Solaris (operating System) - Version History

Version History

Notable features of Solaris currently include DTrace, Doors, Service Management Facility, Solaris Containers, Solaris Multiplexed I/O, Solaris Volume Manager, ZFS, and Solaris Trusted Extensions.

Updates to Solaris versions are periodically released, such as Solaris 10 10/09.

In ascending order, the following versions of Solaris have been released:

Colour Meaning
Red Release no longer supported
Green Release still supported
Blue Future release
Solaris version SunOS version Release date End of support Major new features
SPARC x86
1.x 4.1.x 1991–1994 - September 2003 SunOS 4 rebranded as Solaris 1 for marketing purposes. See SunOS article for more information.
2.0 5.0 June 1992 - January 1999 Preliminary release (primarily available to developers only), support for only the sun4c architecture. First appearance of NIS+.
2.1 5.1 December 1992 May 1993 April 1999 Support for sun4 and sun4m architectures added; first Solaris x86 release. First Solaris 2 release to support SMP.
2.2 5.2 May 1993 - May 1999 SPARC-only release. First to support sun4d architecture. First to support multithreading libraries (UI threads API in libthread).
2.3 5.3 November 1993 - June 2002 SPARC-only release. OpenWindows 3.3 switches from NeWS to Display PostScript and drops SunView support. Support added for autofs and CacheFS filesystems.
2.4 5.4 November 1994 September 2003 First unified SPARC/x86 release. Includes OSF/Motif runtime support.
2.5 5.5 November 1995 December 2003 First to support UltraSPARC and include CDE, NFSv3 and NFS/TCP. Dropped sun4 (VMEbus) support. POSIX.1c-1995 pthreads added. Doors added but undocumented.
2.5.1 5.5.1 May 1996 September 2005 Only release to support PowerPC platform; Ultra Enterprise support added; user and group IDs (uid_t, gid_t) expanded to 32 bits, also included processor sets and early resource management technologies.
2.6 5.6 July 1997 July 2006 Includes Kerberos 5, PAM, TrueType fonts, WebNFS, large file support, enhanced procfs. SPARCserver 600MP series support dropped.
7 5.7 November 1998 August 2008 The first 64-bit UltraSPARC release. Added native support for file system meta-data logging (UFS logging). Dropped MCA support on x86 platform. Sun dropped the prefix "2." in the Solaris version number, leaving "Solaris 7." Last update was Solaris 7 11/99.
8 5.8 February 2000 March 2012 Includes Multipath I/O, Solstice DiskSuite, IPMP, first support for IPv6 and IPsec (manual keying only), mdb modular debugger. Introduced Role-Based Access Control (RBAC); sun4c support removed. Last update is Solaris 8 2/04.
9 5.9 May 28, 2002 January 10, 2003 October 2014 iPlanet Directory Server, Resource Manager, extended file attributes, IKE IPsec keying, and Linux compatibility added; OpenWindows dropped, sun4d support removed. Most current update is Solaris 9 9/05 HW ("U9").
10 5.10 January 31, 2005 January 2018 Includes x86-64 (AMD64/Intel 64) support, DTrace (Dynamic Tracing), Solaris Containers, Service Management Facility (SMF) which replaces init.d scripts, NFSv4. Least privilege security model. Support for sun4m and UltraSPARC I processors removed. Support for EISA-based PCs removed. Adds Java Desktop System (based on GNOME) as default desktop.
  • Solaris 10 1/06 (known internally as "U1") added the GRUB bootloader for x86 systems, iSCSI Initiator support and fcinfo command-line tool.
  • Solaris 10 6/06 ("U2") added the ZFS filesystem.
  • Solaris 10 11/06 ("U3") added Solaris Trusted Extensions and Logical Domains.
  • Solaris 10 8/07 ("U4") added Samba Active Directory support, IP Instances (part of the OpenSolaris Network Virtualization and Resource Control project), iSCSI Target support and Solaris Containers for Linux Applications (based on branded zones), enhanced version of the Resource Capping Daemon (rcapd).
  • Solaris 10 5/08 ("U5") added CPU capping for Solaris Containers, performance improvements, SpeedStep support for Intel processors and PowerNow! support for AMD processors.
  • Solaris 10 10/08 ("U6") added boot from ZFS and can use ZFS as its root file system. Solaris 10 10/08 also includes virtualization enhancements including the ability for a Solaris Container to automatically update its environment when moved from one system to another, Logical Domains support for dynamically reconfigurable disk and network I/O, and paravirtualization support when Solaris 10 is used as a guest OS in Xen-based environments such as Sun xVM Server.
  • Solaris 10 5/09 ("U7") added performance and power management support for Intel Nehalem processors, container cloning using ZFS cloned file systems, and performance enhancements for ZFS on solid-state drives.
  • Solaris 10 10/09 ("U8") added user and group level ZFS quotas, ZFS cache devices and nss_ldap shadowAccount Support, improvements to patching performance.
  • Solaris 10 9/10 ("U9") added physical to zone migration, ZFS triple parity RAID-Z and Oracle Solaris Auto Registration.
  • Solaris 10 8/11 ("U10") added ZFS speedups and new features, Oracle Database optimization, faster reboot on SPARC system.
11 Express 2010.11 5.11 November 15, 2010 - Adds new packaging system (IPS — Image Packaging System) and associated tools, Solaris 10 Containers, network virtualization and QoS, virtual consoles, ZFS encryption and deduplication, fast reboot, updated GNOME. Removes Xsun, CDE.
11 5.11 November 9, 2011 November 2024 New features and enhancements (compared to Solaris 10) in software packaging, network virtualization, server virtualization, storage, security and hardware support:
  • Packaging: Image Packaging System, network and local package repositories; Automated Installer to automated provisioning, including Zones; Distro Constructor to create ISO 9660 filesystem images;
  • Network: network virtualization (vNICs, vSwitches, vRouters) and QoS, Exclusive–IP default for Zones, the dladm utility to manage data links, the ipadm utility to manage IP configuration (including IPMP), ProFTPD and enhancements;
  • Zones: Immutable (read–only) Zones, NFS servers in zones, delegated administration, P2V pre–flight check, the zonestat utility coupled with the libzonestat dynamically linked library;
  • Security: root as a role, netcat and enhancements;
  • Storage: ZFS shadow migration, ZFS backup/restore with NDMP, recursive ZFS send;
  • Hardware Support: SPARC T4, critical threads, SDP enabled and optimized, including support for Zones, SR-IOV, Intel AVX;
  • UltraSPARC II, III, IV series support removed; IA-32 architecture support removed.


A more comprehensive summary of some Solaris versions is also available. Solaris releases are also described in the Solaris 2 FAQ.

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