Solaris 10 Zones is an ideal solution for complex network architectures where may coexist several critical services, consolidating all the applications in a single server. Solaris Zones reduce management and hardware costs by simplifying the solution. The Zones have been created in SUN by Andrew Tucker, they are similar to FreeBSD jails. AIX 6 has also some concepts similar to Solaris 10 Zones. The Solaris Zones create isolated processes, achieving security because these processes can not affect processes from other Zones or the Global Zone.

Zones

The Servers Consolidation solutions available in the market are:

  • Domains and Partitions: Hardware based solutions like IBM LPARs or Sun Fire ™.
  • Virtual Machine: Software based solution (Not integrated in the OS) like VMware or IBM VM.
  • OS Partitions: Software based solution (integrated in the OS), like FreeBSD jails, Linux Vservers and Solaris Zones.