Oracle Solaris 11.4 is supported by Oracle at *least* till 11/2034.
I'm not aware of any other Vendor with such a long term guarantee.
Today, 18th January 2022 the SRU41 (CPU JAN 2022) was released.
All the details on MOS in Doc 2433412.1
Every quarter a CPU (Critical Patch Update) is made available,
which is recommended to be installed on production systems.
Every month after the CPU a SRU with several new features
is released. Stay tunned for February 2022 !
Additionally Patches for Solaris 10 and ESU for Solaris 11.3
was made available. This updates are only available for Customers
with "Extended/Vintage Support"
Solaris 11.3 ESU 36.27 MOS 2759706.1
Solaris 10 a few new patches
This Extended Support for the older Solaris Releases ends on 01/2024.
Time to plan and prepare upgrades to Solaris 11.4.
18 January 2022
Current State and Updates for Oracle Solaris 01/2022
22 December 2021
Oracle Increases Max Memory for SPARC T8 Servers by 2x
Oracle does now deliver
128 GB DIMM for the SPARC T8 and M8 Servers.
Using this new DIMMs every SPARC M8 CPU has now access to 2 TB of Memory.
All the details on the Oracle Blog
https://blogs.oracle.com/oracle-systems/post/announcing-new-enhancements-to-sparc-t8-and-m8-servers
02 December 2021
Adjust Time Quickly at Boot on Solaris Servers
On Solaris 11.4 NTP does update the time after boot.
By default this can take a few minutes, because the NTP client
waits for a few reply's of the NTP servers.
To update the time quickly it is recommended to use the 'burst iburst'
flags in the ntp.conf
server <ntpserverip> burst iburst
Using this configuration NTP adjusts the time a few seconds after start.
This is an important configuration if you start your apps or databases automatically.
09 November 2021
Oracle Solaris and SPARC Server Online Event 12/2021
Register now!
EMEA, Dec 1st
JAPAC, Dec 7th
NAM, Dec 8th
25 October 2021
Performance Impact of a Large Solaris 11 IPS Repo
The content and size of a
Solaris IPS Repo has impact on your update processes.
Of
course more SRUs increase the size of the repository and the
duration of package downloads and operations.
To compare the difference we have two repos on a SPARC S7 LDom.
A first one with 60 updates: all U4 SRUs and a few U3 SRUs
-bash-5.0$ ipsadm -c
show_repo repository=http://192.168.20.75:8282 | grep entire@ | wc -l
60
-bash-5.0$ ipsadm -c
show_repo repository=http://192.168.20.75:8283 | grep entire@ | wc -l
2
Look at this huge difference
real 4m23.097s
sys 0m12.151s
real 0m37.629s
user 0m34.968s
9 minutes with the large IPS Repo.
...
Planning linked: 3/3 done
real 8m46.280s
sys 0m38.675s
Planning linked: 3/3 done
real 5m59.820s
user 12m59.500s
Re-create your IPS repo from time to time after updates when you for sure don't need older SRUs anymore.
But always add the GA version first, and then the required SRUs additionally.
13 August 2021
Don't remove Data Disks from Solaris Zpools if performance is important
Solaris 11.4 delivers a new feature to remove data disks from existing zpools.
zpool remove myzpool <disk>
We used this feature a few times without problems on test environments.
But it has performance impact if the removed disk had data on it.
Especially if read performance is important. We know customers with oracle databases
where latency around 1ms is expected. After removing a disk from a
large zpool the performance was terrible and the only solution was to
re-create the zpool.
Important to understand there is an expected performance impact while the disk is removing.
Sure. The data needs to be copied to the remaining disks.
But even after the remove there can be a major performance impact when the data (from the removed disk) must be read, because the data copy added additional internal redirections.
The recommendation is to use this feature only after an accidentally add
of a disk to a wrong zpool. there is no performance impact if the
removed disk has no data.
Find the details of this recommendation in the Solaris 11.4 ZFS Manual:
https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E37838_01/html/E61017/remove-devices.html
To avoid such troubles we disabled the dataset -c remdisk feature for data disks
by default in VDCF Version 8.1.8
More about our VDCF Solaris Management product can be found on
https://www.jomasoft.ch/vdcf/
23 April 2021
Did You Know Oracle Solaris Includes Ksplice?
Look what we have here:
-bash-5.0$ pkg list ksplice
NAME (PUBLISHER) VERSION IFO
system/ksplice 11.4-11.4.29.0.1.82.3 i--
Ksplice supports online Kernel Updates.
Oracle Support delivers in rare cases of Kernel issues
an IDR which are installed online using ksplice.
For a Solaris Admin such an IDR is handled like other IDRs.
It can be installed as usual with the pkg command.
Here a sample:
# pkg info -g ./idr4712.1.p5p idr4712
Name: idr4712
Summary: To back out This IDR : # /usr/bin/pkg uninstall -r idr4712
Description: sparc IDR built for release : Solaris 11.4 SRU # 29.82.3
State: Not installed
Publisher: solaris
Version: 1
Branch: None
Packaging Date: February 12, 2021 at 10:22:38 AM
Size: 4.08 kB
FMRI: pkg://solaris/idr4712@1:20210212T102238Z
-bash-5.0$ pkg list -g ./idr4712.1.p5p -af
NAME (PUBLISHER) VERSION IFO
idr4712 1 ---
system/kernel/platform 11.4-11.4.29.0.1.82.3.4712.1 ---
system/ksplice 11.4-11.4.29.0.1.82.3.4712.1 ---
system/osnet-splice 11.4-11.4.29.0.1.82.3.4712.1 ---
# pkg set-publisher -g file:///var/tmp/idr4712.1.p5p solaris
# pkg install idr4712
Packages to install: 2
Packages to update: 2
Services to change: 3
Create boot environment: No
Create backup boot environment: Yes
..
..
..
Using spliceadm you can verify the installed splices.
# spliceadm
ID STATE CVE BUGID
471201 applied N/A 32407818
in case of a problem you can even revert the fix
# spliceadm reverse 471201
Splice 471201 reversed successfully on Fri Apr 23 13:15:20.
# spliceadm status
ID STATE CVE BUGID
471201 not-applied N/A 32407818
Another powerful and easy to use Solaris Feature