Deploying Solaris 8 Systems using Solaris 10 Containers
Sun has recently announced the availability of a new tool designed to help migrate applications currently running on older SPARC hardware and Solaris 8. We can now take advantage of the newer UltraSPARC T2 and SPARC 64-VI product lines, while keeping the Solaris 8 system image.
A great engineering exercise performed by the same core team that developed both Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 Operating Environments, combines the Containers technology with the BrandZ technology and extends the initial scope of allowing the creation of Linux Containers, to further allow the creation of Solaris 8 Containers.
Aimed at those environments where full migration of the software stack to Solaris 10 is not an option, this tool will enable a rapid deployment of your current Solaris 8 system image into a virtualized environment supported by a Solaris 8 Container inside a Solaris 10 box. Nice, huh?
One can argue that migrating applications to Solaris 10 is not at all hard, but there are many reasons why some customers choose not to do so, like:
- The applications are old, unsupported
- Migrating less important applications doesn't justify risk and costs
- Application has been built in-house and/or source is no longer available (you can't imagine how many times we see this...)
So how do I go about migrating my running Application to the new sexy sun boxes? Here's a quick tour:
First, if you're going to test run the tool prior to engaging with Sun to provide you with a full migration service, you can download and freely use the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant 1.0 for 90 days.
This product includes a tool called Archiver (aka P2V), that archives your current system image, ready to be moved to the new system.
Also included is the Updater Tool, that processes your Solaris 8 image and prepares it for the new, virtualized environment. This processing includes applying the latest set of required patches and changing some otherwise incompatible startup scripts that wouldn't run perfectly on a Container.
The last component is the Solaris 8 Container itself, that we create to install and run the Solaris 8 image just as it was running in the old hardware. This special container includes the BrandZ library that translates all Solaris 8 system calls to Solaris 10 system calls. Here's a quick example of such deployment:
# zonecfg -z zone8
zonecfg:zone8> create -t SUNWsolaris8
zonecfg:zone8> set zonepath = /export/home/zones/zone8
zonecfg:zone8> add net
zonecfg:zone8:net> set address = <IP Address>
zonecfg:zone8:net> set physical = e1000g1
zonecfg:zone8:net> end
zonecfg:zone8> verify
zonecfg:zone8> commit
zonecfg:zone8> exit
# zoneadm -z zone8 install -a <FLAR_image_location> {-u|-p}
After applying the patches and finishing the update of the image, the new container is ready to be booted.
For more information about the Solaris 8 Migration Assistant tool, please check here.
Hi.
I need run containers with Solaris 8 on a domain. Is possible in the same domain run containers with Solaris 8 and Solaris 10?
Posted by Sergio Alavez on June 03, 2008 at 11:10 PM WEST #
Hi Sergio.
First of all, please excuse me for this obviously late reply, but I have been somehow neglecting my blog due to an ever increasing workload.
Regarding your question, the straightforward answer is yes, we can.
In fact, any system with Solaris 10 installed can manage an incredible number of different containers, each installed and configured with it's own characteristics, namely:
whole root zones or sparse zones, and branded containers. The latter come in different flavors, like Solaris 8 containers, Solaris 9 containers, and linux containers. All such containers have an embedded BrandZ library that will translate the hosted OS's system calls to the appropriate system calls directed at the underlying Solaris 10 kernel.
Any non-branded container is by definition a Solaris 10 container, and we can have a mix of all types of containers running alongside on any system.
Posted by Paulo Silva on October 02, 2008 at 03:17 PM WEST #