Member Avatar for Flinch24

Hi there guys!

Just wanna know if Solaris container is the same as Solaris zone.
I've been searching over the net, and all throughout, it seems that a solaris zone is the same as solaris containers.

If they're not, please kindly tell me what is the difference between the two.

Thanks in advance!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rubberman

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Short answer for : people commonly use "Solaris zones" and "Solaris Containers" interchangeably, but technically a zone is the actual OS‑level container (a non‑global zone running inside the global zone) while "Solaris Containers" was Sun/Oracle’s umbrella name for the combination of zones plus Solaris resource‑management features. Oracle’s docs treat the same tech under the Zones/Containers heading and explicitly note the historical naming. (docs.oracle.com)

Clarifying the practical difference (and responding to and ): zones are operating‑system‑level virtualization — they share the single Solaris kernel, provide isolated execution environments and resource controls, but do not emulate hardware or run a different kernel the way a VMware/KVM VM does. Branded zones (BrandZ) can present different userlands (for example Solaris 8/9/10 or the lx brand) by using compatibility hooks, but that is userland compatibility rather than full hardware virtualization. The "Containers" story also includes resource controls (resource pools, zone.cpu‑shares, projects, Fair Share Scheduler, etc.) that let admins cap or guarantee CPU/memory per zone. (docs.oracle.com)

Quick, practical checks and a caution: from the global zone run the standard tools to verify and inspect zones:

# zoneadm list -cv
# zonecfg -z <zonename> info
# zoneadm -z <zonename> boot|shutdown|install

Those commands show status, brand and configured resource controls; global‑zone privileges are required and the global zone retains system‑wide control (so kernel bugs or misconfigurations can affect all zones). For step‑by‑step administration see Oracle’s Zones/Containers guides. (docs.oracle.com)

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Member Avatar for rubberman

Huh? I have been using Linux for 10+ years and never heard about this? Are you talking about running Solaris in a virtual machine? If so, what virtual machine manager (KVM, XEN, VirtualBox, VMWare, et al) are you using?

Member Avatar for Klyde

One of the features that Solaris have been so proud of are the virtualization of different operating system without the use of VMWare, VirtualBox, etc.

Edited by Klyde because: n/a
Member Avatar for rubberman

One of the features that Solaris have been so proud of are the virtualization of different operating system without the use of VMWare, VirtualBox, etc.

Ok. I haven't used Solaris for some time, other than as a guest OS in a VirtualBox VM in order to update some kernel modules, so I'm not up to date regarding its native virtualization capabilities. I would suggest that the poster ask this question in the Solaris user forums or search on Oracle's web site for documentation about these issues.

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