Tom Chen wrote:
> Thanks for everyone!
>
> I just tested my GLDV3 driver and VLAN support is automatic without any
> modification. Thanks!
>
> It looks like Clearview is for the ordinary, those legacy, GLDV2 drivers to
> support VLAN. But, is Clearview just an intermediate step towards GLDV3
> without some limitation? Will Clearview be replaced by GLDV3 eventually?
>
Clearview is for drivers that can't or won't update to GLDv3. Its a
band-aid, and it has limitations. Use of GLDv3 natively is strongly
encouraged, where possible. (One serious problem with GLDv3 is that it
isn't yet public, so unbundled NIC drivers cannot use it.)
> I recently ordered some SunFire servers and these servers run Solaris 10
> 10/06! I am wondering when OpenSolaris will be installed instead? If SUN will
> soon stop shipping Solaris 10 servers, then, there is no need to improve my
> GLDv2 driver. Otherwise, I might have to provide VLAN support for GLDV2
> driver running on Solaris 10.
>
There is no concrete, public plan to cease delivery of Solaris 10. I
would go ahead and improve your GLDv2 driver if you have a need to
support Solaris 10.
In any case, Sun probably won't start shipping an OpenSolaris-derived
installation by default on systems until Solaris 11. Since there is no
public plan (and I don't know of any private one, but that might mean
nothing more than my own ignorance) to release Solaris 11, I'd plan on
Solaris 10 shipping for the foreseeable future.
As an aside, a lot of us in engineering would *really* really like to
see a Solaris 11 plan put into place. Having to backport/backsupport
everything on Solaris 10 is a real drain on engineering resource. I
suspect the higher mucky-mucks believe that there is a lot of mindshare
in Solaris 10, and they'd rather continue to evolve Solaris 10
indefinitely rather than delivering a new release. Part of this is no
doubt due to the perception of a lot of customers that Solaris minor
releases require them to recertify their various applications, etc.
Whereas Solaris 10 updates are seen as less risky. There is a small bit
of truth in this, but its certainly not nearly as cut-n-dried as I think
a lot of outsiders believe. Especially since we try hard in Sun to
avoid breaking applications even on Solaris release boundaries. (C.f.
"ABI compatibility guarantee".) Those of you customers reading this
message, that can do something to educate decision makers so they fear
minor upgrades less will be doing a lot to help get us towards a real
Solaris 11 release. (And yes, you do want this. Because despite some
wishes to the contrary, some features will never be backported to
Solaris 10. A public GLDv3 is just one such example.)
-- Garrett
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