A best practices guide to upgrading to Solaris 10 OS provides an overview of the technologies and approaches available for those aiming to bring the latest innovations from Sun's OS into their datacenters. Brian Down, Ken Pepple, and Jeff Savit discuss the upgrade options available, issues to consider, planning the upgrade, and strategies for implementation.

Solaris 10 contains built-in virtualization features and the Solaris ZFS file system, which facilitates server consolidation and improved performance and data integrity. These two features alone save on having to purchase additional virtualization technology products and third-party volume managers. Plus by upgrading to the Solaris 10 OS, IT departments can eliminate the burden of managing the patch history for older operating systems, and take advantage of bug fixes and patches built into the latest release.

The first plan of action outlined by the authors is for administrators to understand their current, existing environments, in terms of power, cooling, and enterprise infrastructure stack support (i.e., if the computing and storage platforms do not support the application infrastructure, applications cannot function properly). Also, it is important to evaluate the existing infrastructure to determine what supporting infrastructure, utilities, or scripts are needed in the new environment to ensure applications meet service-level agreements (SLAs) for availability and throughput.

Then, measurable objectives must be set and prioritized, and the upgrade project's value proposition outlined. The authors recommend addressing the business driver (i.e., performance = improved customer response time or meets throughput requirements) as a value proposition to help determine which upgrade paths and technologies satisfy business needs.

Common components in most risk management techniques, which are inherent in IT projects, are listed to help with the upgrade plan. The paper identifies these as risk identification, estimation, evaluation, and mitigation and contingency plan creation. Definitions and suggestions are provided.

Next, the paper discusses the primary methods for upgrading to the Solaris 10 OS, including factors to consider, trade-offs in the approaches, evaluation of platform choices, and application and technology considerations.

The three follow-up the previous section by listing the opportunities created by Solaris 10 such as improved resource utilization, more efficient storage infrastructure, improved availability, ease of managed services via the Service Management Facility (SMF), security features, and performance gains.

The paper ends with a list of optional services and programs that can ease the move to new hardware and software platforms. Sun offers a Solaris 10 Upgrade Service, Virtualization Service, Sun Enterprise Migration Suite, Sun Eco Services Suite, and Global Sun Solution Centers.

More Information

Best Practices for Moving to the Solaris 10 Operating System - Sun BluePrints article (login or registration required)

Details on Solaris 10 10/09 OS

Solaris 10 10/09 Released

Solaris 10 Security Deep Dive Updated for 10/09 Release [...read more...]

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