Zones installed on an Oracle Solaris system can communicate with each other over the network. The zones have separate bindings, or connections, and can run their own server daemons. These daemons can listen on the same port numbers without any conflict. The IP stack resolves conflicts by considering the IP addresses for incoming connections. The IP addresses identify the zone.
In Oracle Solaris, the network configuration of a specific system is managed by an active network configuration profile (NCP) that is enabled either automatically during an Oracle Solaris installation or manually by a system administrator. Only one NCP can be active on the system at one time.
To use shared-IP type zones, the operative NCP on the global zone must be the DefaultFixed NCP. To check which NCP is currently active on the system, type the following command:
# netadm list TYPE PROFILE STATE ncp DefaultFixed online ncp Automatic disabled loc Automatic offline loc NoNet offline loc DefaultFixed online
The NCP with the online state is the operative or active network configuration profile on the system. If DefaultFixed is offline, then enable the profile with the following command:
# netadm enable DefaultFixed
# svcprop -p netcfg/active_ncp svc:/network/physical:default DefaultFixed