Zones provide a new isolation primitive for the Solaris OS, which is secure,
flexible, scalable and lightweight: virtualized OS services which look like
different Solaris instances. Together with the existing Solaris Resource management framework, Solaris Zones forms the basis of Solaris Containers.
Describes why Sun engineers developed Solaris 8 Containers and how you can use Solaris 8 Containers to move your unmodified Solaris 8 Application and environment to a Container on Solaris 10.
Zones Parallel Patching: The zones parallel patching enhancement to the standard Solaris 10 patch utilities increases the patching tools performance on systems with multiple zones by allowing parallel patching of the non-global zones.
The maximum number of non-global zones to be patched in parallel is set in a new configuration file for patchadd, /etc/patch/pdo.conf. Revision 66 or later of this patch works for all Solaris 10 systems and higher level patch
automation tools such as Sun Ops Center.
For more information, see:
Comments in /etc/patch/pdo.conf for details on
setting num_proc
Starting with the Solaris 10 5/09 release, support has been added for using ZFS clones when cloning a zone. If the source and the target zonepaths reside on ZFS and both are in the same pool, a snapshot of the source zonepath is taken and zoneadm clone uses ZFS to clone the zone.
You can still specify that a ZFS zonepath be copied instead. If neither the source nor the target zonepath is on ZFS, or if one is on ZFS and the other is not on ZFS, the clone process uses the existing copy technique. In all cases, the system copies the data from a source zonepath to a target zonepath if using a ZFS clone is not possible.
A new -b option to zoneadm attach has also been added. Use this option to specify official or Interim Diagnostics Relief (IDR) patches to be backed out of a zone during the attach. This option applies only to zone brands that use SVr4 packaging.
For more information, see the zoneadm(1M) man page and the System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones, on docs.sun.com.
Solaris 10 Containers on OpenSolaris Demo Available
A new screencast demonstrates the configuration, installation, booting, and operation of a Solaris 10 Container on OpenSolaris.
Solaris 10 Containers are based on the lightweight Solaris Zones virtualization technology, and allow administrators to virtualize Solaris 10 OS environments on OpenSolaris without the use of a hypervisor. Solaris 10 Containers technology is currently under development: You can learn more about it and zones technology at the Zones community site on opensolaris.org.
OpenSolaris Zones Community
This community is the home base for the Zones community: Users, application developers, folks who want to contribute to the zones infrastructure itself, and those developing management solutions.
How to Move A Solaris Container
Instructs users, system administrators, and developers who have experience with Solaris 10 on proper use of new features which allow a Solaris 10 Container to be moved from one computer to another. Users are guided step-by-step through the process of moving a Container, with code examples and illustrations.
Consolidating Servers and Applications
Instructs users, system admins, and developers on how to consolidate applications onto a single server. Users are guided through the consolidation process, with code examples and illustrations.
Solaris Containers Learning Center(01/2008)
The Solaris Containers Learning Center provides links to Solaris Container resources, such as multimedia presentations and demos, how-to guides, and more.
Solaris Zones Examples(04/2007)
This page contains a few examples for the configuration of Solaris 10 Zones. Currently with a focus on Resource Controls. brendangregg.com.
OpenSolaris Zones Presentation (pdf)(11/2006)
Presentation on Zones and OpenSolaris given at ApacheCon US 2006. Authors: Narayana Janga and Shivani Khosa.
