Introduction to Oracle Solaris 10 Zones

Introduction to Oracle Solaris 10 Zones

BrandZ provides the framework to create branded zones, which are used to run applications that cannot be run in an Oracle Solaris 11 environment. The brand described here is the solaris10 brand, Oracle Solaris 10 Zones. Workloads running within these solaris10 branded zones can take advantage of the enhancements made to the Oracle Solaris kernel and utilize some of the innovative technologies available only on the Oracle Solaris 11 release, such as virtual NICs (VNICs) and ZFS deduplication.

About the Solaris10 Brand

The solaris10 branded zone, described in the solaris10 (5) man page, is a complete runtime environment for Oracle Solaris 10 applications on SPARC and x86 machines running the Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 operating system or later released update. If you are running an Oracle Solaris 10 release earlier than Oracle Solaris 10 9/10, it is possible to use the earlier update release if you first install the kernel patch 142909-17 (SPARC) or 142910-17 (x86/x64), or later version, on the original system. You must install the patch before you create the archive that will be used to install the zone. It is the kernel patch of the release that is the prerequisite for migration to Oracle Solaris 10 Zones, not the full Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 or later release. The software download site for patches is My Oracle Support. Click on the "Patches & Updates" tab. On that site, you can view the download instructions and download the images. Contact your support provider for additional information regarding patches. The brand is supported on all sun4v, sun4u, and x86 architecture machines that the Oracle Solaris 11 release has defined as supported platforms. The brand supports the execution of 32-bit and 64-bit Oracle Solaris 10 applications.
The brand includes the tools required to install an Oracle Solaris 10 system image into a non-global zone. You cannot install a solaris10 brand zone directly from Oracle Solaris 10 media. A physical-to-virtual (P2V) capability is used to directly migrate an existing system into a non-global zone on a target system. The zonep2vchk tool is used to generate information needed for the P2V process and to output a zonecfg script for use on the target system. The script creates a zone that matches the source system's configuration. The /usr/sbin/zonep2vchk script can be copied from the Oracle Solaris 11 system.
The brand also supports the tools used to migrate an Oracle Solaris 10 native zone into a solaris10 brand non-global zone. The virtual-to-virtual (V2V) process for migrating an Oracle Solaris 10 native non-global zone into a solaris10 branded zone supports the same archive formats as P2V. See Chapter 31, (Optional) Migrating an Oracle Solaris 10 native Non-Global Zone Into an Oracle Solaris 10 Zone for more information.

Solaris10 Zone Support

The solaris10 branded zone supports the whole root non-global zone model. All of the required Oracle Solaris 10 software and any additional packages are installed into the private file systems of the zone.
The non-global zone must reside on its own ZFS dataset; only ZFS is supported. The ZFS dataset will be created automatically when the zone is installed or attached. If a ZFS dataset cannot be created, the zone will not install or attach. Note that the parent directory of the zone path must also be a ZFS dataset, or the file system creation will fail.
Any application or program that executes in a native Oracle Solaris 10 non-global zone should also work in a solaris10 branded zone.
Note that zones do not support statically linked binaries.