Upgrade Planning

For a UFS file system, you can upgrade a system by using one of three different upgrade methods: Solaris Live Upgrade, the Solaris installation program, and custom JumpStart.
For a ZFS root pool, you must use Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade. For ZFS upgrades, see Chapter 12, Solaris Live Upgrade for ZFS (Planning), in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.

Table 4-5 Solaris Upgrade Methods

Current Solaris OS	Solaris Upgrade Methods
Solaris 8, Solaris 9, Solaris 10	Solaris Live Upgrade – Upgrades a system by creating and upgrading a copy of the running system The Solaris installation program – Provides an interactive upgrade with a graphical user interface or command-line interface Custom JumpStart method – Provides an automated upgrade

Upgrading and Patching Limitations

The following table lists limitations when you upgrade a system under some conditions.

Issue	Description	For More Information
For ZFS root pools, there are other upgrade limitations	You can only use Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade ZFS root pools.	For requirements and limitations. seeChapter 12, Solaris Live Upgrade for ZFS (Planning), in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.
Upgrading to a different software group	You cannot upgrade your system to a software group that is not installed on the system. For example, if you previously installed the End User Solaris Software Group on your system, you cannot use the upgrade option to upgrade to the Developer Solaris Software Group. However, during the upgrade you can add software to the system that is not part of the currently installed software group.	For more information on software groups, see Disk Space Recommendations for Software Groups.
Upgrading when non-global zones are installed	You can upgrade a system that has non-global zones installed with the Solaris installation program, Solaris Live Upgrade or JumpStart. The following limitations apply: Solaris Live Upgrade is the recommend program to upgrade or patch a system. Other upgrade programs might require extensive upgrade time, because the time required to complete the upgrade increases linearly with the number of installed non-global zones. If you are patching a system with Solaris Live Upgrade, you do not have to take the system to single-user mode and you can maximize your system's uptime. When you use a Solaris Flash archive to install, an archive that contains non-global zones is not properly installed on your system.	For requirements and limitations see Upgrading With Non-Global Zones.
Patching with Solaris Live Upgrade from the Solaris 8 or 9 OS	You cannot use Solaris Live Upgrade to patch a Solaris 10 inactive boot environment when the active boot environment is running the Solaris 8 or 9 OS. Solaris Live Upgrade will invoke the patch utilities on the active boot partition to patch the inactive boot partition. The Solaris 8 and Solaris 9 patch utilities are unaware of Solaris Zone, Service Management Facility (SMF), and other enhancements in the Solaris 10 OS. Therefore the patch utilities fail to correctly patch an inactive Solaris 10 boot environment. Therefore, if you are using Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade a system from the Solaris 8 or Solaris 9 OS to the Solaris 10 OS, you must first activate the Solaris 10 boot environment before patching. After the Solaris 10 boot environment is activated, you can either patch the active boot environment directly or set up another inactive boot environment and patch that one by using Solaris Live Upgrade.	For more information on patching with Solaris Live Upgrade, see To Add Patches to a Network Installation Image on a Boot Environment in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning
Upgrading with Veritas file systems	The Solaris interactive installation and custom JumpStart programs do not present you with the opportunity to upgrade a system when you are using Veritas VxVM file systems under these conditions: If the root file system to be upgraded is under Veritas control. For example, if the root (`/`) file system is mounted on a `/dev/vx/...` device. If any Solaris software is installed on any file system that is under Veritas control. For example, if the `/usr` file system is mounted on a `/dev/vx/...` device.	To upgrade when Veritas VxVM is configured, use one of the following methods: Use Solaris Live Upgrade with this procedure, System Panics When Upgrading With Solaris Live Upgrade Running Veritas VxVm in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning. If you have non-global zones installed, you must migrate the affected file systems from VxVM file systems to UFS file systems. You cannot use the Solaris Live Upgrade procedure in the previous procedure.

Upgrade Programs

You can perform a standard interactive upgrade with the Solaris installation program or an unattended upgrade with the custom JumpStart installation method. Solaris Live Upgrade enables you to upgrade a running system.

Upgrade Program	Description	For More Information
Solaris Live Upgrade	Enables you to create a copy of the currently running system. The copy can be upgraded and then a reboot switches the upgraded copy to become the currently running system. Using Solaris Live Upgrade reduces the downtime that is required to upgrade the Solaris OS. Also, Solaris Live Upgrade can prevent problems with upgrading. An example is the ability to recover from an upgrade if the power fails, because the copy being upgraded is not the currently running system.	To plan for disk space allocation when using Solaris Live Upgrade, see Solaris Live Upgrade Requirements in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.
The Solaris installation program	Guides you through an upgrade with an interactive GUI.	Chapter 2, Installing With the Solaris Installation Program For UFS File Systems (Tasks), in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Basic Installations.
Custom JumpStart program	Provides an automated upgrade. A profile file and optional preinstallation and postinstallation scripts provide the information required. When creating a custom JumpStart profile for an upgrade, specify `install_type upgrade`. You must test the custom JumpStart profile against the system's disk configuration and currently installed software before you upgrade. Use the `pfinstall -D` command on the system that you are upgrading to test the profile. You cannot test an upgrade profile by using a disk configuration file.	For more information about testing the upgrade option, refer to Testing a Profile in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations For more information about creating a upgrade profile, see Profile Examples in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations For more information about performing an upgrade, see Performing a Custom JumpStart Installation in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations

Installing a Solaris Flash Archive Instead of Upgrading

The Solaris Flash installation feature provides a method of creating a copy of the whole installation from a master system that can be replicated on many clone systems. This copy is called a Solaris Flash archive. You can install an archive by using any installation program.

Caution - A Solaris Flash archive cannot be properly created when a non-global zone is installed. The Solaris Flash feature is not compatible with Solaris Zones partitioning technology. If you create a Solaris Flash archive, the resulting archive is not installed properly when the archive is deployed under these conditions:

The archive is created in a non-global zone
The archive is created in a global zone that has non-global zones installed

Creating an Archive That Contains Large Files

The default copy method that is used when you create a Solaris Flash archive is the cpio utility. Individual file sizes cannot be greater than 4 Gbytes. If you have large individual files, the flarcreate command with the -L pax option uses the pax utility to create an archive without limitations on individual file sizes. Individual file sizes can be greater than 4 Gbytes.

For information about installing an archive, see the following table.

Installation Program	For More Information
Solaris Live Upgrade	Installing Solaris Flash Archives on a Boot Environment in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning
Custom JumpStart	To Prepare to Install a Solaris Flash Archive With a Custom JumpStart Installation in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations
Solaris interactive installation	Chapter 4, Installing and Administering Solaris Flash Archives (Tasks), in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Flash Archives (Creation and Installation)
WANboot	Chapter 13, Installing With WAN Boot (Tasks), in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Network-Based Installations

Upgrading With Disk Space Reallocation

The upgrade option in the Solaris installation program and the upgrade keyword in the custom JumpStart program provide the ability to reallocate disk space. This reallocation automatically changes the sizes of the disk slices. You can reallocate disk space if the current file systems do not have enough space for the upgrade. For example, file systems might need more space for the upgrade for the following reasons:

The Solaris software group that is currently installed on the system contains new software in the new release. Any new software that is included in a software group is automatically selected to be installed during the upgrade.
The size of the existing software on the system has increased in the new release.

The auto-layout feature attempts to reallocate the disk space to accommodate the new size requirements of the file system. Initially, auto-layout attempts to reallocate space, based on a set of default constraints. If auto-layout cannot reallocate space, you must change the constraints on the file systems.

Note - Auto-layout does not have the ability to “grow” file systems. Auto-layout reallocates space by the following process:

Backing up required files on the file systems that need to change.
Repartitioning the disks on the basis of the file system changes.
Restoring the backup files before the upgrade happens.

If you are using the Solaris installation program, and auto-layout cannot determine how to reallocate the disk space, you must use the custom JumpStart program to upgrade.
If you are using the custom JumpStart method to upgrade and you create an upgrade profile, disk space might be a concern. If the current file systems do not contain enough disk space for the upgrade, you can use the backup_media and layout_constraint keywords to reallocate disk space. For an example of how to use the backup_media and layout_constraint keywords in a profile, refer to Profile Examples in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Custom JumpStart and Advanced Installations.

Using the Patch Analyzer When Upgrading

The Patch Analyzer performs an analysis on your system if you want to upgrade to one of these releases that follow the initial Solaris 10 3/05 release.

Solaris 10 1/06 release
Solaris 10 6/06 release

If you are already running the Solaris OS and have installed individual patches, upgrading to a subsequent Solaris 10 release causes the following:

Any patches that were supplied as part of one of the releases noted above are reapplied to your system. You cannot back out these patches.
Any patches that were previously installed on your system and are not included in one of the releases noted above are removed.

You can use the Patch Analyzer to determine which patches, if any, will be removed. For detailed instructions about using the Patch Analyzer, refer to Appendix C, Using the Patch Analyzer When Upgrading (Tasks), in Oracle Solaris 10 9/10 Installation Guide: Solaris Live Upgrade and Upgrade Planning.

Backing Up And Restarting Systems For an Upgrade

Backing up your existing file systems before you upgrade to the Solaris OS is highly recommended. If you copy file systems to removable media, such as tape, you can safeguard against data loss, damage, or corruption.

For detailed instructions to back up your system, refer to Chapter 23, Backing Up and Restoring UFS File Systems (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Devices and File Systems.
To backup your system when non-global zones are installed, see Chapter 27, Solaris Zones Administration (Overview), in System Administration Guide: Oracle Solaris Containers-Resource Management and Oracle Solaris Zones.

In previous releases, the restart mechanism enabled you to continue an upgrade after a loss of power or other similar problem. Starting with the Solaris 10 10/08 release, the restart mechanism is unreliable. If you have a problem, your upgrade might not restart.

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