Solaris Live Upgrade 2.0

Solaris Live Upgrade 2.0 is available in the Solaris 9 operating environment. This description covers version 2.0.

Solaris Live Update 2.1 is now available in the Solaris 9 8/03 Update release. For a description of Solaris Live Update 2.1, see Solaris Live Upgrade 2.1.

Solaris Live Upgrade provides a method of upgrading that substantially reduces the usual service outage that is associated with an operating system upgrade. You can duplicate your current running boot environment, then while the original boot environment continues to run, you can upgrade the duplicate. The duplicate boot environment is then activated to become the active boot environment when the system is rebooted. If a failure occurs, you can quickly fall back to the original boot environment with a simple reboot. This feature eliminates the downtime for the production environment that is associated with a normal test and evaluation process.

In addition to upgrading a boot environment, you can install a Web Start Flash archive on an inactive boot environment. When you reboot the system, the configuration that you installed on an inactive boot environment is active.

The Solaris 9 release includes several Live Upgrade enhancements that apply to the command-line interface only. These enhancements affect the following:

• Progress Reporting – When using Solaris Live Upgrade to upgrade or install a Web Start Flash archive, the percentage of the upgrade or install completed is reported.

• Changes to the lumount and luumount Commands – The lumount command mounts all the boot environment's file systems. If you do not explicitly specify a mount point, lumount creates a mount point. This mount point uses the boot environment name rather than a random set of numbers, thus preventing a proliferation of mount points. This enhancement makes the luumount command easier to use.

  The luumount command unmounts the boot environment's root file system. The luumount command now accepts a mount point as well as the boot environment name. And with the -f option, a boot environment's file system can be forcibly unmounted.

  See the man pages lumount(1M) and luumount(1M).

• Scheduling Priorities – Solaris Live Upgrade's main purpose is to minimize production environment downtime while migrating to a new operating system. Some Solaris Live Upgrade operations, such as upgrading and copying file systems, can cause significant load to a system. Solaris Live Upgrade now has the tools to control scheduling by priorities. This feature minimizes performance degradation on the production system. You can change the defaults in the /etc/default/lu file.

• Naming Boot Environments – Solaris Live Upgrade commands allow long names for boot environments. The commands can now associate a description of any length with a boot environment name.

  For further information, see the Solaris 9 Installation Guide or the man page, ludesc(1M).

For further information on Solaris Live Upgrade, see “Solaris Live Upgrade (Topics)” in Solaris 9 Installation Guide.

In the Solaris 9 Update releases, note the following name change:

Solaris Flash (formerly Web Start Flash)