Solaris 11.4 Beta

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jan 30, 2018

Oracle has released Solaris 11.4 Open Beta.

“The Sudden Death and Eternal Life of Solaris”

Posted by Bill Bradford on Sep 4, 2017

“The Sudden Death and Eternal Life of Solaris” is a blog article by Bryan Cantrill with his thoughts on Oracle’s recent staff terminations.

Oracle lays off large number of Solaris tech staff

Posted by Bill Bradford on Sep 3, 2017

This tweet by Simon Phipps claims that a large portion of Solaris technical staff were let go – as a “Silent EOL” of the product – in the recent Oracle layoffs on Friday, September 1st.

More Sun-related layoffs at Oracle?

Posted by Bill Bradford on Aug 4, 2017

An article at Phoronix discusses more recent layoffs in Sun/SPARC-related teams at Oracle.

Oracle officially cancels Solaris 12

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jan 18, 2017

According to this Ars Technicha article, Oracle is officially cancelling any plans for Solaris 12, instead focusing on what they call “Solaris 11.next”, which is expected to be released in late 2018 and last through 2021.

Solaris to adopt OpenBSD “pf” packet filter

Posted by Bill Bradford on Apr 12, 2015

From this blog post comes the news that Solaris will soon be adopting the OpenBSD “pf” firewall / packet filter in Solaris 11.3, and Oracle hopes to make it the default in Solaris 12. I think this is a good thing, as current IPF in Solaris is ancient, and is what “pf” was designed to replace originally in OpenBSD.

James Gosling grades Oracle’s handling of Sun’s technology

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jan 14, 2014

In this InfoWorld article, Java founder James Gosling rates Oracle’s handling of Sun’s technologies in the four years since the acquisition.

In short, Java gets a passing grade, while the treatment of the Solaris operating system fails miserably.

Oracle suing companies providing “illegal” third-party Solaris OS support

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jul 26, 2013

This NetworkWorld article describes how Oracle is going after third-party companies who provide “illegal” Solaris support (patches, updates) to customers who don’t want to go through Oracle.

Oracle halting development of Sun Ray technologies

Posted by jkemp on Jul 15, 2013

Oracle will soon be announcing that it’s discontinuing development of its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, Sun Ray software and hardware, and Oracle Virtual Desktop Client product lines.

https://blogs.oracle.com/virtualization/entry/important_information_about_oracle_desktop

http://www.zdnet.com/oracle-to-halt-development-of-sun-virtualization-technologies-7000018028/

Sun Fire 280R with 3,737 days of uptime

Posted by Bill Bradford on Mar 14, 2013

This YouTube video documents the final shutdown of a SunFire 280R server with 3,737 (10.24) years of continual uptime.
It beats my personal record of almost two years on a Solaris machine, and more than six years on a Cisco switch.

OpenSolaris.org shutting down 24 March 2013

Posted by jkemp on Feb 13, 2013

OpenSolaris.org shutting down 24 March 2013

http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/

If you need anything from OpenSolaris.org, now is the time to download and archive it.

Solaris 10 update 11 available now

Posted by jkemp on Feb 13, 2013

Solaris 10 update 11 is available now.

Get it here:

http://www.oracle.com/us/products/servers-storage/solaris/solaris10/overview/index.html

Solaris 11 Source Code Leaked – and Oracle doesn’t seem to care

Posted by Bill Bradford on Dec 21, 2011

Ars Technica has an article up about how the source code to Solaris 11 has been leaked to various file-sharing networks and services, but there has yet to be any sort of official reaction from Oracle. This has led some people to believe that the “leak” may not have been accidental.

Solaris 11 GA released

Posted by jkemp on Nov 9, 2011

Solaris 11 GA released

Today marks the release of Oracle Solaris 11, the first cloud OS.

Oracle Solaris 11 delivers ground-breaking features for secure and agile deployment of services in large scale cloud environments and enterprise data centers. With over 4,000 different new features, Oracle Solaris 11 raises the bar on enterprise operating systems. Oracle Solaris 11 is 7 years in the making and a whole new set of capabilities, from advanced network virtualization to high performance cryptography and virtualization, dependency aware software packing and installation technologies.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/overview/whats-new/index.html

Download: http://oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/downloads/index.htm

Release Notes: http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/E19963-01/index.html#release-info

Documentation: http://oracle.com/technetwork/server-storage/solaris11/documentation/index.html

Oracle Solaris 11 Drops Support for Legacy Sun Hardware

Posted by Bill Bradford on Jun 17, 2011

According to the End-of-Feature Notices, Solaris 11 is dropping support for older “legacy” SPARC hardware:

Support for legacy systems that have included the UltraSPARC I, II, IIe, III, IIIi, III+, IV and IV+ processor architectures (as reported by the Solaris ‘psrinfo -pv’ command) has been removed. All Oracle SPARC Enterprise M-Series Servers and Oracle SPARC T-Series Servers will continue to be supported.

Note: Oracle Solaris 10 will continue to be a supported operating system for these affected platforms as per the current Oracle lifetime support policy.