Chapter 1 What's
New in the Solaris 10 10/09 Release
This document summarizes all features in the Solaris 10 Operating System
(OS) that are new or have been enhanced in the current release, the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
For a summary of all features in the Solaris 10 OS that were introduced
or enhanced since the Solaris 9 OS was originally distributed in May 2002,
see Solaris 10 What’s
New.
System Administration Enhancements
The following system administration features and enhancements have been
added to the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
Two-Terabyte Disk Support for Installing and Booting
the Solaris OS
Starting with the Solaris 10 10/09 release, you can install and boot the Solaris
OS from a disk that is up to 2 Tbytes in size. In previous Solaris releases,
you could not install and boot the Solaris OS from a disk that was greater
than 1 Tbyte in size.
In this Solaris release, you can use the VTOC label on a disk of any
size. However, the addressable space by the VTOC is limited to 2 Tbytes. This
feature enables disks that are larger than 2 Tbytes to also be used as boot
drive. However, the usable space from label is limited to 2 Tbytes.
This feature is available only on systems that run a 64-bit kernel.
A minimum of 1 Gbyte of memory is required for x86–based systems.
For more information about the Solaris disk drivers and disk utilities
that have been updated to support boot on disks greater than 1 Tbyte, see System Administration Guide: Devices
and File Systems.
pcitool Utility
The pcitool utility enables system administrators
to bind interrupts to specific hardware strands for enhanced performance.
This utility exists in the public SUNWio-tools package.
For more information about using pcitool, see the pcitool man page.
ZFS Features and Changes
The following section summarizes new features in the ZFS file system.
-
ZFS and Flash installation support –
In the Solaris 10 10/09 release, you can set up a JumpStart profile to identify a flash
archive of a ZFS root pool. For more information, see the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.
-
Setting ZFS user and group quotas –
In previous Solaris releases, you could apply quotas and reservations to ZFS
file systems to manage and reserve space. In this Solaris release, you can
set a quota on the amount of space consumed by files that are owned by a particular
user or group. You might consider setting user and group quotas in an environment
with a large number of users or groups. You can set user or group quotas by
using the zfs userspace and zfs groupspace properties
as follows:
# zfs set userquota@user1=5G tank/data
# zfs set groupquota@staff=10G tank/staff/admins
|
You can display a user's or group's current quota setting as follows:
# zfs get userquota@user1 tank/data
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
tank/data userquota@user1 5G local
# zfs get groupquota@staff tank/staff/admins
NAME PROPERTY VALUE SOURCE
tank/staff/admins groupquota@staff 10G local
|
-
Using ZFS ACL pass through inheritance
for execute permission – In previous Solaris releases, you
could apply ACL inheritance so that all files are created with 0664 or 0666 permissions. If you want to optionally include the execute
bit from the file creation mode into the inherited ACL, you can use the pass
through inheritance for execute permission in this release.
If aclinherit=passthrough-x is enabled on a ZFS dataset, you can include
execute permission for an output file that is generated from cc or gcc tools. If the inherited ACL does not include execute permission,
then the executable output from the compiler won't be executable until you
use the chmod command to change the file's permissions.
-
Using cache devices in your ZFS storage
pool – In the Solaris 10 10/09 release, you can create pool and specify cache devices, which are used to cache storage pool data. Cache
devices provide an additional layer of caching between main memory and disk.
Using cache devices provide the greatest performance improvement for random
read-workloads of mostly static content.
One or more cache devices
can specified when the pool is created. For example:
# zpool create pool mirror c0t2d0 c0t4d0 cache c0t0d0
# zpool status pool
pool: pool
state: ONLINE
scrub: none requested
config:
NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
pool ONLINE 0 0 0
mirror ONLINE 0 0 0
c0t2d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
c0t4d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
cache
c0t0d0 ONLINE 0 0 0
errors: No known data errors
|
For information about determining whether using cache devices is appropriate
for your environment, see the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.
-
ZFS property enhancements –
The Solaris 10 10/09 release provides the following ZFS property enhancements:
-
You can set ZFS file system properties at pool creation time.
In the following example, compression is enabled on the ZFS file system that
is created when the pool is created.
# zpool create -O compression=on pool mirror c0t1d0 c0t2d0
|
-
You can set two cache properties on a ZFS file system that
allow you to control what is cached in the primary cache (ARC) or the secondary
cache (L2ARC). The cache properties are set as follows:
You can set these properties on an existing file system or when the
file system is created. For example:
# zfs set primarycache=metadata tank/datab
# zfs create -o primarycache=metadata tank/newdatab
|
Some database environments might benefit from not caching user data.
You will have determine if setting cache properties is appropriate for your
environment.
For more information, see the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.
-
You can use the space usage properties to identify space
usage for clones, file systems, and volumes, but not snapshots. The properties
are as follows:
-
usedbychildren – Identifies the amount
of space that is used by children of this dataset, which would be freed if
all the dataset's children were destroyed. The property abbreviation is usedchild.
-
usedbydataset – Identifies the amount
of space that is used by this dataset itself, which would be freed if the
dataset was destroyed, after first destroying any snapshots and removing any refreservation. The property abbreviation is usedds.
-
usedbyrefreservation – Identifies
the amount of space that is used by a refreservation set
on this dataset, which would be freed if the refreservation was
removed. The property abbreviation is usedrefreserv.
-
usedbysnapshots – Identifies the
amount of space that is consumed by snapshots of this dataset. In particular,
it is the amount of space that would be freed if all of this dataset's snapshots
were destroyed. Note that this is not simply the sum of the snapshots' used properties, because space can be shared by multiple snapshots.
The property abbreviation is usedsnap.
These new properties break down the value of the used property
into the various elements that consume space. In particular, the value of
the used property breaks down as follows:
used property = usedbychildren + usedbydataset +
usedbyrefreservation + usedbysnapshots
|
You can view these properties by using the zfs list -o space command. For example:
# zfs list -o space
NAME AVAIL USED USEDSNAP USEDDS USEDREFRESERV USEDCHILD
pool 33.2G 72K 0 21K 0 51K
rpool 27.0G 6.27G 20.5K 97K 0 6.27G
rpool/ROOT 27.0G 4.73G 0 21K 0 4.73G
rpool/ROOT/zfsBE 27.0G 4.73G 97.5M 4.63G 0 0
rpool/dump 27.0G 1.00G 16K 1.00G 0 0
rpool/export 27.0G 60K 16K 23K 0 21K
rpool/export/home 27.0G 21K 0 21K 0 0
rpool/swap 27.5G 553M 0 41.5M 512M 0
|
-
In this release, snapshots are omitted from zfs list output.
The listsnaps pool property controls whether snapshot information
is displayed by the zfs list command. If you use the zfs list -t snapshots command, snapshot information
is displayed. The default value is off, which means snapshot
information is not displayed by default.
-
ZFS log device recovery –
In the Solaris 10 10/09 release, ZFS identifies intent log failures in the zpool
status command. FMA reports these errors as well. Both ZFS and FMA
describe how to recover from an intent log failure.
For example,
if the system shuts down abruptly before synchronous write operations are
committed to a pool with a separate log device, you will see intent-log related
error messages in the zpool status output. For information
about resolving log device failures, see the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.
-
Using ZFS ACL Sets –
The Solaris 10 10/09 release provides the ability to apply NFSv4–style ACLs in
sets, rather than apply different ACL permissions individually. The following
ACL sets are provided:
-
full_set = all permissions
-
modify_set = all permissions except write_acl and write_owner
-
read_set = read_data, read_attributes, read_xattr, and read_acl
-
write_set = write_data, append_data, write_attributes, and write_xattr
These ACL sets are pre-defined and cannot be modified.
For more information about these improvements and changes, see the Solaris ZFS Administration Guide.
See the following What's New sections for related ZFS feature information:
nss_ldap shadowAccount Support
The LDAP name service is enhanced to support the account locking and
password aging functionality using the data in the shadow database stored
on a configured LDAP server. This support enables the passwd(1)
utility and the pam_unix_*(5) PAM modules to function almost
the same when handling account locking and password aging for local accounts
and remote LDAP user accounts. Therefore, using the pam_ldap(5)
module is no longer the only way to implement the password policy and account
control for the LDAP name service. pam_unix_*(5) can be
used to obtain the same consistent results as with the files and nisplus name services.
For more information, see System Administration Guide: Naming and Directory Services (DNS,
NIS, and LDAP).
Sun Validation Test Suite 7.0 Patch Set 6
The SunVTSTM 7.0 Patch Set 6 is integrated in the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
The SunVTS 7.0 Patch Set 6 follows a conventional three-tier architecture
model. The patch set includes a browser-based user interface (BUI), a Java
technology-based middle server, and a diagnostic agent. Enhancements to the
SunVTS infrastructure include:
-
Support for solid-state drives (SSD) added to vtsk
-
Default level of logical tests enhanced to adapt to system
configuration size
-
Minimum and maximum values or hard limit for reserve swap
in vtsk
-
Ability to change the sequence of Logical Test execution
The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes the following enhancements to memory and
CPU diagnostics:
-
Coverage is added for X86-L3$ in l3sramtest
-
Enhanced vmemtest, fputest, and l2sramtest provide callbacks
to return swap requirements
-
Tuned logical tests for x86 systems and UltraSPARC® T2 Processor-based systems
The Solaris 10 10/09 release also includes the following enhancements to the
I/O diagnostics:
-
disktest is enhanced to run in Read only mode if Write or
Read option is not applicable
-
Disk Logical Test is tuned for x86, UltraSPARC T2 Processor,
and UltraSPARC IV systems
-
disktest options are automated to run solid-state drive (SSD)
and hard disk drive (HDD) Tasks in Disk LT
-
Selection of test-options is automated in netlbtest
-
Support in disktest and iobustest for safe and unsafe test
options
Installation Enhancements
The following installation feature has been added to the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
Turbo-Charging SVR4 Packaging
Starting with the Solaris 10 10/09 release, SVR4 package commands run faster.
This enhancement means that the Solaris installation technologies, such as
initial installations, upgrades, live upgrades, and zone installations, perform
significantly faster.
System Resources Enhancements
The following system resources feature has been added to the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
Zones Parallel Patching
The zones parallel patching enhancement to the standard Solaris 10 patch
utilities increases the patching tools performance on systems with multiple
zones by allowing parallel patching of the non-global zones. In releases prior
to Solaris 10 10/09, the feature is implemented through the patch utilities
patch 119254-66 or later revision for SPARC and 119255-66 or later revision
for x86. The global zone is still patched before the non-global zones are
patched.
For more information, see the following:
PVIO Drivers in Solaris 10 Guest Domains
When using the Sun xVM hypervisor in a Solaris OS, fully virtualized
guest domains are referred to as hardware-assisted virtual machines (HVMs).
HVM + PVIO guests provide better performance through the use of PV drivers.
Releases starting with the Solaris 10 10/08 release are shipped with
the Solaris PV drivers. A patch is available for Solaris 10 5/08.
For more information, see “Solaris 10 releases” in Guests That
Are Known to Work in System Administration
Guide: Virtualization Using the Solaris Operating System.
This guide also discusses HVM-capable machines.
Device Management Enhancements
The following device management feature has been added to the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
iSCSI Initiator SMF Service
A new SMF service, under FMRI svc:/network/iscsi/initiator:default is introduced to control the availability of iSCSI devices. The
SMF service also controls the timing to start discovery and enumeration of
iSCSI devices during OS start—up.
Other services that rely on the availability of iSCSI devices can customize
their dependency on the this new iSCSI Initiator services. For more information
see, the iscsi(7D) man
page.
LSI 6180 Controller Support in Solaris MPxIO
Starting with the Solaris 10 10/09 release, Solaris MPxIO supports the LSI 6180
controller-based storage arrays.
System Performance Enhancements
The following system performance feature has been added to the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
Callout Subsystem Scalability
The callout subsystem is redesigned to include the following features:
-
Performance and scalability improvements:
-
Per-CPU data structures to minimize mutex contention
-
Per-CPU callout processing to improve scalability
-
Event-based implementation that avoids polling overhead
-
High-resolution timers for improved functionality. Many API
calls use high-resolution timers and do not experience latency because the
system rounds off the specified intervals. These timers include commonly used
calls such as poll() and nanosleep().
-
Observability improvements:
Driver Enhancements
The following driver features and enhancements have been added to the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
Enhanced 10 Gigabit Ethernet Performance
The Solaris 10 10/09 includes many enhancements to the Solaris 10GbE drivers.
The nxge 10GbE driver includes the following enhancements:
-
TCP receive throughput is improved from 40% at 8 connections
to over 90% improvements for 32, 100, 400, and 1000 connections
-
TCP transmit throughput is improved from almost 80% at 8 connections
to over 100% for the higher connection tests
-
UDP transmit throughput is improved from 80% for 64 byte messages
to over 160% for 8 Kbyte messages
The ixgbe driver on x86 systems includes the following enhancements:
-
TCP transmit throughput is improved to almost 100% for 8 or
more connections
-
TCP receive rates are 10Gb line rate for 8, 32, 100, 400,
and 1000 connections
-
UDP transmit maximum throughput doubles to 10Gb line rate
-
Ping pong data rates are improved from 2x to 3x as the message
size increases from 64 bytes to 512 bytes
Solaris 10GbE drivers can now deliver close to line data rates providing
optimal performance on 10 Gigabit networks.
InfiniBand Feature Improvements
The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes the following InfiniBand-related enhancements:
-
InfiniBand Host Channel Adapter (HCA) –
The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes a significantly enhanced InfiniBand driver for
the Mellanox ConnectX HCA. The InfiniBand driver enables InfiniBand protocols
to operate over both Double Data Rate (DDR) and Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand
fabrics. The driver is also integrated into the Solaris FMA framework for
fault management and the driver supports relaxed ordering on SPARC systems.
-
InfiniBand Transport Framework (IBTF) –
The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes a significantly improved IBTF implementation
that provides enhanced support for running RDMA-based InfiniBand protocols
in Solaris. InfiniBand for SPARC now supports both the PCI Dynamic Reconfiguration
(DR).
-
Internet Protocol over InfiniBand
(IPoIB) – The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes a significantly improved
IPoIB driver (ibd) supporting Internet RFCs 4391 and 4392. The IPoIB driver
in the Solaris 10 10/09 release supports the User Datagram (UD) mode of operation,
IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, and takes advantage of hardware offloads in the
ConnectX HCA for improved throughput at lower CPU utilization. IPoIB-UD enables
the use of any TCP/IP application protocol such as SSH, HTTP, FTP, NFS, and
iSCSI over both Double Data Rate (DDR) and Quad Data Rate (QDR) InfiniBand
fabrics. The new IPoIB driver for both SPARC and x86 platforms offers a significant
performance boost over the previously available driver.
-
Sockets Direct Protocol (SDP) –
The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes a significantly improved SDP driver and sockfs implementation. SDP is a transport protocol layered over the Infiniband
Transport Framework (IBTF). SDP is a standard implementation based on Annex
4 of the Infiniband Architecture Specification Vol 1. The SDP protocol provides
reliable byte-stream, flow controlled two-way data transmission that is similar
to the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP). InfiniBand programmers use SDP
through the libsdp C library that supports a sockets-based SOCK_STREAM interface to application programs. The SDP protocol
supports graceful close, IPv4 and IPv6 addressing, the connecting/accepting
connect model, out-of-band (OOB) data and common socket options. The SDP protocol
also supports kernel bypass data transfers and data transfers from send-upper-layer-protocol
(ULP) buffers to receive ULP buffers.
-
Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) –
The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes an improved RDSv1 driver certified for use with
Oracle RAC (Real Application Clusters) 10gR2.
-
User-Level Direct Access Programming
Library (uDAPL) – The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes an updated uDAPL over InfiniBand API that conforms to the latest Direct Access
Transport (DAT) Collaborative uDAPL 1.2 specification.
Driver for LSI MPT 2.0-Compliant SAS2.0 Controllers
The mpt_sas(7D) driver supports SAS, SATA, SMP physical
devices, and virtual devices by using the Integrated RAID feature. The new
architecture for SAS drivers supports the following features:
-
SAS initiator ports (iports)
-
Dynamic reconfiguration of SAS, SATA, and SMP targets
-
FWARC 2008/013-compliant device representation
-
Multipathing
For more information, see the mpt_sas(7D) man page.
x86: Broadcom NetXtreme II Gigabit Ethernet
Driver
The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes new chipsets support such as bcm5716c and bcm5716s.
x86: Interrupt Remapping Support for Intel
Vt-d
The Solaris 10 10/09 release provides an interrupt-remapping table that isolates
interrupts on at least the Intel Nehalem platform and ensures that devices
can only use authorized interrupts and that the interrupts are properly targeted.
This feature improves system reliability, availability, and serviceability
(RAS).
x86: SATA Tape Devices Supported by the AHCI
Driver
SATA tape devices are now supported by the AHCI driver. Users can connect
or hot-plug the SATA tape drive to the AHCI controller though the SATA or
eSATA cable. Error handling mechanism is also enhanced for SATA ATAPI devices
including CD, DVD, or tape.
For more information, see the ahci(7D) man page.
Sun StorageTek 6Gb/s SAS PCIe RAID HBA Driver
The mr_sas MegaRAID SAS2.0 controller host bus adapter
driver is a SCSA-compliant nexus driver that supports the LSI MegaRAID SAS
92xx series of controllers and the StorageTek 6Gb/s SAS RAID HBA series of
controllers and the LSI MegaRAID SAS 92xx series of controllers.
Some of the supported RAID features include:
-
RAID levels 0, 1, 5, and 6, and RAID spans 10, 50 and 60
-
Online capacity expansion (OCE)
-
Online RAID level migration (RLM)
-
Auto resume after loss of system power during array rebuild
or reconstruction (OCE or RLM)
-
Configurable stripe size up to 1 Mbyte
-
Capability to check consistency for background data integrity
-
Patrol read for media scanning and repairing
-
64 logical drive support
-
Up to 64 TB LUN support
-
Automatic rebuild, and global and dedicated hot—spare
support
Intel 82599 10Gb PCI Express Ethernet Controller
Starting with the Solaris 10 10/09 release, the ixgbe driver supports the Intel
82599 10Gb PCI Express Ethernet Controller chipset.
Intel 82598 10Gb PCI Express Ethernet Controller
Starting with the Solaris 10 10/09 release, the ixgbe driver supports the Intel
82598 10Gb PCI Express Ethernet Controller chipset.
Freeware Enhancements
The following freeware features and enhancements have been added to
the Solaris 10 10/09 release.
NTP Version 4.2.5
The Solaris 10 10/09 release includes the latest version of the network time
protocol that supports enhanced authentication, IPv6, and greater performance.
For more information, see the ntpdate(1M) man
page.
PostgreSQL
The Solaris 10 10/09 release supports PostgreSQL versions 8.1.17, 8.2.13, and
8.3.7.
Samba
The Solaris 10 10/09 release supports Samba 3.0.35.
Download this book in PDF (548 KB)