If all you need is a minimal OpenSolaris installation where you can play with the operating system and familiarize yourself with the Image Packaging System (IPS), the Service Management Facility (SMF), the basics of ZFS, networking and anything else you feel up to, you will probably find the ~270MB OpenSolaris OVF image in this post useful. The creator of the appliance goes through the details of how the image was created, so you can create it yourself (just in case you do not trust OS images made by 3rd parties). Note, that if you use VirtualBox you will need version 2.2 or newer to import the appliance from “File->Import Appliance“. By the way, Virtualbox now supports automatic configuration of bridged networking. No more bridged network setup scripts! (hurrah!) Unfortunately, I didn’t have the necessary spare time to play with this appliance as much as I liked, but I can say for sure that it is much more convenient than having to load a full blown OpenSolaris installation in a virtualized environment.

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Tags: Virtualization