The amount of hardware resources used by the applications versus the amount available in the system. This includes the number and processing power of CPUs, memory size, NICs, HBAs, etc. What portion of the installed zones are actually in use. For example, you can create 100 zones, each ready to offer a web service, but only boot the 10 that you need this month. The unbooted zones take up disk space, but do not cause the use of any extra CPU power, RAM, or I/O.

Yes, you can run PostgreSQL in a Solaris Container and this is described in the How To Guide available at http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/howtoguides/postgresqlhowto.jsp#3. This is an excellent way to improve the security of your PostgreSQL installation.

Multiple applications can share a single system but still remain completely isolated from one another Allows a system administrator to create an environment that the Container Administrator can customize for the application

The other components are the resource management tools in the Solaris OS. They control the amount of resources an application receives, such as CPU cycles, physical memory, and network bandwidth. Resource management tools also help with measuring the usage of an application. This could be used for health monitoring and capacity planning, as well as billing and charge back.

They interact as if they are on different systems, through the network or shared disk. For example, if they interact through the network, the system knows that one Solaris Container is talking to another, so communications will go through the network stack. Communication between Solaris Containers is very fast because it never leaves the system or even hits the network interface card.

Yes. Solaris Zones and the Solaris resource management feature are both part of Solaris Containers and are designed to work together.

Solaris Zones are part of a Solaris Container, delivering security, application fault, and namespace isolation. The addition of Solaris Zone functionality to Solaris Containers allows the creation of a Solaris Container that is fully customized for an application.

The Solaris Cluster software currently supports the resource management parts of Solaris Containers. An updated release of the Solaris Cluster software will support Solaris Zones.

Yes, with Solaris 10 8/07 you can use Solaris Live Upgrade for patching and upgrading systems with Solaris Containers. This offers two important operational advantages, particularly around patching. You can patch without taking the system offline because you patch a copy of the system. Patching Containers is a serial operation, so patching without taking the system off-line is a major advantage. After patching the copy, you then can boot from that copy.

an integral part of the Solaris 10 Operating System, Solaris Containers isolate software applications and services using flexible, software-defined boundaries. A breakthrough approach to virtualization and workload management, Solaris Containers let many private execution environments be created within a single instance of the Solaris OS.

Solaris Containers provide security, application fault, and name space isolation. This means that once working in Solaris Containers, users cannot compromise or even see outside of their Solaris Containers other than the regular ways, such as through the network or shared file systems. The name space isolation allows Solaris Containers to have their own users, and even their own root user, who only has authority inside the root user's own Solaris Container.

If you plan to have several developers on the same system, you could, for example, create a Container with all the right applications and developer tools as a golden master. You can then use the new cloning feature to replicate this golden master and quickly create an identical Container with the same set of applications and tools for every new developer.

It's really useful for moving your application from your testing and staging systems to your production systems. This allows you to prepare the application and its environment in testing and then move over as is, greatly decreasing the installation and deployment time for the production systems. You can also pre-harden the Container by turning off all the network services you don't need.

Yes, the same restrictions apply as with normal Solaris 10 Containers with regard to having enough CPU, memory, disk, etc. Thus, this tool a way to simultaneously consolidate and transition to newer hardware and OS technologies.

No, because of the BrandZ translation layer every Container can be on its own distinct Solaris 8 patch revision.

A "free" copy of Solaris for personal use (where "free" means you pay only media, shipping, and handling cost), is available from here: For *.edu (Educational users): http://www.Sun.COM/edu/solaris/ For all others: http://www.Sun.COM/developers/ I also have this link: http://www.Sun.COM/solaris/freesolaris.html The cost is US$8 for US Shipping/handling (plus sales tax), US$12 for Canada, and US$25 for the rest of world.

There is no difference. N1 Grid Container was the name previously used to describe the container functionality in Solaris 10. The “N1 Grid Container” name has been replaced by the name “Solaris Containers.”

The following two CDs are supplied with the commercial version but not with the free version: Netscape Communicator V4.05 and Software Supplement for Solaris 7. The latter contains SunVTS, ODBC Driver Manager, Open GL, Solaris on Sun Hardware AnswerBook, PC file viewer, ShowMe, and SunFDDI.

The Software License Agreement included with the media only allows evaluation use of the software. To obtain the right-to-use (RTU/Entitlement) for unlimited use of Solaris 10, the customer must register their Solaris installations to receive the Entitlement document, which provides the additional terms and perpetual right to use Solaris. Customers can download the Solaris software for free at http://sun.com/solaris.

Containers must be placed at the curb before 7:00 a.m. on collection day (and may be set out the night before). City Ordinance requires that all containers be retrieved from the curb within 24 hours of collection, and placed to the side or at the rear of the residence.

Consult the Empty Container Decision Tree in the Hazardous Chemical Waste Management Reference Guide for Laboratories (page 11) to determine if your empty container can be safely disposed of in the regular trash or if it must be managed as hazardous waste.

Solaris(tm) is Sun's name for their UNIX-based user environment, including the UNIX(tm) operating system, window system (X11-based), and other stuff too. Solaris 1.x is a retroactive (marketing?) name for SunOS 4.1.x (x>=1), a version of UNIX that is BSD-like with some SVR4 features, along with OpenWindows 3.0. Solaris 2.x (which is what most everybody means by "Solaris") includes SunOS 5.x, which is an SVR4-derived UNIX, along with OpenWindows 3.x, tooltalk, and other stuff.

Solaris indeed has never been translated directly into English and Stanislaw Lem was dissatisfied with the current translation. Whether this state of affairs will change remains an open question. The following quote from a letter from the Managing Director of the Publishing House Faber and Faber serves as an explanation: "With regard to Solaris, I am afraid that we would not currently be willing either to publish a new translation or to license one."

If you just want to use freefonts or sharefonts, you can copy these files into the appropriate directory (such as /usr/openwin/lib/fonts/freefonts/ or /usr/openwin/lib/fonts/sharefonts/), or merge them with the appropriate fonts.dir and fonts.scale files if you mixed in freefonts and sharefonts with existing fonts: The 'fontadmin' tool is a openwin demo program and sometimes does not exist. To properly add fonts the finagled directory requires fonts.dir, fonts.scale files to exist.

Solaris (2.5 and up) has its own version of X in /usr/openwin, its own version of make in /usr/ccs/bin/make, and its own compiler (to be purchased separately) which, if you have it, is available in /opt/SUNWspro/bin. Solaris does not provide the XPM library, which is required for the Xaw client; it doesn't provide any of the stuff required for imlib, gdk and gtk, either, which is required to build the GTK+ client.

On Solaris, FreeBSD, and some other systems, the default make isn't GNU make. In order to compile with such a make you must either configure --disable-cvs-deps --disable-nls in order to disable the GNU make specific parts of the Makefile.

Another program may have turned off the speaker or headphones or whatever interface to which you're listening. Obviously, tkbiff cannot guess which one that might be, so it assumes you are controlling that yourself. To check the status of where sound is going, run audiocontrol and then, for example, if you want sound to come out of the speakers, click on Speaker.

Yes. DenyHosts has been reported to work with Solaris. However, since Solaris uses a pam_afs format for logging messages, you will need to add this line to your configuration file (typically, denyhosts.cfg ).