CoolThreads Tuning Tool

CoolTuner no longer necessary!

It's been a while since the last CoolTuner release. There's a good reason - we haven't needed one. CoolTuner is no longer required!

CoolTuner was originally created to simplify the process of tuning UltraSPARC-T1 and -T2 platforms for optimal performance and stability. But successive releases of Solaris 10 gradually incorporated more of the required changes, to the point that all of the recommendations implemented by CoolTuner were provided by Solaris automatically.

So what version of Solaris 10 do you need to be sure you have all the recommended changes? If you are running Solaris 10 8/07 (Update 4) or later, you don't need to install CoolTuner.

UPDATE October 09: There is one exception: if you are running an UltraSPARC T2 or T2plus system (i.e. Sun SPARC Enterprise T5120, T5220, T5240, or T5440) and using 10Gigabit Ethernet, you should continue to use CoolTuner until you upgrade to Solaris 10 10/09 (Update 8) or later. This is necessary because the default value for ip:ip_soft_rings_cnt did not get changed until Solaris 10 Update 8.

To find out which release of Solaris 10 is installed on your system, run the "cat /etc/release" command:

# cat /etc/release
                       Solaris 10 8/07 s10s_u4wos_12b SPARC
           Copyright 2007 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All Rights Reserved.
                        Use is subject to license terms.
                            Assembled 16 August 2007
#

The "u4" in s10s_u4wos above shows that this is the Update 4 release.

At the time CoolTuner was released, a long-term objective was to see it become redundant. So it's satisfying to see that particular milestone reached!

Posted at 01:33AM Jul 02, 2009 by allanp in Sun  |  Comments[0]