APPLICATIONS

To further accelerate the adoption of the Solaris 10 Operating System (OS), Sun Microsystems today announced that it will distribute and support the open source Postgres database with its Solaris OS. Sun also announced the integration of Solaris ZFS, a revolutionary new 128-bit file system with virtually unprecedented error detection and correction capabilities, into OpenSolaris. In addition, Sun announced plans to integrate Solaris Containers for Linux Applications, a feature that allows organizations to run Red Hat binaries unmodified in Containers on Solaris 10 into OpenSolaris by year end. Additionally, Sun demonstrated the provisioning and management of the Solaris OS to a virtualized server environment, a result of its active participation in the Xen open source project. "We continue to redefine how people think of the operating system," said John Loiacono, executive vice president of Software for Sun. "I don't see how any vendor can survive long term without offering a full spectrum of services -- ranging from the file system, networking, management, virtualization, observability, provisioning and database, widely available and open source." Postgres Database Integrated Into the Solaris 10 OS and Supported by Sun Today Sun announced that it will be integrating the Postgres open source data base into the Solaris 10 OS and providing world-wide 24x7 support for customers who wish to develop and deploy open source database solutions into their enterprise environments. Sun is working with the PostgresSQL community to take advantage of the advanced technologies in the Solaris 10 OS, such as Predictive Self-Healing, Solaris Containers and Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace). The recent move by Oracle to select the Solaris OS as its preferred open source 64-bit development and deployment environment combined with Sun's support for Postgres confirms the position of the Solaris 10 OS as one of the premier platforms for hosting high-performance, mission-critical database solutions. "We look forward to collaborating with Sun's engineers, both in optimizing PostgresSQL on Solaris, and improving PostgresSQL performance in general," said Josh Berkus, PostgresSQL Project Core Team. "Solaris' reputation for reliability and scalability make it a very desirable platform for expanding the PostgresSQL user base into new and larger enterprises. Even more, we're very excited to have a new company with Sun's stature joining the global PostgresSQL community." Run Linux Applications on the Solaris OS Solaris Containers for Linux Applications enables Red Hat applications to run seamlessly and unmodified on the Solaris OS. Now customers can consolidate multiple environments onto a unified platform and leverage the reliability, scale, observability and manageability of the Solaris OS, while preserving application compatibility with internally developed or off-the-shelf Linux applications. The Solaris OS can now become the premier platform for developing, testing, deploying and managing Solaris and Linux applications, helping to greatly reduce cost and complexity. Xen and the Art of Virtualization Sun is actively participating in the Xen project, an open source community developing new virtualization technologies that allow multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a single hardware system. Xen also makes it possible to migrate an operating system environment to another hardware system quickly and easily with almost no downtime. Virtualization helps maximize the use of high-performance hardware and speeds server consolidation. Sun today demonstrated the Solaris 10 OS running in this virtualized environment and the use of its recently announced Sun N1 System Manager to provision Xen with multiple operating systems in a Xen virtualized environment across Sun's line of AMD Opteron servers. "We welcome Sun's announcement of a commercial commitment to Xen," said Nick Gault, President & CEO, XenSource Inc. "Sun and XenSource intend to partner to deliver a cross-platform, commercial virtualization solution of compelling value to Sun's customers. XenSource will assist Sun in the development of the solution and will support Sun and its customers when the solution goes to market." Solaris ZFS - One of the Most Advanced File Systems on the Planet Sun today released its next generation file system, Solaris ZFS, to the OpenSolaris community. The ground-breaking capabilities of Solaris ZFS include self-healing data through advanced error detection and correction, task automation that dramatically simplifies storage management -- in some cases reducing task times from hours to seconds -- and built-in storage virtualization that eliminates the complexity of a volume manager. ZFS will be broadly available to customers in the first half of 2006. "Solaris 10 provides material enhancements from prior releases. It highlights Sun's commitment to continuous innovation and puts Solaris ahead of the competition," said Michael Minichino, IT director at Parago. "Incorporating ZFS into the Solaris Operating Environment presents a compelling value proposition as it will compete with other solutions cost burdened with expensive software such as Veritas Volume Manager and File System at a much lower price point. This combined with Sun's new server products will put a high end UNIX solution within reach of cost conscious small and medium enterprises." The Solaris 10 OS on a Roll Sun has distributed over 3.3 million licenses for the Solaris 10 OS to a broad range of customers, developers and students around the world. The Solaris 10 OS is now supported on almost 500 Sun x86 and AMD Opteron processor systems from a variety of vendors including IBM, HP and Dell. In addition the OpenSolaris community, launched less than 5 months ago, already boasts nearly 10,000 members. Availability The next update of the Solaris 10 OS -- available in December -- will include the Sun Update Connection, providing ready access to all the latest Solaris 10 OS fixes and features over the network. The update will integrate support for new systems, increased network performance and improved memory management functionality. Additionally the update will include the Grub Boot Loader, which speeds the adoption of new Sun x86 hardware platforms and peripherals. Working with the Xen and PostgresSQL communities, Sun intends to distribute Postgres for the Solaris 10 OS this month and integrate it into the Solaris 10 OS in the first half of 2006. Additionally Sun intends to make Xen support for Solaris 10 and Solaris Containers for Linux Applications available to the OpenSolaris community in December.