A nested zone is a non-global zone that is installed and booted from within a kernel zone. In nested zones, the kernel zone serves as the global zone. A nested zone can be a new solaris branded zone or a migrated solaris or solaris10 branded zone. Kernel zones are not supported as a nested zone.
Nested zones have the following requirements:
All nested zones must have support for Oracle Solaris 11.2 or higher.
solaris branded zones running Oracle Solaris 11 or Oracle Solaris 11.1 must be updated to Oracle Solaris 11.2. See Chapter 3, Installing and Updating Software Packages in Adding and Updating Software in Oracle Solaris 11.3 for information about updating system software packages.
You can migrate a solaris10 branded zone to a non-global zone running at least Oracle Solaris 11.2. See Migrating a solaris10 Branded Zone to Another System in Creating and Using Oracle Solaris 10 Zones for procedures on how to migrate a solaris10 zone to an Oracle Solaris 11.2 system.
A solaris or solaris10 branded zone that runs as a nested zone can use exclusive-IP or shared-IP. If you need an exclusive-IP configuration, you need to configure the kernel zone to allow for additional MAC addresses.
Nested zones only can use system resources available to the kernel zone. These resources include virtual disks and iSCSI disks.
If a kernel zone containing a nested configuration is cloned, only the outside kernel zone will be cloned. Any zones inside the kernel zone are not cloned during the zone cloning process. See Cloning a Kernel Zone.