Since you are on Solaris, use fssnap and ufsdump on the snapshot. That would be partition by partitiion, not whole disk. You could set up a script that handles it, put it in an adm directory (I use /usr/local/adm/backup), and then just run that script. Set up permissions so only your engineering logins have access to it.

I've used svm in the past, but with my new T5220's, I'm using raidctl for the mirroring of the root drives. My script for doing backups works fine. Amanda also works well using the same tools. However, it sounded like your situation is more of a one off thing when you are distributing systems.

If you are running realtime processes (like ntpd), you need to stop those before doing fssnap and then start them up again. That can be incorporated in the script as well.