Project Janus
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Also new is the Linux Application Environment, code-named Project Janus, which lets Solaris 10 and native Linux binaries run side by side with no modifications.
Read more here about Janus and its delays.
The new 128-bit Solaris ZFS file system has 16 billion billion times more capacity than current 64-bit file systems, he said.
But Suns Loiacono told eWEEK that when the first production version of the new Solaris 10 operating system ships, it will likely not include the new 128-bit Solaris ZFS file system or the Linux Application Environment (Janus) technology that allows Linux binaries to run natively on Solaris.
Click here to read about Suns delay of some Solaris pieces.
"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," Loiacono said last week.
"This revolutionary new file system required a lot of work and we had to make sure it could meet the quality standards we set for Solaris in general, and so we decided we would pull it if necessary."
Longtime Solaris users such as Thomas Nau, head of the Communication and Information Centers infrastructure department at the University of Ulm, Germany, say they would have liked to see ZFS in the initial release because it is the only bundled file system that really supports file systems larger than 1TB without introducing other limitations. "We require ZFS to handle our large file systems more easily as we are approaching a number of limits," he said
James Dobson, a systems architect at Dartmouth College, of Hanover, N.H., said he is interested in Janus since the college uses Solaris, mostly on Sun SPARC hardware, with more on x86 and x86-64 hardware expected in the future.
"My vendors ship i386/Linux binaries—more specifically, Red Hat Enterprise Server/Advanced Server. I run these on Fedora and other free Linux distributions. I would like to run these on Solaris if possible," Dobson said.
But he said an important question that must be answered is why Sun is doing this. "Is it a transition tool? A porting tool? A real tool for production use? I think we would all prefer to run native applications," Dobson said.
"If Sun is not able to get ISVs to port to Solaris x86, then Janus becomes critical for the success of their platform. Thought is required as to why they are doing this so it can meet the needs of customers," he said.
"It should, for example, allow me to run graphical applications—interactive, like Mathworks Matlab. Some plans Ive heard suggest it will be run in virtual machine, in a Linux "zone," which may not let me use Janus on the workstation."
Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest open-source news, reviews and analysis.
Read more here about Janus and its delays.
The new 128-bit Solaris ZFS file system has 16 billion billion times more capacity than current 64-bit file systems, he said.
Click here to read about Suns delay of some Solaris pieces.
"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," Loiacono said last week.
"This revolutionary new file system required a lot of work and we had to make sure it could meet the quality standards we set for Solaris in general, and so we decided we would pull it if necessary."
Longtime Solaris users such as Thomas Nau, head of the Communication and Information Centers infrastructure department at the University of Ulm, Germany, say they would have liked to see ZFS in the initial release because it is the only bundled file system that really supports file systems larger than 1TB without introducing other limitations. "We require ZFS to handle our large file systems more easily as we are approaching a number of limits," he said
James Dobson, a systems architect at Dartmouth College, of Hanover, N.H., said he is interested in Janus since the college uses Solaris, mostly on Sun SPARC hardware, with more on x86 and x86-64 hardware expected in the future.
"My vendors ship i386/Linux binaries—more specifically, Red Hat Enterprise Server/Advanced Server. I run these on Fedora and other free Linux distributions. I would like to run these on Solaris if possible," Dobson said.
But he said an important question that must be answered is why Sun is doing this. "Is it a transition tool? A porting tool? A real tool for production use? I think we would all prefer to run native applications," Dobson said.
"If Sun is not able to get ISVs to port to Solaris x86, then Janus becomes critical for the success of their platform. Thought is required as to why they are doing this so it can meet the needs of customers," he said.
"It should, for example, allow me to run graphical applications—interactive, like Mathworks Matlab. Some plans Ive heard suggest it will be run in virtual machine, in a Linux "zone," which may not let me use Janus on the workstation."
Check out eWEEK.coms for the latest open-source news, reviews and analysis. 
