Choosing a Virtualization Option
Before you can install your ADE, you need to plan and set up the virtualized environment
that will host the ADE. One important consideration is the balance between isolation and
flexibility.
The following table describes the virtualization models available for Oracle
Solaris.
Table 3 Virtualization Models Available for Oracle Solaris
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Operating System Virtualization
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Each environment contains what appears to be a private copy of the OS in a
container. The OS virtualization model provides near-native performance and
flexibility, and has a much smaller disk, RAM, and CPU footprint than either virtual
machines or physical machine.
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Virtual Machines
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By using virtual machines, you can run multiple OS instances with a single set
of hardware resources. Each virtual machine that you create runs its own OS. A
software or firmware hypervisor creates the illusion that each guest OS instance is
running on its own system. Although virtual machines provide less resource
flexibility than a physical machine that uses OS virtualization, they provide more
isolation.
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Physical Domains
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Oracle SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers
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Hardware partitions provide physical separation between the running OS and its
separate set of resources and power. Because this model does not use a hypervisor,
it provides bare-metal performance. This virtualization model provides the most
isolation but it is much less flexible with resource configuration than either the
virtual machine or OS virtualization model.
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The following diagrams illustrate some of the virtualization models described in the
table.
Figure 1 OS Virtualization by Using Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones
Figure 2 Using Virtual Machines on an Oracle SPARC System
Figure 3 Using Virtual Machines on an Oracle x86 System
