When installing the global zone, be sure to reserve enough disk space for all of the zones you might create. Each non-global zone might have unique disk space requirements. The following description is a brief overview of planning information. For complete planning requirements and recommendations, see Chapter 18, Planning and Configuring Non-Global Zones (Tasks), in System Administration Guide: Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Solaris Zones.
No limits are placed on how much disk space can be consumed by a zone. The global zone administrator is responsible for space restriction. Even a small uniprocessor system can support a number of zones running simultaneously.
The characteristics of the packages installed in the global zone affect the space requirements of the non-global zones that are created. The number of packages and space requirements are factors. The following are general disk space guidelines.
Approximately 100 Mbytes of free disk space is suggested when the global zone has been installed with all of the standard Solaris packages. Increase this amount if additional packages are installed in the global zone. By default, any additional packages installed in the global zone also populate the non-global zones. The directory location in the non-global zone for these additional packages is specified through the inherit-pkg-dir resource.
Add 40 Mbytes of RAM per zone if the system has sufficient swap space. This addition is recommended to make each zone operational. When planning your system size, consider this addition of RAM.