Oracle Solaris 11 – Beginners Guide

If you are working as a Sun Solaris system administrator, you know that how rapidly Solaris  operating system  is changing from version to version. There were  a lot difference between Solaris 9  and Solaris 10. But people were able to grab the changes quickly in the past when it was transformed from Solaris 8/9 to Solaris 10. ZFS and Zones were not utilized potentially on Solaris 10 and this could be the reason why the system administrators couldn’t find any difficulties. But now most of the people are asking that how and where to start for oracle Solaris 11. Oracle Solaris 11 is completely different from Solaris 10. Oracle has set the default root filesystem as ZFS from Solaris 11 onwards. In other words , we are forced to use the liveupgrade and brand new Image Packing system.

[box type=”warning” ]This article will be helpful only for engineers who are currently working on Solaris 10 Operating System. If you are new to Solaris operating system, it will be quite difficult to grab the things. [/box]

Few months back, Oracle has released Solaris 11.2  and there were lots of new features added compare to oracle Solaris 11.1.

Here we will see the learning path for Oracle Solaris 11.

1. Download the Oracle Solaris 11.2 from the oracle Website and install it on VMware workstation or virtual box as guest operating system. (Only for Learning purpose)

2. As you know that IPS repository  is mandatory from Oracle Solaris 11, You should know that how to setup the Image Packaging system repository on your server.

• Oracle Solaris 11.2 IPS repository setup (Refer this article if you going to configure IPS repository for Solaris 11.2)
• oracle Solaris 11.1 IPS repository setup  (Refer this article if you going to configure IPS repository for Solaris 11.1)

At the end of this exercise  , you should be able to install/uninstall packages on Oracle Solaris 11.

3.There are lot of new enhancement has been made on zones. Please go through the below article to understand the new features of the Solaris 11 zone’s.

• Oracle Solaris 11 – Zones Overview

At the same time you should go through the difference between Solaris 11.1 and Solaris 11.2 since new type of zone has been introduced on Solaris 11.2

• Oracle Solaris 11.1 Vs Oracle Solaris 11.2

After reading the above mentioned articles, you are good to proceed with zone installation.

• Creating & installing Solaris 11 zone
• Creating & Installing Solaris kernel zone. (Only supported on Oracle Solaris 11.2)
• Cloning the local zone
• Converting the Native zone as Kernel zone (Only Supported on Oracle Solaris 11.2)
• Install oracle Solaris 10 as branded zone on Solaris 11

4. Liveupgrade commands are completely renamed. (Ex: lucreate,lustatus). In oracle Solaris 11, you need to use “beadm” set of commands will be used to manage the boot environment.

• Managing the Boot environment on Solaris 11

5. Jumpstart has been replaced by Automated Installer.

• Configuring the Automated Installer
• Installing Solaris 11 using AI

6. Configuring the DNS on Oracle Solaris 11.

7.Oracle Solaris 11 has COMSTAR package to make the host as ISCSI server

• ISCSI COMSTAR Server Setup

8.There is new utility called distribution constructor which is introduced in Oracle Solaris 11 to customize the bootable images.

• How to use the DC (Distribution Constructor)

9.There are lot of new things has been introduced on Oracle Solaris 11 networking stack. In Oracle Solaris 11, you can able to create the virtual NICs and Virtual Switches.

• Configuring the Solaris 11 IPMP & Link aggregation
• Configuring the probe based IPMP
• Creating the Virtual NIC on Solaris11
• Creating the Virtual Switch on Solaris 11
• Controlling the zone’s Bandwidth on Solaris 11
• Measuring the Network Bandwidth

10.Patching the Oracle Solaris 11 environment. (Sorry. There is no Patching  concept from Oracle Solaris 11. Only Package updates)

11.Migrating from Oracle Solaris 10 to Oracle Solaris 11 (There is no direct method to migrate from Solaris 10 to Solaris 11)

12.Please go through the below article to see the upgrade from Oracle Solaris 11.1 to Oracle Solaris 11.2

• Solaris 11.1 to Solaris 11.2

13. The below article will help you to understand the configuration difference  between Solaris 10 & Solaris 11.

• Configuration difference between Solaris 10 & Solaris 11.

14.Refer the below mentioned article if  you face any IPS repo issue.

• Refer for any repo issues,

Hope these articles are more than enough to understand the Solaris 11 concepts and core features.

I haven’t add more theory on this article. I strongly believes that only piratical can make you understand better than anything.

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