Although all zones on the system share a common kernel, an additional feature set has been added called branded zones (BrandZ for short). This allows individual zones to behave in a manner other than the default brand of the global zone. The existing brands (October 2009) can be grouped into two categories:
- brands which do not perform system call translation:
- 'native' is the default for Solaris 10
- 'ipkg' is the default for OpenSolaris and OpenIndiana
- 'joyent' is the default for SmartOS
- 'cluster' is used for Solaris Cluster zones
- 'labeled' is used for zones in a Solaris Trusted Extensions environment
- brands which perform system call translation:
- 'solaris8' provides a Solaris 8 environment on a Solaris 10 system, including translation from Solaris 8 system calls to Solaris 10 system calls (available only on SPARC systems)
- 'solaris9' provides a Solaris 9 environment on a Solaris 10 system, including translation from Solaris 9 system calls to Solaris 10 system calls (available only on SPARC systems)
- 'lx' provides a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 environment on a Solaris 10 system, including translation from RHEL 3 system calls to Solaris 10 system calls (available only on x86 systems)
- 's10brand' provides a Solaris 10 environment on an OpenSolaris or Oracle Solaris 11 system, including translation from Solaris 10 system calls to OpenSolaris/Oracle Solaris 11 system calls
The brand for a zone is set at the time the zone is created. The second category is implemented with interposition points within the OS kernel that can be used to change the behavior of syscalls, process loading, thread creation, and other elements.
For the 'lx' brand, libraries from Red Hat 3 or an equivalent distribution such as CentOS are required to complete the emulated environment.
Read more about this topic: Solaris Containers
Famous quotes containing the words branded and/or zones:
“You do not become a “dissident” just because you decide one day to take up this most unusual career. You are thrown into it by your personal sense of responsibility, combined with a complex set of external circumstances. You are cast out of the existing structures and placed in a position of conflict with them. It begins as an attempt to do your work well, and ends with being branded an enemy of society.”
—Václav Havel (b. 1936)
“The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates—the inhabitants of marketing zones in the consumer goods society, television audiences and news magazine readerships... vote with money at the cash counter rather than with the ballot paper at the polling booth.”
—J.G. (James Graham)