1. Managing ZFS File Systems in Oracle Solaris 11.4
  2. Managing the ZFS Root Pool
  3. Managing ZFS Swap and Dump Devices

Managing ZFS Swap and Dump Devices

The installation process automatically creates a swap area and a dump device on a ZFS volume in the ZFS root pool.

The dump device is used when the directory where crash dumps are saved has insufficient space, or if you ran the dumpadm -n command syntax. The -n modifies the dump configuration to not run savecore automatically running after a system reboot.

Certain systems avail of the deferred dump feature in the current Oracle Solaris release. With this feature, a system dump is preserved in memory across a system reboot to enable you to analyze the crash dump after the system reboots. For more information, see About Devices and the Oracle Hardware Management Pack in Managing Devices in Oracle Solaris 11.4.

Note the following guidelines when managing swap and dump volumes:

  • During a Solaris installation, a dump device is automatically created in the root pool. This is the recommended location for dump and swap devices. If the root pool is too small for the dump device, it can be relocated to a non-root pool. The non-root pool must be either a single-disk pool, a mirrored pool, or a striped pool. Dump devices are not supported on a RAIDZ pool.

  • ZFS volumes that are used for swap are always encrypted by using an ephemeral key.

  • Sparse volumes are not supported for swap volumes.

  • Currently, using a swap file on a ZFS file system is not supported.