The latest version of the Solaris 10 operating system (10/09, also referred to as Update 8 ) is now available for download as an importable VirtualBox OVF appliance image. We are making this available as a way to quickly download and get started working with Solaris 10 in your VirtualBox 3.x environment on your x86/X64 machine.
The image is smaller than downloading the complete DVD Media Kit iso image. This appliance image is just under 1.5Gb. It also starts up and imports much quicker than doing a normal DVD install.
The image is taken from a default installation of Solaris 10 10/09. Before the image was exported to OVF format, the sys-unconfig command was ran on the image. When you import this image and start it up for the first time, you will be prompted to select several parameters for your installation (keyboard layout, networking, root password, time zone, etc.).
This is the first time that Sun has made a Solaris 10 appliance images available, and hopefully this will benefit our customers. Let me know if you have any feedback on this effort for future improvements. One option we had considered was to provide a minimum installed version of Solaris 10 (no windowing and GUI). This was much smaller at just over 300Mb in size, but it may not be very useful to the average user.
Bruce,
Can I suggest a link to the OVF (with disclaimers) on the Solaris 10 downloads page, or at least some acknowledgement of its existence. I’d hate to see this initiative flounder just because of the archaic problem of lack of visibility. Maybe it needs Google bombing …
This is a great development, much requested in the past, glad its finally been actioned …
Now, if you could only manage to make it easily discoverable for browsers
Craig
By: Craig Morgan on December 15, 2009
at 12:48 am
Craig,
It is being worked to get the marketing page for the S10 download to include a link to the OVF image. BigAdmin has plans to promote this image.
Bruce
By: Bruce Hill on December 15, 2009
at 9:15 am
Excellent, thats great news
Thanks Bruce!
Craig
By: Craig Morgan on December 15, 2009
at 10:14 am