Sun to Delay Solaris 10 Pieces

The first production version of Sun Microsystems Inc.'s Solaris 10 operating system likely will not include two technologies when it ships early next year.

Missing will be the 128-bit Solaris ZFS file system and the Janus technology that allows Linux binaries to run natively on Solaris, officials of the Santa Clara, Calif., company said.

Click here to read more about delays in "Project Janus".

"The ZFS file system, which automates many common tasks for system administrators, may not make it until the first update after Solaris 10 ships, which should be within two quarters of that initial ship date," said John Loiacono, executive vice president for software at Sun.

Both the ZFS file system and Janus are not kernel-based technologies and, as such, could be provided later, whereas the other kernel-based technologies could not, Loiacono said.

Solaris users such as Thomas Nau, head of the Communication and Information Center's Infrastructure Department at the University of Ulm, in Germany, said he would have liked to see ZFS in the initial release because it is the only bundled file system that supports more than 1TB without introducing limitations. "We require ZFS to handle our large file systems more easily as we are approaching a number of limits," Nau said.

Customers could get the Janus technology when Solaris ships, Loiacono said, but the technology might not be included in the actual media kit and may have to be downloaded separately. The first phase for Janus focused on letting users run their applications for Red Hat Inc.'s Red Hat Linux 3.0 or later. In subsequent releases, Sun will start combining Janus with the container technology in Solaris.

"I can have five containers with five different distributions, including Red Hat Linux, running right beside [Novell Inc.'s] SuSE Linux and [Mandrakesoft SA's Mandrakelinux] all on one copy of Solaris, and they will all be firewalled from each other," Loiacono said.

Sun has also pushed back announcing the launch and details of its Open Solaris project, which will make the source code for Solaris 10 available under license to the open-source and Linux communities, at its Solaris 10 launch and Network Computing event in San Jose, Calif., this week. "We're developing not only a license model but also a governance model," Loiacono said.

Sun is looking to make an announcement with details and specifics around the Open Solaris project by the end of this year or early next year.

Loiacono said Sun will be aggressive with its pricing of Solaris 10, offering a wide array of models. Customers will be able to get everything from early access to source code, to a production-quality copy of Solaris at no charge.

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