Solaris

Hi Solaris users - I have an Ultra10 SPARC machine, with IIe processor. To prepare for the Solaris10 admin exam PartII I need to set up the metadb/mirroring in my machine, but do not know how to do this properly.
I need this to practice the mirroring tasks.

If anyone could help it would be great.
For example, how would things work, in terms of power supply connections, disk position if only one disk bay, boot process, BIOS, etc, etc.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post and to anyone who responds.

How do you propose adding another disk if you have only one disk bay? Have you an external SCSI hard disk enclosure with the appropriate cable?

There is no BIOS on an UltraSPARC 10. There is an OBP - OpenBoot PROM.

Hi:
U10 is a "normal" ATA/IDE hard disk machine.
In order to practice I recommend you buy two identical (size, model, maker, geometry (CHS)) ATA/IDE hard disks. Or buy one identical to the current one.

Depending of your U10 origin; may need two double connectors ATA/IDE flat cables (allowing you connect 2 devices per MB port).

Since CDROM has a master designation; and If you want to avoid working on OBP too much left one hd as master and the other as slave on separate MB ports.
Then boot off CDROM install Oracle/Solaris on one disk leaving the 7th slice (30/50MB) for metadb storage and practice SVM.

PD: Keep in mind that there is a kernel parameter to avoid 1/2+1 (metadb) requirement to boot mirrors. ;-)

From default, the Ultra 10 can support 2 x IDE hard disks.
You have 1 hard disk on a bay just under the power supply and the second hard disk that sits in the 5 1/4 bay underneath the CD-ROM.
You can in fact with the right cable and screws fit a third hard disk inside the chassis just above the floppy drive.
However if using this media bay, your hard disks would have to be low profile disks to achieve this such as the Seagate single platter LP 500GB.
Attaching these drives together is simple using 2 x IDE cables however you will need to modify OBP's boot aliases to cope with the new drive device paths.
For example, if you add a second drive, the CD-ROM will need to move up to being a slave device. This means it will become target 3 not target 2.
So, your OBP device alias for "cdrom" will need to change from the master position target 2 to the slave position target 3.
Your new hard disk will become the master on the second IDE channel meaning it becomes target 2.
Adding a third disk will require you using the third disk as a slave on the first IDE channel with your root disk. This will become target 1.
The Ultra 10 will then look like this:
root disk, master, first IDE channel, target 0
new disk, slave, first IDE channel, target 1
new disk, master, second IDE channel, target 2
CD-ROM/DVD, slave, second IDE channel, target 3

What I did was use a compact flash as my third disk and put the Solaris operating system on the compact flash. I then played with mirroring and ZFS using the 2 remaining 160GB HDD's I had installed.
I placed the compact flash (8GB) just above the floppy in the media drive bay using a disk bracket. Connected it as master to the first IDE channel.
Then I made the 2 x 160GB HDD's as the slave of the first IDE channel then the master of the second IDE channel. This worked really well and made my Ultra 10 seem like a modern SSD platform.
You probably should not do this though as you will need to practise root mirroring with your exam not just data disk mirroring.
So, try to obtain 2 of the smallest IDE hard disks you can get. 120GB's would be perfect but 160GB's waste a little space as the Ultra 10 will only see 128GB for it's root / boot disk.
Setting up of a root mirror via SVM or ZFS is well documented on Google. It's just a few small commands.

Hope this helps,

- tonymac

---------- Post updated at 10:25 AM ---------- Previous update was at 10:22 AM ----------

Oh, and don't worry about power / cooling.
The old 9GB and 18GB IDE drives that the Ultra 10 came with used far more power than a modern drive and thus generated far more heat. This disks sometimes used up to 15 watts.
Modern disks will use a fraction of that like 2 - 7 watts depending on disk and size.
The Ultra 10 will feel like it's been given a vacation.

- tonymac