Managing Kernel Zone CPUs

By default, a kernel zone is given one virtual CPU upon creation. You can alter the number of virtual CPUs by adding and modifying the virtual-cpu resource.

Use the dedicated-cpu zonecfg resource property to dedicate a host CPU to the kernel zone.

Note that if you have already defined the dedicated-cpu zonecfg resource, the default number of virtual CPUs configured in the virtual platform matches the lower value of the ncpus range inside the dedicated-cpu zonecfg resource. If both resources exist, they are cross-checked for consistency. See the zonecfg(1M) man page for further information.

See Chapter 1, How to Plan and Configure Non-Global Zones, in Creating and Using Oracle Solaris Zones for general information on how to set the virtual-cpu and dedicated-cpu zone resources.

Example 1-1  Adding Additional Virtual CPUs to a Kernel Zone

This example shows how to add additional virtual CPUs to the kernel zone kzone1.

global# zonecfg -z kzone1
zonecfg:kzone1> info virtual-cpu
zonecfg:kzone1> add virtual-cpu
zonecfg:kzone1:virtual-cpu> set ncpus=8
zonecfg:kzone1:virtual-cpu> end
zonecfg:kzone1> info virtual-cpu
virtual-cpu:
        ncpus: 8
zonecfg:kzone1> exit

Example 1-2  Adding a Dedicated CPU to a Kernel Zone

This example shows how to add a dedicated CPU to the kernel zone kzone1.

global# zonecfg -z kzone1
zonecfg:kzone1> info dedicated-cpu
zonecfg:kzone1> add dedicated-cpu
zonecfg:kzone1:dedicated-cpu> set ncpus=8
zonecfg:kzone1:dedicated-cpu> end
zonecfg:kzone1> info dedicated-cpu
      ncpus: 8
zonecfg:kzone1> exit

zonecfg:kzone1> info dedicated-cpu
dedicated-cpu:
        ncpus: 8