Zones are one of the best features in Solaris 10 – they’re so lightweight that you can use them at almost no cost in performance. Today, I ran across a situation where one of my zones needed more RAM, and the box it was on didn’t have it. Read on for how to migrate a Solaris Zone to a different machine, and an important update to Solaris 10/08 that makes the process so much easier. The initial steps in migrating a zone are very similar. First, you need to halt the zone:
# zoneadm -z myzone haltNext, you need to detach it from it’s non-global zone:
# zoneadm -z my-zone detachNow, you need to copy the zone files over to machine B. You can use rsync + ssh, tar + ssh, tar + ftp, cpio, or any other mechanism. If you have your zone installed in /apps/zones, then the following should do the trick:
root@hostA # cd /apps/zones; tar -cf myzone.tar myzone
root@hostA # scp myzone.tar someuser@hostB:/var/tmp/ && rm myzone.tar
# ssh over to hostB, and become root
root@hostB # cd /apps/zones/ && tar -xf /var/tmp/myzone.tar && rm /var/tmp/myzone.tar
root@hostB # zonecfg -z my-zone
my-zone: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.
zonecfg:my-zone> create -a /apps/zones/my-zone
zonecfg:my-zone> commit
zonecfg:my-zone> exitAs you can see, the process of moving a zone isn’t too difficult, but the sticking point is when the global zone on machine A has different software and patches than machine B. Since a non-global zone’s inherit files and packages from the global zone, things can get messy. Up until Solaris 10/08, getting things straightened out was an exercise left up to the sysadmin, and it often times was no small task. If you’re on a release prior to 10/08, and there’s a lot of difference between Machine A & B, then you have your work cut out for you. Try this (running this on 10/08 or newer doesn’t hurt anything, and it allows you to “preview” changes):
root@gaia /apps# zoneadm -z sstg attach
These packages installed on this system were not installed on the source system:
SUNWi15cs (2.0,REV=2004.08.23.14.43)
SUNWi1cs (2.0,REV=2004.08.12.10.14)
SUNWlocaledefsrc (11.10.0,REV=2004.08.12.18.18)
SUNWnamdt (1.0,REV=2004.08.12.10.18)
SUNWnamos (11.10.0,REV=2003.12.08.12.08)
SUNWnamow (1.0,REV=2004.03.03.14.07)
SUNWplow (1.0,REV=2004.08.12.10.19)
SUNWplow1 (1.0,REV=2004.11.10.13.49)
SUNWpsvrr (5.0,REV=2005.05.13.16.32)
SUNWpsvru (5.0,REV=2005.05.13.16.32)
SUNWtcatr (11.10.0,REV=2005.01.08.05.16)
These patches installed on the source system are inconsistent with this system:
118666: version mismatch
(18) (20)
118667: version mismatch
(18) (19)
118683: version mismatch
(02) (03)
118718: version mismatch
(01) (02)
118777: version mismatch
(13) (14)
118959: version mismatch
(03) (04)
119059: version mismatch
(46) (47)
119090: version mismatch
(31) (32)
119213: version mismatch
(18) (19)
119254: version mismatch
(65) (66)
119278: version mismatch
(25) (27)
119280: version mismatch
(19) (20)
119315: version mismatch
(15) (16)
119470: version mismatch
(15) (16)
119538: version mismatch
(18) (19)
119757: version mismatch
(14) (15)
119963: version mismatch
(12) (15)
120272: version mismatch
(23) (24)
120410: version mismatch
(30) (31)
120753: version mismatch
(05) (07)
120812: version mismatch
(29) (30)
121081: version mismatch
(06) (08)
121104: version mismatch
(06) (07)
122212: version mismatch
(32) (33)
122259: version mismatch
(01) (02)
122261: version mismatch
(01) (02)
122675: version mismatch
(02) (03)
122911: version mismatch
(15) (16)
123590: version mismatch
(09) (10)
123893: version mismatch
(05) (15)
123938: version mismatch
(01) (02)
124149: version mismatch
(14) (15)
125172: version mismatch
(01) (02)
125332: version mismatch
(05) (06)
125533: version mismatch
(10) (11)
125555: version mismatch
(02) (04)
125719: version mismatch
(17) (20)
125952: version mismatch
(18) (19)
126530: version mismatch
(01) (02)
126655: version mismatch
(01) (02)
127976: version mismatch
(04) (05)
136998: version mismatch
(05) (06)
137000: version mismatch
(03) (04)
137034: version mismatch
(01) (02)
137080: version mismatch
(02) (03)
138174: version mismatch
(01) (02)
138322: version mismatch
(02) (03)
138822: version mismatch
(02) (04)
138826: version mismatch
(02) (04)
138874: version mismatch
(01) (03)
139099: version mismatch
(01) (02)
139606: version mismatch
(01) (02)
139928: version mismatch
(01) (02)
139966: version mismatch
(01) (02)
139974: version mismatch
(02) (03)
139977: version mismatch
(03) (04)
140074: version mismatch
(05) (08)
140171: version mismatch
(01) (02)
140391: version mismatch
(02) (03)
140397: version mismatch
(06) (08)
These patches installed on this system were not installed on the source system:
119397-09
119788-09
122130-04
125060-05
136708-01
140589-01
140916-01
140917-01
140919-01
140921-01
141414-01
141686-01
141688-01
141690-01
141692-01
141694-01
141715-01
141717-01
141719-01
141721-01
141726-01
141729-01
141731-01
141733-01
141736-01
141738-01
141740-01
141742-01
141743-01
141765-01
141767-01
141773-01
141775-01
141781-01WOW. That’s a lot of cleanup. It’s no wonder Sun was compelled to add the update flag. Here’s how to save yourself some hair: At this point, you’re good to ‘boot’ the zone on HostB. Thanks to Sun’s update feature, moving my resource-starved zone to a larger server was a painless ordeal