System Administration Guide: Virtualization Using the Solaris Operating System

Host ID Emulation

When applications are migrated from a standalone Solaris system into a zone on a new system, the hostid changes to be the hostid of the new machine.

In some cases, applications depend on the original hostid, and it is not possible to update the application configuration. In these cases, the zone can be configured to use the hostid of the original system. This is done by setting a zonecfg property to specify the hostid, as described in How to Configure the Zone. The value used should be the output of the hostid command as run on the original system. To view the hostid in an installed zone, also use the hostid command.

For more information about host IDs, see hostid(1).