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DTrace is a feature that is probably the nicest feature enhancement that targets the Worksation users, particularly developers. Dynamci Tracing, or DTrace, is a compelling technology. With it, it is possible to trace and debug much deeper than traditional code level debuggers. One of the best features however, is the ability to use DTrace on a production level machine, be it a server or workstation to generate trace information about a situation in the applications production environment without contaminating it with developer tools all in real time. While DTrace is not in and of itself unique to Solaris, every major operating system offers trace tools, but none of them available today offer the scope and depth of information as DTrace.

There are a couple of things to keep in mind about Solaris on the workstation though. First and foremost is hardware compatibility. Device support is a little limited on x86 where the sheer volume of odd implementations of the same chipsets frequently make supporting them difficult. It took us 3 tries to find a network card that it liked. Second is the disparity between hardware platforms. x86 hardware is cheap, fast and can be hit or miss on compatibility, Sun’s Sparc based hardware is not cheap, clocked slower, but is dead on for compatibility. For example, and Blade 150 with 256mb of RAM and a 500mhz UltraSparc IIe starts at $1395.00 US, but is going to be ready to go right out of the box, meanwhile a Sun Java Workstation with Solaris 10 using an AMD process starts around $1795.00 US, and appears to be an excellent machine that is supported by Solaris 10, though not installed with it by default.

Solaris on the Server

Server environments is where Solaris, and the enhancements to the underlying SunOS 5.10 really shine. We tested our server configurations on both an AMD based x86 machine and an aging Sun Netra X-1 server. The Netra has been replaced by the Fire V100 in Sun’s hardware lineup, and for $995.00 US, is easily the best steal available for a unix server, given Solaris 10, it’s an even better deal.

Identical to the workstation, installation was non-trivial, but not unusable. Once setup though, these two machines proved to be much closer than expected in performance and usage despite a nearly 800mhz disparity in clock speeds. As a server, we ran PostgreSQL, SendMail and Apache2 on both machines to test performance against that of our identically configured Linux machine. The results are simple. Solaris is marginally slower, with the Netra coming in last place in our tests, but not by much.

What is surprising in this is that these tests where performed in a very basic configuration. However, once we started reconfiguring the Solaris servers to take advantage of advanced features, we didn’t see significant degradation in performance. Specifically Containers, formerly called Zones. Containers are not a new idea, but they are a new implementation of an old design philosophy. Virtualization services have been implemented in high end server platforms for more than a decade with great success on the traditional big iron hardware, particularly in the traditional mainframe world. Solaris 10 brings the implementation to a more granular level and offers excellent performance, even on relatively weak hardware. The downside, is that Containers are an adventure to get set up, and tweaked until you are happy with them.

The other big change here are things that we found difficult to artificially stress and test. In particular, the predictive self-healing technologies. While the technology demo’s look great, until we see it work in practice, it’s just that. What we can say is that once we got the server configured to our satisfaction the machine that we left for long term testing has remained stable and not required any significant maintenance in it’s 6 weeks of usage, a bad network cable that I apparently damaged when I put the server back in the rack being the only problem.

On larger scale hardware and deployments, there is very little question that the application of Containers and Secure Execution have enormous potential for both server consolidation and virtualization. In addition to the long proven reliability of Solaris and it’s underlying SunOS foundation, Solaris 10 looks primed to maintain it’s stake in the server rooms around the world, and perhaps even recover some of the lost marketshare from the dot-com crash.

Conclusions

Solaris 10 is a strong player for Sun’s traditional markets, and will be a compelling upgrade for existing Solaris and SunOS customers during the next 18 months, however, it still has some identity crisis issues when targeting existing Linux customers. It will take some marketing, and exposure to bring in those users. The MacOS X and Windows customers are an even harder sell, as the one glaring area that Solaris 10 doesn’t address is manageability. The easy to use tools for managing the enormous power under the hood simply are not there today.

About the Author
Andy Satori is a private consultant and developer of Mac OS X, Windows and Unix software, having used nearly every major and hobby OS available in the last 15 years, covering DOS, OS/2, Windows, Mac OS, Mac OS X, BeOS, Linux, Solaris & AIX as well as a few others...