Boot Environments in Global and Non-Global Zones

Both global zones and non-global zones contain boot environments. Each boot environment in a non-global zone is associated with a parent boot environment in the global zone. Each global zone boot environment is associated with one or more zone boot environments (ZBE) in each installed solaris zone. When the zone is detached, the references to the global zone remain. This enables the zone to be reattached to the same global zone while maintaining associations between global and non-global boot environments.

If a global zone boot environment is inactive, the related non-global zone boot environment is unbootable. However, if you boot into that parent boot environment in the global zone, the related boot environment in the non-global zone becomes bootable.

When you attach or migrate a zone, you can specify the ZBE to attach by name using the ‐z option or use one of several ‐x options to enable the system to select the appropriate ZBE. See the zones(7) man page for information about these options.