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Virtualization has been a hot topic for quite some time. If you are using Solaris and Sun hardware you have had a number of options for many years already and the last few years there has been even more options made available. Today you have four different virtualization alternatives when you want to run Solaris (and I’m not counting running Solaris inside VMware since it only works as a client, not a host). Keep on reading for more information.

Lets start from the oldest and move forward.

1. Hardware Domains
The big enterprise machines can be separated into domains, basically you separate CPU, memory and other hardware components into their own server. This can be seen as a separate server inside the server. Different domains on the same hardware platform can run different versions of Solaris and if you run into problems with the hardware in one domain it won’t affect the other domains. If you reboot one domain it also won’t affect the other. This feature is only available in E2900 and upwards.
2. Zones
This feature was introduced with Solaris 10 and it allows you to run multiple instances of the operating system but they all share the same kernel. If the kernel dies then all zones dies. The nice thing with them is that there is very little overhead, you can setup as many as you like as long as you have enough CPU, memory and disk space. There is currently some development in OpenSolaris to run different versions of Solaris inside different domains.
3. Logical Domains
If you are lucky enough to have a T1 (and soon T2) based system you also have access to logical domains, unfortunately it won’t work on anything else at the moment. It is similar to domains in that you can run different versions of the operating system on top of them, Solaris 10 or some version of OpenSolaris, and you can also run Linux. One of the differences between a Hardware Domain and the Logical Domain is that in the latter you can partition based on virtual CPUs. So with the T2 where you have 64 virtual CPUs you can have 64 logical domains.
4. vXM (or Xen)
In recent releases of OpenSolaris Xen has been integrated. Sun has chosen a different name for it and calls it xVM. xVM only exists for x86 but on the other hand it allows you not only to run multiple Solaris instances and versions, it also allows you to run Windows, Linux and any other operating system that works on top of the Xen hypervisor.

So now you have plenty of starting points to continue your own investigations. All of them have their own strengths and weaknesses.

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