What's new in this update release

This release of BigFix® for Patch for Solaris contains an enhancement to an existing solution for retrieving the endpoint upgrade list.

Table 1. What's new
Feature or enhancement Description References
Fixlet content for Solaris 11.3 Solaris 11.3 patch updates are released through the Solaris Support Repository Update (SRU). Patching endpoints on Solaris 11 or later

Previous updates

You must subscribe to the Patches for Solaris 11 site to access the following additions to the product:

Table 2. Previous updates
Feature or enhancement Description References
Endpoint Upgrade List for Solaris 10

The Endpoint Upgrade List- Solaris 10 analysis is enhanced to retrieve Solaris 10 endpoints that require an operating system update by checking for the updates against the recent published Solaris OS release and the kernel patch update.

This analysis available from the Patches for Solaris site.

Retrieving the endpoint upgrade list
Mirror Management for Solaris 10

BigFix provides a task to help split root disk mirrors before patching and another task to resume disk mirroring when patch installation and the upgrade are verified.

The tasks are available on the Patching Support site.

Mirror management
Network File System (NFS) Support for Solaris 10

The Fixlets for Oracle Recommended Patch Clusters and Oracle Critical Patch Updates (CPUs) allow you to directly install patches from the NFS without copying them to the local system.

This feature is applicable to the patch clusters and CPUs that are on the Patches for Solaris site.

You can select the NFS that you want to use and run basic NFS configuration from the available tasks that are on the Patching Support site.

Network File System Support
Solaris Live Upgrade Support for Recommended Patch Clusters Oracle Recommended Patch Clusters can now be applied with Live Upgrade to facilitate easy failback when issues are encountered during patching. The patch clusters are available from the Patches for Solaris Live Upgrade site. Patching endpoints on Solaris 10 and earlier
Endpoint Upgrade List for Solaris 10 and 11

BigFix provides content to retrieve a listing of Solaris 10 and 11 endpoints that require an update.

The analysis that retrieves the endpoint upgrade list for Solaris 10 systems is available from the Patches for Solaris site. The corresponding task and analysis for Solaris 11 systems are on the Patches for Solaris 11 site.

Retrieving the endpoint upgrade list
Package List Results for Solaris 10 and 11

BigFix provides analyses to gather a listing of all currently installed packages on Solaris 10 and 11 endpoints. You can use the information to verify the level of the current installed patches against the latest installation. These analysis are available on the Patches for Solaris site and Patches for Solaris 11 site.

Retrieving installed package information
Package Installation Task for Solaris 11 BigFix provides the Install packages by using pkg task on the Patches for Solaris 11 site to allow you to install one or multiple packages on the endpoints. You can use this task also when you plan to upgrade the entire distribution to the latest SRU. Installing packages on Solaris 11
Fixlet content for Solaris 11.2 Solaris 11.2 patch updates are released through the Solaris Support Repository Update (SRU). Patching endpoints on Solaris 11 or later
Fixlet content for Solaris 11/11 and Solaris 11.1

The Solaris 11/11 and Solaris 11.1 patch updates are released through the Solaris Support Repository Update (SRU). These updates contain several fixes and are available from the Oracle Support Repository.

Solaris Image Packaging System Repository Management

Solaris Image Packaging System Repository Management dashboard for assigning local repositories to Solaris 11 endpoints.

Regularly updating the endpoints in your deployment is crucial to the success of your organization. Network restrictions often prevent you from getting the latest set of changes from the Oracle hosted repositories. Maintain your own local package repositories to try to limit this restriction. By using local repositories, you can control which updates the endpoints have access to.

You can have multiple local repositories in your environment. For example, you might have one local repository that is used to mirror the latest SRU changes from Oracle and another repository that contains only one particular SRU.

Solaris Image Packaging System Repository Management dashboard overview