Platforms

x86, IBM Power and Z Series

x86, SPARC

Interactive Installation

DVD Image (3.5Gb)

Single installation media with choice of several different software selections. No Live Media capability out of the box. Additional software available in package repositories.

Interactive Text Installer (~500Mb)
Live Media Installer (~800Mb)

Each installation option has a fixed software selection for different environments - server or developer/desktop. Additional software available in package repositories.

Automated Installation

Kickstart
Input file:
- Text based configuration file

The Kickstart configuration file can be generated using a graphical interface
Commands: system-config-kickstart

Red Hat Network Satellite can be used to manage Kickstart profiles at a greater scale through a web interface, along with other capabilities.

Automated Installer
Input files:
- XML based configuration file called an AI manifest specifies disk layout, software packages and virtual environments
- XML based system configuration profiles specify hostname, users, networking, timezone and locale. Can be generated using command line, sysconfig

In order to install clients, an automated install service is required to be created using an administrative utility. This utility can be used to manage several installation profiles for different types of systems, including comprehensive selection criteria based on hostname, IP, MAC address, platform, architecture, CPU and memory sizes.
Commands: installadm

Jumpstart
Support for installing Oracle Solaris 10 clients from Oracle Solaris 11 using Jumpstart is supported. Existing Jumpstart rules and provides can be converted.
Commands: js2ai

Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, included in all Oracle Premier Support agreements, can be used to manage multiple clients at a greater scale through a web interface, along with other capabilities (firmware, virtualization, fault monitoring, network management, etc..).

Custom Media Creation

Customized media can be created by manually modifying a mounted ISO image

Distribution Constructor
Input file:
- XML based file called a manifest (separate to AI manifest)

The Distribution Constructor uses a command line utility distro_const to create customized installation media, taking Oracle Solaris ZFS snapshots along the way allowing administrators to continue the construction process from various checkpoints.

Packaging

RPM
In its simplest form, RPM is a package manager that can install, update, uninstall, query for packages. Often used in combination with other technologies (yum) to provide automatic package dependency resolution and addition of multiple package repositories. There is no integrated end-to-end tool for repository management.
Commands: rpm, rpmdb,rpmsign

Yum
A front end command line utility around RPM that provides an interface to easily automate and install packages from network package repositories. PackageKit is a graphical front end for the desktop environment.
Commands: yum, yum-builddep, yum-config-manager, yumdb, yumdownloader, yum-groups-manager

Behind each RPM package is a text based spec file which describes some basic meta-information, package dependencies, what contents the package has, and any scripts that need to be run as part of package install. Binary packages are built using rpm using the text based spec file and source tarball as inputs. Separate packages are typically created for different boundaries of a software component (developer docs, debugging binaries, ...) but can be created from a single spec file.

Image Packaging System (IPS)
Command line pkg and graphical Package Manager allows install, update, uninstall, query, etc...Other commands available for creating and publishing packages and repositories.
Commands: pkg, pkgsend, pkgrecv, pkgsign, pkgdiff, pkgfmt, pkgmogrify, pkgrepo

Services

Upstart
Upstart is an event based init replacement to handle service processes at startup, shutdown and runtime with automatic dependency checking and fault monitoring.
Commands: initctl
Job definitions: /etc/init/*.conf

General System Configuration

Locale: /etc/sysconfig/i18n
Timezone: /etc/sysconfig/clock
Hostname: /etc/sysconfig/network

The following configuration is managed in the SMF configuration repository.
Locale: svc:/system/environment:init
Timezone: svc:/system/environment:init
Hostname: svc:/system/identity:node

Users

Commands: useradd, userdel, usermod, users, groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, groups, sudo
User and group locations: /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group/, /etc/gshadow

SELinux is configured to 'targeted' policy and does not use user roles by default.

Commands: useradd, userdel, usermod, users, groupadd, groupdel, groupmod, groups, roleadd, roledel, rolemod, roles, auths, sudo
User and group locations: /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group

Oracle Solaris 11 also uses extended attributes in conjunction with typical user accounts - these provide additional privileges (authorizations, roles and profiles) to individual users of the system. For example, a user or set of users may be given the ability to install new software or create new virtual environments. By default, the traditional UNIX root account has been converted into a role - this ensures proper accountability and auditing as the system is modified. These commands can also be used to store user and role information in remote LDAP directories.

Administrators can use additional utilities to execute a command (or set of commands) within a privileged context

Privileged shells: pfexec, pfbash, pfcsh, pfksh93, pfsh, pfzsh, pftcsh
 

Basic Network Configuration
(Automatic vs Manual)

Automatic
Red Hat Enterprise Linux uses NetworkManager to automatically connect to physical and wireless networks, including support for Mobile, Bluetooth, and VPN connections. A graphical utility or command line option for servers or headless systems is available.
Commands: nmcli








Manual
Manual networking needs to be configured through a series of command line utilities to show or manipulate routing, devices, and a variety of other networking configuration including interface aliasing.

Commands: ip, ethtool, iwconfig, ifconfig
Interface definitions: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*
Hostname and gateway definitions: /etc/sysconfig/network
Definition of static routes: /etc/sysconfig/static-routes

Automatic
Automatic networking in Oracle Solaris 11 is managed through a series of network profiles (configuration profiles and location profiles). Two network configuration profiles are provided by default, DefaultFixed (ie. manual networking) and Automatic (providing automatic detection of network interfaces and an attempt to obtain an IP address through DHCP). Location profiles manage configuration like naming service or IPfilter. Only one network configuration profile and one location profile can be enabled at any one time. Oracle Solaris 11 supports both graphical interaces or command lines for automatic networking.
Commands: netadm, netcfg

Manual
Manual configuration is handled primarily by two commands - dladm which handles the data-link layer, and ipadm which handles the IP layer. While ifconfig is still provided for compatibility, this utility will only configure interfaces temporarily and will not be persistent across a system reboot. Administrators also have the ability to rename data-links to aid network configuration migration across the data center.

Commands: dladm, ipadm
IP configuration (private): /etc/ipadm
Data-link configuration (private): /etc/dladm
Network profiles (private): /etc/nwam
Static routes (private): /etc/inet/static_routes

Network Virtualization

Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides some network virtualization support for its virtualization solution, KVM. Administrators can set up access to the host OS, the internet, or resources on the network through a variety of means - from user networking, private virtual bridges or public bridges.
Commands: ip, brctl, tunctl

Bandwidth partitioning and resource control

IPQoS
IP Quality of Service (IPQoS) enables you to prioritize, control, and gather accounting statistics. Using IPQoS, you can provide consistent levels of service to users of your network. You can also manage traffic to avoid network congestion. IPQoS enables the Differentiated Services (Diffserv) architecture that is defined by the Differentiated Services Working Group of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). In Oracle Solaris, IPQoS is implemented at the IP level of the TCP/IP protocol stack.
Commands: ipqosconf

Network Resource Management
Oracle Solaris 11 supports dynamic QoS through resource management by setting data-link properties that pertain to network resources. By setting these properties, you can determine how much of a given resource can be used for networking processes. For example, you can limit the bandwidth limit per link, or dedicate a number of CPUs for specific network processing. A network flow is a customized way of categorizing packets to further control how resources are used to process these packets - administrators can organize according to IP address, transport name (TCP, UDP, STCP), and application port number for example.
Commands: flowadm, dladm

TCP congestion control
Oracle Solaris 11 supports a number of congestion control algorithms (NewReno, Highspeed, CUBIC, Vegas). NewReno is currently the default.

Link Aggregation

Ethernet/NIC Bonding (link aggregation) allows administrators to combine the bandwidth from several interfaces into a single connection. A number of different modes are supported during the loading of the bonding kernel driver module - round robin, active-backup, XOR, broadcast, 803.2ad dynamic link aggregation, adaptive (transmit) load balancing.
Commands: ip, ifenslave

Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports three main types of tunneling - IPIP (IPv4 over IPv4 encapsulation), GRE (IPv4/6 over IPv4 encapsulation) and SIT (IPv6 over IPv4 encapsulation)
Commands: ip

Oracle Solaris 11 supports IPv4 (IPv4/6 over IPv4 encapsulation), IPv6 (IPv4/6 over IPv6 encapsulation) and 6to4 tunnels (IPv6 over IPv4 encapsulation, as a preferred way of transitioning from IPv4 to IPv6 addressing for networks that don't yet support IPv6).
Commands: dladm

Bridging

Bridging on Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) only.
Commands: brctl

Bridging on Oracle Solaris 11 supports two protocols - Spanning Tree Protocol (STP) and Rapid Spanning Tree Protocol (RSTP) by default, TRILL.
Commands: dladm

WiFI

Wide range of support for 802.11 compatible wireless devices and security protocols.
Commands: iw, iwconfig, iwevent, iwgetid, iwlist, iwpriv, iwspy
Wireless Configuration: /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*
WPA Configuration: /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Support for 802.11 (a/b/g/n) for common wireless devices
Commands: dladm

Load Balancing

Load Balancing functionality is provided with the Load Balancing Add-On to Red Hat Enterprise Linux - comprises of two main components - Linux Virtual Server (LVS) and the Piranha Configuration Tool. LVS supports both NAT and Direct Route load balancing.

ILB
The Integrated Load Balancer (ILB) provides Layer 3 and Layer 4 load-balancing capabilities for Oracle Solaris 11. ILB intercepts incoming requests from clients, decides which back-end server should handle the request based on load-balancing rules, and then forwards the request to the selected server. ILB performs optional health checks and provides the data for the load-balancing algorithms to verify if the selected server can handle the incoming request. ILB supports stateless Direct Server Return (DSR) and NAT (full and half) modes for IPv4 and IPv6.
Commands: ilbadm

VRRP
Virtual Router Redundancy Protocol (VRRP) is an Internet standard protocol to implement virtual routers that can be introduced into a LAN to provide continuity of network services in the event of failure.
Commands: vrrpadm

Link Layer Discovery

Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports Link Layer Discovery Protocol and Data Center Bridging
Commands: lldpad, lldptool

Link Layer Discovery
Oracle Solaris 11 adds support for LLP, allowing an Oracle Solaris host to exchange system information and capabilities with a peer networking device. The information exchanged can be used to topology discovery and any misconfiguration on both the ends of a point-to-point connection.
Commands: llpadm

Data Center Bridging
Oracle Solaris 11 also adds support for Priority Flow Control (PFC) and Data Center Bridging Exchange Protocol (DCBX). These protocols provide lossless ethernet, and enable protocols such as Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE), sensitive to packet loss, to work smoothly over Ethernet.
Commands: llpadm

Virtualization

KVM
KVM is a full virtualization solution on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (support for para-virtualized Xen is also provided). Red Hat officially supports a limited number of guest OSs (RHEL, Windows), but other OS versions are possible. Along with the command line utilities, a graphical tool (Virtual Machine Manager) can be also used to create and manage virtual environments. Guest, host and process isolation can be achieved using SELinux and cgroups. KVM requires an Intel processor with Intel VT-x and
Intel 64 extensions (x86), or an AMD processor with AMD-V and AMD64 extensions.

Commands: virsh, virt-clone, virt-convert, virt-image, virt-install, virt-viewer, virt-what, virt-xml-validate

Linux Containers
Linux containers provide a flexible approach to application runtime containment on bare-metal systems without the need to fully virtualize the workload. Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides application level containers to separate and control the application resource usage policies via cgroup and namespaces. Linux containers is currently considered a technology preview and not currently supported.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization is an additional offering can be used to manage and monitor virtualization environments at greater scale through a web interface. 

Oracle Solaris Zones
Oracle Solaris Zones provide native low overhead OS virtualization, with high application isolation and resource management. Oracle Solaris 11 also supports Oracle Solaris 10 Zones, the ability to run applications that require an Oracle Solaris 10 environment within a non-global zone running on Oracle Solaris 11.
Commands: zoneadm, zonecfg, zonestat, zonename, zone2pvhck

Oracle VM Server
Oracle VM Server for SPARC (previously called Sun Logical Domains) provides highly efficient, enterprise-class virtualization by taking advantage of built-in virtualization capabilties on the SPARC T series processor. Each domain is a full virtual machine that can be started or stopped independently. Domains can take on different roles - control, service, I/O or guest. Oracle VM Server for SPARC also has the ability to support Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) enabling efficient sharing of PCIe network devices among I/O domains so application workloads can achieve near native I/O performance.
Commands: ldm, ldm2v

Dynamic Domains
Dynamic domains provide electrically isolated hard partitioning for SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers. Each domain executes a unique instance of Oracle Solaris. Since isolation is instantiated all the way to the hardware, configurations can be created in which software changes, reboots, and potential faults in one domain do not impact applications running in another domain.
Commands: showhardconf, showboards, setupfru, setdcl, addboard, addfru

File Systems

Ext4
Default journaling file system. Maximum file size and volume size of 16TB.
Commands: e2fsck, fsck, mount, umount

Support for XFS file systems is also supported.

LVM
Logical Volume Manager (LVM) provides necessary volume management on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. LVM supports the ability to take offline snapshots and supports a number of RAID configurations.
Commands: pvchange, pvcreate, pvdisplay, pvmove, pvremove, pvresize, pvs, pvscan, lvchange, lvconvert, lvcreate, lvdisplay, lvextend, lvm, lvmdiskscan, lvmdump, lvreduce, lvremove, lvrename, lvresize, lvs, lvscan

Btrfs is currently considered a technology preview and not currently supported. Btrfs has some of the same feature set as ZFS. 

Oracle Solaris ZFS
Default file system on Oracle Solaris 11. Maximum file size of 16EB, maximum volume size of 16EB. Oracle Solaris ZFS has integrated data services - snapshot and cloning, deduplication, encryption, compression, shadow migration, and RAID.
Commands: zfs, zpool

Support for a number of other file systems, including UFS, is also available but not as root file system.

Mandatory Access Control, Role Based Acess and Multi-Level Security

SELinux
SELinux is a framework in Red Hat Enterprise Linux for supporting access control policies by providing capabilities that span mandatory access control, multi-level security, role based access control and type enforcement. SELinux is pre-configured in RHEL for the 'targeted' policy where most processes are unrestricted and only specific services are isolated into distinct security domains. Other policies are also available.
Commands: sestatus, secon, semodule*, set/getenforce, set/getsebool, selinux*, setfiles, fixfiles, load_policy, restorecon*
Configuration: /etc/selinux/config



















Trusted Platform Module support is considered a technology preview.
Commands: tpm*

RBAC
Also known as user rights management, RBAC allows administrators to distribute administrative duties. RBAC is integrated right across the operating system.
Commands: profiles, roleadd, roledel, rolemod, roles, auths

Trusted Extensions
Trusted Extensions supports both traditional discretionary access control (DAC) policies based on ownership, as well as label-based mandatory access control (MAC) policies. Trusted Extensions is integrated into much of the operating system, including Oracle Solaris Zones.
Commands: tncfg, txzonemgr, setlabel, getlabel, plabel

Privileges
Privileges are fine-grained, discrete rights on processes that are enforced in the kernel. Oracle Solaris defines over 80 privileges. Privileges can be granted to a command, a user, a role, or a system. Many Oracle Solaris commands and daemons run with only those privileges that are required to perform their task. The use of privileges is also called process rights management.
Commands: ppriv, profiles


Trusted Platform Module
The Trusted Platform Module (TPM) offers the ability to securely generate, store and access cryptographic keys from processors or external devices.
Commands: tpmadm

VPN

IPsec
IP security (IPsec) protects IP packets by authenticating the packets, by encrypting the packets, or by doing both. Oracle Solaris supports IPsec for both IPv4 and IPv6. Because IPsec is implemented well below the application layer, Internet applications can take advantage of IPsec without requiring modifications to their code.
Commands: ipadm, ipsecconf, ipsecalgs, ipseckey
Configuration file: /etc/inet/ipsecinit.conf

Firewall

Netfilter and IP Tables
IP Tables is used to set up, maintain, and inspect tables of IPv4 packet filter rules in Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
Administrators can also use the graphical Firewall Configuration Tool.
Command: iptables, iptables-multi, iptables-restore, iptables-save, iptables-xml, system-config-firewall-tui
Configuration files: /etc/sysconfig/iptables-config, /etc/sysconfig/ip6tables-config
Rules configuration files: /etc/sysconfig/iptables, /etc/sysconfig/ip6tables 

IPfilter
IPfilter provides packet filtering capabilities. IPfilter is integrated into SMF providing the ability for administrators to configure per service firewall rules.
Commands: ipf, ipnat
Configuration files: /etc/ipf/ipf.conf, svc:/network/ipfilter:default

Encryption

Linux Unified Key Setup
Red Hat Enterprise Linux supports LUKS for file system encryption. LUKS only protects data in a partition that has been encrypted when the system has been turned off.
Commands: cryptsetup

ZFS
Oracle Solaris ZFS supports full encryption of datasets during creation
Commands: zfs

Oracle Solaris Cryptographic Framework
The Cryptographic Framework provides a common store of algorithms and PKCS #11 libraries to handle cryptographic requirements.
Commands: cryptoadm, pktool

SMF & FMA
The Service Management Framework and Fault Management Architecture provide Oracle Solaris' self healing capability, monitoring the operating system for faults whether it's individual hardware components or system or application services, and silently works to isolate those faults or automatically restart services. State notifications have been added to Oracle Solaris 11 so administrators can send emails or SNMP traps for any important events they most are interested in.
Commands: svcadm, fmadm

Oracle Solaris Cluster is an additional offering that provides high levels of availability through clustering for enterprise applications and databases. Oracle Solaris Cluster is integrated with Oracle Solaris 11 features (ZFS, Zones, SMF, Network Virtualization) giving significant benefits in terms of detection and recovery from failure.

DTrace
The DTrace framework includes many providers that distribution thousands of probe points across the operating system. A list of providers cover different aspects of the system, the ability to observe individual processes, and a number of different networking protocols. Support for a number of runtimes (Java, Python, PHP, Ruby) is also provided.
Commands: dtrace

A large selection of other administrative tools provide monitoring capabilities, helping to aggregate and display much of the same information you can get from DTrace.
Network: flowstat, dlstat, netstat, acctadm, ipmpstat
Oracle Solaris Zones: zonestat
SMF Services: svcs
Fault Management: fmstat
I/O: iostat
File system: fsstat, stat
Kernel: kstate
CPU: mpstat, pgstat
VM: vmstat
Process: prstat, truss, ptree
Resource Management: poolstat
System Latency: latencytop
Power Management: powertop

Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, included with all Oracle Premier Support agreements, provides extensive monitoring at a greater scale including both Oracle Solaris and Linux systems.