Oracle Solaris 11 is the future of enterprise IT, that is now clear.

Still, we need to wait a year until it is officially released. What can we do now? Well, quite a lot, it turns out. Even if the preview version (due later this year) hasn't been relased yet, there are a lot of things you can do to prepare for the big OS upgrade.

Here's a list of 11 things you can do now to start enjoying the benefits of Solaris 11, get ahead of your system peers and be a part of the future of Solaris now!

My last post about Solaris 11 triggered an interesting discussion with UX-admin about IPS and the lack of pre-/post-scripts for installation/removal.

Assuming that Solaris 11 will be based on IPS just like OpenSolaris, it is certain that sysadmins will have to change a lot in how they create and manage packages, because IPS is fundamentally different from the good old System V packaging system.

So let's explore the lack of scripting hooks in IPS and see if we can find some ways of working around them:

Lots of speculation about Solaris and OpenSolaris is happening right now, with an allegedly leaked email being the latest generator of buzz, rumors and troll-ism.

But is that any useful? No.

So let's cut through the shiitake, do some due diligence and focus on some real facts instead.

In this article, we'll check out some real and authoritative sources of Solaris direction, mainly John Fowler's recent webcast about Solaris 11. Then we'll see what our future opportunities as members of the Solaris community are, and close with some pointers to other opinions on Solaris 11.

Ever since Oracle announced that they'll buy Sun, there has been a lot of discussion about the future (some would say "fate") of OpenSolaris in the "community".

In fact, the last 15 months have been very instructive in terms of how communities work, or how they don't.

Let's check out what a community is supposed to do, and what it is not supposed to do, in the light of the latest OpenSolaris announcement: Illumos.

Every year, on the last Friday of July, Sysadmin Day is celebrated around the world.

You know, the guy (or gal) that makes sure you always receive your emails on time, strips away the spam, cuddles your web server so you can write blog articles, or makes sure the network is always online, so you can read your favorite blogs. Or install new servers and storage so your web experience becomes faster and so your data is never lost.

Sysadmins often have a hard time: Noone calls them to tell them "Thank you for delivering all my emails!" or "Thanks for making sure my data is backed up every day!". Instead, they only get phonecalls when something goes wrong, or worse yet, some anonymous electronic complaint in some soulless ticketing system.

Therefore, this Friday, the 30th of July, 2010, think about your sysadmin, call her up and say something nice, or consider giving them a gift. Here are some geeky gift ideas for sysadmins to celebrate Sysadmin Day 2010, from low-budget to truely-devoted-appreciation pricing order.

After all, you really don't want your sysadmin to turn into a grumpy BOFH, do you?

When talking to customers, partners and colleagues about Oracle Solaris ZFS performance, one topic almost always seems to pop up: Synchronous writes and the ZIL.

In fact, most ZFS performance problems I see are related to synchronous writes, how they are handled by ZFS through the ZIL and how they impact IOPS load on the pool's disks.

Many people blame the ZIL for bad performance, and they even try to turn it off, but that's not good. Actually, the opposite is true: The ZIL is there to help you.

In this article, we'll learn what synchronous writes are, how they're processed by ZFS, what the ZIL is, how it works, how to measure ZIL activity and how to accelerate synchronous write performance, which is at the root of many, if not the majority of ZFS performance problems.

Darren from ProBlogger today posted his 7 Link Challenge. A fun idea in which he asks bloggers to share 7 links to posts, based on the 7 criteria he selected.

ProBlogger is a great website with lots of useful tips for bloggers. Even if you don't plan to make money with your blog, or if you don't think of yourself as a pro blogger, this site is still one of the best in terms of blogging advice.

I'm currently reading his book "ProBlogger" (affiliate link) and I can highly recommend it to anyone who is thinking more seriously about blogging.

Now, let's get started with the ProBlogger 7 Link Challenge for Constant Thinking: