Vic/containers

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Sun introduced zones/containers with the first release of Solaris 10. Solaris Zones, simply put, is a virtualization technology which may be used to provide an isolated application environment for applications needing such an environment. In addition to zones/containers Sun has provided server consolidation technology via Dynamic Domains for quite a while and more recently via Logical Domains which are available only with chip multithreading architecture i.e. Sparc T1 and T2.

Contents

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A Couple of Notes Before Creating Zones

  • If your zone will be running any application needing to write to /usr or /sbin then you need to create a whole root zone otherwise creating the default sparse root zone will save space and time.
  • A whole root zone (create -b) requires about 5 GB of space. Add a few more GB for /var so a typical whole root zone should have maybe 8GB of disk space. A sparse root zone requires about 700MB. It would be a good idea to make sparse root zones maybe 3gb total to allow for log growth etc.
  • Simple perl script to create several containers
  • Zone Manager Script from OpenSolaris
  • Good HowTo Doc...
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Example configuration

  • This example shows a zone being created in interactive mode and then installed. 

[root@sunx4200-shu02--->]zonecfg -z newzone
newzone: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.
zonecfg:newzone> create
zonecfg:newzone>  set zonepath=/zones/sunx4200-shu02-zone1
zonecfg:newzone> set autoboot=true
zonecfg:newzone> add net
zonecfg:newzone:net> set address=10.60.181.229
zonecfg:newzone:net> set physical=e1000g1
zonecfg:newzone:net> end
zonecfg:newzone> verify
zonecfg:newzone> exit

[root@sunx4200-shu02--->]zoneadm -z sunx4200-shu02-zone1 install
  • Commands
    • zlogin -C zonename (Connect to the zone console)
    • zlogin zonename (Login to a zone)
    • zoneadm -z zonename boot|halt (Start/Stop a zone)
    • zoneadm list -cv (List all the zones and their states)
    • zonecfg -z newzone -f /var/zone-templates/apache_template
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Example of Zone Creation Using Command Files

  • Zones may be created with command files.
    • zonecfg -z newzone -f /var/zone-templates/apache_template
    • The apache_template file might look like this... 
create
set zonepath=/zones/newzone
set autoboot=true
add net
set address=10.60.181.230
set physical=e1000g1
end
commit
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Adding a ZFS dataset

add dataset
set name=apache/docs
end
commit
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Mounting a loopback filesystem in the zone

  • If you have a filesystems in the global zone and you want to make it available to all the local zones, consider mounting it as a loopback filesystem in the local zone.
  • Example:
    • In the global zone you have a filesystem mounted as /webdocs and you want it available to several zones whose zone paths are /zonepool/zone1, /zonepool/zone2 etc.
    • Do the following from the global zone.
      • mkdir /zonepool/zone1/root/zoneshare
      • mount -F lofs /webdocs/zoneshare /zonepool/zone1/root/zoneshare
    • Now login to zone 1 and verify the loopback mount. 
[root@ldom2--->]zlogin zone1
[Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/4]
Last login: Thu Jan  3 16:11:06 from 192.168.100.21
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.10      Generic January 2005
[root@ldom1-z1--->]df -k
Filesystem            kbytes    used   avail capacity  Mounted on
/                    82095318 4579448 77515870     6%    /
/dev                 82095318 4579448 77515870     6%    /dev
/lib                 11952412 4309874 7523014    37%    /lib
/platform            11952412 4309874 7523014    37%    /platform
/sbin                11952412 4309874 7523014    37%    /sbin
/usr                 11952412 4309874 7523014    37%    /usr
proc                       0       0       0     0%    /proc
ctfs                       0       0       0     0%    /system/contract
mnttab                     0       0       0     0%    /etc/mnttab
objfs                      0       0       0     0%    /system/object
swap                 7379472     296 7379176     1%    /etc/svc/volatile
fd                         0       0       0     0%    /dev/fd
swap                 7379208      32 7379176     1%    /tmp
swap                 7379208      32 7379176     1%    /var/run
/zoneshare           30691974      36 30691937     1%    /zoneshare
    • We can see that /zoneshare is in fact mounted. Success!
    • Now repeat the steps for the other zones needing access to /zoneshare
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Installing and Booting the newly Created Zone

  • Now the zone is created. Next install it and boot it then connect to the console.
    • zoneadm -z newzone install
    • zoneadm -z newzone boot
    • zlogin -C newzone
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Zone Management Tips

  • After the zone is installed copy a sysidcfg file to the zone's /etc directory. The sysidcfg file will be used by the zone during boot to set the initial root password, configure the hostname and IP address among other things.
  • Create generic.xml files to automatically configure services which will run in the zone.
    • Example - Suppose you have created a zone where you intend to run an Apache web server. After enabling and disabling services as desired, extract the service configuration to a generic.xml file...
      • svccfg extract > generic.xml
    • Now move generic.xml to /zonepath/root/var/svc/profile/generic.xml of zone prior to first boot. This would be typically done by a jumpstart finish script or by a zone creation script or even manually.
  • With a little planning zone creation and configuration can be fully automated.
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