Container Manager Overview

Solaris Container Manager 3.6 is an add-on software product to the Sun Management Center 3.6.1 release. This product helps you to consolidate servers to control the cost of large networks of servers and software. Container Manager enables you to create and manage containers, projects, resource pools, and zones. You benefit from better utilization of hardware resources and higher server-to-administrator ratios.

The product enables you to do the following tasks:

• Partition the resources of a host

• Allocate, control, and organize resources

• Isolate applications from one another

• Analyze resource consumption for specific applications

• Monitor resource usage and gather extended accounting data for CPU and memory usage

Containers are ideal for any organization where users need their own virtualized environment, including IP address, disk storage, and applications. For example, a company might set up containers for specific applications, such as mail server, web server, or database. A company might also set up containers for geographic areas, such as United States, Americas, Europe, and Asia-Pacific. Similarly, a company might set up containers for functional departments, such as, human resources, research and development, and sales.

Specific industries can use containers or zones for a variety of purposes. A university might give each university student a zone with an instance of the OS, a share of system resources, and a root password. A wireless company might set up containers to monitor services, such as long-distance service, local telephone service, and voice mail. A cable provider or Internet service provider might set up containers for DSL, cable modem, or cable television service. A financial institution might set up separate containers for users, who do complex queries on data warehouses, and for users, who need online transaction processing. An independent software vendor (ISV) might set up containers or zones for separate customers to whom they sell software or services.

Container Manager and Other Resource Management Utilities

This product organizes existing resource management utilities that run on the Solaris 8, Solaris 9, and Solaris 10 releases. Specifically, this product provides tools to simplify the configuration of Solaris Resource Manager 1.3 and Solaris 9 Resource Manager.

For more information about the Solaris resource management utilities, see Solaris Resource Manager 1.3 System Administration Guideand System Administration Guide: Network Services.