Solaris Containers: Easy paths to upgrade
Solaris Containers is already a highly adopted and highly used OS virtualization technology, easy to use and maintain, for those customers using Solaris it really is the first stop when looking at the path to a virtualized datacenter.
In the past the choice around how to upgrade your system that is running containers has seem limited but now we have arrived a point where when upgrading your containers you will have a choice that fits your service window and requirements. There is a fantastic blog from our own Jeff Victor that goes into the details and does some simple investigation but here are the highlights:
LiveUpgrade: You will have to reboot your whole system but downtime is lmited to this reboot as the patching happens on the Alternative Boot Environment (ABE) while you are still in operation. See the blog by Bob Netherton for more info.
Parallel Patching: Recently released and described here Zones Parallel Patching (ZPP) allows you to, unsurprisingly, patch your Conatiners in parallel making use of those highly threaded systems and reducing your overall downtime.
Update on Attach: Move your Containers to newer patch level systems as described here, this gives you the benefit of better granuality being able to take single Containers offline in sequence and minimising downtime to that required to update the individual Container.
By using the above features in several different strategies Containers really are in a position where you have the opportunity to chose the right fit for you and your customers' needs. Go check out Jeff's blog today and see how you can be quickly and efficiently upgrading your systems.
