Solaris

Hi all,

I have a Solaris 10 running on a M4000.
I wanted to migrate it to M10

q1) can I do a ufsdump on / in the m4000 and restore it on the m10 ?

q2) how do we ufsrestore on the naked M10 without any OS being install/running in the 1st place ?

q3) if the answer to the above is no , what is the easiest way to do a server migration (reinstall ?)

Regards,
Noob

You can do a ufsdump of root (/) and restore it to another box by booting from DVD into single-user

Code:

ok> boot cdrom -s

and then accessing the ufsdump from tape or nfs handle or wherever you stored it. Before the restore you can format disk, set slices, mount the empty disk (typically onto /a) and restore the filesystem.

Be aware though that you may well have to tweak a number of things whilst in single-user after the restore such as boot block, /etc/vfstab, system file, and very likely the device nodes for drives, before the system will boot. Then modify the name of the network interface, etc. I've detailed this on a number of threads here in the past so search for it or post back here with your questions.

If the model is not the same (M5000 ~= M4000 but M10 != M4000 I think) then you must install the OS first, and then transfer the other(!) parts with ufsdump (or with tar or with find+cpio).

All the drivers that were installed for the M4000 will complicate things on the M10. I would recommend you do a rebuild on the M10 rather than a restore.

Hi,

I'd definitely agree with what others have said here for sure. In my own experience of server migrations, you want to have a clean install of everything on the new server (the OS and all needed applications), then after it's all up and running you deal with copying across content and configuration files from the old server.

Now if you were going from one server to another that was absolutely 100% identical in every single way then maybe you could get away with just transferring the whole filesystem across, but even then, I'd personally always be a bit concerned about doing things that way these days.

When it comes to cloning / DR / bare metal type activities, I always suggest Linux, AIX and Solaris Backup and System Recovery Software as a good place to start. Costs depend on your setup, but you can have a play with the demo to see how you like the tools. It allows for network and disk layout changes in the restore step so you can correct poor practice (e.g. one huge root filesystem) and clone, safe in the knowledge that you can avoid IP conflicts the first time it boots. You can clone to & from physical or virtual servers as required. You can choose to include the application & data or not, but if you rely on a 3rd party backup tool for these, make sure it is part of the root volume group you clone.

It should also cope with hardware architecture changes, but I haven't tested that part of it for Solaris because I didn't have dissimilar hardware available to try it on.

Other commercial providers include Cristie Software which can do a whole server (including data) in one go, but in my experience is not quite as flexible.

There too and free tools too. Consider clone cd linux free download - SourceForge and Awesome Open Source Cloning Software too.


I hope that this helps,
Robin