How Zones Work

A non-global zone can be thought of as a box. One or more applications can run in this box without interacting with the rest of the system. Zones isolate software applications or services by using flexible, software-defined boundaries. Applications that are running in the same instance of the Oracle Solaris operating system can then be managed independently of one other. Thus, different versions of the same application can be run in different zones, to match the requirements of your configuration.

A process assigned to a zone can manipulate, monitor, and directly communicate with other processes that are assigned to the same zone. The process cannot perform these functions with processes that are assigned to other zones in the system or with processes that are not assigned to a zone. Processes that are assigned to different zones are only able to communicate through network APIs.

IP networking can be configured in two different ways, depending on whether the zone has its own exclusive IP instance or shares the IP layer configuration and state with the global zone. Exclusive-IP is the default type. For more information about IP types in zones, see Zone Network Interfaces. For configuration information, see How to Configure the Zone.

Every Oracle Solaris system contains a global zone. The global zone has a dual function. The global zone is both the default zone for the system and the zone used for system-wide administrative control. All processes run in the global zone if no non-global zones, referred to simply as zones, are created by the global administrator or a user with the Zone Security profile.

The global zone is the only zone from which a non-global zone can be configured, installed, managed, or uninstalled. Only the global zone is bootable from the system hardware. Administration of the system infrastructure, such as physical devices, routing in a shared-IP zone, or dynamic reconfiguration (DR), is only possible in the global zone. Appropriately privileged processes running in the global zone can access objects associated with other zones.

Unprivileged processes in the global zone might be able to perform operations not allowed to privileged processes in a non-global zone. For example, users in the global zone can view information about every process in the system. If this capability presents a problem for your site, you can restrict access to the global zone.

Each zone, including the global zone, is assigned a zone name. The global zone always has the name global. Each zone is also given a unique numeric identifier, which is assigned by the system when the zone is booted. The global zone is always mapped to ID 0. Zone names and numeric IDs are discussed in Using the zonecfg Command.

Each zone also has a node name that is completely independent of the zone name. The node name is assigned by the administrator of the zone. For more information, see Non-Global Zone Node Name.

Each zone has a path to its root directory that is relative to the global zone's root directory. For more information, see Using the zonecfg Command.

The scheduling class for a non-global zone is set to the scheduling class for the system by default. See Scheduling Class for a discussion of methods used to set the scheduling class in a zone.

Summary of Zones by Function

The following table summarizes the characteristics of global and non-global zones.

How Non-Global Zones Are Administered

A global administrator has superuser privileges or equivalent administrative rights. When logged in to the global zone, the global administrator can monitor and control the system as a whole.

A non-global zone can be administered by a zone administrator. The global administrator assigns the required authorizations to the zone administrator as described in admin Resource. The privileges of a zone administrator are confined to a specific non-global zone.

How Non-Global Zones Are Created

You can specify the configuration and installation of non-global zones as part of an Automated Install (AI) client installation. See Installing Oracle Solaris 11.1 Systems for more information.

To create a zone on an Oracle Solaris system, the global administrator uses the zonecfg command to configure a zone by specifying various parameters for the zone's virtual platform and application environment. The zone is then installed by the global administrator, who uses the zone administration command zoneadm to install software at the package level into the file system hierarchy established for the zone. The zoneadm command is used to boot the zone. The global administrator or authorized user can then log in to the installed zone by using the zlogin command. If role-based access control (RBAC) is in use, the zone administrator must have the authorization solaris.zone.manage/zonename.

For information about zone configuration, see Chapter 16, Non-Global Zone Configuration (Overview). For information about zone installation, see Chapter 18, About Installing, Shutting Down, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Overview). For information about zone login, see Chapter 20, Non-Global Zone Login (Overview).

Non-Global Zone State Model

A non-global zone can be in one of the following seven states:

Configured

The zone's configuration is complete and committed to stable storage. However, those elements of the zone's application environment that must be specified after initial boot are not yet present.

Incomplete

During an install or uninstall operation, zoneadm sets the state of the target zone to incomplete. Upon successful completion of the operation, the state is set to the correct state.

A damaged installed zone can be marked incomplete by using the mark subcommand of zoneadm. Zones in the incomplete state are shown in the output of zoneadm list -iv.

Unavailable

Indicates that the zone has been installed, but cannot be verified, made ready, booted, attached, or moved. A zone enters the unavailable state at the following times:

• When the zone's storage is unavailable and svc:/system/zones:default begins, such as during system boot

• When the zone's storage is unavailable

• When archive-based installations fail after successful archive extraction

• When the zone's software is incompatible with the global zone's software, such as after an improper -F (force) attach

Installed

The zone's configuration is instantiated on the system. The zoneadm command is used to verify that the configuration can be successfully used on the designated Oracle Solaris system. Packages are installed under the zone's root path. In this state, the zone has no associated virtual platform.

Ready

The virtual platform for the zone is established. The kernel creates the zsched process, network interfaces are set up and made available to the zone, file systems are mounted, and devices are configured. A unique zone ID is assigned by the system. At this stage, no processes associated with the zone have been started.

Running

User processes associated with the zone application environment are running. The zone enters the running state as soon as the first user process associated with the application environment (init) is created.

Shutting down and Down

These states are transitional states that are visible while the zone is being halted. However, a zone that is unable to shut down for any reason will stop in one of these states.

Chapter 19, Installing, Booting, Shutting Down, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Tasks) and the zoneadm(1M) man page describe how to use the zoneadm command to initiate transitions between these states.

Table 15-1 Commands That Affect Zone State

Non-Global Zone Characteristics

A zone provides isolation at almost any level of granularity you require. A zone does not need a dedicated CPU, a physical device, or a portion of physical memory. These resources can either be multiplexed across a number of zones running within a single domain or system, or allocated on a per-zone basis using the resource management features available in the operating system.

Each zone can provide a customized set of services. To enforce basic process isolation, a process can see or signal only those processes that exist in the same zone. Basic communication between zones is accomplished by giving each zone IP network connectivity. An application running in one zone cannot observe the network traffic of another zone. This isolation is maintained even though the respective streams of packets travel through the same physical interface.

Each zone is given a portion of the file system hierarchy. Because each zone is confined to its subtree of the file system hierarchy, a workload running in a particular zone cannot access the on-disk data of another workload running in a different zone.

Files used by naming services reside within a zone's own root file system view. Thus, naming services in different zones are isolated from one other and the services can be configured differently.

Using Resource Management Features With Non-Global Zones

If you use resource management features, you should align the boundaries of the resource management controls with those of the zones. This alignment creates a more complete model of a virtual machine, where namespace access, security isolation, and resource usage are all controlled.

Any special requirements for using the various resource management features with zones are addressed in the individual chapters of this manual that document those features.

Zones-Related SMF Services

Zones-related SMF services in the global zone include the following:

svc:/system/zones:default

Starts each zone that has autoboot=true.

svc:/system/zones-install:default

Performs zone installation on first boot, if needed.

svc:/application/pkg/zones-proxyd:default

Used by the packaging system to provide zones access to the system repository.

svc:/application/pkg/system-repository:default

Caching proxy server that caches pkg data and metadata used during zone installation and other pkg operations. See the pkg(1) and pkg(5) man pages.

svc:/system/zones-monitoring:default

Controls zonestatd.

The svc:/application/pkg/zones-proxy-client:default zones proxy client SMF service runs only in the non-global zone. The service is used by the packaging system to provide zones access to the system repository.

Monitoring Non-Global Zones

To report on the CPU, memory, and resource control utilization of the currently running zones, see Using the zonestat Utility in a Non-Global Zone. The zonestat utility also reports on network bandwidth utilization in exclusive-IP zones. An exclusive-IP zone has its own IP-related state and one or more dedicated data-links.

The fsstat utility can be used to report file operations statistics for non-global zones. See the fsstat(1M) man page and Monitoring Non-Global Zones Using the fsstat Utility.