Sun Microsystems Inc. is bulking up its Solaris 8 operating environment by tightly linking it with iPlanet Application Server and improving its Java and storage capabilities.
Combining the Solaris 8 10/01 (also known as Update 6) platform with the application server is part of the Palo Alto, Calif., companys push to make it easier for developers to access Suns Web services program, called Sun ONE (Open Net Environment). Sun made the announcement at its Services on Demand Summit last week in Santa Clara, Calif.
Sun is also embedding the Java 2 Standard Edition Version 1.3.1 software development kit, which is tuned to the latest version of Suns UltraSPARC III CPU, into the newest Solaris 8, which officials said will improve performance and memory. Another feature will be Disk Soft-Partitions, which enhances storage manageability by enabling administrators to break large storage disks into more than 8,000 smaller ones.
Solaris 8 gives Texas Instruments Inc. 64-bit capabilities, but the company is most interested in the Live Upgrade feature of Update 6, said Raymond Scott, Unix infrastructure architect.
“Live Upgrade should allow us to do the maintenance work while the machine is up and used by customers,” said Scott, in Plano, Texas. “Once the maintenance is complete, a reboot to the modified boot drive is all that is required.”
Sun will roll out Update 6 in the first quarter of next year.