Dec 17, 2008 
Someone had a question for me – does patching a sparse zone take less time than patching a whole-root zone? My first instinct was “yes”, because there would be much less data to copy into each zone, as some file systems like /usr are shared with the global zone. I decided to test both scenarios.
Here is the procedure I used:
Rebooted server to clear inode cache, memory pages, etc. With 3 whole-root zones installed, used PCA (http://www.par.univie.ac.at/solaris/pca/), and patched, adding 106 patches to the system. Rebooted, removed the zones and backed out the 106 patches. Rebooted and installed 3 sparse zones and performed the same patching again.
Patching whole-root zones: 88 minutes to install 106 patches
Patching sparse zones: 72 minutes to install 106 patches
Hmm not all that different. Not quite what I expected, but good to know.
Setup : SunFire V440, using all local disk/ SVM mirrored, 4GB RAM, Solaris 10 update 4, patching to the EIS May 2008 level.
UPDATE: I patched the server without any zones also, and it took only 30 minutes. My sub-par math tells me each sparse zone took 14 minutes to patch, and each whole root took 19 minutes.
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this is a greatly intriguing enter, thank you for the information. Contrite my english is not the very best. do you be versed if it is possible to despatch this to the spanish language. that would be quite helpfull.