Ubuntu,  Unix

OpenSolaris 2009.06 First Impressions

OpenSolaris 2009.06 is the next generation of the OpenSolaris, the Open Source Solaris that has become the testing ground for new features bound for Sun’s popular Solaris Operating System.  The latest version of OpenSolaris sports a number of new features that environments both large and small are sure to find interesting, most of which have to do with more streamlined ways of managing disk, network and other resources – both in virtualization environments and with the operating system itself.

First up is package management (using the tool appropriately called Package Manager).  It’s now easier to install software managed/compiled by the OpenSolaris community.  The packaging environment for OpenSolaris can now access different repositories, which gives administrators the ability to try different packages, which have been developed by different groups or individuals in the event that one doesn’t work.  This creates an environment where packages installed from one repository might act differently than those installed from another, but overall I found it nice to have more choices.  Some of the more popular packages you install might be included in multiple repositories but it’s nice to have choices.  While the package management is better, it’s still not where the Ubuntu community is at.

But OpenSolaris also now sports a new web project called SourceJuicer, which is meant to assist in automating the IPS build process, which collects packages, allows for easier contribution and includes bug reporting.  While SourceJuicer gives hope for the future it still isn’t where it will need to be for wider OpenSolaris adoption.

OpenOffice.org performed beautifully without any complications and OpenSolaris found all of the drivers for my test systems automatically (1 Dell Precision T7500 and an older whitebox custom built by yours truly). Firefox was pre-loaded and zippy as always. Elisa is nice. It’s no Plex, but once I got SUNW-gnome-media-center running it was sleek and within a couple of minutes I was watching an old episode of Systm, albeit with choppy video because of a crappy video card in my testing servers.

Once you have all of your software installed, OpenSolaris has a number of features meant to make it easier to manage your system. Chief amongst these is Crossbow, which helps you to manage network resources intelligently. This includes the ability to assign two virtual machines to the same NIC without having to waste resources by doing so. I was also able to easily create virtual switches, virtual routers and create containers easily. The VLANs worked very well and while my testing did not net any quantifiable improvement in speed I don’t doubt that if I were using newer NICs I would realize some of the other benefits of the Crossbow system. Overall, the new network management is smooth, but lacks some of the virtualization integration features that might convince me to use VirtualBox on OpenSolaris vs. using VMware.

As a filer, OpenSolaris is also improved. I was able to use the ACLs to granularly define access to shares and limit access to the SMB server via IP and subnet, which granted I’ll likely not use, but is a nice feature to have. I setup the new HA (High Availability) clustering options and had an Active/Passive pair of servers up and running in minutes. I was able to unplug the network interface on one machine and continue working without any connection issues from Windows 7 or Mac OS X. However, I wasn’t able to then move into an Active/Active pair, but that could definitely be my own fault…

I found Time Slider, OpenSolaris’ competitor to Time Machine lacking in sleekness as compared to Time Machine, but to have a number of features, such as snapshots that make it worthwhile, especially when running on a file server. Having said that, I couldn’t quickly find a way to expire snapshots based on disk capacity, something that seems to all to commonly be overlooked. Again, I may figure out how to do so in the future (or someone may comment on this article and explain how, hint, hint). Or I might just write a script to do it for me…

I am still wrangling with trying to get it to build on a Sun Ultra 27 Workstation sitting in my lab, which is included in the hardware compatibility list, but it doesn’t seem to install properly. When I get around to figuring out why I’ll try and post an explanation. I was also unable to install VMware Tools on a virtual machine I was trying to run OpenSolaris on, but VirtualBox performed beautifully both as the host and the guest. I also had a bear of a time with iSCSI, but reading through the forums there will be more support for iSCSI released pretty soon.

Overall, I found the latest OpenSolaris to be a welcome addition to my lab – next up, getting all my OpenStorage moved over to the new rev…