Core files are just a process dump (image from physical memory) when the process terminates abnormally. These files are very important to find the root cause of process(application/DB) failure.  Normally , application/DB  need to send these core files to application vendor to fix this issue. Otherwise system administrator’s job will become hectic to perform the core file clean up all the time to prevent the root filesystem full.

Crash-dump is also similar to core-dump but instead of dumping for the process failure, it creates the memory dump for Operating system crash/failure. This crashdump file should be sent to Operating system vendor to find the root cause for the system crash.

bash-3.2# dumpadm
      Dump content: kernel pages
       Dump device: /dev/dsk/c0t1d0s1 (dedicated)
Savecore directory: /var/crash
  Savecore enabled: yes
   Save compressed: on

bash-3.2# coreadm
     global core file pattern:
     global core file content: default
       init core file pattern: core
       init core file content: default
            global core dumps: disabled
       per-process core dumps: enabled
      global setid core dumps: disabled
 per-process setid core dumps: disabled
     global core dump logging: disabled