This release introduces Unified Archives, a new type of archive format that enables creating a single archive for redeployment either as clones within a cloud environment or for system backup and disaster recovery purposes. You can quickly capture a complete bare-metal system, virtual environments, or a combination of both.
For example, to create a clone archive of a system:
# archiveadm create ./newclone.uar
To create a full system recovery archive:
# archiveadm create --recovery ./newrecovery.uar
Unified Archives are portable with a great deal of flexibility for deployment, enabling a variety of physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-physical transformations including use with Oracle Solaris Zones, Oracle VM for SPARC, and Oracle VM for x86.
See Using Unified Archives for System Recovery and Cloning in Oracle Solaris 11.2 for more information.