ZFS Encryption

It looks like ZFS crypto project has finally been integrated. It's been reported by other blogger here and the bug id: 4854202 ZFS data set encryption has been updated to reflect that it is in snv_149. Congratulations to Darren Moffat! - the guy behind the project.

It took much longer than expected. If I were to speculate I would say the integration was delayed on purpose so it gets integrated only after the public access to onnv gate was closed so 3rd parties like Nexenta could not take advantage of it before Oracle can. Hopefully once Solaris 11 is out we will see the source code as well. It also probably means that it will be in Solaris 11 Express as well.

Nexenta's take on ZFS, Oracle and NetApp

Interesting post from Nexenta on recent developments in regards to ZFS, Oracle and NetApp. There is also a podcast which is a Q&A session with Evan Powell, CEO of Nexenta.

Oracle to buy NetApp?

The Register:

"Oracle boss Larry Ellison said he'd love to have the 60 per cent of NetApp's business that plugs NetApp boxes into Oracle software, hinting that a NetApp purchase could be on his mind.

[...]

A combination of Oracle and NetApp would be a truly formidable server/storage play, even if the IBM NetApp reseller deal subsequently collapsed. Will Oracle actually make an approach? Will NetApp respond positively? The key there is whether it truly believes an independent, best-of-breed stance is viable or whether the stack-in-a-box, centralised IT approach is a sustained tank attack that threatens to flatten its business.

A future inside Oracle in those circumstances might look a lot better than a slow fade into a Unisys-like state while EMC, buoyed up with VMware and products above raw storage arrays, grows and prospers."

Bloomberg also reports on Oracle acquisitions plans.

SPARC T3 On-Chip Security Accelerator

New SPARC T3 Systems

Joerg reports:

Oracle announced several new SPARC systems based on the SPARC T3 processor. SPARC T3 is the next iteration of SPARC in the throughput arena: 16 cores running at 1.65 GHz., so 128 threads per socket, on-chip PCIe 2.0, on-chip 10GBe ...

It starts with one 16-core 1.65GHz SPARC T3 processor on the SPARC T3-1 Server . So you get 128 Threads packaged in a 2 rack units chassis.

Above this you will find the SPARC T3-2 with two SPARC T3 processors. It gives you 256 threads and 256 GB. You get this amount of power in 3 RU.

At the high-end is the T3-4 with four of the SPARC T3 CPU giving you 512 threads, 512 GB of main memory with 8 GB DIMMs and 16 PCI Express Modules. This system is somewhat larger: 5 RU.

At last there is a new blade for the Blade 6000 chassis: SPARC T3-1B. As the name suggests it provides 1 SPARC T3 processor, so 128 Threads on one blade.

The Register reports on the new systems as well.

If you are interested in a brief summary of what T3 is read Joerg post about it here.

OpenIndiana

See the announcement and slides. You can also download ISOs here which are based on snv_147.

So it has begun... Is it going to survive in the long term?

OpenIndiana

http://openindiana.org

OpenIndiana is a continuation of the OpenSolaris operating system. It was conceived during the period of uncertainty following the Oracle takeover of Sun Microsystems, after several months passed with no binary updates made available to the public. The formation proved timely, as Oracle discontinued OpenSolaris soon after in favour of Solaris 11 Express, a binary distribution with a more closed development model to debut later this year.

OpenIndiana is part of the Illumos Foundation, and provides a true open source community alternative to Solaris 11 and Solaris 11 Express, with an open development model and full community participation.

Announcement Details

We will be holding a press conference in London (UK) at the JISC offices at 6:30pm UK Time (BST, GMT+1) to formally announce the project and provide full details, including information on gaining access to download our first development release. In addition, we will be broadcasting live on the internet – please see http://openindiana.org/announcement for details of attending in person or on the web.

We believe this announcement will deliver the distribution the community has long sought after.

Solaris 10 License Change

Joerg reports on Solaris 10 license change.

Solaris 10 9/10

What's New:

• Installation Enhancements
• SPARC: Support for ITU Construction Tools on SPARC Platforms - In this release, the itu utility has been modified to support booting a SPARC based system with the install-time updates (ITU) process.
• Oracle Solaris Auto Registration - before you ask ... you can disable it
• Oracle Solaris Upgrade Enhancement for Oracle Solaris Zone– Cluster Nodes
• Virtualization Enhancements for Oracle Solaris Zones
• Migrating a Physical Oracle Solaris 10 System Into a Zone - cool, my RfE found its way into Solaris 10
• Host ID Emulation
• Updating Packages by Using the New zoneadm attach -U Option
• Virtualization Enhancements for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (formerly known as LDOMs)
• Memory Dynamic Reconfiguration Capability
• Virtual Disk Multipathing Enhancements
• Static Direct I/O
• Virtual Domain Information Command and API - the virtinfo command
• System Administration Enhancements
• Oracle Solaris ZFS Features and Enhancements
• ZFS device replacement enhancements - namely autoexpand
• some changes to the zpool list command
• Holding ZFS snapshots
• Triple parity RAID-Z (raidz3)
• The logbias property
• Log device removal - at last
• ZFS storage pool recovery
• New ZFS system process – In this release, each storage pool has an associated process, zpool-poolname
• Splitting a mirrored ZFS storage pool (zpool split)
• Fast Crash Dump
• x86: Support for the IA32_ENERGY_PERF_BIAS MSR
• Support for Multiple Disk Sector Size
• iSCSI Initiator Tunables
• Sparse File Support in the cpio Command
• x86: 64-Bit libc String Functions Improvements With SSE
• Automated Rebuilding of sendmail Configuration Files
• Automatic Boot Archive Recovery
• Security Enhancements
• net_access Privilege
• x86: Intel AES-NI Optimization
• Language Support Enhancements
• New Oracle Solaris Unicode Locales
• Device Management Enhancements
• iSCSI Boot
• iSER Initiator
• New Hot-Plugging Features
• AAC RAID Power Management
• Driver Enhancements
• x86: HP Smart Array HBA Driver
• x86: Support for Broadcom NetXtreme II 10 Gigabit Ethernet NIC Driver
• x86: New SATA HBA Driver, bcm_sata, for Broadcom HT1000 SATA Controllers
• Support for SATA/AHCI Port Multiplier
• Support for Netlogic NLP2020 PHY in the nxge Driver
• Freeware Enhancements
• GNU TAR Version 1.23
• Firefox 3.5
• Thunderbird 3
• Less Version 436
• Networking Enhancements
• BIND 9.6.1 for the Oracle Solaris 10 OS
• GLDv3 Driver APIs
• IPoIB Connected Mode
• Open Fabrics User Verbs Primary Kernel Components
• InfiniBand Infrastructure Enhancements
• X11 Windowing Enhancements
• Support for the setxkbmap Command
• New Chipset Support
• ixgbe Driver to Integrate Intel Shared Code Version 3.1.9
• Broadcom Support to bge Networking Driver
• x86: Fully Buffered DIMM Idle Power Enhancement
• Fault Management Architecture Enhancements
• FMA Support for AMD's Istanbul Based Systems
• Several Oracle Solaris FMA Enhancement
• Diagnostic Tools Enhancements
• Sun Validation Test Suite 7.0ps9
• Enhancements to the mdb Command to Improve the Debugging Capability of kmem and libumem

You wil find a more in-depth description at docs.sun.com.

NetApp, Oracle Drop ZFS LawSuits

The Wall Street Journal:

"NetApp Inc. and Oracle Corp. have agreed to dismiss patent lawsuits against each other, putting to bed a battle that had been ongoing since 2007.

The terms of the agreement weren't disclosed, and the companies said they are seeking to have the lawsuits dismissed without prejudice.

NetApp President and Chief Executive Tom Georgens said Thursday the companies would continue to collaborate in the future.

NetApp, which sells data-storage systems, and Sun Microsystems, which has since been bought by Oracle, began the fight in 2007, with each company alleging the other was infringing some of its patents.

Lawsuits were filed on both companies' behalf, with NetApp alleging that Sun's ZFS file-system-management technology infringed a number of its patents. Sun at the time also said NetApp products infringed its patents."

See also The Register article.

The Future of Solaris

Below is a collection of blog entries on what's going on recently in regards to Open Solaris and Solaris 11.

• Adam Leventhal's take on Solaris future
• Bryan Cantrill's comments on Illumos
• Garrett D'Amore - The Hand May Be Forced
• Garrett D'Amore - Illumos
• Ben Rockwood - Illumos Shines New Light
• Ben Rockwood - OpenSolaris R.I.P.
• Steve Stallion - OpenSolaris is Dead
• Jim Laurent - Solaris 11 in 2011
• The Register - Next Solaris prepped for 2011

Illumos

Bryan Cantrill's comment.

SMF/FMA Update

A rather large and interesting putback for SMF/FMA related technologies went into Open Solaris yesterday. It will be available in build 146.

PSARC/2009/617 Software Events Notification Parameters CLI
PSARC/2009/618 snmp-notify: SNMP Notification Daemon for Software Events
PSARC/2009/619 smtp-notify: Email Notification Daemon for Software Events
PSARC/2010/225 fmd for non-global Solaris zones
PSARC/2010/226 Solaris Instance UUID
PSARC/2010/227 nvlist_nvflag(3NVPAIR)
PSARC/2010/228 libfmevent additions
PSARC/2010/257 sysevent_evc_setpropnvl and sysevent_evc_getpropnvl
PSARC/2010/265 FMRI and FMA Event Stabilty, 'ireport' category 1 event class, and the 'sw' FMRI scheme
PSARC/2010/278 FMA/SMF integration: instance state transitions
PSARC/2010/279 Modelling panics within FMA
PSARC/2010/290 logadm.conf upgrade
6392476 fmdump needs to pretty-print
6393375 userland ereport/ireport event generation interfaces
6445732 Add email notification agent for FMA and software events
6804168 RFE: Allow an efficient means to monitor SMF services status changes
6866661 scf_values_destroy(3SCF) will segfault if is passed NULL
6884709 Add snmp notification agent for FMA and software events
6884712 Add private interface to tap into libfmd_msg macro expansion capabilities
6897919 fmd to run in a non-global zone
6897937 fmd use of non-private doors is not safe
6900081 add a UUID to Solaris kernel image for use in crashdump identification
6914884 model panic events as a defect diagnosis in FMA
6944862 fmd_case_open_uuid, fmd_case_uuisresolved, fmd_nvl_create_defect
6944866 log legacy sysevents in fmd
6944867 enumerate svc scheme in topo
6944868 software-diagnosis and software-response fmd modules
6944870 model SMF maintenance state as a defect diagnosis in FMA
6944876 savecore runs in foreground for systems with zfs root and dedicated dump
6965796 Implement notification parameters for SMF state transitions and FMA events
6968287 SUN-FM-MIB.mib needs to be updated to reflect Oracle information
6972331 logadm.conf upgrade PSARC/2010/290

Dell and HP Continue Supporting Solaris

New announcement about Solaris support on non-Oracle servers:

• Oracle today announced Dell and HP will certify and resell Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM on their respective x86 platforms.

• Customers will have full access to Oracle’s Premier Support for Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM running on Dell and HP servers. This will enable fast and accurate issue resolution and reduced risk in a company’s operating environment.
  

• Customers who subscribe to Oracle Premier Support will benefit from Oracle’s continuing investment in Oracle Solaris, Oracle Enterprise Linux and Oracle VM and the resulting innovation in future updates.

What Motivates Us