Patching in Zones

The zones hierarchy displays as a group and members of the group, for example if HostA has two non-global zones, it is displayed as HostA_zone_group [3]. Expand HostA_zone_group [3] to see the two non-global zones. The SDS automatically creates the group HostA_zone_group [3] and populates it with with registered agents from all of the zones on the system.

Before patching Solaris zones, you should be familiar with how zones are designed to work. An update can be installed in a non-global zone without being installed in a global zone, and vice versa. When patching to zones, some patches will not install in non-global zones (sparse or full) and others will. Some patches that are installed in the global zone do not affect non-global zones directly, but others do affect non-global zones. Within the constraint of the update itself. The packaging of the component defines whether it needs to be in the global zone or not. Under zones, there is just one instance of the Solaris OS, which means that usually components belonging to the OS runtime (kernel, services) must be updated in the global zones. The update meta-data, but not the bits, is propagated to the non-global zones.

See CR 6533814.