The following Oracle Solaris Zones features are supported in this release. For information about the latest feature enhancements, see Introduction to Oracle Solaris Zones.
Oracle Solaris 10 branded zones – Oracle Solaris 10 Zones provide an Oracle Solaris 10 environment on Oracle Solaris 11.
You can migrate an Oracle Solaris 10 system or zone to a solaris10 zone on an Oracle Solaris 11 system in the following ways:
Create a zone archive and use the archive to create an s10zone on the Oracle Solaris 11 system. See Transitioning an Oracle Solaris 10 Instance to a Non-Global Zone on an Oracle Solaris 11 System.
Detach the zone from the Oracle Solaris 10 system and attach the zone on the Oracle Solaris 11 zone. The zone is halted and detached from its current host. The zonepath is moved to the target host, where it is attached. See About Detaching and Attaching the solaris10 Zone in Creating and Using Oracle Solaris 10 Zones.
You can create and manage multiple boot environments (BEs) for a Solaris 10 branded zone, as well as modify the currently active BE or any inactive BE, all while the production workload continues to run. See About Multiple Boot Environments On solaris10 Zones in Creating and Using Oracle Solaris 10 Zones.
Legacy branded zones – The following legacy branded zone features are supported in Oracle Solaris 10 only:
Linux brand (lx)
Oracle Solaris 8 Containers (solaris8)
Oracle Solaris 9 Containers (solaris9).
Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones – Kernel zones, also known as solaris-kz branded zones, use the branded zones framework to run a zone with a separate kernel and operating system (OS) installation from the global zone. The administrative and structural content of a kernel zone is entirely independent from that of the global zone. Because kernel zones do not share system packaging with a global zone or a kernel zone host, you have complete independence over which software packages are installed on each kernel zone. Before using this feature, review the information in Hardware and Software Requirements for Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones in Creating and Using Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones.
Kernel zone live migration – Oracle Solaris 11.3 supports kernel zone live migration, where the memory state of the migrated zone is copied to the migrated guest. You can use kernel zone live migration to load balance services. Live migration is recommended for situations where downtime must be minimized and when applications must remain in a running state. Live migration is only available on solaris-kz branded zones. See Using Live Migration to Migrate a Kernel Zone in Creating and Using Oracle Solaris Kernel Zones.
Oracle Solaris 11 installation support – You can specify the configuration and installation of non-global zones as part of an AI client installation. Non-global zones are installed and configured on the first reboot after the global zone is installed. See Chapter 12, Installing and Configuring Zones in Installing Oracle Solaris 11.3 Systems.
Exclusive-IP zones by default – Exclusive-IP zones enable you to assign a separate IP stack per zone. Each zone has the flexibility to configure IP within that stack completely separate to other zones. You can easily observe network traffic, per zone, and apply individual network resources. In previous versions of Oracle Solaris this was dependent on the number of physical NICs per system. The addition of network virtualization provides enhanced flexibility when managing zones, without the restrictions of physical network hardware. Newly created zones in Oracle Solaris 11 are exclusive-IP zones with a VNIC (net0) whose underlying link is automatically selected at boot time. See Introduction to Oracle Solaris Zones.
Immutable Zones – The file-mac-profile property enables you to run a non-global zone with a read-only root file system. See Chapter 11, Configuring and Administering Immutable Zones in Creating and Using Oracle Solaris Zones.
IPoIb PV driver support for kernel zones – This support is provided through the ib-vhca resource, which is used to specify the physical function (PF) that is used to allocate a virtual function (VF) to a kernel zone. You virtualize the PF by using the ibadm command, then you allocate a VF to the kernel zone by using the zonecfg command. For further details, see the ibadm(1M) and zonecfg(1M) man pages.
iSCSI support in non-global zones – Neither iSCSI target nor initiator services are currently supported in non-global zones.
Network virtualization for zones – Most Oracle Solaris network virtualization features can be applied to a zone by creating a virtual NIC (VNIC) for the zone and then applying bandwidth limits and traffic flows to the zone's assigned VNIC. The VNIC is created when the zone boots, deleted when the zone halts, and is created within the non-global zone's datalink name space. This feature enables you to provision a zone without knowing the details of the network configuration and topology. If you want to assign a preexisting datalink to an exclusive-IP zone, you can still do so during the zone configuration.
NFS server and CIFS support in non-global zones – Any Oracle Solaris 11 non-global zone brand type can be an NFS server or an NFS client. However, an Oracle Solaris10 branded non-global zone cannot be an NFS server. Any Oracle Solaris 11 non-global zone can be a CIFS client, but no non-global zone of any brand type can be a CIFS server. Also, an Oracle Solaris 10 branded non-global zone cannot be a CIFS client, except when using the non-native Solaris open source Samba package.
Whole root zones only – Oracle Solaris Zones are whole-root type only. However, you can configure zones in a more flexible way, for example, when disk space is limited or if you prefer a read-only zone root configuration. By default, zone boot environments are compressed.
In addition, you can automatically update any non-global zone to ensure consistency across the system. An added benefit is that individual software stacks for each non-global zone are independent of the global zone.
Zone monitoring – System resources that are consumed by non-global zones can be monitored by using the zonestat command.