Hi All,

I need to expand a number of Filesystems on a Sun machine running Solaris 10 OS. But first I am confused;

1. Is it possible to expand a ufs filesystem such as /dev/dsk/c1t1d0s0 (that is not managed by SVM) without lossing existing data?

2. Is it possible to have such a filesystem span over more than 1 physical disks?

At present I have the following filesystems which are almost full;

/dev/dsk/c1t1d0s0 141179002 121798695 17968517 88% /mainDB
/dev/dsk/c1t4d0s0 141179002 130083737 9683475 94% /mainHOME
/dev/dsk/c1t3d0s0 141179002 139767832 0 100% /webapps

Each of these flesystems were created on 1 physical disk each taking the whole space. ( The entrie disk has been taken up by the filesystems)

I wish to expand these filesystems; I have added five new disks to the system.

How do I expand these file systems without loosing the existing data?

I thought of the following;

1. Partition the new disks and create metadevices on them, ->create 3 volumes using SVM, -> mount the new volumes on 3 different fielsystems, -> then backup or copy the existing filesystems to the newly mounted ones (how do I do that?), -> edit the /etc/vfstab, change the mount devices for the filesystems so that the system mounts the newly created metadevices on the old mount points, re-partition the old disks and make them into metadevices, use growfs to expand the the 3 filesystems on the fly.

I haven't done this before, I just some opinions please. What steps can I take for these please

Thanks

atogunde

Hi,

just a small question about this.

Do you like to use ZFS or would you take the "old fashioned" way ?.
With zfs you make a pool with your new disks an cut out your filesystems from the whole bunch.

Think about it. zfs could be the better way, possible the easier. SVM or ZFS ?

Hi Serano,

I don't know much about ZFS now; and I don't know if it can be implemented on this system without lossing the existing data. Then, will zfs co-exist with ufs? I forgot to mention that there are some other filesystems on this system that are already being managed by SVM.

I just read a brief about ZFS and it seems like it'll be the best, but it should have been implemented from the begining, right?

What do I have to do if it's SVM or ZFS?

Hi,

no,you can add zfs pools whenever you like.
The problem with your plan above is that you will have at the end a concated filessystem, no raid, no mirror, just a concat.

Does that help for beginning?
ZFS Tutorial Part 1

ZFS can definitely coexist with UFS.

Hi Serano,

Yes I agree, maybe a concat filesystem for now as there's not enough disks for mirror. But there may be enough for raid. What do you suggest?

Maybe we can add a raid zpool on the new disks, create filesystems on the pool then copy the existing/old filesystems to the new ones on zfs (would that work? how?).

You can create a RAIDZ pool with your five disks and then create as many file systems as you need there to move your data.

This can easily be done assuming you can turn off the application accessing the data during the move.