Blade Watch

Sun have released an updated version of OpenSolaris, which includes numerous improvements in the networks, storage, virtualization and performance fields. It’s always great to see further innovation of the OpenSolaris platform particularly with the announcement of further enterprise support creating further possibilities for end user choice in platforms.

The specific innovations are in the press release quoted below – or check out the video:

Major Enhancements Continue in Storage

OpenSolaris 2009.06 provides dozens of enhancements to the breakthrough technology of ZFS and encompasses it with a complete architecture of connectivity and protocol support. New, fully integrated flash storage support in ZFS helps to optimize large scale pools of very high performance storage by designating flash devices as write accelerators and read accelerators. These pools are automatically managed by ZFS to achieve extreme levels of performance across many workloads, making the need for small caches on RAID controllers obsolete.

Native support for Microsoft CIFS has been added as a full peer to NFS, as a high performance kernel with integrated features and support for Microsoft Windows semantics for security, naming and access rights, allowing transparent use and sharing of files across Windows, Linux and Solaris environments. To round out the complete storage capability, Sun has designed new, very high performance support for iSCSI and Fiberchannel block protocols into the Solaris kernel, allowing systems running OpenSolaris to participate as a client and a target for virtually any storage topology.

All of these storage features are integrated into the Solaris platform and take full advantage of its core functionality including: fault management, networking, multi-threaded scaling, performance, security and resource management capabilities. More information on the storage enhancements in OpenSolaris is available at: http://opensolaris.com/learn.

Comprehensive Approach to Virtualization

With this announcement, Sun continues to deliver on a holistic, built-in virtualization design for networking, storage and application abstraction, raising performance and scale to new highs for the industry. Building on the advances in networking storage virtualization, the OpenSolaris platform delivers key server virtualization technologies in the form of Solaris Containers, Logical Domains (LDoms) for Sun CMT systems and the Xen-based hypervisor to give users a complete virtualization platform built directly into the OpenSolaris OS. One of the most widely deployed virtualization technologies in the world, Solaris Containers provide lightweight, agile, software-defined boundaries that can be used to create virtual servers for consolidating hundreds of existing enterprise-class workloads onto a single system. More information on the built-in virtualization capabilities of OpenSolaris is available at: http://opensolaris.com/learn.

OpenSolaris Performance

OpenSolaris is fully supported on thousands of systems, including all shipping Sun x86 and SPARC(R) systems, delivering world-record performance and reliability, with the highest levels of service and support. Since it was first launched in May 2008, OpenSolaris has set 24 world records and industry benchmarks clearly demonstrating its versatility. The trend continues for OpenSolaris 2009.06. By leveraging the advantages of the built-in innovation and enhancements, OpenSolaris 2009.06 delivers 35 percent better memory management, 22 percent better integer arithmetics and 18 percent better multi-thread scheduler management when compared to the latest Linux releases.(1)

For detailed information and a complete list of all benchmarks on Sun systems visit: http://www.sun.com/benchmarks and http://blogs.sun/weber for more information on OpenSolaris performance.

Related posts:

1. Sun continues platform innovation Sun SANTA CLARA, Calif. [...]...
2. Innovation and investment in SPARC continues http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS112570+13-Oct-2009+BW20091013 Enhanced Server Line With Faster SPARC64 Processors Sets Four...
3. Oracle continues the evolution and innovation of the Sun and Solaris platforms Sun.com Sun/Oracle have published a statement illustrating Oracle’s commitment to...
4. Dell continues the innovation http://media-newswire.com/release_1107949.html Dell introduced new infrastructure management, storage and networking solutions...
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