Key Features in Solaris Express

The Solaris Express releases introduce enhancements to the Solaris 10 OS. The Solaris 10 OS includes the following key features.

In the Solaris 10 OS, Sun Microsystems developed a new architecture for building and deploying systems and services that are capable of Predictive Self-Healing. Self-healing technology enables Sun systems and services to maximize availability. The Predictive Self-Healing feature includes significant changes to the booting and service administration processes. Also in the Solaris 10 OS, changes in the installation of the operating system provide a simplified and unified installation process.

The Solaris 10 OS introduces Solaris Zones software partitioning technology. Solaris Zones is a component of the Solaris Containers environment. Zones are used to virtualize operating system services. Zones provide an isolated and secure environment for running applications.

Other key features in the Solaris 10 software include the DTrace dynamic tracing facility, process rights management, and a new architecture for network stacks. DTrace is a comprehensive dynamic tracing facility that gives Solaris users, administrators, and developers a new level of observability into the kernel and user processes. In the Solaris software, processes that previously required superuser capabilities now require process rights. Process rights management uses privileges to restrict processes to only those rights that are required to perform the task. Also of particular importance, the networking stack for TCP connections has been rearchitected to deliver extremely high performance while improving the scalability.

Java 2 Platform, Standard Edition 5 is another key technology. Also of particular significance, the Solaris 10 software introduces support for the 64–bit computing capabilities of the AMD Opteron processor. Finally, the Solaris 10 software introduces the Java Desktop System. This desktop system combines open source software with Sun innovation.

For a complete summary of all the new features that are new in the Solaris 10 release, see Solaris 10 What's New at http://docs.sun.com. For a summary of features that were introduced in the Solaris 9, Solaris 8, or Solaris 7 releases, see What's New in the Solaris 9 Operating Environment at http://docs.sun.com.