[Veritas-vx] LiveUpgrade on Veritas 5.1SP1 and other problems with Solaris 10

[P***@inform.gazprom.ru]

Hello all!



I have found a few problems with veritas&zfs&ufs and LiveUpgrade Solaris technology .



I want to haveš zfs on my root and veritas groups for local zone roots. šThere are a lot of whole-root local zones so I have to use Solaris LiveUpgrade što upgrade Alternate Boot Environment including alternate global & local zones while the production is online. On external disk array. It is a pity but I cannot create ABE š(lucreate) withš global zone on zfs and local zones on veritas volumes (vxfs). This is not supported by Oracle. šSo I have two options:

1) to place local zones on zpoolš under veritas dmp controlš which is supported by Symantec but not by Oracle;

2) to useš svm ufs on global zone with local zones on veritas švxfs (or zfs).This is supported now by LiveUpgrade but UFS will not be supported by Oracle šin Solaris 11 release.







1. Option one.š Everything is ok.š But the problem is thatš StorageFoundation installers cannot work with alternate whole-root local zones. For example šyou can use alternate root path in installrp script to install rolling patch. And that is all. šThe script knows nothing about alternate local zones created for use by ABE. So it is only possible to get list of patches with installrp -listpatches and install them by luupgrade utility for your ABE. This is the only workaround I see.



2. šOption two. The second thing isš worse because I could not find any information on how it is possible to migrate from ZFS to UFS.

I made a tar backup of /root onš rpool and restored it on UFS partition 0. For /var šI used ufs partition 3. The ufs boot block was installed correctly. Fsck on /dev/rdsk/... was done. /etc/vfstab file was corrected. Everything seemed ok. But on restarting the systemš I saw the error: system/filesystem/minimal:default failed to mount /var. After that the system froze. It was not possible to enter a root password or continue or to send a break from console.



So the question is: how to migrate from ZFS back to UFS?



Regards, Pavel Tsvetkov.

[Hudes, Dana]

1. UFS is deprecated in Solaris 10 and removed in Solaris 11
2. Booting from vxfs is not supported and never was; root disk encapsulation is a hack that was needed until we got zfs boot. There is no longer a use for this technique.
3. Use of ZFS for root disk and zone roots gives you clean Live Upgrade using snapshots and clones.
4. The only places I see a use for Veritas are legacy applications which use raw volumes and do not support ZFS (Filenet Image Services prior to v4.12 is one example) and of course massive legacy storage (e.g. "MSAR"...we have 50+ TB of VxVM, moving that to ZFS after we go to IS 4.12 is non-trivial). Oracle DBMS with raw volumes and certain workloads (and of course legacy storage from prior releases) will benefit from raw volumes and ODM.



________________________________
From: veritas-vx-***@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-vx-***@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of ***@inform.gazprom.ru
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 4:06 AM
To: veritas-***@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-vx] LiveUpgrade on Veritas 5.1SP1 and other problems with Solaris 10

Hello all!

I have found a few problems with veritas&zfs&ufs and LiveUpgrade Solaris technology .

I want to have zfs on my root and veritas groups for local zone roots. There are a lot of whole-root local zones so I have to use Solaris LiveUpgrade to upgrade Alternate Boot Environment including alternate global & local zones while the production is online. On external disk array. It is a pity but I cannot create ABE (lucreate) with global zone on zfs and local zones on veritas volumes (vxfs). This is not supported by Oracle. So I have two options:

1) to place local zones on zpool under veritas dmp control which is supported by Symantec but not by Oracle;

2) to use svm ufs on global zone with local zones on veritas vxfs (or zfs).This is supported now by LiveUpgrade but UFS will not be supported by Oracle in Solaris 11 release.





1. Option one. Everything is ok. But the problem is that StorageFoundation installers cannot work with alternate whole-root local zones. For example you can use alternate root path in installrp script to install rolling patch. And that is all. The script knows nothing about alternate local zones created for use by ABE. So it is only possible to get list of patches with installrp -listpatches and install them by luupgrade utility for your ABE. This is the only workaround I see.


2. Option two. The second thing is worse because I could not find any information on how it is possible to migrate from ZFS to UFS.

I made a tar backup of /root on rpool and restored it on UFS partition 0. For /var I used ufs partition 3. The ufs boot block was installed correctly. Fsck on /dev/rdsk/... was done. /etc/vfstab file was corrected. Everything seemed ok. But on restarting the system I saw the error: system/filesystem/minimal:default failed to mount /var. After that the system froze. It was not possible to enter a root password or continue or to send a break from console.



So the question is: how to migrate from ZFS back to UFS?



Regards, Pavel Tsvetkov.

[P***@inform.gazprom.ru]

Thank šyou for the reply.



I have found the way to get back to ufs from zfs. Not too complicated one. Just a few words about the item.

1. VxVM can be used "add fs" in local zones. And should be used of course. šWhy ? Because Storage Foundation HA is the best product on

the market.

2. šVxVM supportsš the new storage APIs like thin provisioning and thin reclamation. It can be very useful if you don't want to waste too much disk space on VMAX storage .

3. ZFS still has some limitations. For example it is not possible to import šBCV or Clone of zpool on the same host as standard volumes.



From: Hudes, Dana [mailto:***@hra.nyc.gov]
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 8:27 PM
To: ã×ÅÔËÏ× ðÁ×ÅÌ áÎÁÔÏÌØÅ×ÉÞ; veritas-***@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: RE: [Veritas-vx] LiveUpgrade on Veritas 5.1SP1 and other problems with Solaris 10



1. UFS is deprecated in Solaris 10 and removed in Solaris 11
2. Booting from vxfs is not supported and never was; root disk encapsulation is a hack that was needed until we got zfs boot. There is no longer a use for this technique.
3. Use of ZFS for root disk and zone roots gives you clean Live Upgrade using snapshots and clones.
4. The only places I see a use for Veritas are legacy applications which use raw volumes and do not support ZFS (Filenet Image Services prior to v4.12 is one example) and of course massive legacy storage (e.g. "MSAR"...we have 50+ TB of VxVM, moving that to ZFS after we go to IS 4.12 is non-trivial). Oracle DBMS with raw volumes and certain workloads (and of course legacy storage from prior releases) will benefit from raw volumes and ODM.







________________________________

From: veritas-vx-***@mailman.eng.auburn.edu [mailto:veritas-vx-***@mailman.eng.auburn.edu] On Behalf Of ***@inform.gazprom.ru
Sent: Thursday, May 05, 2011 4:06 AM
To: veritas-***@mailman.eng.auburn.edu
Subject: [Veritas-vx] LiveUpgrade on Veritas 5.1SP1 and other problems with Solaris 10



Hello all!



I have found a few problems with veritas&zfs&ufs and LiveUpgrade Solaris technology .



I want to have zfs on my root and veritas groups for local zone roots. There are a lot of whole-root local zones so I have to use Solaris LiveUpgrade to upgrade Alternate Boot Environment including alternate global & local zones while the production is online. On external disk array. It is a pity but I cannot create ABE (lucreate) with global zone on zfs and local zones on veritas volumes (vxfs). This is not supported by Oracle. So I have two options:

1) to place local zones on zpool under veritas dmp control which is supported by Symantec but not by Oracle;

2) to use svm ufs on global zone with local zones on veritas vxfs (or zfs).This is supported now by LiveUpgrade but UFS will not be supported by Oracle in Solaris 11 release.







1. Option one. Everything is ok. But the problem is that StorageFoundation installers cannot work with alternate whole-root local zones. For example you can use alternate root path in installrp script to install rolling patch. And that is all. The script knows nothing about alternate local zones created for use by ABE. So it is only possible to get list of patches with installrp -listpatches and install them by luupgrade utility for your ABE. This is the only workaround I see.



2. Option two. The second thing is worse because I could not find any information on how it is possible to migrate from ZFS to UFS.

I made a tar backup of /root on rpool and restored it on UFS partition 0. For /var I used ufs partition 3. The ufs boot block was installed correctly. Fsck on /dev/rdsk/... was done. /etc/vfstab file was corrected. Everything seemed ok. But on restarting the system I saw the error: system/filesystem/minimal:default failed to mount /var. After that the system froze. It was not possible to enter a root password or continue or to send a break from console.



So the question is: how to migrate from ZFS back to UFS?



Regards, Pavel Tsvetkov.