Solaris Zone Part 1

Solaris Zone ( Concepts and theory )

In this tutorial will learn some key concepts about Solaris zones. 



Solaris Zone Part 1 ( Concepts and theory )
Solaris Zone Part 2 ( Sparse Solaris zone )
Solaris Zone Part 3 ( whole Solaris zone )
Solaris Zone part 4  ( Zone Configuration )

what is solaris zones :-

zones is a technology that enable system administrator to create multiple independent operating systems with independent process space, allocated resources, and users. that means inside one physical server you can create four zones as follow  (  zone 1 = apache,  zone 2 = dns, zone 3 = MySQL, zone 4 = whatever application ), each one of these zones has its own process, file system ... etc. Processes running within a zone, cannot affect activity in other zones. think of zones as opreating system inside Operating system.

Solaris Zones features :-

➊ Solaris zones can host only instance of solaris. Not other OSs.
➋ Program Isolation - zone1 (Apache), zone2(MySQL)
➌ Security : Processes running within a zone, even one with superuser credentials, cannot affect activity in other zones.
➍ Virtualization, Granularity, Transparency.
➎ each zone has its own ID. ID 0, ID1, ID2 ...etc.
➏ No additional hardware is required for a zone

Solaris Zone Types :-

➊ Global zone
➋ Non-global zone

Features of GLOBAL zone
➊ Every Solaris system contains a global zone.
➋ Solaris ALWAYS boots to the global zone
➌ Knows about ALL hardware devices attached to the system.
➍ Knows about ALL non-global zones
➎ The global zone is the only zone from which a non-global zone can be configured, installed, managed, or uninstalled
➏ Only the global zone is bootable from the system hardware.
➐ The global zone is always mapped to zone ID 0.
➑ thers is only ine global zone in the system.
➒ Global zone is created automatically when you install solaris OS for the first time, that means the Global zone is the current solaris OS you are working on now. 

Features of Non-GLOBAL zone
➊ The non-global zones contain an installed subset of the complete Solaris Operating System software packages.
➋ The non-global zone is not aware of the existence of any other zones.
➌ The non-global cannot install, manage, or uninstall itself or any other zones.

whene you create a new zone ( Non-global zone), it shares some file with the global zone.

zones can be installed as :-

➊ Sparse Root zone
➋ Whole Root zone

Sparse Root zone :-
Small zone, it consumes the least disk space, because Only a subset of the packages installed in the global zone are installed directly into the non-global zone, and it shares most of the files whith the global zone, but in this type of zones the /usr and /lib are not writable.
Features :-

- smaller disk
- better security since /usr and /lib are not writable
- faster to create and patch
- easier to migrate


Whole Root zone
Big zone no files are shared between this type of zone and global zone, need more space because more files and packages will be installed.

steps to create zones
➊ determine zone types :- Sparse Root zone OR Whole Root zone
➋ determine the name of the zone
➌ determine the zonepath, zonepath is the Path that the zone will be installed.
➍ dtermine the zone file system :- dir,special,raw,type ( i will explain them later in solaris zone lab )
➎ determine zone network card and IP address.
➏ other option .

Posted in: Solaris Zones