OpenSolaris Arrives in a New Version

by Sam Dean - Jun. 01, 2009Comments (1)

In conjunction with its CommunityOne event, Sun Microsystems has announced a new version of its OpenSolaris operating system. Dubbed OpenSolaris 2009.06, it features networking improvements, storage management and virtualization features. Here's more on what's under the hood, and how Sun will proceed with a free open source version of OpenSolaris, and a paid version featuring new lower support fees.

Virtualization support in OpenSolaris built directly into the operating system kernel, and users can maintain a one-application-per-server deployment model while simultaneously sharing hardware resources. You can read more about how to run hypervisors like Xen in Solaris Containers here.

According to Dan Roberts, director of product management for OpenSolaris, speaking with ZDNet, the paid version of OpenSolaris will have reduced costs for support, with three tiers available, "$324 for basic, $720 for standard and $1,080 for premium." Roberts also told ZDNet that Sun wants to unify the open source and paid version of the operating system. You can find more about OpenSolaris support here.

OpenSolaris 2009.06 has many enhancements to Sun's ZFS storage technology. Flash storage is fully integrated, which means that flash devices can be designated as write accelerators and read accelerators. There are more file and storage protocols supported, and many other types of performance improvements throughout the OS. Sun has also added a collection of networking features, dubbed Project Crossbow, designed to limit the amount of networking hardware that users need.

OpenSolaris, like many other technologies from Sun, has lots of open questions surrounding it as Oracle digests Sun. Hopefully Oracle will preserve the openness of the operating system. The company has already stated its intention to offer servers pre-loaded with software stacks, and OpenSolaris is likely to be a key component in those stacks. How free and open will it stay as that happens though? That's an unknown at this point.

You can download OpenSolaris 2009.06 here.

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by an anonymous user on Mar. 04, 2010

Am I the only one who sees the Elephant in this Room? OpenSolaris may be a lot of things but it is not an Operating System. It takes longer time than the best Windows-OS to install the OpenSolaris and then what have you got? Some worthless junk. The OpenSolaris's so called Operating System can only see its own installed files and folders. It Can Not Even Detect the Computer's Disks!!! It can not detect the disk A, B, C, D, or any other thing about the computer's other non-solaris files. It lives and operates in its own little bubble! Then it takes another several hours to convince it to connect to the internet. It installs to give you a pretty blue desktop with some neat icons on it, and that is all that it does.

Yes, as a waste of time for some computer addicts who like to play with worthless useless new computer programs, it is an excellent program. However, if you intend to use it to read and write documents, do data graphing and calculating, make drawings, watch video, or browse on the internet, then Opensolaris is just a piece of trash-ware. At lest some of the thousands of useless variations of the Linux OS's that are out there can detect your computer and see what is on the computer, and if you are lucky they may even be able to open a file or two. But OpenSolaris can not even do that! Don't waste your time on it.

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