I don't normally just post about something that someone else did. That is what RSS aggregators and search engines are for. Occasionally something comes across an email discussion list that you just have to pass along. This is one of those times.

Roman Strobl, Martin Man and and Lubos Kocman (leaders of the Czech OpenSolaris User Group) put together a very nice OpenSolaris training day and have posted all of the materials from the event. This is an excellent OpenSolaris overview and tutorial - nicely paced and a good amount of content.

Thanks to Roman, Lubos and Martin for making this available.

A big thanks to all who attended the Solaris Boot Camps in Juneau, Fairbanks, Portland and Salem. I hope that you found the information useful. And thanks for all of the good questions and discussion.

Here are the materials that were used during the bootcamp.

• Solaris Overview
• Just the Live Upgrade slides from the Overview
• What's New in Solaris 10 10/08
• Solaris Service Management (SMF)
• Solaris Containers
• ZFS

Please send me email if you have any questions or want to follow up on any of the discussions.

Thanks again for your attendance and continued support for Solaris.

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Bootcamp ZFS Zones SMF

I've had a great time traveling around the country talking about Solaris. It's not exactly a difficult thing - there's plenty to talk about. Many of you have asked for copies of the latest Solaris update, virtualization overview and ZFS deep dive. Rather than have you dig through a bunch of old blog entries about bootcamps from 2005, here they are for your convenience.

• What's New in Solaris 10 11/06 - Overview with examples
• ZFS Deep Dive with examples
• Virtualizing Solaris - An overview of virtualization technologies with some recommendations

I hope this will save you some digging though http://mediacast.sun.com and tons of old blogs.

In a few weeks I'll post a new "What's New in Solaris" which will have some really cool things. But we'll save that for later.

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Zones VMware Virtualization ZFS

Wow - we had a great turnout for the Solaris 10 Boot Camp at UTD. A big thanks to the staff at UTD for being excellent hosts and helping with all the logistics (like the last minute request for a wireless microphone because the room was that big).

And a big thanks to everyone that attended. We had nearly 300 people register, and our walk-ins offset the no-shows, so we had a good 250 or better for most of the day.




Attendence was so good that I couldn't get it all in one picture.

As promised, the materials are now available for download.

Solaris 10 Overview and Update
DTrace Overview
Solaris Containers
Predictive Self-Healing
ZFS

Thanks again for spending the day with us. I hope you found the information interesting and useful. Please let me know if you have any questions and I look forward to seeing you at an upcoming Deep Dive or Breakfest Briefing. And please send us a comment or two to let us know that you were there!

I have been thinking about a useful way to organize the Boot Camp materials so that attendees can easily find them, or at the very least a pointer to the speaker(s). So let's give this a try - and please let me know if this is useful or a waste of time.

<

Date	Location	Event Type	Speaker(s)	Materials Available
June 13, 2006 June 14, 2006	Chicago, Il	Breakfast Briefing ZFS	Linda Kateley	Coming Soon
June 9, 2006	Orlando, Fl	Boot Camp	Bob Netherton	Solaris 10 Overview and Update DTrace Overview Solaris Containers Predictive Self-Healing ZFS
June 6, 2006	Tampa, Fl	Boot Camp	Bob Netherton	Solaris 10 Overview and Update DTrace Overview Solaris Containers Predictive Self-Healing ZFS
May 18, 2006	Sacramento, Ca	Boot Camp	Kimberly Chang	Coming Soon
May 17, 2006 May 16, 2006	Chicago, Il	Breakfast Briefing Service Management (SMF)	Christine Tran	SMF_DeepDive.pdf
April 11, 2006 April 12, 2006	Chicago, Il	Breakfast Briefing Solaris 10 Security	Serge Nadon	Solaris 10 Security
March 29, 2006	Troy, NY	Boot Camp	Jeff Victor	Coming Soon
March 28, 2006	Austin, Tx	Boot Camp	Linda Kateley	Coming Soon
March 23, 2006	Ann Arbor, Mi	Boot Camp	Linda Kateley	Coming soon
March 23, 2006	St. Louis, Mo	Deep Dive	Bob Netherton	Coming Soon
March 21, 2006	Kansas City, Ks	Boot Camp	Bob Netherton	Solaris 10 Overview and Update DTrace Overview Solaris Containers Predictive Self-Healing ZFS
March 8, 2006 March 7, 2006	Chicago, Il	Breakfast Briefing DTrace	Jim Fiori	Coming Soon
February 22, 2006	Boise, Id	Boot Camp	Kimberly Chang Serge Nadon	Solaris 10 OS Strategy and Overview Container Overview & Demo DTrace Overview & Demo ZFS Overview & Demo Predictive Self Healing and Solaris 10 Security
February 8, 2006 February 7, 2006	Chicago, Il	Breakfast Briefing More about Zones	Linda Kateley	zanyzones.pdf
February 8, 2006	Des Moines, Ia	Boot Camp	TBD	Coming Soon
January 31, 2006	Dallas, Tx	Boot Camp	Bob Netherton	Solaris 10 Overview and Update DTrace Overview Solaris Containers Predictive Self-Healing ZFS
January 18, 2006	Chicago, Il	Boot Camp	Linda Kateley	Boot Camp Jan06
January 7, 2006	Chicago, Il	Breakfast Briefing	Linda Kateley	Boot Camp Jan06
January 6, 2006	Itasca, Il	Breakfast Briefing	Linda Kateley	Boot Camp Jan06
December 8, 2005	Philadelphia, Pa	Boot Camp	Joe Trout Jeff Savit	Yes, contact speakers
November 21, 2005	Knoxville, Tn	Boot Camp	Bob Netherton	Solaris 10 Overview and Update DTrace Overview Solaris Containers Predictive Self-Healing Process Rights and ZFS
November 17, 2005	Durham, NC	Boot Camp	Jim Mauro	Yes, contact speaker
November 17, 2005	Raleigh, NC	Boot Camp	Jim Mauro	Yes, contact speaker
November 16, 2005	Chapel Hill, NC	Boot Camp	Jim Mauro	Yes, contact speaker
November 15, 2005	Charlotte, NC	Boot Camp	Jim Mauro	Yes, contact speaker
November 9, 2005	Portland, Or	Boot Camp	Kimberly Chang Serge Nadon	Solaris 10 OS Strategy and Overview Container Overview & Demo DTrace Overview & Demo ZFS Overview & Demo Predictive Self Healing and Solaris 10 Security
November 9, 2005	St. Louis, Mo	Boot Camp	Bob Netherton	Solaris 10 Overview and Update DTrace Overview Solaris Containers Predictive Self-Healing Process Rights and ZFS
September 28, 2005	San Diego, Ca	Boot Camp	Bob Netherton Kimberly Chang	Solaris 10 Overview and Update DTrace Overview Solaris Containers Predictive Self-Healing Process Rights and ZFS
September 8, 2005	Santa Clara, Ca	Deep Dive	Linda Kateley Benoit Chaffanjon Bob Netherton	Solaris Overview (updated) and Containers Solaris Performance Migrating a Legacy RC Service DTrace Overview and Use Cases

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp Workshop

As Eric Boutilier points out in a recent posting, the Solaris 10 Boot Camp series has been very popular indeed. We've received lots of positive feed back and I know that all of the presenters are working hard to keep the materials fresh and up to date. We are also planning on revisiting several cities with Deep Dives over the next few months.

There doesn't seem to be a single convenient place to find all of the Boot Camps and Deep Dives, so I'll try to collect information about them as I see requests for speakers.

Date	Location	Event Type	Speaker(s)	Registration Information	Materials Available
Nov 2, 2006	Houston, Tx Rice University McMurtry Auditorium in Duncan Hall 6100 Main Houston, TX 77005 Map and driving directions	Solaris Deep Dive	Bob Netherton Wences Michel	suneventreg.com, #1195	Coming Soon
Nov 30, 2006	Kansas City, Ks	Solaris Deep Dive	TBD	Coming Soon	Coming Soon

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp Workshop

As Eric Boutilier points out in a recent posting, the Solaris 10 Boot Camp series has been very popular indeed. We've received lots of positive feed back and I know that all of the presenters are working hard to keep the materials fresh and up to date. We are also planning on revisiting several cities with Deep Dives over the next few months.

There doesn't seem to be a single convenient place to find all of the Boot Camps and Deep Dives, so I'll try to collect information about them as I see requests for speakers.

Date	Location	Event Type	Speaker(s)	Registration Information	Materials Available
January 18, 2006	Chicago, Il La Salle and Adams 40th Floor	Boot Camp	Unknown	www.suneventreg.com, #748	Unknown
January 31, 2006	Dallas, Tx University of Texas at Dallas Galaxy Room, Rm. # SU2.602 Student Union 2601 North Floyd Rd. Richardson, TX 75080	Boot Camp	Bob Netherton	www.suneventreg.com, #652	Yes
February 8, 2006	Des Moines, Ia Drake University Olmsted Center Room: Parents Hall North 2507 University Ave. Des Moines, IA 50311 (515) 271-3987- Office	Boot Camp	TBD	www.suneventreg.com, #768	Yes

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp Workshop

Last fall we discussed the differences between a Boot Camp, a Deep Dive (aka Boot Camp II), and a Workshop. Since then we have delivered many of these sessions all over the US. And most of the Boot Camp and Deep Dive materials have been posted, although not always easy to find (I'll work on that over the coming weeks). When looking at Mediacast the other day I noticed that Linda Kateley has posted an update to her excellent Boot Camp materials

But what about the workshops ?

Well, let's correct that. This quarter I will start a new series called Teach Yourself Solaris in a Day. This is to supplement already existing web based and instructor led classroom training. That training is put together and delivered by professional educators and is quite good. These new In a Day workshops, like the Boot Camps, will go beyond the "what" of some of this new technology and try to explore some of the "why" (and often times suggest a "where" it might be useful or "where" you might want to look for future developments).

With that behind us, let's do the first two. Teach Yourself Service Management is a self-directed workshop for the Solaris Service Management Facility (SMF). It includes the motivation for SMF, core concepts, the new boot process, troubleshooting, and migration of a legacy RC service. There are labs (with answers) for those that want to practice as they go along. I have to thank Linda Kateley and all of the customers who have attended this workshop for their contributions.

Teach Yourself DTrace is a self-directed workshop for the Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace). This workshop covers the motivation for DTrace, core concepts, examples of the various providers, and some use cases. These materials are based on work done by Jay Danielsen, Andrew Deally, Tom Gendron and Jim Fiori and I thank them for their contributions. This workshop is still under development, but has been posted for your convenience (updates will follow).

What's next ?

How about Solaris Containers, including resource management as well as Branded Zones, ZFS, Rights Management ?

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp Workshop SMF DTrace

Thanks to the folks at the University of Tennesee and Washington University in St. Louis for hosting our recent Solaris 10 Boot Camps. The facilities were great and support couldn't have been better. And thanks to Bonnie and Joe for all the support, we couldn't do these without lots of local help.

We had a great turnout for both events, so I want to thank all of the attendees for their time and thoughtful questions. You can find the materials for each of the sections back in the San Diego Boot Camp blog entry. Now that ZFS has been released to OpenSolaris I will even post my ZFS section.

If you have any questions, send me email or post a comment below (and I do keep an eye out for comments). And if you just attended and just want to say hello, I'd like to hear from you too.

If you want to get an idea of what the Deep Dive contents are like, the materials are available here.

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp Workshop

I would like to thank everyone that attended the Sun/VMware consolidation seminar in St. Louis and Kansas City. I would also like to thank Elizabeth Schaedler for helping create the content and delivering it at the Denver event in November.

I learned some things about VMware and I hope that my friends from VMware learned a bit more about Sun.

A few of you have asked for a copy of the presentation. You can find a copy here, or if you prefer you can browse our entire public collection at http://mediacast.sun.com

Thanks again for coming to our event.

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris VMware

We are always looking for ways to improve the content that is included in the Solaris Boot Camp and Deep Dive sessions. From recent survey comments there are a couple of areas that I think we can do a little better. So if you have attended a session or are planning on attending I would like to hear from you.

You can review Boot Camps and Deep Dives for a quick overview of the content and approach for each of these events. With this in mind, a few questions

Idea 1: More time for Q & A and breaks

The typical agenda is four hours of content delivered over 5 hours, which leaves little room for discussions and breaks. So my questions are

• Should we reduce the content in each of these events ?
• If so should we eliminate a topic or cover each in less detail ?
• Alternatively, should we increase the time by an hour, perhaps a bit more so that we can cover the agenda materials properly ?

Idea 2: More examples and demonstrations

Somewhat related to the timeframe question, including more examples may increase the time required for each topic. In some respects the sessions have been developed as concepts (Boot Camp) and practical application (Deep Dive) with this in mind.

• Do you want to trade off some of the DTrace concepts in order to see it in action ?

Idea 3: Topics not adequately covered

Solaris 10 is a vast product with many big ideas. The most obvious of these major features are DTrace, Zones (a component of Containers), Predictive Self-Healing, Role Based Access Control and Least Privilege, and the new file system ZFS.

• Are there any major topics that seem interesting to you that we haven't adequately covered in either the Boot Camp or Deep Dive ?

Your comments will very valuable as we continue to refine the content for these events. Feel free to send email or post a comment below.

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp Workshop

On September 27 and 28, Kimberly Chang and I participated in a Solaris Boot Camp in Los Angeles and San Diego. These were both pretty full days and we appreciated the time that everyone invested in these events, particularly the questions and discussions during the breaks. Hopefully you found the information presented useful.

As promised, here is are the materials from the Boot Camp.

Session	Topic
1	Operating System Strategy Solaris 10 Overview and Update
2	DTrace Overview and Demonstration
3	Solaris Containers
4	Predictive Self-Healing
5	Process Rights and ZFS

Note: I'm not completely satisfied with the Process Rights section, so I'll post it when I complete the last set of updates. I'm also waiting on a review of my ZFS material before I post it.

Thanks again for your attendance. We hope to see you at a Boot Camp II soon. Please post a comment or send us email if you have any questions.

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp

So what's the different between a Solaris Boot Camp, a Solaris Deep Dive (aka Boot Camp II), and a Solaris Workshop ? The question comes up frequently, so here is how I approach each of these different events.

A Solaris Boot Camp is a thorough overview of Solaris 10, much more complete than you might get in a typical customer briefing that is usually limited to 45 minutes or so.

A Boot Camp agenda might look something like

• Operating System Strategy and Update
• Dtrace Overview & Demo
• Solaris Containers Overview & Demo
• Predictive Self Healing (SMF & FMA)
• Role Based Access Control (RBAC) and Process Rights
• ZFS

Each of these topics is generally limited to 30 minutes, so the discussions lean towards concepts: from a practical perspective to be sure, but concepts nontheless. The idea is that this is a good way to be exposed to the vast technology set that we call Solaris. It also makes the Deep Dive (aka Boot Camp II) more interesting as we can dispense with the concepts, for the most part.

So that brings us to the Deep Dive. A typical agenda looks like

• Overview of Solaris 10
• Solaris 10 Performance Features
• Migration of a Legacy RC service to an SMF managed service
• Server Consolidation with Solaris Containers including Best Practices for Container Use
• Solaris Dynamic Tracing (DTrace) Overview
• DTrace Performance Scenarios (aka How to use Dtrace in the real world)

Each of these discussions are a bit longer, 45 minutes to as long as 90 minutes for the combined Dtrace overview and use cases. With the expanded time and the assumption that this follows a Boot Camp, we jump right into the details. For example, the Service Management Facility (SMF) module is a complete migration of a legacy service - which makes sense if you understand the concepts of SMF.

So what's this thing called a Workshop ? It builds on the Deep Dive and goes farther, potentially much farther. For each Deep Dive modules there is a corresponding one day Workshop session. These are highly interactive and best done in a hands-on lab environment where each participant has their own system. It does not replace instructor led training and it will not adequately prepare you for passing the Solaris Cerification exam, but the modules are designed to help customers understand how to take advantage of key Solaris technologies.

So now you know what to expect when a Solaris Boot Camp or Deep Dive comes to a city near you. We hope to see you at a future event.

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp Deep Dive Workshop

I had the great pleasure of delivering a Solaris Deep Dive with Linda Kateley and Benoit Chaffanjon. We had a great turnout at the Santa Clara campus. Lots of great questions and some interesting discussions during the breaks. A great big thank you to those of you that were in attendance - I hope that it was a good use of your time.

You can get the Migrating a Legacy RC service module here. This was the first time this information was presented in the Solaris Deep Dives, so thanks for being a test audience. Since this is new material, any feedback would be greatly appreciated.

The Dtrace Overview and Use Cases can be found here. Large portions, particularly the use cases, were derived from work by Jim Fiori and Tom Gendron.

Benoit has posted his Solaris Performance presentation here

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, please post a follow up comment or send me email.

Technocrati Tags: Sun Solaris Boot Camp Deep Dive SMF DTrace

I am one of the fortunate ambassadors that get to travel around the country delivering workshops and boot camps for various technologies, such as Solaris 10. If you have attended one of these sessions, or perhaps one by a colleague, I would like to say thank you for attending. I hope it was a good use of your time.

As you can imagine, the content developed for these workshops isn't the work of one or two individuals, but rather the collected efforts of a large technical community.

It would be impossible to credit everyone involved, so for the entire community I offer my most sincere appreciation.