The SMF framework is always active on an Oracle Solaris 11 system. SMF provides the following capabilities:
Boot faster. SMF speeds booting of large systems by starting services in parallel according to the dependencies of the services.
Restart failed services. SMF services have well defined dependency relationships with other services. If a service fails, SMF reports any affected dependent services. SMF automatically attempts to restart failed services in dependency order.
Inspect services. View the relationships between services and processes. View the values of service properties.
Manage services. Enable, disable, and restart services. These changes can persist through upgrades and reboots, or you can specify temporary changes.
Configure services.
Change the values of service properties.
Add and delete custom properties.
Audit service changes. SMF writes Solaris audit records for every administrative change to a service or its properties. SMF can show whether a property value or service state was set by an administrator.
Securely delegate tasks to non-root users, including the ability to modify properties and enable, disable, or restart services.
Create new services. Easily create a new instance of an existing service, copy and modify an existing service, or use a service creation tool.
Debug service problems. Easily display an explanation for why an enabled service is not running or why a service is preventing another service from running.
Configure how you will be notified of particular software events or hardware faults.
Convert inetd.conf configurations to SMF services.
Convert SMF service properties to configuration files. This mechanism provides a bridge for services that are managed by SMF but interact with applications that still require configuration files.