Using Solaris Baselines

What Is a Baseline?

A Solaris baseline is a dated collection of patches, patch metadata, and tools. Sun releases Solaris baselines on a monthly basis. When you install the patches of a baseline on a host, that host is considered to be compliant with that baseline.

You can select a baseline from a list of dated baselines in the Components list. Each dated baseline contains these patch sets:

• Full - Includes all Solaris patches
• Recommended - Includes Solaris recommended patches and security patches
• Security - Includes only Solaris security patches

All baselines include patches for a specific time frame. However, the Full baseline often contains Solaris OS patches that are not included in the Recommended baseline. The Full baseline includes additional patches based on feedback from various customer support groups within Sun. These patches are not always included in the Recommended baseline.

To install the Recommended and Security baselines, you either need to deploy two jobs, or have a job that includes multiple tasks. This might result in multiple reboots, for example, if both tasks (baselines) include patches that have Single User mode requirements.

Sun's knowledge base that is, the hosted tier is updated with the details of the baselines. This is done after few days of the official release of baselines by Sun.

Why Use a Baseline?

Using Solaris baselines enables you to easily know the patch level of your hosts. For example, you install some test hosts with a particular baseline. Then, you test these hosts for a period of time to see whether the patches in this baseline are stable enough to be used on your production hosts. When the testing reveals that this baseline is stable, you can install the same baseline you tested on your production hosts.