Preface

This book is part of a documentation set that provides a significant part of the Oracle Solaris operating system administration information. This book assumes that you have already installed the operating system and set up any networking software that you plan to use.

New features in this release are covered in About Oracle Solaris Zones in This Release.

About Oracle Solaris Zones

The Oracle Solaris Zones product is a complete runtime environment for applications. A zone provides a virtual mapping from the application to the platform resources. Zones allow application components to be isolated from one another even though the zones share a single instance of the Oracle Solaris operating system. The Oracle Solaris Resource Manager product components, commonly referred to as resource management features, permits you to allocate the quantity of resources that a workload receives.

The zone establishes boundaries for resource consumption, such as CPU. These boundaries can be expanded to adapt to changing processing requirements of the application running in the zone.

For additional isolation, zones with a read-only root, called Immutable Zones, can be configured.

About Oracle Solaris 10 Zones

Oracle Solaris 10 Zones, also known as solaris10 branded non-global zones, use BrandZ technology to run Oracle Solaris 10 applications on the Oracle Solaris 11 operating system. Applications run unmodified in the secure environment provided by the non-global zone. This enables you to use the Oracle Solaris 10 system to develop, test, and deploy applications. Workloads running within these branded zones can take advantage of the enhancements made to the kernel and utilize some of the innovative technologies available only on the Oracle Solaris 11 release.

To use this product, see Part III, Oracle Solaris 10 Zones.

About Using Oracle Solaris Zones on an Oracle Solaris Trusted Extensions System

For information about using zones on an Oracle Solaris Trusted Extensions system, see Chapter 13, Managing Zones in Trusted Extensions, in Trusted Extensions Configuration and Administration. Note that only the labeled brand can be booted on an Oracle Solaris Trusted Extensions system.

Oracle Solaris Cluster Zone Clusters

Zone clusters are a feature of Oracle Solaris Cluster software. All nodes of a zone cluster are configured as non-global solaris zones with the cluster attribute. No other brand type is permitted. You can run supported services on the zone cluster in the same way as on a global cluster, with the isolation that is provided by zones. For more information, see the Oracle Solaris Cluster System Administration Guide.

Oracle Solaris Resource Manager

Resource management enables you to control how applications use available system resources. See Part I, Oracle Solaris Resource Management.

Who Should Use This Book

This book is intended for anyone responsible for administering one or more systems that run the Oracle Solaris release. To use this book, you should have at least 1 to 2 years of UNIX system administration experience.

Access to Oracle Support

Oracle customers have access to electronic support through My Oracle Support. For information, visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=info or visit http://www.oracle.com/pls/topic/lookup?ctx=acc&id=trs if you are hearing impaired.

Typographic Conventions

The following table describes the typographic conventions that are used in this book.

Table P-1 Typographic Conventions

Shell Prompts in Command Examples

The following table shows the default UNIX system prompt and superuser prompt for shells that are included in the Oracle Solaris OS. Note that the default system prompt that is displayed in command examples varies, depending on the Oracle Solaris release.

Table P-2 Shell Prompts

Obtaining Information on Privileges and Administrative Rights

For more information about roles and administrative rights, see Part III, Roles, Rights Profiles, and Privileges, in Oracle Solaris 11.1 Administration: Security Services.