Cloning Non-Global Zones With ZFS Zonepaths and Other ZFS Enhancements

This system resource enhancement is new in the Solaris Express 6/06 release.

The zoneadm clone command now automatically uses ZFS clone to clone a zone, when both the source and the target zonepaths reside on ZFS and are in the same pool.

The zoneadm clone command takes a ZFS snapshot of the source zonepath and sets up the target zonepath. The snapshot is named SUNWzoneX, where X is a unique ID which is used to distinguish between multiple snapshots. The destination zone's zonepath is used to name the ZFS clone. A software inventory is performed so that a snapshot used at a future time can be validated by the system.

Note that you can still specify that the ZFS zonepath be copied instead of ZFS cloned if desired.

To clone a source zone multiple times, a new parameter added to zoneadm command allows you to specify that an existing snapshot should be used. The system validates that the existing snapshot is usable on the target.

The zone installation process now has the capability to detect when a ZFS file system can be created for a zone. The process for uninstalling a zone can detect when a ZFS file system in a zone can be destroyed. These steps are then performed automatically by zoneadm.