New Features in Solaris Express 2/05

This section describes all features that are new or have been enhanced in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

Support for iSCSI Devices

This device management feature is new in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

Support for Internet Small Computer System Interface (iSCSI) is provided in this release. iSCSI is an Internet Protocol (IP)-based storage networking standard for linking data storage subsystems. By carrying SCSI commands over IP networks, the iSCSI protocol enables you to mount disk devices, from across the network, onto your local system. On your local system, you can use the devices like block devices.

The iSCSI protocol does the following:

• Runs across existing Ethernet networks

• Uses existing management tools for IP networks

• Can be used to connect to fibre-channel or iSCSI Storage Area Network (SAN) environments

You can use the iscsiadm command to set up and manage your iSCSI devices. For more information, see the System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems and the iscsiadm(1M) man page.

Fibre-Channel HBA Port Utility

This system administration feature is new in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

fcinfo is a command-line interface that collects administrative information on fibre-channel host bus adapter (HBA) ports. This interface also collects data about any fibre-channel targets that might be connected to those ports in a Storage Area Network (SAN).

For further information, see the fcinfo(1M) man page.

Metaslot in the Cryptographic Framework

This security feature is new in the Solaris Express 2/05 release. This feature is of interest to both system administrators and software developers.

The metaslot is a component of the Solaris cryptographic framework library, libpkcs11.so. With metaslot software, an application that needs encryption can specify its cryptographic needs. With these specifications, the most suitable cryptographic mechanism that is available on the system will be supplied. The metaslot serves as a single virtual slot with the combined capabilities of all tokens and slots that have been installed in the framework. Effectively, the metaslot enables an application to connect transparently with any available cryptographic service through a single slot.

The metaslot is automatically enabled. The system administrator can explicitly disable the metaslot if preferred.

When an application requests a cryptographic service, the metaslot points to the most appropriate slot, which simplifies the process of selecting a slot. In some cases, a different slot might be required, in which case the application must perform a separate search explicitly.

Further information about the cryptographic framework is provided in the Solaris Security for Developers Guide. See also the System Administration Guide: Security Services.

IKE Enhancements

These security enhancements are new in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

IKE is fully compliant with NAT-Traversal support as described in RFC 3947 and RFC 3948. IKE operations use the PKCS #11 library from the cryptographic framework, which improves performance. The cryptographic framework provides a softtoken keystore for applications that use the metaslot. When IKE uses the metaslot, you have the option of storing the keys on an attached board or in the softtoken keystore.

For further information about IKE, see the System Administration Guide: IP Services.

Xorg Release 6.8.2

This desktop enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 2/05 release.

The Xorg X server implementation has been upgraded from the 6.8.0 version to version 6.8.2 in this release. This upgrade fixes several bugs in the modules for various graphics cards. The upgrade also adds support for new graphics card models.

New and Updated Drivers

In the Solaris Express 2/05 release, the chxge driver supports the Chelsio 10G Ethernet controller card. This support is provided on 32–bit and 64–bit architectures for both x86 and SPARC platforms. This driver supports the DLPI interface and checksum offload.

For detailed information, see the chxge(7D) man page.