Recently I created my first ZFS clones but quickly realized that there was no simple way to tell the clones from the regular filesystems. My first instinct was to run 'zfs list -t clone' similar to 'zfs list -t snapshot' but this didn't work. Maybe it works in newer versions of ZFS.
I've been working with Unix for a fairly long time now- about 13 years.
I'll admit that I started with Linux and thought it was light years ahead of SunOS 4.x running on those old SPARC machines- I mean who had heard of SPARC processors? I remember my boss trying to explain to me that even an older SPARC processor was more powerful than a newer Intel Pentium processor. I didn't really believe him. In time, I convinced them to get rid of most of their SPARC/Solaris in favor of the hip, free, and cheap Intel/Linux combination.
Now I see that I couldn't have been more wrong. I realize that SunOS 4.x probably still has features which I don't know how to use properly. When I look at Solaris 10, ZFS, Zones, LDOMS, DTrace, etc. I not really sure you could pay me to work with Linux (that would be soo depressing). That isn't even mentioning the SPARC hardware it runs on- Can any Intel server compare to a T5140???
The Solaris Flash installation feature enables you to use a single reference installation of the Solaris OS on a system, which is called the master system. Then, you can replicate that installation on a number of systems, which are called clone systems. You can replicate clone systems with a Solaris Flash initial installation that overwrites all files on the system or with a Solaris Flash update that only includes the differences between two system images. A differential update changes only the files that are specified and is restricted to systems that contain software consistent with the old master image.
I ran into several issues trying to create such a DVD when following the standard Google results so I thought I'd summarize my experiences. This is a work in progress- I might hit a brick wall at some point, but I hope not.
A friend of mine asked me the other day if there was such a thing as Partition Magic for Solaris. Apparently, someone had installed a system on a single slice and their security team was requiring a separate partition for the DB.