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Solaris zones enables a software partitioning of solaris 10 OS to support multiple independent, secure
OS environments to run in the same OS. Each environment has separate process space, resource
allocation and users. Zones are widely used in production environments as it is easy to setup and
doesnt require any special hardware like ldoms does.
Zone types
Global zone every installed OS acts like a global zone, which is present by default. All non-global
zones can only be intalled, configured and administered from global zone.
Non-global zone They share the functioning of the kernel booted under the global zone. All the
software and other resources are inherited from the global zone.
Whole Root zone (Big zone) It gets their own writable copy of all the file systems like /opt, /usr. It
takes more disk space.
Sparse root zone (Small zone) File systems like /opt, /usr are shared from global zone as loopback
file-system (you only have a read-only access to these directories in non-global zone). It takes very
less disk space.
Branded zones These are solaris 8 or solaris 9 zones on the solaris 10 global zones.
global# psrinfo -v
global# psrinfo -vp
After you have confirmed the CPUs you want to use, you can add a fixed no of CPUs to the zone.
zonecfg:zone01> add fs
zonecfg:zone01:fs> set dir=/data01
zonecfg:zone0101:fs> set special=/dev/dsk/c1t1d0s0
zonecfg:zone0101:fs> set raw=/dev/rdsk/c1t1d0s0
zonecfg:zone0101:fs> add options [logging, nosuid] (optional)
zonecfg:zone0101:fs> end
ZFS dataset
When we delegate a dataset to a non-global zone we can do any operation on that dataset inside of
the zone without requiring global zone to configure it all the time.
IP
We can either give an exclusive IP using a dedicated interface to a non-global zone or use an existing
interface in the global zone to share it with the non-global zone. When we configure an exclusive IP
we have to configure IP address inside of the non-global zone and not during the configuration.
a. Exclusive IP
b. Shared IP
In this case zone uses a shared interface which is already plumbed and being used in the global zone.
zonecfg:zone01> add net
zonecfg:zone01:net> set address=192.168.1.2
zonecfg:zone01:net> set physical=hme0
zonecfg:zone01:net> set defrouter=10.0.0.1 [optional]
zonecfg:zone01:net> end
Device
We can also directly assign a physical device like disk to a non-global disk.