Solaris 9 Installation Guide

Guidelines for Selecting Slices for root (/) Mirrors and Metadevices

You can use Solaris Live Upgrade on a system that is currently using either Solaris Volume Manager metadevices or Veritas Volume Manager VxVM volumes. The source boot environment can be contained on any combination of physical disk slices, Solaris Volume Manager metadevices, or Veritas Volume Manager volumes. When creating a new boot environment, the slice that is chosen for the root (/) file system for the new boot environment can be either a physical disk slice or a Solaris Volume Manager metadevice. If you choose a Solaris Volume Manager metadevice for the root file system, the metadevice must be either a stripe with only a single disk or a mirror on a single-disk stripe. See metaroot(1M) for more details.

You cannot use a Veritas VxFS volume for the root (/) file system when creating a new boot environment. For any file system except the root (/) file system, you can use either a physical disk slice, a Solaris Volume Manager metadevice, or a Veritas VXFS volume.

Table 31–2 describes the acceptable disk configurations for creating a boot environment when using metadevices or volumes.

Table 31–2 Acceptable Slices for Metadevices or Volumes

Product 

Source Slice 

If Target Is a Metadevice for a root (/) File System

If Target Is Not a root (/) File System, But Is for /usr, /var, or /opt

Solaris Volume Manger 

For the root (/) file system, the source can be a metadevice or physical slice.

The root (/) file system, must be either a stripe with only a single disk or a mirror on a single-disk stripe.

Other file systems can be either a physical slice or metadevice. 

Veritas VxVM Volume Manager 

For the root (/) file system, the source can be a volume or physical slice.

The root (/) file system, cannot be a VxVM volume; root (/) must be a physical slice.

Other file systems can be either a physical slice or volume. 

When creating a new boot environment, the lucreate -m command recognizes the following three types of devices only:

Using boot environments with metadevices or volumes has special considerations when upgrading or installing a flash archive. See Upgrading Metadevices and Volumes for details.


Note –

If you have problems upgrading with Veritas VxVM, see System Panics When Upgrading With Solaris Live Upgrade Running Veritas VxVm.