Oracle Solaris 11 Boot Environments use the beadm utility and ZFS file systems to create and manage boot environments. The Oracle Solaris 11 software automatically creates boot environments.
A boot environment is an instance of a bootable Oracle Solaris image plus additional software packages that are installed onto the image, and the set of all file systems and devices (disk slices and mount points) that are required to operate an Oracle Solaris OS instance. A system can have only one active boot environment, which is the booted environment. An alternate boot environment is an inactive environment that is not currently booted. A system can have many inactive boot environments.
A dual boot environment is often used to manage updates because it can significantly reduce the service outage time that is usually associated with patching. Maintaining multiple boot environments also enables quick and easy rollback to a version before the patches were applied, if needed.
The Boot Environment tab of the Oracle Solaris operating system page displays Oracle Solaris boot environment and file system details, including all available boot environments, the size, and the synchronization date. For a selected boot environment, you can view snapshot details, file system details, and any associated zone boot environments. This tab is only available for Oracle Solaris operating systems
The Boot Environment tab of the Oracle Solaris operating system page displays Oracle Solaris boot environment and file system details, including all available boot environments, the size, and the date the environment was created or synchronized. The Boot Environment tab is only available for Oracle Solaris operating systems