Wednesday 08 September 2010
OpenSolaris AMIs, the package update comment (which updates the kernel and ramdisk) is disabled because Amazon does not, for security reasons, allow for the operating system kernel to be messed with on the EC2 cloud. A few days after the release, the project put out a 32-bit AMI image for EC2, as you can see from the blog dedicated to EC2 and Sun software. In this AMI package, ZFS is the default root file system and as is the case in other OpenSolaris AMIs. ust as OpenSolaris 2009.06 was being readied at the end of May, the OpenSolaris project also announced a security-hardened 32-bit implementation of OpenSolaris 2008.11 (the November release from last year).
Sun has been working with the US National Security Agency and Defense Information Systems Agency, along with the Center for Internet Security, to lock down and benchmark the security of the commercial-grade Solaris 10 compiled version of Sun’s Unix, and Sun and the CIS have taken the settings developed with Uncle Sam’s spook and military IT departments and applied them to OpenSolaris 2008.11 to create the hardened implementation. In April, Sun put a 64-bit version of OpenSolaris 2008.11 out for EC2, and it seems likely that a 64-bit version of the more recent 2009.06 release is due any day now. The most recent addition to the AMI jukebox for OpenSolaris running on Amazon’s EC2 is an OpenESB v3 stack, all licensed under Sun’s Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).
Sun’s own third-generation, utility-style computing offering, called simply the Sun Cloud, was previewed back in March on the same day that the rumors of IBM’s attempted acquisition of Sun broke, leading to Oracle’s eventual takeover bid for Sun. That can change quickly, particularly if Oracle ponies up some cash and chases cloud computing in as serious a manner as it has application software and middleware.
