Solaris OS Structure

Solaris is a Unix based operating system that was developed by Sun Microsystems and after its acquisition by Oracle, it is known as Oracle Solaris. It is known for its scalability and its innovative features such as DTrace, ZFS, Time Slider etc. Solaris is a microkernel design and it is not possible to create a monolithic Solaris kernel.

A diagram demonstrating the structure of the Solaris operating system is as follows −

The different components in the Solaris operating system structure are −

Hardware

This includes the physical components of the computer system such as monitor, keyboard, data storage etc.

I/O Buffer

I/O devices are very important in the computer systems. They provide users with the means of interacting with the system. The I/O buffer handles the buffers for the I/O devices and makes sure that they work correctly.

Device Drivers

Most of the device drivers are part of the operating system such as keyboard and screen console drivers, floppy and hard-disk drivers, printer port driver, serial port driver etc.

Scheduler

The schedulers schedule the processes in such a way that the system resources are divided between the processes according to their need.

Process Management

This is responsible for managing the processes i.e assigning the processor to a process at a time. This is known as process scheduling. The different algorithms used for process scheduling are FCFS (First Come First Serve), SJF (Shortest Job First), Priority Scheduling, Round-Robin Scheduling etc.

Memory Management

Memory management deals with memory and the moving of processes from disk to primary memory for execution and back again.

File System

The different methods used by the operating system to keep track of the files on a disk constitutes the file system. It also includes the method in which the files are organized on the disk.

I/O Services

The I/O services provided by the Solaris operating system include the communication services between the computer system input and output devices and the outside world.

System API

The system application programming interface (API) contains software building tools, subroutine definitions as well as communication protocols that facilitate interaction between systems.

User Processes

The user processes are the applications run by the users in the Solaris operating system. These processes carry out the designated tasks in the operating system.

Some of the features of the Solaris Structure are −

• Solaris protects the user data by encrypting everything as required at any time.
• Solaris uses hardware-based encryption to secure the virtual machines and live migrations.
• It provides limited control to prevent credentials misuse. This is done by giving only necessary access.
• There is a limit to the system privileges that can be provided to employees, contractors etc.
• Solaris secures cloud deployments by locking the virtual machines and using compliance standards.