SPARC: Lift & Shift Solaris 10 ZFS RPool

SPARC: Lift & Shift Solaris 10 ZFS RPool

Abstract:

Since the adoption of SMP (Symmetric Multi Processing) by Sun Microsystems, there has been a shift in consolidation on chassis: co-hosting applications on a common OS instance, applications leveraging limited protections with "chroot", hosting multiple OS's on the same chassis through PDoms (Physical Domains), hosting multiple OS's via LDoms (Logical Domains), hosting applications in Solaris Containers (Zones). Sun had created techniques to lift-and-shift UFS based Solaris instances to LDoms, but had not provided a way forward for virtualization of ZFS bsed Solaris 10 systems... until days ago.

Solaris 10 P2V With ZFS Root

With Solaris 10 coming "end of life" and the push to Solaris 11 going strong, there is still a need to consolidate older model chassis. There is a guide called "Lift and Shift". Sekhar Lakkapragada, Senior Principal Software Engineer at Oracle, wrote an article on  how to accomplish this very task:

"Migrate Oracle Solaris 10 Physical Systems with ZFS root to Guest Domains in 3 Easy Steps" 

ldmp2vz

Sekhar posted a tool to accomplish this very activity, to the Oracle Solaris Blog. A short synopsis:

We are happy to announce that we now offer a new tool called ldmp2vz(1M) that can migrate Oracle Solaris 10 source systems with ZFS root. This tool has two commands; ldmp2vz_collect(1M) and ldmp2vz_convert(1M). These two commands enable migration of a sun4u or a sun4v Oracle Solaris 10 physical machine to an Oracle Solaris 10 guest domain on a system running Oracle Solaris 11 in the control domain as shown in this diagram.

In short, it is a 3 step process, not dissimilar from the ldmp2v tool:

1. Collection: Run ldmp2vz_collect(1M) on the source for system image and configuration
2. Preparation:  Create a new Oracle Solaris 10 SPARC guest domain using ovmtdeploy(8), Jumpstart, or DVD.
3.  Conversion: Run ldmp2vz_convert(1M) from prepared Solaris 10 guest domain using Live Upgrade technology.

Sekhar 

Conclusions:

This has been a long time coming, but it is welcome, none the less.