Preparing for an Upgrade

This section describes how to prepare for your upgrade.

Upgrade Considerations

When you decide to upgrade the host system being used for the file system, consider the following:

• Move to the new host while the existing host is still in operation. This practice enables you to install, configure, and test the new hardware platform with your applications.

• Moving to a new host system is equivalent to installing the Sun QFS software for the first time. In SAM-QFS archiving environments, you need to reinstall the software and update the configuration files. These files include the mcf file and the /etc/opt/SUNWsamfs/inquiry.conf file. In addition, you need to copy your existing archiver.cmd and defaults.conf files to the new system, configure system logging, and so on.

• Before powering down the old host system, decide whether the backup copies you have on hand are sufficient. You might want to capture new dump files to re-create the file system on the new server. For more information about creating a dump file, see Setting Up Dump Files.

• If you need to upgrade the Oracle Solaris OS to support the latest products, see Upgrading the Oracle Solaris OS.

Support for Rolling Upgrades in a Shared Environment

You can upgrade individual shared file system clients without taking down the rest of the file system. To perform a rolling upgrade, you environment must include one primary metadata server and at least one potential metadata server.

How to Perform Rolling Upgrades in a Shared Environment

1. Upgrade the potential metadata server.
2. Failover to the potential metadata server.
3. Upgrade the primary metadata server.
4. Failover to the primary metadata server.
5. Upgrade the clients.

Preserving Information for an Upgrade

If you are about to add or change disks, controllers, or other equipment in your environment, it can be difficult to correct or regenerate all the file system descriptions in the mcf file. Using the samfsconfig command can help you by generating information about your file system and file system components after you make these changes.

The samfsconfig command examines the devices you specify, determines whether any of them have Sun QFS superblocks on them, and writes this information to stdout. It uses information from the discovered superblocks and aggregates the devices into a format similar to an mcf file. You can save this format and edit it to re-create a damaged, missing, or incorrect mcf file.

The command can retrieve the Family Set number of the base device (the file system itself), the file system type (ma or ms), and whether the file system is a shared file system.

Irregularities are flagged with one of the following symbols:

• A pound sign (#), which indicates incomplete family set information.

• A greater-than sign (>), which indicates that more than one device name refers to a particular file system element.

The following examples show output from the samfsconfig command.

In this example, the system administrator has put a list of device names into a file. These device names were for devices that were not accounted for in the environment and that the system administrator therefore wanted to examine for family sets. The results displayed in the following code example show some old fragments of family sets and several complete instances.

Example 10-1 Output From the samfsconfig Command

mn# samfsconfig -v *`cat /tmp/dev_files'*

Device `/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s0' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Couldn't open '/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s1': I/O error
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s3' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s4' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s5' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s6' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s7' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s0' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Couldn't open '/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s1': I/O error
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s3' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s4' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s5' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s6' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s7' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s0' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Couldn't open '/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s1': I/O error
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s3' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s4' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s5' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s6' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s7' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s0' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Couldn't open '/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s1': I/O error
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s3' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s4' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s5' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s6' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s7' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s0' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s1' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s3' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s4' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s5' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s6' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s7' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s0' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Couldn't open '/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s1': I/O error
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s3' has a SAM-FS superblock.
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s4' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s5' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s6' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
Device '/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s7' doesn't have a SAM-FS superblock (SBLK).
13 SAM-FS devices found.

#
# Family Set 'qfs1' Created Mon Jun 25 10:37:52 2004
#
# Missing slices
# Ordinal 0
# /dev/dsk/c5t8d0s1 10 mm qfs1 -
#
# Family Set 'qfs1' Created Wed Jul 11 08:47:38 2004
#

qfs1 200 ma qfs1 - shared

/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s3    201      mm     qfs1 -
/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s3    202     mr    qfs1   -
/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s3    203     mr    qfs1  -
/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s3    204     mr    qfs1  -
/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s3    205     mr    qfs1  -
/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s3    206     mr    qfs1  -

#
# Family Set `sqfs1' Created Wed Nov  7 16:55:19 2004
#

sqfs1 100 ma sqfs1 - shared

/dev/dsk/c5t8d0s0    101      mm     sqfs1  -
/dev/dsk/c5t9d0s0    102     mr    sqfs1  -
/dev/dsk/c5t10d0s0    103     g0    sqfs1  -
/dev/dsk/c5t11d0s0    104     g0    sqfs1  -
/dev/dsk/c5t12d0s0    105     g1    sqfs1  -
/dev/dsk/c5t13d0s0    106     g1    sqfs1  -

#

In the output shown in the following code example, the devices flagged with a greater-than sign (>) are duplicated. The s0 slice starts at the start of disk, as does the whole disk (s2) slice. This style of output was obtained on a system running the Solaris 9 OS.

Example 10-2 Output from the Command

# samfsconfig /dev/dsk/c3t*
#
# Family Set 'shsam1' Created Wed Oct 17 14:57:29 2001
#

shsam1 160 ma shsam1 shared
> /dev/dsk/c3t50020F23000055A8d0s2    161    mm   shsam1  -
> /dev/dsk/c3t50020F23000055A8d0s0    161    mm   shsam1  -
> /dev/dsk/c3t50020F23000055A8d0s1    162    mr   shsam1  -
> /dev/dsk/c3t50020F23000078F1d0s0    163    mr   shsam1  -
> /dev/dsk/c3t50020F23000078F1d0s2    163    mr   shsam1  -
> /dev/dsk/c3t50020F23000078F1d0s1    164    mr   shsam1  -