What´s new in Solaris 10 10...

The "What´s new in What's New in the Solaris 10 10/08 Release" document is online at docs.sun.com. Thus you can get an overview what you can expect from the next release of Solaris 10.

I will provide a list of the features for you in this article. For more informations please consult the linked article. As you see, there was a lot of development in the ZFS part of Solaris 10. Another really interesting feature is the update-on-attach for Zones. This solves some problems like the migration of zones from normal SPARC to a CMT SPARC system (sun4u versus sun4v).

Okay, in Solaris 10/08 aka Update 6 you will find:

• Installation Enhancements
• Solaris Installation for ZFS Root Pools
• System Administration Enhancements
• ZFS Command Improvements and Changes
• ZFS installation and boot support
• Rolling back a ZFS dataset without unmounting
• Enhancements to the zfs send command
• ZFS quotas and reservations for file system data only
• new ZFS storage pool properties
• ZFS command history enhancements
• support for upgrading ZFS filesystems
• ZFS delegated administration
• Setting up separate ZFS logging devices
• Creating intermediate ZFS datasets
• ZFS hot-plugging enhancements
• GZIP compression now available for ZFS
• Storing multiple copies of ZFS user data
• Solaris Installation Tool Support of ZFS File Systems
• Solaris interactive text installer to install a UFS or a ZFS root file system.
• Custom JumpStart features to set up a profile to create a ZFS storage pool and designate a bootable ZFS file system.
• Migrate a UFS root file system to a ZFS root file system by using the Solaris Live Upgrade feature.
• Set up a mirrored ZFS root pool by selecting two disks during the installation.
• Automatically create swap and dump devices on ZFS volumes in the ZFS root pool.
• SunVTS 7.0 Patch Set 3
• lockstat Provider for DTrace. DTrace lockstat probes that displayed the spin count (spins) now returns spin time in nanoseconds.
• System Resource Enhancements
• New Solaris Zones Features
• Update on Attach.
  If the new host has the same or later versions of the zone-dependent packages and their associated patches, using zoneadm attach with the -u option, updates those packages within the zone to match the new host.[...] This option also enables automatic migration between machine classes, such as from sun4u to sun4v.
• Ability to Set Default Router in Shared-IP Zone
• ZFS Zone Path Permitted
• x86: New GRUB findroot Command
• x64: Support for 256 Processors
• System Performance Enhancements
• SPARC: Solaris SPARC Boot Architecture Redesigned
• x86: Kernel Support for Intel SSSE3, SSE4.1, SSE4.2, and AMD SSE4A
• Security Enhancementy
  • Separation of Duty Enforcement Through the Solaris Management Console
  • SHA256/SHA512 crypt(3C) Plug-in
  • pam_list Module
• Desktop Enhancements
• SPARC: Adobe Reader 8.1.2
• Flash Player 9.0.124.0
• Networking Enhancements
• Communication Protocol Parser Utilities
• SIP End-to-end Traffic Measurements and Logging
• Device Management Enhancements
• Faulty Device Retirement Feature
• MPxIO Support for Hitachi Adaptable Modular Storage Series Arrays
• Driver Enhancements
• x86: NVIDIA ck804/mcp55 SATA Controller Driver
• x86: LSI MegaRAID SAS Controllers Driver
• ixgbe Driver. The ixgbe is a 10 Gigabit PCI Express Ethernet driver that supports Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet controller.
• SPARC: Support for aac Driver
• Additional Software Enhancements
• Perl Database Interface and Perl PostgreSQL Driver
• PostgreSQL 8.3
• Language Support Enhancements
• IIIMF Hangul Language Engine. The Hangul LE (Language Engine) is a new Korean input method.
• Freeware Enhancements
• C-URL - The C-URL Wrappers Library
• Libidn - Internationalized Domain Library
• LibGD - The Graphics Draw Library
• TIDY HTML Library
You will find Solaris 10/08 for download at the usual locations, but at the moment there is still the 05/08 release.