System Resources Enhancements

The following system resources feature has been added to the Solaris 10 10/09 release.

Zones Parallel Patching

The zones parallel patching enhancement to the standard Solaris 10 patch utilities increases the patching tools performance on systems with multiple zones by allowing parallel patching of the non-global zones. In releases prior to Solaris 10 10/09, the feature is implemented through the patch utilities patch 119254-66 or later revision for SPARC and 119255-66 or later revision for x86. The global zone is still patched before the non-global zones are patched.

For more information, see the following:

• http://blogs.sun.com/patch/date/20090619

• System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones

PVIO Drivers in Solaris 10 Guest Domains

When using the Sun xVM hypervisor in a Solaris OS, fully virtualized guest domains are referred to as hardware-assisted virtual machines (HVMs). HVM + PVIO guests provide better performance through the use of PV drivers.

Releases starting with the Solaris 10 10/08 release are shipped with the Solaris PV drivers. A patch is available for Solaris 10 5/08.

For more information, see “Solaris 10 releases” in Guests That Are Known to Work in System Administration Guide: Virtualization Using the Solaris Operating System. This guide also discusses HVM-capable machines.