By Ian Murphy, VNU Net
As users struggle to migrate their existing infrastructures to
Microsoft’s Windows 2000, Sun Microsystems has been on the
offensive with Solaris 8, the latest version of its rival operating
system.
Inside Solaris 8 there are some interesting technological and
directional changes that seem to underpin Sun’s belief in itself
and in Unix. The company is still embroiled in a bitter court
battle with Microsoft, and has failed to take advantage of the
possibilities that Java provided. On the defensive over claims of
proprietary behaviour in its Java licensing mechanism, Jiro, Jini
and other Sun initiatives are not core to the first release.
Under the bonnet
To minimise downtime, Solaris 8 offers a live upgrade mechanism
that allows a boot partition to be built and required drivers to be
installed, while earlier versions continue to run and support
users. The biggest benefits of this come during deployment, where
systems can be prepped while support staff are around, and rebooted
into Solaris 8 once the weekly back-up is complete. The maximum
time remains for final testing before users arrive for work the
following week. In the past, replacing hardware was a consideration
with each major software upgrade simply to minimise the potential
for failure.
Sun has also provided hot patching of the operating system (OS)
without a reboot. There are enhanced utilities providing a major
aid for debugging critical errors and for analysing crash dumps and
core files. Error messages received before a reboot or crash of the
OS are saved for later viewing.
The imminent arrival of Intel’s Itanium processors sees Solaris
extending the Intel port. Unfortunately, this creates something of
a problem. Inside the core, or Sparc, version of Solaris 8, both
32-bit and 64-bit are supported, allowing developers to take
advantage of faster execution but with hugely increased memory
addressing. For large data-oriented applications, this is a
critical issue. Until Itanium finally ships, the Intel port is only
32-bit, with Sun yet to commit to a 64-bit delivery schedule. It
may therefore lose momentum against Microsoft, as the Redmond
company ships its first 64-bit beta version of Windows 2000 during
the third quarter of this year.
Adding functionality
Previous Solaris versions used add-ons for increased OS
functionality and these were mostly expensive packages. Solaris 8
integrates many of these into the OS, ensuring that management of
the packages is coherent. Wizards simplify common tasks, saving
significant amounts of time spent writing Perl or shell scripts to
automate frequent processes.
There is a new Admin Pack with improved administration available
through third-party products and multi-OS environments. This sees
Sun moving to full support for the web-based enterprise management
standard. The Management Console is an example of this. Available
from a range of OSs or through integration with products from other
vendors, it uses a Windows interface. Despite efforts to position
its products as departmental and enterprise servers, this perhaps
shows that Sun recognises it is seen more as a high-end solution
administered by people with limited Unix experience.
Clustering
Support is provided for existing clustering services (version 2.2)
and is promised for Cluster 3.0 in the forthcoming service pack.
This update promises an increase in the number of nodes to eight,
global device naming and a new cluster file system. There will also
be new application program interfaces to ensure developers can take
full advantage of the new features.
Bandwidth issues
Through the Solaris bandwidth manager, administrators can control
user bandwidth inside a corporate network by breaking down network
traffic into various classes, and then allocating both
prioritisation and guaranteed bandwidth to services. This uses an
OS utility to do the controlling.
The introduction of a dual internet protocol (IP) stack allows
access to both IPv4 and IPv6, so that network administrators can
look at extending existing network infrastructures, taking user
demand for access into account and implementing additional
features.
The introduction of devices like personal digital assistants and
mobile phones means a potential shortage of IP addresses. As Voice
over IP becomes a requirement within organisations, the joint
IPv4/IPv6 stack will enable administrators to migrate fixed devices
across to IPv6. A component that Solaris 8 has failed to deliver is
support for mobile IP, but this is also promised in the first
service pack. IPSec, which is a key requirement for designing
virtual private networks, is available for the IPv4 stack, but Sun
has yet to incorporate it into the IPv6 stack. Again, this is
expected with the first service pack.
Security features
Security control mechanisms include support for Kerberos and
lightweight protocols for access and directory control, leaving
interoperability with Microsoft 2000 still to be resolved. Sun has
also introduced a new role-based access control mechanism similar
to that of other OSs. The limited access control inherent within
the Unix OS remains, but provides a halfway house between the
default environment, and secure Unix.
Embracing open source
A large number of open source applications such as Apache 1.3.9 are
supported, and with the iPlanet and Netscape suites, Sun has
provided some of the most widely-used and highly-respected web
environments available. You will need to check the release notes
carefully though, as many of the iPlanet products are supplied for
development and not production usage.
LXRUN allows Linux binaries to run natively on top of the
Intel port, letting Sun take advantage of the growing Linux
applications environment. But it would have been more interesting
if Sun had developed a tool that allows the code to be executed
directly on top of the Sparc implementation.
Close, but no cigar
Despite providing a wide range of alternative tools and utilities,
Java is not at the heart of Solaris 8. Support for Java in the
first release of Solaris 8 is based around Java 2 Standard Edition,
and while there is support for Enterprise JavaBeans, these are only
for developers, and licensing issues need checking.
Sun has also failed to include its Jini or Jiro technologies,
even though it will be including relevant components in the future
along with new hardware. There should be Jiro management components
in the first service pack, and it is hoped that Sun will not miss
the opportunity to include this Java-based technology.