SUMMARY: Veritas and Root Disk Setup

Hello Sun Managers,

   I'd like to thank everyone for their replies: Kevin Buterbaugh,
Hichael Morton, Bertrand Hutin, Aaron M. Hirsch, Jay Lessert, Ken
Zachmann, Darren Dunham, Bryan Moore, Ben Rockwood, and Preiszl
Matthias.

   There were several different answers I received (see my question at
the bottom of this email):

1. About half of the answers I got were to just use DiskSuite and use
Veritas for the data only.
2. Use a manual cloning/mirroring script.
3. Make a copy of the original disk (to be paranoid about a problem),
encapsulate, and mirror, as mentioned in the Sun Blueprints.

Most people said I should not worry about encapsulation of the root disk
failing since it is very reliable and it updates all the vfstab and boot
stuff automatically (and its faster than my idea).

This page's suggestion also seemed interesting:
http://unixway.com/vm/veritasvm/rootdg.html

Also, if it's set up correctly, you should be able to see your disks
without the Veritas drivers.  See this page:
http://www.sunhelpdesk.com/users/john/Mirror-boot-disk-with-VxVM.htm

What a pain in the #@! all this stuff can be...but that's why we're all
Sun Managers, right?  I don't know about you, but I would just like
technology to work as easy and painlessly as advertised...OK OK, that's
enough of my philosophical input.

ORIGINAL QUESTION:

--------------------------------------------------
I posted to the list a while back and I am now at the point where I have
the hardware to mirror my root disk; I was just wondering what
everyone's feedback is on this particular "case study" and whether my
"plan" will work:

   I have a SunFire 280R (one primary disk NOT under Veritas control
with /, /usr, /usr/local, and /var slices) and one new internal,
untouched 36GB disk.  I also have a D1000 with 5-36GB drives and 7-9GB
drives.  The last 9GB drive is the only one in 'rootdg' (the rest are in
'/export/home/xyz' user data disk groups).  Is the following feasable
(see my reasons why I want to do it this way at the end):

1. Initialize the new disk into Veritas control under rootdg with 1
(root) partition
2. Boot from CD-ROM and ufsdump each of the original disk's slices. 3.
Boot into single user mode (so I have the Veritas drivers loaded) and
ufsrestore each of the partitions into the newly initialized internal
disk which is now under Veritas control. 4. I assume I have to do
something else to make this new disk bootable? 5. Reboot into OpenBoot
and boot off new disk. 6. If everything looks good, continue with the
mirroring setup (initialize old disk, etc.)

The reason I would like to do it this way is so that I don't have to
mess around with encapsulating my root disk (so if something goes wrong,
it's no big deal).  Only once everything is working, will I go ahead and
initialize my original disk and make it the mirror.  Perhaps someone can
tell me if this is possible to do?

Also, on a quick sidenote: If your disk and your data are all under
Veritas control, and some disaster happenes and you want to boot from a
CD-ROM -- you wouldn't be able to access any of your data because there
are no Veritas drivers on the CD-ROM, correct?  Is there any way to get
around this?  (I've heard/read about custom Jumpstart -- but how about
from a CD-ROM?)
--------------------------------------------------

--END TRANSMISSION--

;-)
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