System Administration Guide: Virtualization Using the Solaris Operating System

About Branded Zones

Branded zones (BrandZ) provide the framework to create containers that contain alternative sets of runtime behaviors. Brand can refer to a wide range of operating environments. For example, the non-global zone can emulate the Solaris 8 Operating System, or an operating environment such as Linux. Every zone is configured with an associated brand.

The brand defines the operating environment that can be installed in the zone and determines how the system will behave within the zone so that the software installed in the zone functions correctly. In addition, a zone's brand is used to identify the correct application type at application launch time. All branded zone management is performed through extensions to the standard zones structure. Most administration procedures are identical for all zones.

BrandZ extends the zones tools in the following ways:

Although you can configure and install branded zones on a Solaris Trusted Extensions system that has labels enabled, you cannot boot branded zones on this system configuration, unless the brand being booted is the labeled brand on an OpenSolaris system configuration.