One of the nice features about Solaris zones (available in Oracle Solaris 10 and later) is the ability to migrate them from one Solaris system to another. In most cases, it is a very easy process with little risk of problems. As long as a few precautions are taken prior to the move, most Solaris system administrators should not have any problems with moving zones.
Matching Solaris Release Levels Prior to Zone Migration
It is important to make sure that both the source and target systems for zone migration are at the same Solaris release and operating system patch level. If the target system has a newer release or patch level of Solaris, the source system will need to be upgraded as well prior to the migration. It is not necessary to worry about the patch levels for third party products when it comes to the Solaris zone migration itself. For example, if one system has an older version of Oracle database or Weblogic, it does not matter with regards to the migration.
If upgrading the Solaris release is part of the zone migration, it is best to perform the upgrade prior to the zone migration if Live Upgrade is used. Live Upgrade will allow system administrators to revert to the previous version of the operating system if there is a failure during the upgrade. However, it is also possible to wait until after the migration to perform the Solaris OS upgrade.