After less than two months since first announcement Sun is already able to release first version of Solaris 8 branded zone (formerly project Etude).
This new branded zone is a special Solaris Container able to host a Solaris 8 instead of Solaris 10 partition, just like Solaris Container for Linux Applications exposes a container to host CentOS and Red Hat Linux partitions instead of Solaris 10 ones.
But differently from its Linux counter-part, this branded zone is offered along with a P2V migration tool, so that Solaris 8 customers (only ones adopting SPARC architectures) just have to migrate their physical boxes to complete the whole process.
While Sun Solaris 10, Solaris Containers and new Solaris Containers for Linux Applications are free, this product doesn’t come free as well. After a 90-days trial you have to buy and subscribe support services, which price is still unknown at the moment.
Download the trial here.