Oracle Solaris Zones includes support for fully independent and isolated environments called Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones, which provide a full kernel and user environment within a zone. Kernel zones increase operational flexibility and are ideal for multitenant environments where maintenance windows are significantly harder to schedule. Kernel zones can run at a different kernel version from the global zone and can be updated separately without requiring a reboot of the global zone. You can also use kernel zones in combination with Oracle VM for SPARC for greater virtualization flexibility.
You configure, install, and boot kernel zones with the existing zonecfg(1M) and zoneadm(1M) commands.
For example, to create and install a kernel zone:
# zonecfg -z newzone create -t SYSsolaris-kz
# zoneadm -z newzone install
See Creating and Using Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones and the solaris-kz(5) man page for more information.