Bob Netherton demonstrates how some of the new features in Solaris 10 10/09 or Update 8 work. He concentrates on:

SVR4 package commands

Improvements have been made in the SVR4 package commands (pkgadd, pkgrm, pkginfo et al), and Netherton works through a zone installation, noting that it takes about half the time as on Solaris 10 5/09 and only 48 seconds versus 129 seconds in system time.

Zones parallel patching

Users can specify the number of threads to be used to patch a system with zones. This feature can be enabled by assigning a value to num_proc in /etc/patch/pdo.conf.

Installing flash archive from an existing ZFS root system

Solaris 10 10/09 provides the ability to install a flash archive created from an existing ZFS root system. Netherton points out that there are still a few limitations, such as the flash source must be from a ZFS root system and differential archives cannot be used.

Setting ZFS properties on the initial zpool file system

Solaris 10 10/09 allows users to specify any ZFS file system property using zpool -O.

Adding persistent read ahead caches to a ZFS zpool

Netherton says this additional capability improves the read performance of ZFS as well as reducing the ZFS memory footprint. He provides an example of creating a pool of 2 mirrored devices, 2 cache devices and a spare.

New cache control properties

There are two new ZFS properties:

• primarycache: controls what is stored in the memory resident ARC cache
• secondarycache: controls what is stored in the L2ARC control what is stored in the ARC and L2ARC

Applying user and group quotas to a file system

User can now apply both user and group quotas to a file system similarly to UFS. The ZFS file system must be at version 15 or later and the zpool must be at version 4 or later. Netherton takes readers through the process.

New space usage properties to ZFS file systems

These include:

• usedbychildren (usedchild): this is the amount of space that is used by all of the children of the specified dataset
• usedbydataset (usedds): this is the total amount of space that would be freed if this dataset and its snapshots and reservations were destroyed
• usedbyrefreservation (usedrefreserv): this is the amount of space that would be freed if the dataset's reservations were to be removed
• usertbysnapshots (usedsnap): the total amount of space that would be freed if all of the snapshots of this dataset were deleted.

More

Other features in this release that caught Netherton's attention:

• Support for 2TB boot disks: Solaris 10 10/09 supports a disk Volume Table of Contents (VTOC) of up to 2TB in size.

• pcitool: A new command for Solaris that can assign interrupts to specific threads or display the current interrupt routing.

• New iSCSI initiator SMF service: Allows for the control discovery and enumeration of iSCSI devices early in the boot process.

He also lists new and updated device drivers and open source software packages that have been updated in Solaris 10 10/09.

More Information

What's New in Solaris 10 10/09 Netherton's blog entry

Solaris 10 10/09 Released

Details on Solaris 10 10/09 OS

Upgrade to Solaris 10

What's New in Solaris [...read more...]

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