lot more secure, featuring a new integrated cryptographic framework based on the Trusted Solaris product. The Role Based Access Control (RBAC) technology, introduced a couple of releases back, has also been extended to give fine-grained control over both users and processes, while applications and services can now be isolated within their own virtual execution space using Solaris Containers (formerly N1 Grid Containers).
Features
There are several notable advances on the availability front too, including 'predictive self healing', which enables the OS to identify and automatically recover from a range of hardware and software faults. And for developers there’s a new integrated debugging tool called DTrace that lets programmers and system administrators see exactly what’s going on while applications are executing.
Solaris 10 also sees the official release of JDS 3.0, Sun’s Gnome-based Java Desktop System, and the resurrection of support for the x86 platform as well as Sun’s own UltraSPARC processors. Moreover, Sun has opted to make Solaris 10 available for free download and, with claims to be able to run Linux applications natively on the new OS, is clearly making a play for the corporate open source market.
Unfortunately it’s at this point that the Solaris proposition starts to lose some of it lustre. Yes, you can download and install it just like Red Hat or SuSE Linux, but there the similarities end, making Solaris 10 far less of an obvious choice for companies looking for a Linux alternative.
Installation & setup
To begin with, it’s important to understand that you’re still dealing with a proprietary OS here. Sure, you can download and run it for free (if you’ve the time and bandwidth to download all four CD-ROM images!), but a full open source release is unlikely to appear for some time. And although Sun is keen to stress support for the whole gamut of x86 platforms, including the latest 64-bit AMD and Intel processors, the lack of all those open source developers churning out code means that hardware compatibility isn’t as universal as it is with most Linux distributions.
We tried installing the software on a number of different systems -- from older Pentium III-based PCs to the latest and greatest Xeon server hardware -- and experienced lots of basic compatibility problems. These ranged from a clash between the install program and the CD-ROM drive to -- where we could get that to work -- a failure to recognise the network or storage adapters being used. We also experienced crashes when using USB devices and even had problems installing Solaris 10 in a virtual machine environment. However, we did eventually get it to work with the latest VMware Workstation 5 release which provides specific (if unsupported) Solaris support.
Linux compatibility
The famed Linux compatibility, based on a technology called Janus, doesn’t quite live up to expectation either. In its favour, Janus provides compatibility at the kernel level, which allows it to take full advantage of all the new features -- including container virtualisation. It also allows Linux applications to run natively with minimal performance overheads. Unfortunately the first release is limited to handling 32-bit applications, with compatibility only guaranteed for code written for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.
Worse still, Janus isn’t yet included as standard in the Solaris download, and other features slated for inclusion have also been left out of the first production release. Most notable of the latter is the Zettabyte File System (ZFS), which is designed to simplify storage management in large enterprises.
On the plus side, the Sun software now doesn’t cost anything and security updates are also free to download. You can buy support for all platforms direct from Sun at a cost that compares well with Red Hat and other enterprise Linux distributions, and there's plenty of good documentation to be had, both embedded in the package and on Sun's Web site. Sun has gone further down the Linux route and bundled Apache, Tomcat, MySQL and other applications with its OS as well as StarOffice 7 for desktop deployment.
Conclusion
Despite all this, however, Solaris 10 has to be viewed as a proprietary product best implemented on Sun hardware, be it UltraSPARC or one of the AMD Opteron-based x86 boxes. Strides have been made towards embracing the Linux model, and an open source implementation is promised. But it’s not here yet, and Sun has a long way to go before it can claim to provide the same wide platform support that's available from the top Linux vendors.
So if you’re a Sun customer, then go for it. Otherwise stick with Linux until the bugs have been ironed out and it does what it says on the tin.
Images
Member reviews
Hardware compatibility should not be the reason one chooses an OS, unless you are more concerned with the hardware you are running on than the services and applications you look to provide. As a system manager of both Linux and Solaris due to the features, ease of administration, upgrade compatability, rock-solid stability and large ISV support causes me to choose Solaris over Linux in many situations. The hardware choice is secondary to the OS.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10It took a while for Sun to comlete the architectural underpinnings of Solaris, but now that's done they're really starting to advance the state of the art.
Solaris 10 is based on standards, has binary compatibility going back years (15 years or more on sparc), is pretty fast, as cheap as it can get, and packed with features.
We love zones and SMF (even though the latter takes a while to get your head round; we love the renewed energy around x86 - although Solaris has always been a fine OS in that space anyway.
We're disappointed - like many - that ZFS and Janus aren't there yet. But they're coming along, as is OpenSolaris.
Solaris is excellent already, and it's going to get even better.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Facts:
Solaris 10 is a High Performance OS
-fast TCP/IP stack
-extremely secure architecture
-really multi-threaded
-ideal for databases like Oracle with Terabytes of Data
Solaris 10 works well on the hardware that is currently listed on the Sun Hardware List
Solaris 10 will be available as OpenSolaris (open source Solaris 10) in the next few months
Solaris 10 has the best security architecture available in any operating system in the market today (containers, cryptography framework, RBAC, etc.)
Solaris 10 is cheaper than Red Hat today
Bottom line: If you were/are a Winblows MCSE and want to "try" a Unix-like OS just so you can get familiar with Unix, go check Linux. If you are the Sys Admin for a bank and you want an OS you can really depend on, an OS that's reliable, fast, scales and secure while doing all this at the same time, then Solaris 10 should be on the top of your list. Don't be fooled by these "experts" that write these reviews. Ask real sys admins what the banks and the telecoms are using.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Check netcraft for the history of zdnet.co.uk.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Despite so much bloatware creeping into the latest release, the operating environment is still quite fast. Hardware support is still sketchy, but anyone experienced on the Solaris X86 platform should be used to that by now. Some of the new features like the service administration facility are quite a radical departure from any other Unix/Linux on the market that this release is DEFINITELY worth investigating.
- 7.50 out of 10
7.50 out of 10- 4.00 out of 10
4.00 out of 10I've been a Sun admin for over 10 years now and have also been using Linux as early as 1994. All this Linux hype is really sickening. Is it a stable and powerful OS? Sure it is. But when I can buy a Sun UltraSPARC based system with full console access, lights out management, and get Solaris for the same price or cheaper than equivalent x86 systems, why would I even bother going to Linux? I can run all the same open source tools on Solaris as I can on Linux. People act like Open Source is something new!! It's been around for 30 years! Sendmail, Bind, Apache, the list goes on and on. The comparison should be of Linux to Solaris vs the other way around.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10This isn't Linux, and it shouldn't be confused as such. This is Unix (TM), but the best part is that it's free! The only thing holding this back is device drivers on desktops, but that's been a stumbling block for Solaris, openstep, unixware et al.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10I've used Solaris for 10 years, and loved it. I also use Linux, and while I love the Linux HW support (and until recently Linux's performance advantage), Linux can't beat Solaris from an enterprise OS point of view. Solaris 10 brings performance, platform parity, debugging, and management facilities together that I don't think any OS beats. I can't believe that this review was done without consulting the Solaris HCL.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Sure if you want a desktop OS, Solaris isn't for you. That's not it's target audience. If you want a scalable, reliable and flexiable server OS, there is no OS that can come close to Solaris capabilities. The author obviously lacks significant experience with Linux and Solaris. I've been using both for over 10 years each. I'd never trust my enterprise to Linux. It's just not there yet.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Solaris 10 is slow! The only "feature" is the boring Java desktop. It has nothing in it that Linux doesn't already offer except for compiles that don't work.
- 5.00 out of 10
5.00 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10This is a very bad review of an excellent product. Common Linux distros are still toys in many areas comparing to Solaris 10. Very bad review indeed.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Many people in business aren't going to GPL their software, like it or not. The very best software products in the world are NOT GPL, grow up and deal with it.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10I wonder if, when you finally get the chance to review LongWait...excuse me, Longhorn; you'll advise your readers that its "proprietary" and therefore should be avoided.
And when you do your next enterprise server OS roundup, try to compare LongWait to the *latest* versions of the other platforms, and not against older ones. And wait until LongWait is actually shipping before you review it, and try to find someone other than a pair of 'softies from NCSU to do the review.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10Best for server clustering / virtualisation. With little improvements (JDS) and proper software, can be a very solid workstation for dedicated environments.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10The article has some incorrect details. The cryptographic framework did not come from Trusted Solaris it was developed from scratch explicitly for Solaris 10 and is very much integrated with new Solaris 10 features such as the Service Management Framework (Predictive Self Healing) and Zones (Containers).
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10The article writer is so obviously Linux biased, how would you expect any product that is not Linux based to get a good review? Solaris is not a cobbled together bunch of unsupported code, but a well designed and planned out implementation of Unix.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I have installed it on three laptops and two desktops -- the only hitch on one was the display setting which were easily corrected.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10This reviewer must be a desktop Linux guy, and it's understandable why he can't appreciate Solaris 10. Enterprise customers rarely re-purpose existing hardware "hey let's install on our old Next box!". For them hardware is fairly inexpensive next to application and integration costs. For them Solaris 10 is a huge advantage in performance, reliability, scalability and sustainability. I play with Linux and like it, but I bet my j-o-b on Solaris.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Solaris 10 delivers some interesting and genuine features that make it a very solid foundation as a server OS. I would not say Solaris is proprietary because it conforms to POSIX and other well established standards. When it will be released as a true open source OS ("OpenSolaris") in the first half of 2005 there is a good chance that it might even become a great desktop OS too.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Reviewer was not fair with the review and was completely Linux biased. Solaris 10 features when compared with any Linux distribution is superior by a long walk, Linux features are standard in Solaris since a long time ago.
Solaris is a great product when is required stability, security, manageability, serviciability and availability, if you look at performance number, I am sure the reviewer did not look at the latest benchmarks.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10IT will do anything any other OS will do with the added benefit of being rock solid. It is also fast. I find it easy to install and work with.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10While it may be around a while now, it still lacks a large, active community. And the only way they will ever get there is by offering more than what the competition has to offer, at a better price. This meaning no cddl, and more than just x86 for free. It lacks the Linux attitude. The main reason people here still use it is because it has Sun on it. Be more open and charge people for support.
- 7.00 out of 10
7.00 out of 10There are many clear wins for Solaris 10, not the least of which is that it has seen the longest and broadest beta test of any version of Unix, with the Solaris Express program. Additionally it seems to me to have the others beat hands-down for diagnosability, DTrace even allows me to find issues in my application code, (fix them and verify the fix, all on the fly. Do that with another OS? I don't think so.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10I've actually installed the system on my laptop (Lifebook from Fujitsu) and it was a breeeze to install and to use. the only glitch is non-working audio. not bad for an OS that can run on the Sun Fire 25 K.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10The onlt thing linux can brag about is the community releasng a lot of free software for it, which can be obtained to Solaris also (sunfreeware.com). But linux is nothing compared to Solaris when it comes to stability and peformance. Also today, when installing Solaris you´ll get the right version for your system direct (64/32 bit).
It is so great, just wait until ZFS comes with the second release this summer, then it will be even better.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Rock solid performance, for over a decade now.
- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10Excellent value for the money, much better quality than Linux, thank you very much.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10As any sysadmin worth her salt knows, it's not about 'latest and greatest', or the coolest new feature.
Solaris 10 is awesome on both Sparc and x86. It is the strongest Solaris release since 2.6, and it stands on its own two legs as the best enterprise Unix out there.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Solaris 10 is an excellent, leading edge, robust, scalable, secure OS with features and facilities only dreamed of by other Unix-like Operating Systems like Linux & FreeBSD. But you would not get this impression from this crappy review. The review is poorly written and incomplete. Sub standard work from someone who is not qualified to review anything more sophisticated than a toaster oven IMHO.
Bad job ZDNET. I would have expected your editorial process to weed out this level of mediocrity -- not propagate it.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Solaris 10 is the first release which really targets desktop users and the general x86 community. It's a very good indication of where the Solaris platform is heading.
There are some minor differences from Linux, but nothing insurmountable. The Sun documentation is LIGHTYEARS ahead of the Red Hat and LDP documentation. I've been very impressed with it's thoroughness and completeness.
Having fairly painlessly installed it on my laptop I'm not feeling like I'm mising anything from the previous Fedora Core 2 Linux install.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 8.50 out of 10
8.50 out of 10Solaris is not Linux, so I do not know why this review centered around comparing the two. Solaris is not competing with Linux in the server arena. Linux is not in any position to even begin competing with Solaris in regards to scalability, management, support, and overall quality. Please, before you write another review on any operating system, do your research first so you can at least get it to work. I wouldn't be surprised if they never did get it working, and based the review upon the Solaris feature charts.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10A solid OS that is made for servers, not desktops. If you want a fast, secure, bulletproof OS this is what you want. It's one of the few OSs that actually gets faster on the same hardware -- not slower, with each release (although with a bigger disk image). Even runs great on my old Ultra 10. The only weakness, is on x86 platforms in regards to hw driver availability. Don't expect flashy desktops -- they have no place on a server.
- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10Someday these reviewers will wake up and see what true value is. Solaris 10 is fast, scalable and dependable. Linux has its place and purpose, but Solaris 10 is the datacenter OS!
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Why pay Red Hat's extortion when you can run what it's trying to copy?
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Sorry, but I think the reviewer's unwillingness to actually review the main features of the product totally disqualify him from reviewing it.
Additionally, it's an unfair characterization that it has "large compatability" problems with x86 hardware just because it didn't work on the systems it was tested on. It's worked fine so far on every system I own, so take what the reviewer says with a canister of salt. Also, hardware compatability is fairly well documented on the BigAdmin HCL list and the reviewer shouldn't be complaining about problems on systems that aren't listed as supported. A complaint in general about the need for expanded hardware support would have been a better valid criticism.
The reviewer also failed to mention how much of a panacea for development Solaris 10 is compared to the current Linux distributions. My company has been working with RedHat Enterprise Linux since it's early versions and so far we've found Solaris to be a much better documented and robust product. For a lot of development shops Solaris does deliver, and equally well compared to Linux. This is greatly in part due to SUN's developer friendly focus and mountains of documentation that they have available on the system.
They also fail to mention that many businesses can run Solaris 10 for likely half the price RedHat wants...
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.00 out of 10
9.00 out of 10As a Windows MCSE I earn my living on the "other side" so I have no axe to grind. I keep an old AMD K7 450 with 256MB and a 10Gb HD to install a guest OS from time to time at home to play around with. I had no problems with the install at all. It took a while was the only criticism I had of it(but then the Hardware ain't up to much). It was easy to network and a whole lot easier than the Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake, BeOS that I have played around with before.
- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10Run on a Sun V20z gives outstanding performance.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 7.50 out of 10
7.50 out of 10I've tried it on 3 x86 machines and 1 ultra 10. Problems start from the beginning-- won't pickup the network card on one. One doesn't pick up DHCP. The 3rd and 4th CDs fail to install on another one. On all 3 x86 machines X will not start (this is a very common problem).
I was very excited in the months leading up to the release... but how can I test it out if I can't get it to run on anything?!?!
Linux is also free, has a huge support community, and works out of the box every single time. I'll stick to it for now.
- 5.00 out of 10
5.00 out of 10I've been a Linux and Solaris advocate for years. Linux offers many distro benefits, but Solaris keeps the core OS doing what it needs to be. Plus, you can port very easily all of the Open Source you need since GCC is a common between the two. Zones, Dtrace, and production quality.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Solaris 10 seems to work only on some of our existing platforms and with high kernel CPU usage (30%) while it was almost 0% with previous Solaris releases. Moreover we'll have to port existing applications to overcome some performance issues regarding system calls.
- 5.50 out of 10
5.50 out of 10Runs on different notebooks without troubles, much more easier to configurate than earlier releases 7 - 9.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10DTrace rlz...zones too :)
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Is the best S.O.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Using Sun Fire V20z servers based on the AMD Opteron processor running the Solaris 10 Operating System and Linux, SLAC was able to demonstrate completely filling a 10 Gbyte/sec transcontinental network path for a sustained time with standard 1500-byte packets, and the team achieved more than 15 Gbyte/sec (9.43 Gbyte/sec in one direction and 5.65 Gbyte/sec in the reverse direction simultaneously) on a single 10 Gbyte/sec wavelength path. In addition, the team successfully showed smooth communications at multiple Gbyte/sec rates between multiple operating systems and different vendor network interface cards. The Bandwidth Challenge results prove the efficiency and robustness that an operating system can deliver, as well as the power and flexibility of two- and four-way servers from Sun built with the AMD Opteron processor and 10 Gigabit Ethernet cards from Neterion (formerly S2io) and Chelsio.
- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10So, reviewers are gushing about "predictive healing" and "Dtrace" etc. Does that mean that these concepts will be put under the test and stress that x86 systems go through, or that they will only be implemented under the well-baby-sat corporate environments?
SUN has been talking a lot about x86 support for a while, yet with Solaris 10 they show that they can only cater to the corporate crowd. Why talk so much about x86 support if you don't have the guts to follow through with reasonable, real x86 world device support, better licensing and a better administration framework?
A long time ago, Microsoft quietly defined an OS to be not just the kernel and its immediate underlying supports, but it and the applications that run over it and the devices that interact with it. The Linux world has taken intuitive notice of this, but SUN will take another five or so years to note this. Even with their OpenSolaris initiative. They have been wrapped in an exclusive corporate cocoon for too long.
- 6.50 out of 10
6.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10Very much Improved performance on OS level , Plus extra Security features & OS level Zoning are fantastic...
- 8.00 out of 10
8.00 out of 10- 7.50 out of 10
7.50 out of 10Who would want to run this on out of date hardware anyway. We don't slate Mac OSX because it doesn't run well on a 5 year old Compaq/whatever. Lets eval the product and focus on what it is intended for.
- 9.50 out of 10
9.50 out of 10- 10.00 out of 10
10.00 out of 10Compare to other OS like
Freebsd 6.1 or Debian GNU Linux 3.1, Solaris 10 is like early RedHat: very agresive marketing and poor quality.
Performace? pfff it is such a shame that Sun not allow to public benchmark results!
Documentation and manuals? I thing that I would write it much better! You are willing to say SUPPORT. What support you are going to give to sysadmins if you dont know how to write proper man pages! Hope that some day people understund that agresive marketing is not enough.
- 4.00 out of 10
4.00 out of 10