Identify the applications that you would like to run in zones.

Review the applications running on your system:

• Determine which applications are critical to your business goals.

• Assess the system needs of the applications you are running.

Refer to your business goals and to your system documentation if necessary.

Determine how many zones to configure.

Assess:

• The performance requirements of the applications you intend to run in zones.

• The availability of 1 gigabyte of disk space per zone to be installed. The amount required is dependent on the software to be installed inside the zone, and should be adjusted accordingly. The use of ZFS compression will reduce the amount of required disk space.

  Note that during non-global zone installation and subsequent package installations and updates, some temporary space is required. The disk space requirement of 1 gigabyte takes this into account.

See Evaluating the Current System Setup.

Determine whether your zone will use resource pools or assigned CPUs to partition machine resources.

If you are also using resource management features on your system, align the zones with the resource management boundaries. Configure resource pools before you configure zones.

Note that you can add zone-wide resource controls and pool functionality to a zone quickly by using zonecfg properties.

See How to Configure the Zone, and Chapter 13, Creating and Administering Resource Pools (Tasks).

Perform the preconfiguration tasks.

Determine the zone name and the zone path.

Determine any additional requirements for the zone, such as whether to host the zone on shared storage.

By default, a non-global zone is created as an exclusive-IP type with an anet resource. The anet resource creates an automatic virtual NIC (VNIC) for the non-global zone. Alternatively, you can configure the zone as a shared-IP zone or as an exclusive-IP zone by using the net resource. Determine the required file systems and devices for each zone. Determine the scheduling class for the zone. Determine the set of privileges that processes inside the zone should be limited to, if the standard default set is not sufficient. Note that some zonecfg settings automatically add privileges. For example, ip-type=exclusive automatically adds multiple privileges required to configure and manage network stacks.

For information on the zone name and path, IP types, IP addresses, file systems, devices, scheduling class, and privileges, see Chapter 16, Non-Global Zone Configuration (Overview) and Evaluating the Current System Setup. For a listing of default privileges and privileges that can be configured in a non-global zone, see Privileges in a Non-Global Zone. For information about IP functionality, see Networking in Shared-IP Non-Global Zones and Networking in Exclusive-IP Non-Global Zones.

Develop configurations.

Configure non-global zones.

See Configuring, Verifying, and Committing a Zone and the zonecfg(1M) man page.

As global administrator or a user with appropriate authorizations, verify and install configured zones.

Zones must be verified and installed prior to login.

The initial internal configuration of the zone is created and configured at installation.

See Chapter 18, About Installing, Shutting Down, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Overview), Chapter 19, Installing, Booting, Shutting Down, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Tasks), sysconfig(1M), and Chapter 6, Unconfiguring or Reconfiguring an Oracle Solaris instance, in Installing Oracle Solaris 11.1 Systems.

As global administrator or a user granted appropriate authorizations, boot the non-global zones.

Boot each zone to place the zone in the running state.

See Chapter 18, About Installing, Shutting Down, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Overview) and Chapter 19, Installing, Booting, Shutting Down, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Tasks).

Prepare the new zone for production use.

Create user accounts, add additional software, and customize the zone's configuration.

Refer to the documentation you use to set up a newly installed machine. Special considerations applicable to a system with zones installed are covered in this guide.