Migration : From Solaris 10 Sparse Local Zone to Solaris 11 Local Zone

Let's described the migration process of Solaris 10 Sparse Local Zone to Solaris 11 Local Zone in 09 easy steps. But before delving into the subject, it's important to remind the following. 
In Solaris 10, we had 02 types of zones/containers that we could create, the first (and the default type) is "Sparse root zone" and the second is "Whole root zone". 
The main difference between these 02 types was that with "sparse root zone", you shared part of the root filesystem with the global zone while with  "whole root zone", every Solaris packages are copied to the local zone private filesystem. In Solaris 11, this distinction goes away (more details about Comparison between Solaris 11 Zone and Solaris 10 Zone can be found here). What we address below is the migration of a sparse Solaris 10 zone from Solaris 10 Global Zone to Solaris 11 Global Zone.

1. Let’s Print the existing zone's configuration. We will need this information to recreate the zone on the destination system:

SOURCE_GLOBAL_ZONE# zonecfg -z Source_local_zone info zonename: Source_local_zone zonepath: /zpool_slz/slz brand: native autoboot: false bootargs: pool: scheduling-class: ip-type: shared hostid: inherit-pkg-dir: dir: /lib inherit-pkg-dir: dir: /platform inherit-pkg-dir: dir: /sbin inherit-pkg-dir: dir: /usr net: address: 192.168.1.118/24 physical: nxge5 defrouter: 192.168.1.1

2. The next step is to stop this source local zone and bring it to a state where it can be archived.
The reason for stopping the zone is that we should not archive a running zone because the application or system data within the zone might be captured in an inconsistent state.Also,  the zone is a sparse root zone that has inherit-pkg-dir settings, For that reason we need to bring it in the state "ready" ( that'll enable the archiving of  inherited directories).

SOURCE_GLOBAL_ZONE# zoneadm -z Source_local_zone halt SOURCE_GLOBAL_ZONE# zoneadm -z Source_local_zone ready

3. Now, we should copy the /var/sadm/system/admin/INST_RELEASE from the source global zone to the source local zone, otherwise we may face the  Bug 15751945 (with an error stating that The image release version must be 10 (got unknown), the zone is not usable on this system).

# cp /var/sadm/system/admin/INST_RELEASE /zpool_slz/slz/root//var/sadm/system/admin/

4. Let’s archived the local zone (zonepath: /zpool_slz/slz).  For that we’ll create a gzip compressed cpio archive named Source_local_zone.cpio.gz (The local zone will still be named Source_local_zone on the target system)

SOURCE_GLOBAL_ZONE# cd /zpool_slz/slz SOURCE_GLOBAL_ZONE# find root -print | cpio -ocP@ | gzip >/export/home/slz.cpio.gz

N.B: the –c option of cpio is to avoid the error similar to “UID or GID are too large to fit in the selected header format”

5. Transfer the archive to the target Oracle Solaris 11.1 system, using any file transfer mechanism to copy the file, we’ll use sftp here.

SOURCE_GLOBAL_ZONE# scp /zpool_slz/slz.cpio.gz admin@192.168.1.20:

6. On the target systems (DEST_GLOBAL_ZONE), create the target zone. Below, we're using a configuration file that's sourced for the creation of the zone.
Note – The zone's brand must be solaris10 and the zone cannot use any inherit-pkg-dir settings, even if the original zone was configured as a sparse root zone.

root@DEST_GLOBAL_ZONE:/export/zonecfg# cat /export/zonecfg/Source_local_zone.cfg create -t SYSsolaris10 set zonepath=/zones/slz select anet linkname=net0 set linkname=Source_local_zone_net0 set lower-link=net0 end add anet set linkname=Source_local_zone_net1 set lower-link=net1 end root@DEST_GLOBAL_ZONE# zonecfg -z Source_local_zone -f /export/zonecfg/Source_local_zone.cfg

7. Display the new local zone's configuration:

root@DEST_GLOBAL_ZONE:/export/zonecfg# zonecfg -z Source_local_zone info brand: solaris10 autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: default,proc_priocntl,proc_clock_highres,sys_time scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: linkname: Source_local_zone_net0 lower-link: net0 allowed-address not specified configure-allowed-address: true defrouter not specified allowed-dhcp-cids not specified link-protection: mac-nospoof mac-address: random mac-prefix not specified mac-slot not specified priority not specified rxrings not specified txrings not specified mtu not specified maxbw not specified rxfanout not specified anet: linkname: Source_local_zone_net1 lower-link: net1 allowed-address not specified configure-allowed-address: true defrouter not specified allowed-dhcp-cids not specified link-protection: mac-nospoof mac-address: random mac-prefix not specified mac-slot not specified priority not specified rxrings not specified txrings not specified mtu not specified maxbw not specified rxfanout not specified

8. Install the zone from the archive that was created on the source system, with the archive transferred into the /zpool_slz directory on the destination system

DEST_GLOBAL_ZONE# zoneadm -z Source_local_zone install –p -a /export/home/admin/slz.cpio.gz

N.B: Again, you might get an error here specifying that “The image release version must be 10 (got unknown)” if you haven’t copied the /var/sadm/system/admin/INST_RELEASE file in the source local zone as specified above.

9. Once the zone installation has completed successfully, the zone is ready to boot.

DEST_GLOBAL_ZONE# zoneadm -z Source_local_zone boot

Migration Completed....