Sun Microsystems manual Duplicating zones with zoneadm detach/attach and zfs clone, 101

Version 3.1-enSolaris 10 Container Guide - 3.1 5. Cookbooks Effective: 30/11/2009

5.3.8. Duplicating zones with zoneadm detach/attach and zfs clone

[ug] First, the zone "test" is moved to its own ZFS file system. The file system must only be available from root otherwise an error message will appear.

global# zfs create container/ztest
global# ls -ld		/container/ztest
drwxr-xr-x	2	root	root	2	Feb 19	16:00 /container/ztest
global# chmod og-rwx /container/ztest
global# ls -ld		/container/ztest
drwx------	2	root	root	2	Feb 19	16:00 /container/ztest

Next, the zone is moved to the separate ZFS file system. The configuration is adjusted automatically; to do so, it must of course be shut down.

global# zoneadm -z test move /container/ztest

Moving across file-systems; copying zonepath /container/test...

Cleaning up zonepath /container/test...

The zone is detached, and the current status of the file system is recorded with zfs snapshot as a read-only version (the gold standard). The original zone can then be activated again.

global# zoneadm -z test detach

global# zfs snapshot container/ztest@gold global# zoneadm -z test attach

global# zoneadm -z test boot

A copy of the zone is created by generating a writable version of the zone file system with zfs

clone.

global# zfs clone container/ztest@gold container/ztest2

global# zfs list
NAME	USED	AVAIL	REFER	MOUNTPOINT
container	181M	803M	88.7M	/container
container/ztest	91.8M	803M	88.7M	/container/ztest
container/ztest@gold	3.07M	-	90.4M	-
container/ztest2	0	803M	90.4M	/container/ztest2

In order to activate the zone copy, it must be configured, and the zone path must be adjusted. Subsequently, it is sufficient to use zoneadm attach and the zone can be started up.

global# zonecfg	-z test export zonecfg -z test2
test2: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to	begin configuring a new zone.
global# zonecfg	-z test2 set zonepath=/container/ztest2
global# zoneadm	-z test2 attach
global# zoneadm	-z test2 boot

In the zone, the name of the OS instance is still the same of course since the file /etc/nodename has not yet been changed. Furthermore, it makes sense to adapt the network addresses as well, just like the zonepath adaptation performed here.

Additional zones with the same OS content can now be created very quick by repeating the steps zfs clone / zonecfg / zoneadm attach.

In the same way, zones can also be moved to other systems with zoneadm detach / attach. A prerequisite is that the same package and patch status is present on the target system. By using the option zoneadm attach -u,a zone can be moved to a system with a newer status, however, downgrading of patches must not occur.

Since Solaris 10 5/09, zfs clone is used automatically with the command zoneadm -z zone clone if the zone is located on a ZFS file system. This facilitates the quick creation of zones even more.

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