[OpenIndiana-discuss] solaris10 branded zones

[Ian Collins]

Jim Klimov wrote:
> Hello all,
>
>     I am currently helping evacuate data/OS from a legacy system
> that ran Solaris 10u3 (11/06) in a VM until recently - hypervisor
> host died - with tasks stuffed into a number of local zones, in
> whole roots over dedicated UFS SVM "partitions". The customer
> has decided to migrate the services ASAP into another VM on
> another box, which currently has Windows and can run VirtualBox,
> by salvaging as many bytes as possible from the old installation.
> Possibly, later a new dedicated hypervisor will be provided
> (likely ESX, or native OI+zones+VirtualBox, maybe SmartOS+KVM...)
>
>     Our foreseeable options are to migrate into a new VM:
> 1) as is, rsync'ing the data from the old VM or even importing
>      its disk image if that works
>
> 2) into solaris 10u8 "golden image" and possibly updating the
>      OS parts for the local zones in the process (detact/attach -u)
>
> 3) into OI and stuff old tasks "as is" into solaris10 branded
>      zones; maybe later migrate at least some tasks to native
>      OI zones.
>
>     I am partial to the OI variant, as it gives more flexibility
> with networking setup and other bonuses. What I am not sure about
> is the current state of affairs with the solaris10 zones:
>
> * is it enough to copy the zoneroot (whole root zones) and just
>     run it? (the global zone was nothing but a zonehoster)

Detach then attach does work.

> * are there limitations to the solaris 10 release which must be
>     imported into a branded zone? I know that there may be problems
>     due to mismatch of ZFS between kernel and zone, but it is not
>     planned to delegate datasets into these zones at the moment.

It's been a while since I last did this, but I'm sure there's a minimum 
patch level (update 9?) required.

I imported the zones onto an update 9 VM first.

> * is it possible to "attach -u" or liveupgrade local zones that
>     are branded in OI (i.e. import sol10u3 and turn it into sol10u8)?

I'm sure -u isn't supported for branded zones, you have to do this on 
Solaris 10 first.

-- 
Ian.