Root Mirroring in Solaris10 Update9 using SVM

To mirror root is a good practice as it provides high-availability in production environments and also minimum downtime. I have to make the document as simple as I could though I cant help with the commands that seem to be so unfriendly. In this tutorial I would be ignoring the installation part of solaris10 update9.

Below is the partition layout of first disk onto which Solaris is installed on my VirtualBox.

As you can see that slice 7 is dedicated for the replicas.

The /etc/vfstab file output.

Format command output

As we have two hard disks c0t0d0 and c0t1d0 and our OS is installed on c0t0d0, we need to partition the second disk exactly as the first to perform root mirror. So we shall copy the VTOC of c0t0d0 to c0t1d0.

# prtvtoc /dev/rdsk/c0t0d0s2 | fmthard -s - /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s2

Now that we have partitioned the second hard disk same as the first one we need to prepare a layout of what other slices do we need to mirror apart from the root slice.

Preparing mirroring strategy

/                                   d10      d11 + d12        c0t0d0s0 + c0t1d0s0  

swap                            d20      d21 + d22        c0t0d0s1 + c0t1d0s1

/var                              d30      d31 + d32        c0t0d0s3 + c0t1d0s3

/export/home                d40      d41 + d42        c0t0d0s4 + c0t1d0s4

/data                             d50      d51 + d52        c0t0d0s5 + c0t1d0s5

Once we have prepared the strategy, we can go ahead and carry out further steps to root mirroring.

First of all we need to create replicas on the slice 7 of each disk.

# metadb -afc3 c0t0d0s7

# metadb -afc3 c0t1d0s7

Next we create mirrors on both disks, create main mirrors and attach the first mirror to the main mirror.

Creating slice 0 mirrors or root mirrors

# metainit -f d11 1 1 c0t0d0s0                ## slice 0 stripe d11 on disk1

# metainit -f d12 1 1 c0t1d0s0                ## slice 0 stripe d12 on disk2

# metainit d10 -m d11                             ## attaching slice 0 stripe d11 to main mirror d10

Creating slice 1 mirrors or swap mirrors

# metainit -f d21 1 1 c0t0d0s1

# metainit -f d22 1 1 c0t1d0s1

# metainit d20 -m d21

Creating slice 3 mirrors

# metainit -f d31 1 1 c0t0d0s3

# metainit -f d32 1 1 c0t1d0s3

# metainit d40 -m d41

Creating slice 4 mirrors

# metainit -f d41 1 1 c0t0d0s4

# metainit -f d42 1 1 c0t1d0s4

# metainit d50 -m d51

Creating slice 5 mirrors

# metainit -f d51 1 1 c0t0d0s5

# metainit -f d52 1 1 c0t1d0s5

# metainit d50 -m d51

After creating the main mirrors, we need to run metaroot command specifying the root mirror. After which you will see a notable change in the /etc/vfstab and /etc/system files which in turn will confirm us about the root mirror.

# metaroot d10

This line shows in /etc/vfstab, notice the partitions and you can find that there are changes in / file system line.

/dev/md/dsk/d10          /dev/md/rdsk/d10         /           ufs        1          no        -

Before issuing metaroot

After issuing metaroot

These lines show in /etc/system file

* Begin MDD root info (do not edit)

rootdev:/pseudo/md@0:0,0,blk

* End MDD root info (do not edit)

Change all the partitions mounted in /etc/vfstab as shown below. The below made changes are according to the metadevices that were applicable in my case, hence do not copy unless you are sure about it.

# sync; sync;

# lockfs -fa

# init 6

After the system has rebooted open up the terminal again and attach rest of the mirrors that were created to the main mirrors one by one

# metattach d10 d12

# metattach d20 d22

# metattach d40 d42

# metattach d50 d52

# metattach d60 d62

You can check the syncing status of the mirror using below mentioned commands.

# metastat

# metastat | grep -i %

After attaching all the mirrors one after the other, run the below mentioned command to check and confirm the mirror status.

# metastat -p

Now that we have set up the mirrors, we have to set boot device. This can be done as follows.

# ls -ll /dev/md/dsk/d10

# eeprom bootpath=/devices/pseudo/md@0:0,10,blk

eeprom output

We can also set the bootpath as the first disk and alternate bootpath as second disk. We will go with the root mirror d10.

#eeprom bootpath=/devices/pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@0,0:a

#eeprom altbootpath=/devices/pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@1,0:a

As soon as the bootpath is set to root mirror d10, the file /boot/solaris/bootenv.rc shows these lines:

setprop bootpath '/devices/pseudo/md@0:0,10,blk'

Now we need to set up grub on the second disk. The following command does that for us.

# installgrub -m /boot/grub/stage1 /boot/grub/stage2 /dev/rdsk/c0t1d0s0

Edit /etc/system file and append the below mentioned lines to avoid the system to enter the maintenance mode if one of the hard disks fails.

set md:mirrored_root_flag=1

Finally set the swap device as the mirror d20 as we had mirrored the swap area also. You can see your default swap area using the command dumpadm. To set up the swap area use -d switch to specify the swap area.

That was all we had to do while root mirroring two disks. Cheers !!!