Creating a Solaris Zones Virtual Machine

Once you have at least one system setup to host Solaris Zones and registered with Cloudmin, you can create your first virtual system. The steps to do this are :

  1. On the left menu, open the Create System link and click on Create Solaris Zone. This will open the Create New System page.
  2. In the System hostname field, enter a short hostname for the new instance. This does not need to include a domain name - it will be appended automatically based on the Zones host selected.
  3. In the System description field enter a short description, like Foo Corp's webserver.
  4. From the Initial system image menu, select the OS image to install. Or you can select None - base OS only, which tells Cloudmin that the zone should be created by copying packages from the host system. If you do use an image, make sure you select one of the same architecture (X86 or Sparc) as the host system.
  5. In the Root login mode section, select Using password and enter the root password to set for the new system into the adjacent field.
  6. In the Webmin installation mode section you do not have to select anything if you have chosen to use an image with Virtualmin, as Webmin will be installed automatically.
  7. Because the selected image may include old packages, you should set the Update Virtualmin packages? field to Yes, so that Cloudmin will install all available updates after instance creation.
  8. From the Zones hosting system menu, select the host on which this zone should be created. It is generally a good idea to spread your instances across hosts to avoid putting too much load on a single system.
  9. Finally, click the Create System button to start the creation process.

If you chose to create the zone from an image, the process will take 5 to 10 minutes, as the image needs to be transferred from the Cloudmin master and un-compressed on the host system. If you selected the base OS option it will take longer, as all packages that need to be copied from the host system. Either way, Cloudmin will display each step in the process as it is run, including copying the image file, un-compressing it, modifying the zones's filesystem to set the root password and IP address, and finally starting up the instance.

Assuming that everything works, the new virtual system will be added to the left menu. You will be able to use Cloudmin to rebooting, shut it down, start it up, or create Virtualmin domains on it, just as you could for any real system. If you no longer need this zone, it can be completely removed with the Delete System link on the left menu.