Solaris Branded Zones

Branded zones are Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 containers created in a Solaris 10 Global zone and have been available with the Solaris 10 8/07 release.

By default any non-global zone shares the global zone kernel and has same characteristics as the global zone kernel. But in case of branded zone, BrandZ provides the framework which extends the Solaris Zones infrastructure to include the creation of brands, which in turn can be used to create different operating environments to accommodate Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 Operating systems as non-global zones.

On x86 and x64 based architecture machines, BrandZ provides the framework to create an lx branded zone. The lx branded zone is a Solaris container for Linux applications. The lx brand provides a Linux environment for your applications to run.

Prerequisites

In order to utilise branded zones on your Solaris 10 server a number of patches and packages are needed.

You will need to download and install the following Solaris 10 patches for the branded zone version you desire.

Once patching is complete, you need to install the following packages:

What lx zones cannot do:

1. You cannot run Solaris applications inside an lx zone. However, the lx zone enables us to use the Solaris system to develop, test, and deploy Linux application
2. We can change the brand of a zone in the configured state. Once a branded zone has been installed, that brand cannot be changed or moved.
3. The system must be either x64 or x86 based.
4. The lx (Linux) brand supports only the whole root model, so each installed zone will have its own copy of every file.
5. There are no limits on how much disk space can be consumed by a zone. The global administrator is responsible for space restriction.
6. Currently lx brand installer supports only Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.x and the equivalent CentOS distributions. http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Community+Group+brandz/downloads we can download the CentOS tarball from the above link

The procedure for creating either a Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 branded zone is exactly the same. In a nutshell:

1. Create a flar image from a physical Solaris 8/9 machine
2. Configure the branded zone on the Solaris 10 global zone
3. Install the branded zone (converts physical-to-virutal conversation performed)
4. Boot the branded zone
5. Login and perform any final configuration settings

To create an lx zone, we perform:

1. Have the Linux installation CD/DVD or ISO mounted on the global zone
2. Configure the branded zone (-z lx-zone)
3. Install the lx zone
4. Boot the branded zone
5. Login and perform any final configuration settings