The State of Oracle Solaris - Jan 2026

Oracle Solaris is not much in the press anymore, but used
for critical systems around the world.

Solaris 11.4 was launched in 2018. Oracle provides updates/patches
every month. Every quarter (Feb,May,Aug,Nov) the update includes new features.
Oracle will provide this monthly updates till at least November 2037.

Documented in:
http://www.oracle.com/us/support/library/lifetime-support-hardware-301321.pdf

Oracle is working to make sure Solaris will run properly after 2037 for example
with changes in SRU72 delivered in August 2024. It would be no surprise
if the updates will continue after November 2037.
https://blogs.oracle.com/solaris/announcing-oracle-solaris-114-sru72

For developers a pretty current version (CBE) is available
for free to develop and test software.

Solaris CBE Download:
https://www.oracle.com/solaris/solaris11/downloads/solaris-downloads.html

Oracle even provides patches for the older releases Solaris 10
and Solaris 11.3. The last patches are expected by January 2027.
We highly recommend to migrate to Solaris 11.4 and we are
happy to support you with our very experiences engineers.

Oracle's Management and Monitoring tools (OpsCenter and VM Manager for SPARC) 
reached End-Of-Life. No patches are provided anymore. 

We at JomaSoft continue to enhance our VDCF management and monitoring tool 
for Oracle Solaris and Linux
https://www.jomasoft.ch/vdcf/

If you don't have a SPARC server yourself, maybe the JomaSoft
SPARC cloud could be helpful for you.
https://www.jomasoft.ch/services/ 

New Features in Solaris 11.4 SRU87 (Nov 2025)

Another quarterly Solaris SRU including new features

useradd -N / -U 
cableinfo
fmthard -c / -e
ldm add-/list-/remove-devalias


FOSS: GCC 15
EOF: PHP 8.1, Python 3.9

JomaSoft provides OpenJDK 17.0.16 package for Solaris 11.4 SPARC

Since three years JomaSoft produces Solaris 11.4 IPS packages
of opensource software. After postgres openjdk was added.
After 17.0.13 in December 2024, we provide now a package
with version 17.0.16.

Based on the work done by Peter Tribble. Thanks Peter!
https://github.com/ptribble/jdk-sunos-builder

Download Page
https://www.jomasoft.ch/downloads/#js-openjdk

Direct p5p Download Link
https://bit.ly/js-openjdk17-sparc

The package is provided without support or warranty.
Use at your own risk.

New Features in Solaris 11.4 SRU84 (Aug 2025)

Another quarterly Solaris SRU including new features

format -r / -n / -q
Threshold alerts for /tmp usage
Improved nscd resilience

FOSS: OpenSSH 10, sudo 1.9.17p1
EOF: Ruby 3.1, PHP 8.1

Oracle ASR Manager manual update

In the past the Oracle ASR Manager did update itself
automatically. This is not the case anymore with newer
releases.

But the manual update on Solaris is very easy.
Only two commands required

pkgrm asrmanager

pkgadd -d ./asrmanager-25.1.0-20250306063253.pkg


Learn more about Oracle ASR on
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37710_01/index.htm

 

New Features in Solaris 11.4 SRU81 (May 2025)

Another quarterly Solaris SRU including new features

GRUB 2.12
Zone Migration requires NTP
ipadm set-ifprop -p send-unreachables
dladm show-transceiver
s10 brand compressed install archives
ldm set-logctl =func =v (verbosity)

OVM Manager SPARC Agent does not work anymore

FOSS: PHP 8.4
EOF: OpenSSL 1.0.2, Ruby 3.1, GCC 7, stackdb SMF

More details on the Solaris Blog

Solaris 11.4.78 / iostat -b and wildcards

If you are using Kernel Zones

-bash-5.2$ zoneadm list -v
  ID NAME             STATUS      PATH                         BRAND      IP
   0 global           running     /                            solaris    shared
   1 v0182            running     -                            solaris-kz excl

It is now easier on the global zone to analyze
the I/O of only the disks used by kernel zones

using the wildcard (v0182*) and the new -b (backend) flag

-bash-5.2$ iostat -xnzb -Td v0182* 5 3
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at  7:58:29 AM EDT
                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
   0.3    7.5   18.2   53.7  0.0  0.0    0.0    1.7   0   0 v0182/disk1
   0.0    0.0    0.0    9.3  0.0  0.0    0.0    5.1   0   0 v0182/disk2
   0.0    0.0    0.0    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.2   0   0 v0182/disk3
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at  7:58:34 AM EDT
                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
   0.6   14.4   25.8   68.4  0.0  0.0    0.0    1.8   0   1 v0182/disk1
   0.4   68.2    0.3 58301.9  0.0  0.4    0.0    6.5   0  24 v0182/disk2
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at  7:58:39 AM EDT
                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   kr/s   kw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
  11.0    0.0   37.1    0.0  0.0  0.0    0.0    0.3   0   0 v0182/disk1
   0.0   87.2    0.0 52939.6  0.0  0.4    0.0    5.1   0  22 v0182/disk2


And we have similar output on control domains for disks
used in logical domains (Ldoms) on SPARC servers.

-bash-5.2$ iostat -znxMb -T d vds* 5 5
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at  2:20:19 PM CEST
                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   Mr/s   Mw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
 356.5  120.3   16.7   11.1  0.0  0.3    0.0    0.7   0   8 60002AC000000000000004320001507B@primary-vds0
 187.3    5.1   10.2    0.1  0.0  0.1    0.0    0.5   0   9 60002AC0000000000000048F0001507B@primary-vds0
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at  2:20:24 PM CEST
                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   Mr/s   Mw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
 135.2  195.0   80.3  118.0  0.0  0.9    0.0    2.8   0  50 60002AC000000000000004320001507B@primary-vds0
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at  2:20:29 PM CEST
                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   Mr/s   Mw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
 178.6  275.6  115.6  103.2  0.0  1.1    0.0    2.3   0  55 60002AC000000000000004320001507B@primary-vds0
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at  2:20:34 PM CEST
                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   Mr/s   Mw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
 236.6  306.4  100.2  109.9  0.0  1.1    0.0    2.1   0  61 60002AC000000000000004320001507B@primary-vds0
Tuesday, April 29, 2025 at  2:20:39 PM CEST
                    extended device statistics
    r/s    w/s   Mr/s   Mw/s wait actv wsvc_t asvc_t  %w  %b device
 196.2  282.0   95.4  117.2  0.0  1.1    0.0    2.4   0  60 60002AC000000000000004320001507B@primary-vds0