Requirements and Preparation for Installing the Solaris 10 Software

The first step in the installation is to determine whether your system type is supported under Solaris 10. Second, you need to decide which system configuration you want to install and whether you have enough disk space to support that configuration.

In preparation for installing Solaris 10 on a system, use Table 2.1 to check whether your system type is supported. Also, make sure you have enough disk space for Solaris and all of the packages you plan to install. (The section "Software Terminology" later in this chapter will help you estimate the amount of disk space required to hold the Solaris operating system.)

Table 2.1. Sun Platforms That Support the Solaris 10 Environment

System	Platform Name	Platform Group
Workstation Systems	Sun Blade 100	SUNW,Sun-Blade-100
	Sun Blade 150	SUNW,Sun-Blade-100
	Sun Blade 1000	SUNW,Sun-Blade-1000
	Sun Blade 1500	SUNW,Sun-Blade-1000
	Sun Blade 2000	SUNW,Sun-Blade-1000
	Sun Blade 2500	SUNW,Sun-Blade-1000
	Ultra 2	SUNW,Ultra-2
	Ultra 5	SUNW,Ultra-5_10
	Ultra 10	SUNW,Ultra-5_10
	Ultra 30	SUNW,Ultra-30
	Ultra 60	SUNW,Ultra-60
	Ultra 80	SUNW,Ultra-80
	Ultra 450	SUNW,Ultra-4
Entry/Workgroup Servers	Sun Fire V100	SUNW,UltraAX-i2
	Sun Fire V120	SUNW,UltraAX-i2
	Sun Fire V210	SUNW,Sun-Fire-V210
	Sun Fire V240	SUNW,Sun-Fire-V240
	Sun Fire V250	SUNW,Sun-Fire-V250
	Sun Fire 280R	SUNW,Sun-Fire-280R
	Sun Fire V440	SUNW,Sun-Fire-V440
	Sun Fire V480	SUNW,Sun-Fire-480
	Sun Fire V490	SUNW,Sun-Fire-490
	Sun Fire V880	SUNW,Sun-Fire-880
	Sun Fire V890	SUNW,Sun-Fire-890
	Sun Fire B100s	SUNW,Serverblade1
	Sun Fire B10n	SUNW,Serverblade1
	Sun Enterprise 2	SUNW,Ultra-2
	Sun Enterprise Ultra 5S	SUNW,Ultra-5_10
	Sun Enterprise Ultra 10S	SUNW,Ultra-5_10
	Sun Enterprise 250	SUNW,Ultra-250
	Sun Enterprise 450	SUNW,Ultra-4
	Sun Enterprise 220R	SUNW,Ultra-60
	Sun Enterprise 420R	SUNW,Ultra-80
Mid-Range and Mid-Frame Servers	Sun Fire V1280	SUNW,Netra-T12
	Sun Fire 3800	SUNW,Sun-Fire
	Sun Fire 4800	SUNW,Sun-Fire
	Sun Fire 4810	SUNW,Sun-Fire
	Sun Fire 6800	SUNW,Sun-Fire
	Sun Fire E2900	SUNW,Sun-Fire
	Sun Fire E4900	SUNW,Sun-Fire
	Sun Fire E6900	SUNW,Sun-Fire
	Sun Enterprise 3000	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
	Sun Enterprise 4000	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
	Sun Enterprise 5000	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
	Sun Enterprise 6000	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
	Sun Enterprise 3500	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
	Sun Enterprise 4500	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
	Sun Enterprise 5500	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
	Sun Enterprise 6500	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
High-End Servers	Sun Fire E20K	SUNW,Sun-Fire-Enterprise-20K
	Sun Fire E25K	SUNW,Sun-Fire-Enterprise-25K
	Sun Fire 12K	SUNW,Sun-Fire-12000
	Sun Fire 15K	SUNW,Sun-Fire-15000
	Sun Enterprise 10000	SUNW,Ultra-Enterprise
Netra Servers	Netra 20	SUNW,Netra-T4
	Netra 120	SUNW,UltraAX-i2
	Netra 240	SUNW,Netra-240
	Netra 440	SUNW,Netra-440
	Netra 1280	SUNW,Netra-T12
	Netra T1 AC200/DC200	SUNW,UltraAX-i2
	Netra X1	SUNW,UltraAX-i2
	Netra ct 400	SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIi-Netract
	Netra ct 800	SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIi-Netract
	Netra CT 820	SUNW,Netra-CP2300
	Netra CP2300	SUNW,Netra-CP2300
	Netra t1 100	SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIi-cEngine
	Netra t1 105	SUNW,UltraSPARC-IIi-cEngine
	Netra t 1120	SUNW,Ultra-60
	Netra t 1125	SUNW,Ultra-60
	Netra t 1400	SUNW,Ultra-80
	Netra t 1405	SUNW,Ultra-80

If your system is running a previous version of Solaris, you can determine your system type using the uname -m command. The system will respond with the platform group and the platform name for your system. Compare the system response to the Platform Group column in Table 2.1. For example, to check for Sun platforms that support the Solaris 10 environment, use the command uname -m. On a Sun Ultra5, the system returns sun4u as the platform name and on an x86/x64 system, the command will return i86pc as the platform name.

Table 2.1 outlines a general list of Sun systems that support Solaris 10. For a complete, up-to-date listing of all hardware that is compatible with the Solaris 10 OE, including all x86/x64-based systems, go to http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/hcl/. This site features a searchable database to quickly locate equipment in three categories: Sun Certified, Test Suite Certified, and Reported to Work. X86- and x64-based systems are available from many vendors, and the components can vary from system to system. Use this site to track down the specific components that are installed in your system to determine if it is compatible with Solaris 10. Overall, your x86/x64-based system needs to have a 120MHz or faster processor with hardware floating-point support required, a minimum of 128MB of RAM, and 12GB of disk space.

Check slice 2 by using the format command to determine whether your disk drive is large enough to hold Solaris. See Chapter 1, "Managing File Systems," for the correct use of this command. As described in Chapter 1, slice 2 represents the entire disk.

Minimum System Requirements

The computer must meet the following requirements before you can install Solaris 10 using the interactive installation method:

• The system must have a minimum of 128MB of RAM (256MB is recommended). Sufficient memory requirements are determined by several factors, including the number of active users and applications you plan to run.

  Exam Alert

  Minimum Memory Requirements Although Sun states that 128MB of RAM is the minimum required, it is possible to install Solaris 10 on a system that has 64MB of RAM. With less than 128MB, the system will run sluggishly. It's important that you use Sun's RAM recommendations when you encounter this question on the exam. Also, pay close attention to the question and understand the difference between "minimum" and "recommended."

  
  

• The media is distributed on CD-ROM and DVD only, so a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive is required either locally or on the network. You can use all of the Solaris installation methods to install the system from a networked CD-ROM or DVD-ROM.

• A minimum of 2GB of disk space is required. See the next section for disk space requirements for the specific Solaris software you plan to install. Also, remember to add disk space to support your environment's swap space requirements.

• When upgrading the operating system, you must have an empty 512MB slice on the disk. The swap slice is preferred, but you can use any slice that will not be used in the upgrade such as root (/), /usr, /var, and /opt.

• The system must be a SPARC-based or supported x86/x64-based system.