Identify the applications that you would like to run in zones.

Review the applications running on your system:

• Determine which applications are critical to your business goals.

• Assess the system needs of the applications you are running.

Refer to your business goals and to your system documentation if necessary.

Determine how many zones to configure.

Assess:

• The performance requirements of the applications you intend to run in zones

• The availability of the recommended 100 MB of free disk space per zone to be installed

See Evaluating the Current System Setup.

Determine whether you will use resource pools with your zone to create a container.

If you are also using resource management features on your system, align the zones with the resource management boundaries. Configure resource pools before you configure zones.

Note that you can add zone-wide resource controls and pool functionality to a zone quickly by using zonecfg properties.

See How to Configure the Zone, and Chapter 13, Creating and Administering Resource Pools (Tasks).

Perform the preconfiguration tasks.

Determine the zone name and the zone path. Determine whether the zone will be a shared-IP zone or an exclusive-IP zone, and obtain IP addresses or the data-link name. Determine the required file systems and devices for each zone. Determine the scheduling class for the zone. Determine the set of privileges that processes inside the zone should be limited to, if the standard default set is not sufficient. Note that some zonecfg settings automatically add privileges. For example, ip-type=exclusive automatically adds multiple privileges required to configure and manage network stacks.

For information on the zone name and path, IP types, IP addresses, file systems, devices, scheduling class, and privileges, see Chapter 17, Non-Global Zone Configuration (Overview) and Evaluating the Current System Setup. For a listing of default privileges and privileges that can be configured in a non-global zone, see Privileges in a Non-Global Zone. For information about IP feature availability, see Networking in Shared-IP Non-Global Zones and Networking in Exclusive-IP Non-Global Zones.

Develop configurations.

Configure non-global zones.

See Configuring, Verifying, and Committing a Zone and the zonecfg(1M) man page.

As global administrator, verify and install configured zones.

Zones must be verified and installed prior to login.

See Chapter 19, About Installing, Halting, Cloning, and Uninstalling Non-Global Zones (Overview) and Chapter 20, Installing, Booting, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Tasks).

As global administrator, boot the non-global zones.

Boot each zone to place the zone in the running state.

See Chapter 19, About Installing, Halting, Cloning, and Uninstalling Non-Global Zones (Overview) and Chapter 20, Installing, Booting, Halting, Uninstalling, and Cloning Non-Global Zones (Tasks).

As global administrator, perform the initial internal configuration of the zone.

Place a sysidcfg file in the zone's /etc directory or log in to each non-global zone using the zlogin command with the -C option and enter the requested information, including assigning the zone root password.

See Chapter 21, Non-Global Zone Login (Overview) and Chapter 22, Logging In to Non-Global Zones (Tasks).

Prepare the new zone for production use.

Create user accounts, add additional software, and customize the zone's configuration.

Refer to the documentation you use to set up a newly installed machine. Special considerations applicable to a system with zones installed are covered in this guide.