Virtual Disk Appearance
When a back end is exported as a virtual disk, it can appear in the guest domain either as a full disk or as a single-slice disk. The way it appears depends on the type of the back end and on the options used to export it.
Note - Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) storage is available starting with the SPARC T7 series server and SPARC M7 series server. This storage can be a disk drive or a Flash Accelerator F160 PCIe card. This disk type can be used to build a virtual disk back end.
Starting with the Oracle Solaris 11.3 SRU 2.4 OS, you can use the NVMe storage disk type as a full disk or as a single-slice disk.
Prior to the Oracle Solaris 11.3 SRU 2.4 OS, you can use the NVMe storage disk type only as a single-slice disk.
 | Caution - Single-slice disks do not have device IDs. If a device ID is required, use a full physical disk backend. |
Full Disk
When a back end is exported to a domain as a full disk, it appears in that domain as a regular disk with eight slices (s0 to s7). This type of disk is visible with the format(1M) command. The disk's partition table can be changed using either the fmthard or format command.
A full disk is also visible to the OS installation software and can be selected as a disk onto which the OS can be installed.
Any back end can be exported as a full disk except physical disk slices that can be exported only as single-slice disks.
Single-Slice Disk
When a back end is exported to a domain as a single-slice disk, it appears in that domain as a regular disk with eight slices (s0 to s7). However, only the first slice (s0) is usable. This type of disk is visible with the format(1M) command, but the disk's partition table cannot be changed.
A single-slice disk is also visible from the OS installation software and can be selected as a disk onto which you can install the OS. In that case, if you install the OS using the UNIX File System (UFS), then only the root partition (/) must be defined, and this partition must use all the disk space.
Any back end can be exported as a single-slice disk except physical disks that can only be exported as full disks.
Note - Prior to the Oracle Solaris 10 10/08 OS release, a single-slice disk appeared as a disk with a single partition (s0). This type of disk was not visible with the format command. The disk also was not visible from the OS installation software and could not be selected as a disk device onto which the OS could be installed.