Solaris 10 and "upgrade on attach"

The next update of Solaris 10, probably due this fall, will include support for the new option for the update on attach function for zones discussed earlier. All packages that where to be installed in a new zone can be updated at attach instead of the bare minimum to get a supported zone running. The option of doing this today is to include all zones in the initial upgrade, this can take a very long time with many zones, even with the recent enhancements to the packaging system in Solaris 10 10/09. Using this feature the global zone can first be upgraded and then the zones can be attached one after another, possibly moved from another global zone to minimize the downtime.

Read my previous posts regarding the other updates to update 9, or Solaris 10 9/10 which is the planned name and release for the update. In short, large ZFS update, JDK 1.6, iSER and Firefox/Thundebird updates.

Solaris 10 9/10 and second ZFS refresh
First hints of Solaris 10 update 9
Desktop update for Solaris 10 update 9