Zones Basics

A zone environment includes a global zone and one or more non-global zones. When Solaris 10 is first installed on a system there is only one global zone. An administrator can create other non-global zones as children of the global zone. Each zone appears as an independent system running Solaris. Each zone has its own IP address, own system configuration, own instances of running applications, and its own area on the file system.

The global zone contains resources that can be shared among non global zones; this allows the centralization of certain administrative functions. For example, packages installed in the global zone are available (propagated) to all existing non-global zones. This enables you to centralize life-cycle management like installation, upgrade, and uninstallation. At the same time, the isolation provided by non-global zones results in greater security and allows you to have differently configured instances or different versions of the same application running on the same machine.

Non-global zones are either whole root zones or sparse root zones: which of these you choose as an environment for an application depends on how you want to balance administrative control with resource optimization.

• Whole root zones contain a read/write copy of the file system on the global zone. Packages installed in the global zone are automatically copied (with their registry information) to the whole root zones. This maximizes administrative control, at the expense of resources.

• Sparse root zones contain a read/write copy of a portion of the file system on the global zone; other file systems are mounted as read-only file systems. Packages installed in the global zone are available to sparse root zones by means of read-only file systems and through the automatic synchronization of registry information. Sparse root zones optimize resource sharing at the cost of centralized administration.