Brand Types¶
zcage supports the following zone brands:
- sparse (default)
- ipkg
- lipkg
- lx
- bhyve
All brand types have specific benefits and drawbacks, serving a variety of unique needs. This section describes and has creation examples for each of these brand types.
Sparse (default)¶
Sparse zones are created by default if –type is not specified.
# zcage create --alias=test07 --net "omni0|192.168.1.225/24|192.168.1.1" --ram 2gb
In a sparse zone critical file systems like /usr, /lib, /etc, /platform etc are inherited from the global zone to the non-global zone as a read-only loopback file system. This allows to use little disk space and be created faster.
Ipkg (ipkg)¶
Ipkg zones are creating by specifying –type ipkg on creation
# zcage create --alias=test07 --net "omni0|192.168.1.225/24|192.168.1.1" --type ipkg --ram 2gb
An ipkg zone gets its own writable copy of all file systems. Thus installation takes longer time than the sparse root zone.
Lipkg (lipkg)¶
Lipkg zones are creating by specifying –type lipkg on creation
# zcage create --alias=test07 --net "omni0|192.168.1.225/24|192.168.1.1" --type lipkg --ram 2gb
Linked images link the packages in a zone to the global zone. If you update the global zone’s packages, the linked-image zones get updated alongside it. This means going forward, an upgrade with linked image zones does not require detaching and reattaching the zone. You can update zones on a running system (at the cost of losing some log state during the time of the upgrade and the time of a reboot), or you can simply halt the zones, do the upgrade, and reboot with all linked-image zones automatically updated. <https://omniosce.org/info/linked_images.html>.
Linux Branded Zone (lx)¶
Linux branded zones are creating by specifying –type lx on creation, this type of brand needs an extra parameter to be specified on creation ‘–image <image uuid>’ or ‘–docker <container image name>’.
When using the –image flag the user needs to specify an already download linux image, this image could be downloaded using zcage pull --image.
#zcage images --list remote
#zcage pull --image 96bb1fac-c87d-11e5-b5bf-ff4703459205
# zcage create --alias=test07 --net "omni0|192.168.1.225/24|192.168.1.1" --type lx --ram 2gb --with-image 96bb1fac-c87d-11e5-b5bf-ff4703459205
When using the –docker flag the user needs to specify the container image name from docker hub (<https://hub.docker.com/search?q=&type=image>) that will be used when creating the zone.
| samp: | # zcage create –net “vnic0|192.168.1.225/24|192.168.1.1” –ram 2gb –docker alpine/latest –alias lxvm –brand lx |
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Bhyve (bhyve)¶
Bhyve zones are creating by specifying –type bhyve on creation, this type of brand needs an extra parameters to be specified on creation ‘–disk <zfs dataset> ‘ To create a bhyve branded zone, first we need to create a disk for it to use:
# zfs create -V 30G rpool/vm0
# zcage create --brand bhyve --net "net6|192.168.1.207/24|192.168.1.1" --ram 2gb --alias bhyve0 --disk=rpool/vm0
This will create a bhyve zone that will use the dataset specified on the –disk parameter as a disk.
You could specify the iso which to use at boot using the –with-iso option
# zcage start -z bhyve0 --with-iso /home/neirac/isos/FreeBSD-11.2-RELEASE-amd64-bootonly.iso
Then you could connect to the newly created bhyve zone using vnc, to obtain the port just use the info command.
# zcage info -z bhyve0
Or just use the serial terminal
| samp: | # zlogin -C bhyve0 |
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bhyve was originally integrated into FreeBSD by NetApp in around 2011 where it became part of the base system with FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE. It continued to evolve and was ported to illumos by Pluribus Networks in around 2013 and they contributed the resulting code to the illumos community in late 2017. From there, Joyent worked on integrating bhyve into their illumos fork, bringing it up-to-date with bhyve from FreeBSD-11.1 and making many improvements along the way. The intention that they have stated is for them to continue to work closely with the FreeBSD maintainers so that improvements make it back where appropriate.(<https://omniosce.org/info/bhyve.html>)