Plan your zone strategy.

• Evaluate the applications running on your system to determine which applications you want to run in a zone.

• Assess the availability of disk space to hold the files that are unique in the zone.

• If you are also using resource management features, determine how to align the zone with the resource management boundaries.

• If you are using resource pools, configure the pools if necessary.

Refer to historical usage. Also see Disk Space Requirements and Resource Pools Used in Zones.

Determine the name for the zone.

Decide what to call the zone based on the naming conventions.

See Zone Configuration Data and Zone Host Name.

Determine the zone path.

Each zone has a path to its root directory that is relative to the global zone's root directory.

See Zone Configuration Data.

Evaluate the need for CPU restriction if you are not configuring resource pools. Note that with specification in zonecfg, pool settings propagate during migrations.

Review your application requirements.

See dedicated-cpu Resource.

Evaluate the need for memory allocation if you plan to cap memory for the zone by using rcapd from the global zone.

Review your application requirements.

See Chapter 10, Physical Memory Control Using the Resource Capping Daemon (Overview), Chapter 11, Administering the Resource Capping Daemon (Tasks), and Physical Memory Control and the capped-memory Resource.

Make the FSS the default scheduler on the system.

Give each zone CPU shares to control the zone's entitlement to CPU resources. The FSS guarantees a fair dispersion of CPU resources among zones that is based on allocated shares.

Chapter 8, Fair Share Scheduler (Overview), Scheduling Class.

Determine whether the zone will be a shared-IP zone or an exclusive-IP zone.

For a shared-IP zone, which is the default, obtain or configure IP addresses for the zone. Depending on your configuration, you must obtain at least one IP address for each non-global zone that you want to have network access.

For an exclusive-IP zone, determine the data-link that will be assigned to the zone. The zone requires exclusive access to one or more network interfaces. The interface could be a separate LAN such as bge1, or a separate VLAN such as bge2000. Prior to OpenSolaris^TM build snv_83, the data-link must be GLDv3.

See Determine the Zone Host Name and Obtain the Network Address, How to Configure the Zone, and System Administration Guide: IP Services.

For more information on GLDv3 interfaces, see Solaris OS Interface Types in System Administration Guide: IP Services.

Determine which file systems you want to mount in the zone.

Review your application requirements.

See File Systems Mounted in Zones for more information.

Determine which network interfaces should be made available in the zone.

Review your application requirements.

See Shared-IP Network Interfaces for more information.

Determine whether you must alter the default set of non-global zone permissions.

Check the set of privileges: default, privileges that can be added and removed, and privileges that cannot be used at this time.

See Privileges in a Non-Global Zone.

Determine which devices should be configured in each zone.

Review your application requirements.

Refer to the documentation for your application.

Configure the zone.

Use zonecfg to create a configuration for the zone.

See Configuring, Verifying, and Committing a Zone.

Verify and commit the configured zone.

Determine whether the resources and properties specified are valid on a hypothetical system.

See Configuring, Verifying, and Committing a Zone.