Thanks to all of you for the help. -Ivan On Tue, 2008-08-19 at 10:56, Bob Friesenhahn wrote: > On Tue, 19 Aug 2008, Ivan Ordonez wrote: > > > > I would like to get your opinion on what is the best way to setup the > > machine using ZFS on all drives and partitions. I want to use Zones, > > Live Upgrade and Virtualbox in the future. > > > > The machine is SUN Ultra 40 M2 with 6G of RAM, 2 dual core AMD CPU, and > > three physical drive with 250G each. I installed Solaris 10 5/08 (5.10 > > Generic_137112-05) using Solaris Interactive (I chose all the default > > options and partitioning) on the first physical drive, c1d0s0. The two > > other physical drives (c2d0s0 and c3d0s0) were formatted and partitioned > > the same way as c1d0s0. I want to convert c1d0s0 to ZFS filesystem and > > setup raid1 mirroring using c2d0s0. I want to use the third drive > > (c3d0s0) for live upgrade, virtualbox and zones. I want minimal > > downtime in case one of the drive fails, and need to be replace. > > The problem is that the advice which is best for Solaris 10U5 will be > invalidated by Solaris 10U6, which should be available a month or two. > That is because Solaris 10U6 will offer support for ZFS boot so your > first two drives can be in one mirrored pool. > > Given this expected short term future, the best path forward is likely > to place an order now for a fourth disk drive. The first drive can be > your Solaris boot disk, without redundant data protection. Put your > two other drives (c2d0s0 and c3d0s0) into a mirrored pool, using the > whole disk rather than partitions. This will be your data pool. You > can use the extra space on c1d0s0 for non-critical data storage using > UFS or ZFS. > > When Solaris 10U6 arrives, you can install the extra disk and > re-install your system from scratch so that the first two disks are > your ZFS root pool, and the previously existing mirror pool continues > to function as before. I don't know what live upgrade for Solaris > 10U6 looks like, but if we are luckly it has the smarts to upgrade an > existing boot disk to form a ZFS root pool. > > Assuming that the fourth disk shows up before Solaris 10U6 then I > think that you can create a second boot Solaris 10U5 boot environment > on that disk (using lucreate') so that if your normal root disk > craters, you are still able to boot via the second disk (with possible > data loss). The location of the GRUB menu is always a problem since > it seems that there can be only one master GRUB menu, and it might be > on the disk that craters. > > I have a SUN Ultra 40 M2 here as well, and since a motherboard > replacement a month ago (requiring three motherboards before finding > one that maybe worked), the system has just not been the same. The > Emulex fiber channel card now locks up (is specifically shut down with > "Adaptor error") sometimes at the start of a 'zfs scrub'. Yesterday I > found that the system had mysteriously shut down at the start of a zfs > scrub (according to 'last') without being requested to by a user, > without any apparent panic, and without any updates to > /var/adm/messages. Unfortunately, I installed Solaris 10U5 shortly > after the motherboard swap so it is difficult to tell if the strange > behavior is due to hardware, or if Solaris 10U5 (or its Emulex device > driver) has a dreadful bug. > > My experience should be fair warning that even with a service contract > your system can be down unexpectly for a whole week and the > replacement parts might not work due to a quality control problem. > The disk drives are perhaps not the primary concern. > > Bob > ====================================== > Bob Friesenhahn > [EMAIL PROTECTED], http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/ > GraphicsMagick Maintainer, http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
_______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
