Solaris 11.4 SRU42 (Feb 2022) - zpool status -s

zpool status -s does now report many details about
the allocations on the disks


-bash-5.1$ zpool status -s all v0144_data

  pool: v0144_data
    id: 13650650466694793377
 state: ONLINE
  scan: scrub repaired 0 in 1s with 0 errors on Thu Jan 20 08:24:49 2022
config:

NAME     STATE  READ WRITE CKSUM AUNIT LSIZE PSIZE SLOW RPAIR RSLVR ALLOC  FREE %FULL
v0144_d  ONLINE    0     0     0     -     -     -    -     -     - 15.4G 34.3G  31.0
  c1d1   ONLINE    0     0     0   512   512   512    -     -     - 7.26G 12.6G  36.5
  c1d6   ONLINE    0     0     0   512   512   512    -     -     -  8.1G 21.6G  27.2
errors: No known data errors

New Features in Solaris 11.4 SRU42 (Feb 2022)

Every month after the CPU (Critical Patch Update) Oracle releases
a new feature Release for Oracle Solaris.

In February 2022 it is a BIG one

Ansible 2.10
OpenSSL 3.0
ldm command enhancements
Ldom migration-class2 for SPARC T7/S7/T8
split -b
coreadm enhanced defaults
zpool -s flag
Apache 2.4.52
new FS /var/share/cores

and many, many FOSS updates

Stay tuned for more blogs about this new features

Current State and Updates for Oracle Solaris 01/2022

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.

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

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.

Oracle Solaris and SPARC Server Online Event 12/2021

Register now!

EMEA,  Dec 1st
JAPAC,  Dec 7th
NAM,   Dec 8th

https://sites.oracle.com/site/oracle-systems/post/announcing-oracle-systems-engineering-forum-2021-oracle-servers

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

The second repo only with U4 GA and latest SRU38

-bash-5.0$ ipsadm -c show_repo repository=http://192.168.20.75:8283 | grep entire@ | wc -l
2

When replacing the publisher on a target server the catalog is downloaded and analyzed.
Look at this huge difference

# time pkg set-publisher -G "*" -g http://192.168.20.75:8282 solaris

real 4m23.097s

user 4m9.363s
sys 0m12.151s

# time pkg set-publisher -G "*" -g http://192.168.20.75:8283 solaris

real 0m37.629s
user 0m34.968s

sys 0m2.287s

On a SPARC S7 LDom with 3 zones a pkg update -n (trial run) takes nearly
9 minutes with the large IPS Repo.

# time pkg update -n -C 5 --be-name u4.sru38 entire@11.4,5.11-11.4.38.0.1.101.6
...
Planning linked: 3/3 done

real 8m46.280s

user 19m25.699s
sys 0m38.675s

With the smaller repo less than 6 minutes.

Planning linked: 3/3 done

real 5m59.820s
user 12m59.500s

sys 0m27.611s

Summary
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.