Installation guide

TABLE 2–1 Solaris 2.6 Features at a Glance (continued)
Feature Description
64-bit AIO The Solaris operating environment provides a new set of interfaces for developers who
want to do asynchronous I/O to large files. These interfaces are integrated with KAIO in
an implementation technique that optimizes I/O to raw files. They are automatically
selected by either the Solaris AIO interfaces or the new POSIX AIO interfaces. KAIO is the
optimized path for doing I/O to raw files. When using the interfaces with KAIO to raw
files, there is a significant performance improvement.
Network Security
NFS Kerberos Kerberos authentication uses DES encryption to improve security over the network. The
kernel implementations of NFS and RPC network services now support a new RPC
authentication flavor that is based on the Generalized Security Services API (GSS-API).
This support contains the hooks to add stronger security to the NFS environment.
RPCSEC_GSS The user-level RPC implementation supports a new authentication flavor. This flavor is
based on the GSS-API and provides the hooks to add stronger authentication, privacy, and
integrity for RPC-based services.
Authentication
Modules (PAM)
The PAM framework enables you to “plug in” new authentication technologies.
BIND Version
4.9.4-P1
Berkeley Internet Name Daemon (BIND), the most popular DNS implementation, has been
upgraded to 4.9.4-P1. It addresses many of the security problems found in earlier versions
of the implementation.
Network Management and System Administration
Network Time
Protocol (NTP)
Solaris software now supports NTP, which provides both precise time and/or network
clock synchronization for use in distributed computing environments. In the past, Solaris
customers could use a publicly available version of NTP. The new support provides
increased time precision.
Solstice
Enterprise Agents
Solstice Enterprise Agents (SEA) is based on the new extensible agent technology or
Master/subagent technology. SEA is for component developers and system and network
managers who want to develop custom Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) or
Desktop Management Interface (DMI) subagents to instrument different components,
subsystems, and applications within a device to enable management from an SNMP
management console.
DHCP Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) enables a host to get an Internet protocol
address and other system configuration parameters without preconfiguration by the
administrator.
NFS Client
Failover
Client failover provides a high level of availability of read-only file systems by enabling
the client to automatically mount the file system from another server if the first server
becomes unavailable.
2-8 Information Library for Solaris 2.6 (Intel Platform Edition) ♦ August 1997