Oracle Solaris 11 is installed in a ZFS storage pool called the root pool. The root pool installation requirements are as follows:
Disk space – At least 13 GB of disk space is recommended. The space is consumed as follows:
Swap area and dump device – The default sizes of the swap and dump volumes that are created by the Oracle Solaris installation programs vary, based on the amount of memory that is on the system and other variables.
After installation, you can adjust the sizes of your swap and dump volumes to sizes of your own choosing, as long as the new sizes support system operations. See Managing Your ZFS Swap and Dump Devices in Managing ZFS File Systems in Oracle Solaris 11.2 .
Boot environment (BE) – A ZFS BE is approximately 6–8 GB in size, but can vary greatly depending on the size of the dump device. The size of the dump device is based on the size of the system's physical memory. In addition, consider that the size of a new BE increases when it is updated, depending on the amount of updates. You will need to monitor the disk space usage of all BEs on the system. All ZFS BEs in the same root pool use the same swap and dump devices.
Oracle Solaris OS components – All subdirectories of the root file system that are part of the OS image, with the exception of /var, must be in the same dataset as the root file system. In addition, all Oracle Solaris OS components must reside within the root pool, with the exception of the swap and dump devices. For information about specific disk requirements, see Chapter 3, Managing Devices.
x86 only: Support for running multiple operating systems – You can partition the disk that will contain the OS prior to an installation or during an installation. See Partitioning Your System in Installing Oracle Solaris 11.2 Systems .