Sun Ray MTU Patch Released!

The last project I was working on at my last job was a Sun Ray evaluation. I've had a Sun Ray at home for a while now and I remember deploying them back in Sun IT/Ops. So deploying them was very easy. The only issue was that the Sun Ray servers were off-site and DHCP was provided by Windows. The issue was that the MTU had to be 1420 to go across the WAN. This normally would not be a big deal because a Sun DHCP will hand the MTU information out to the DTU. However, in Windows DHCP land, it will only hand out options a DHCP client asks for. In this case, the DTU does not ask for the MTU option. As a result, it defaults to 1500, which caused massive packet loss. It took a few months to get a patch for this, but it was worth it. Now, everyone can enjoy this patch at 120879-01 (Sparc S10, S9, S8) or 120880-01 (S10 x86). The patch takes care of a huge list of bugs in 3.1, including the MTU issue. It'll install a new version of the firmware, so remember to reset all the DTU's and they will pickup the new firmware when they power up:)

Build 33 for Solaris Express and OpenSolaris is Out!

So Build 33 is finally out! I've been waiting for this build to come out so that I could jump from build 28 to something more recent;) You can reach the download page via the OpenSolaris section of my blog to the right. Be warned though, the download site for SX:CR is really busy right now. In the mean time, I get to do the jumpstart shuffle between the U60 and my NetraX1. So first I have to get the Netra setup with JET:)

Xen Code Available in OpenSolaris

So the first release of the Xen code for OpenSolaris is available on the OpenSolaris Xen Community page. This is another huge step for OpenSolaris. Now there are several types of virtualization available for my favorite OS:

• Resource Management
  
• Hardware Domaining (SF3800 and above).
• Solaris Containers (a.k.a. Zones).
• BrandZ Containers
• Xen

There is also talk about using the HyperVisor feature in the T1 (Niagara) processors that will allow for yet another kind of virtualization.

Some New Links

I'm always on the lookout for new websites with information on Solaris or related topics. Here are two really interesting links:

Learning Solaris 10

JES How-To

The JES How-To link is from Lasse Østerild's blog and has some really great JES links. I'm using some of that documentation in combination with the LDAP book I bought to set things up on my home servers. BTW, I have a lot of write-ups to catch up on and will post them shortly:)