System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones

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.

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 commands. Most administration procedures are identical for all zones.

The following two brands are supported on SPARC machines running the Solaris 10 8/07 Operating System or later Solaris 10 release:

Other brands supported on the Solaris 10 OS include:

Although you can configure and install branded zones on a Trusted Solaris system that has labels enabled, you cannot boot branded zones on this system configuration.