Oracle Solaris ZFS Administration Guide

Installing and Booting an Oracle Solaris ZFS Root File System (Overview)

Starting in the Solaris 10 10/08 release, you can install and boot from a ZFS root file system in the following ways:

After a SPARC based or an x86 based system is installed with or migrated to a ZFS root file system, the system boots automatically from the ZFS root file system. For more information about boot changes, see Booting From a ZFS Root File System.

ZFS Installation Features

The following ZFS installation features are provided in this Solaris release:

The following installation features are not provided in this release:

Oracle Solaris Installation and Oracle Solaris Live Upgrade Requirements for ZFS Support

Ensure that the following requirements are met before attempting to install a system with a ZFS root file system or attempting to migrate a UFS root file system to a ZFS root file system.

Oracle Solaris Release Requirements

You can install and boot a ZFS root file system or migrate to a ZFS root file system in the following ways:

General ZFS Storage Pool Requirements

The following sections describe ZFS root pool space and configuration requirements.

Disk Space Requirements for ZFS Storage Pools

The required minimum amount of available pool space for a ZFS root file system is larger than for a UFS root file system because swap and dump devices must be separate devices in a ZFS root environment. By default, swap and dump devices are the same device in a UFS root file system.

When a system is installed or upgraded with a ZFS root file system, the size of the swap area and the dump device are dependent upon the amount of physical memory. The minimum amount of available pool space for a bootable ZFS root file system depends upon the amount of physical memory, the disk space available, and the number of boot environments (BEs) to be created.

Review the following disk space requirements for ZFS storage pools:

ZFS Storage Pool Configuration Requirements

Review the following ZFS storage pool configuration requirements: