SCIENCE

PALO ALTO, CA -- Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: SUNW) today announced a new advanced product for its Sun Management Center software that provides system administrators with enhanced Solaris(TM) Operating Environment (OE) monitoring and management solutions. The new System Reliability Manager product provides four new features that are designed to increase system availability and reliability. Key among these features are software patch management capabilities that enable customers to automate the process of identifying and tracking needed patches. This new software improves the reliability and robustness of Sun systems running Solaris OE management solutions, while lowering administration and service level costs. System Reliability Manager features four modules, all designed to improve system reliability in monitoring and management: Patch Management, File Watch, Script Launcher and OS Crash Dump Analyzer. The benefits of these features include: -- Patch Management helps system administrators to ensure that the Solaris OE is able to operate at an optimum state equipped with the latest software patches and fixes. This feature identifies all missing software patches and generates an easy-to-read report listing three categories of missing patches: security, recommended and general. Using this support, the system administrator can easily identify the software patches they need to incorporate. -- File Watch helps to ensure system uptime by monitoring critical system files and alerting users about missing system and configuration files. File Watch also tracks changes made (old values and new values) to those files and identifies syntax errors that would otherwise adversely affect proper system functions. -- Script Launcher helps to improve system reliability by reducing the risk of operating error in managing system scripts. It does this by enabling system administrators to integrate, schedule and automatically launch any custom scripts that monitor, manage and control system applications. -- OS Crash Dump Analyzer helps system administrators examine data after a crash to determine the root cause of that crash and conduct analysis to help reduce the risk of unplanned downtime. Sun Management Center 3.0 software is a powerful tool for managing up to thousands of Sun systems, the Solaris OE, and applications and services running on Solaris OE. Sun Management Center delivers monitoring and management capabilities that optimize performance, enhance application availability, and simplify management of IT environments. Add-on packages for Sun Management Center 3.0 software include Advanced Systems Monitoring, Premier Management Applications and System Reliability Manager. For more information visit www.sun.com