Oracle Solaris Services

Solaris System Administration

The Solaris OS has a long history of innovation, and the Solaris  Administration includes servicing features such as

• PDOM, LDOM, Zones, and Containers, which provide application isolation and facilitate server consolidation
• ZFS, the file system that provides a new approach to managing your data with an easy administration interface
• The Fault Management Architecture, which automates fault detection and resolution
• The Service Management Facility (SMF), a unified model for services and service management on every Solaris system

Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), for troubleshooting OS and application problems on production systems in real-time.

• Remote server administration

  Natrinsic offers many levels of remote Administration for the corporate user. We offer secure link communication to your site and can utilize more advanced tools depending on your level of participation, like the Sun Management Console (SMC), Enterprise Manager with Ops Center or custom scripts designed specifically for the corporate need.

• Network management

  Natrinsic offers the ability to help you securely manage your network on the physical, virtual and protocol levels. Today’s network not only features physical wiring options like Layer 2, Layer 3 and VLANs, but all come with the complexity of the protocols that reside on top of those connections. Along with this is the need for all of these various parts to remain secure. We can provide your organization with that expertise.

• System troubleshooting & debugging

  Solaris offers an extensive list of tools for system troubleshooting and even a facility the Service Management Facility (introduced in Solaris 10) to help the System Administrator troubleshoot issues in the Solaris operating system. From truss, snoop, Dtrace to other system facilities Natrinsic can demonstrate an advanced knowledge of their use to aid in finding any issue which may be inhibiting a system.

• Disaster recovery

  Natrinsic can provide you the expertise to help incorporate your system(s) into your Business Continuity Plan (BCP) and help provide a plan for Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) with an emphasis on high availability and continuous operations.

• Security auditing & hardening

  Natrinsic has customized scripts made specifically for the Solaris Operating system to test for any vulnerabilities and harden the system in accordance with the corporate security standards. We also can provide guidance, having the further expertise in application knowledge, of how to do this in concert with the applications you run.

• Software Installation & configuration

  Natrinsic can help you to master system package installation, as well as third-party application installations, on your system. The system supplied facilities have changed relatively little for installing and maintaining packages on the Solaris-based operating system. However, there are many factors to consider with PDOMs, LDOMs, Zones and Containers one may have on their system, and we can help you to manage those effortlessly.

• Storage administration

  Natrinsic can provide you with one-stop to answer all your storage administrations needs, even on third-party storage, such as StorageTek, EMC, Fujitsu, Hitachi, NetApp, etc. We provide expertise in ZFS pool usage and administration, as well as, support for third party storage products, such as Veritas. We can help with network storage, using protocols like UDP, in the various incarnations of NFS, as they apply to your operating system version. We can help you with external libraries you may maintain for backup and recovery and large, robotic tape libraries.

• Python/Perl shell CGI system scripting

  Natrisic offers the ability to create, or maintain, custom system scripts to fit the corporate need for information about the system. We can assist in the migration of your scripts from one version of Solaris to another as well. We can help provide assistance from rc init (startup) scripts to metrics for system evaluation.

Solaris performance-tuning

• Network optimization

  Natrinsic can work with you to assist in the best flow of information on your network taking into account your external management devices, such as switches and their protocols (LCAP, for Instance), and the protocols such as TCP/IP, UDP, RDS, etc whether encapsulated in a VLAN (tagged or untagged) or Layer 2, and help determine the proper protocol and frame for optimal network usage.

• Solaris Virtualized Performance

  Natrinsic can assist you in mastering your PDOM, LDOM, Zone and Container management. Whether you are running Global Zones, Non Global Zones, Branded Zones or Sparse Zones we can provide the expertise to manage their use. We can help you to manage the LDOM Control Domain, Service Domain, I/O Domain, Root Domain and Guest Domain. With LDOMs we can assist with the seamless migration to lessen the demands on the system. If you have chosen to use Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) we can assist in making sure that the right roles fit within the LDOM. In the case of the SuperCluster we provide the expertise for the I/O Domain.

• Sun and Veritas Clustering

  Natrinsic offers installation, maintenance, and analysis of different clustering technologies. The Sun Clustering suite is germaine only to certain versions of the Solaris OS, but we can offer guidance in its usage, maintenance, and, if desired, migration. Many Solaris OS users may also employ the usage of Veritas storage and clustering products and we can bring our expertise to bear on their usage and maintenance.

Solaris system patching

Patching Solaris systems is not a task for the faint at heart! At Natrinsic, we follow Oracle best-practice for applying package updates:

• Pre-patch planning

  Natrinsic evaluates your platform, and the health, prior to contemplating the addition of any patching to your environment. We will work with to help correct any system issues that might be found. In addition, we will have a comprehensive checklist of events that will drive the patching process that will result. We work with you to minimize any outage (oftentimes we can reduce this to no outage of service) that may be required for patching. We believe that the more work we do initially the simpler the process of patching your system will be.

• Risk analysis

  Natrinsic will work with the customer to identify what risks there may be to not only the operating system, but to known third party software that may be running on the systems. Our Initial Patch Assessment (IPA) is made to find these issues and to deal with their probable outcomes prior to patching.

• Solaris upgrade patching

  Natrinsic offers the ability to patch any version of the Solaris OS on any Sun/Oracle based platform for which patches are still available. While we can not offer the patches to be used, we can provide the expertise to apply your patch appropriately. From our Initial Patch Assessment (IPA), through our comprehensive patching checklist, to the hands-on patching of the system we will guide you with expertise through the patching process.