The Solaris 9 Operating Environment is the third major release of the complete 64-bit computing environment tuned for Sun's powerful line of highly scalable 64-bit servers. The multithreaded, fully preemptible kernel delivers much faster performance for core system functions and enterprise applications. And with the new increased performance and scalability of the Solaris 9 Operating Environment, customers can immediately see an mprovement in the price/performance ratio of their servers, and thus, increase the return on their investments.
 

• Solaris 9 Guided Tour (This is a multimedia guided tour of Solaris 9 Operating Environment key features)
• Overview of Solaris 9
• Solaris[tm] Operating Environment Family Comparison Chart

This release builds upon the success of the Solaris 8 Operating Environment, enhancing the scalability, availability, manageability, and security to keep Solaris software the leading UNIX[tm] Operating Environment.  Our commitment to binary compatibility ensures the highest level of investment protection for our customers.
 

The Solaris[tm] 9 Operating Environment New Features and Descriptions:

Scalability & Performance
 

• Improvements to threading library: better performance, more efficient scaling to higher processor counts
• Improved Memory Support: Phase I - Multiple Page Size Support (MPSS) allows applications to use larger VM page sizes
• Java 2 Standard Edition 1.4: Features 64-bit Java Virtual Machine, Enhanced Security, IPv6 support, new XML tools

Availability
 

• Compatible with SunCluster 3.0 (5/02 update)
• New Modular Debugger (mdb): for diagnosing system problems before they cause failures
• Improved debugging: Two new commands, pargs and preap, improve process debugging

Manageability
 

• Solaris 9 Resource Manager: resource management and fair share scheduling now integrated in Solaris 9 Operating Environment; Solaris  Resource  Manager licenses are not needed.
• Solaris Volume Manager: complete volume management built-in
• Integration of the Sun[tm] ONE Directory Server (formerly the iPlanet(tm) Directory Server): industry-leading LDAP server integrated into the Solaris software
• Minimal installation: allows for a smaller-footprint installation of Solaris operating environment.
• Single, unified global product for 39 languages
• New Unicode locales for the world: India, Hong Kong, Thailand, Turkey, Egypt, Finland, Poland, Spain, Belgium and Brazil
• New Indian language support: allows for the input, display and print of Hindi data with these locales
• New languages of Localized Software for the CDE desktop: Russia, Poland and Spain

Security
 

• Kerberos: A Kerberos v5 Key Distribution Center (KDC), Principal Administration System, and Principal Database Replication System are now bundled into the Solaris software.
• Firewall: SunScreen 3.2 Firewall included - A complete, enterprise-class firewall is now included in Solaris 9 operating environment.
• Secure Shell: Secure Shell functionality allows fully-encrypted replacements for telnet, ftp, etc.
• 128-bit encryption, password encryption control: Default encryption has been increased from 56-bit in the Solaris 8 operating environment  to 128-bit Solaris 9 operating environment. In addition, a flexible encryption protocol now allows the default password encryption (typically crypt) to be replaced by system administrator.
• Improved LDAP client: better security and manageability
• New versions of BIND enable improved configuration and security through Access Control Lists (ACLs).

Development
 

• New Random Number Interfaces: /dev/random and /dev/urandom have been added to Solaris 9 operating environment.
• New Management Interfaces: Five new WBEM providers are included Frame Buffer Power Management and sysevents interface.
• Data interoperability with non-Solaris environments has been improved.
• Linux APIs: New libraries allow Linux applications to be immediately ported to the Solaris operating environment without change.

Compatibility
 

• Guarantee Test Suite: Tool that assures ISVs that their applications will run on the  latest version of Solaris.
• Certification Test Suite: Tool that certifies software written by ISVs complies with the Solaris Application Binary Interface (ABI) rules

Other
 

• CDRW: The cdrw command provides the ability to create data and audio CDs.
• Customer Ready Systems (CRS) program: a factory integratable version of Solaris 9 operating environment is available through this program