About Oracle Solaris Zones in This Release

This section provides an overview of new features and changes made to Oracle Solaris Zones, including improvements made since the Oracle Solaris 10 release.

The default non-global zone in this release is solaris, described in this guide and in the solaris(5) man page.

Non-global zones running within a single global zone are supported on all architectures that the Oracle Solaris 11.1 release has defined as supported platforms.

To verify the Oracle Solaris release and the machine architecture, type:

#uname -r -m

The solaris zone uses the branded zones framework described in the brands(5) man page to run zones installed with the same software as is installed in the global zone. The system software must always be in sync with the global zone when using a solaris non-global zone. The system software packages within the zone are managed using the Image Packaging System (IPS). IPS is the packaging system on the Oracle Solaris 11 release, and solaris zones use this model.

Default ipkg zones created on the Oracle Solaris 11 Express release will be mapped to solaris zones. See About Converting ipkg Zones to solaris Zones.

Each non-global zone specified in the Automated Install (AI) manifest is installed and configured as part of a client installation. Non-global zones are installed and configured on the first reboot after the global zone is installed. When the system first boots, the zones self-assembly SMF service, svc:/system/zones-install:default, configures and installs each non-global zone defined in the global zone AI manifest. See Installing Oracle Solaris 11.1 Systems for more information. It is also possible to manually configure and install zones on an installed Oracle Solaris system.

For package updates, persistent proxies should be set in an image by using the --proxy option. If a persistent image proxy configuration is not used, http_proxy and https_proxy environment variables can be set.

Zones can be configured to be updated in parallel instead of serially. The parallel update provides a significant improvement in the time required to update all the zones on a system.

By default, zones are created with the exclusive-IP type. Through the anet resource, a VNIC is automatically included in the zone configuration if networking configuration is not specified. For more information, see Zone Network Interfaces.

A zone on shared storage has a zonecfg rootzpool resource. A zone is encapsulated into a dedicated zpool. Zones on shared storage access and manage shared storage resources for zones.

Two new properties used to specify IP over InfiniBand (IPoIB) data-links are available for the zonecfg anet resource. IPoIB is supported on both solaris and solaris10 brand zones.

The Reliable Datagram Sockets (RDS) IPC protocol is supported in both exclusive-IP and shared-IP non-global zones.

The fsstat utility has been extended to support zones. The fsstat utility provides per-zone and aggregate statistics.

solaris zones can be NFS servers, as described in Running an NFS Server in a Zone.

Trial-run, also called dry-run, zoneadm attach -n, provides zonecfg validation, but does not perform package contents validation.

All zoneadm options that take files as arguments require absolute paths.

Oracle Solaris 10 Zones provide an Oracle Solaris 10 environment on Oracle Solaris 11. You can migrate an Oracle Solaris 10 system or zone into a solaris10 zone on an Oracle Solaris 11 system.

The zonep2vchk tool identifies issues, including networking issues, that could affect the migration of an Oracle Solaris 11 system or an Oracle Solaris 10 system into a zone on a system running the Oracle Solaris 11 release. The zonep2vchk tool is executed on the source system before migration begins. The tool also outputs a zonecfg script for use on the target system. The script creates a zone that matches the source system's configuration. For more information, see Chapter 22, About Zone Migrations and the zonep2vchk Tool.

The following differences between solaris zones and native zones on the Oracle Solaris 10 release should be noted:

• The solaris brand is created on Oracle Solaris 11 systems instead of the native brand, which is the default on Oracle Solaris 10 systems.

• solaris zones are whole-root type only.

  The sparse root type of native zone available on Oracle Solaris 10 uses the SVR4 package management system, and IPS doesn't use this framework. A read-only root zone configuration that is similar to the sparse root type is available.

• Zones in this release have software management related functionality that is different from the Oracle Solaris 10 release in these areas:

  • IPS versus SVR4 packaging.

  • Install, detach, attach, and physical to virtual capability.

  • The non-global zone root is a ZFS dataset.

    A package installed in the global zone is no longer installed into all current and future zones. In general, the global zone's package contents no longer dictate each zone's package contents, for both IPS and SVR4 packaging.

• Non-global zones use boot environments. Zones are integrated with beadm, the user interface command for managing ZFS Boot Environments (BEs).

  The beadm command is supported inside zones for pkg update, just as in the global zone. The beadm command can delete any inactive zones BE associated with the zone. See the beadm(1M) man page.

• All enabled IPS package repositories must be accessible while installing a zone. See How to Install a Configured Zone for more information.

• Zone software is minimized to start. Any additional packages the zone requires must be added. See the solaris publisher for more information.

Zones can use Oracle Solaris 11.1 products and features such as the following:

• Oracle Solaris ZFS encryption

• Network virtualization and QoS

• CIFS and NFS

The following functions cannot be configured in a non-global zone:

• DHCP address assignment in a shared-IP zone

• ndmpd

• SMB server

• SSL proxy server

• ZFS pool administration through zpool commands