A mechanism is disclosed for establishing a separate virtual system console for each non-global zone of an operating system environment that has been partitioned into a global zone and one or more non-global zones. An operating system kernel instance implements a virtual console driver. A particular instance of the virtual console driver is executed. A device node is established within a non-global zone controlled by the kernel instance. An association is established between the device node and the particular virtual console driver instance. A process executes within the device node's non-global zone. In response to the process' request to write to the device node, it is determined which virtual console driver instance is associated with the device node. In response to determining that the device node is associated with the particular virtual console driver instance, data received from the process is sent to the particular virtual console driver instance.