Thursday, March 20, 2008

Solaris 8 in a Zone

Well, wha if you stuck with Solaris 8 for many reasons but need to get it on modern SPARC HW and better yet get it clustered? You also need MPxIO working with latest arrays, and if you could go with SC3.2 for free to limit costs that would be ideal...

Playground: 2x T5220, 1x 2530 SAS array, Solaris 10 U4, MPxIO, IPMP, Sun Cluster 3.2 with Zones agent, patch 126020-02 applied (support for Etude). Entire software is for free.

Then you install Etude - just two packages. Export your Solaris 8 root file system over nfs or create a flar archive. Now you create a Solaris Branded Zone with Solaris 8 emulation providing exported Solaris 8 or flar archive as a source and a moment later you have a working copy of your Solaris 8 system in a Solaris 10 zone - cool!

Now you configure that Zone under a cluster (couple of commands) and you got it clustered so you can switch that zone between systems.

So far so good. Next week more functional tests and some basic application testing. If it will go well then we will switch production to it.

Last phase? Create another Zone - this time Solaris 10 zone (standard one), put it under a cluster and migrate one by one applications between zones doing some cleaning at the same time.

In a mean time we will provide better reliability due to clustering, better performance due to faster storage, more RAM and more CPU power.

Not only it allows you to use recent HW and rapid migration, but since it's running on Solaris 10 you also benefit from technologies like ZFS (yes, etude zone can be on zfs), Dtrace, resource management, etc.

How hard is it to set-up? Actually very easy, way easier than you think.
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6 comments:

  1. Anonymous20 March, 2008 20:08

    Do you know of any useful tutorials/resources concerning Sun Cluster and zones?

    Everything I read about refers to 'testing' and 'beta' concerning cluster and zones.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous25 March, 2008 09:41

    You can get the Sun cluster data service guide for containers @
    docs.sun.com/app/docs/doc/819-3069.

    for interacting with the ohac community, you can join www.opensolaris.org/os/community/ha-clusters/

    You can also follow blogs.sun.com/sc for announcements and technical docs

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous25 March, 2008 14:22

    It's not for free :)

    "Note: This download comes with an evaluation license for a period of 90 days from your first use. For full support please contact your Sun sales team for the full RTU and service subscription."

    You have to pay for full right to use.

    Radek

    ReplyDelete
  4. milek26 March, 2008 10:27

    Radek - http://blogs.sun.com/dp/entry/solaris_8_migration_assistant_etude#comments

    I'm not entirely sure if it is for free or not. According to Marc Hamilton it is free assuiming you already have S8 RTU.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous26 March, 2008 13:08

    I've read those comments. Summarize:
    - You have to have Sol8 RTU license - but, what about migrating 1 sol8 env to N sol8 branded zones, is it possible? (i assume on sun branded hardware)
    - You have to have sol10 RTU license - free of charge - what about service plan subscriptions? is it optional or not?
    - You have to have sol8sa RTU license - free of charge - but until now there is a mistake in corresponding FAQ, which suggest it isn't free.

    Am I right?

    I've ask those questions our sun salesman and i am waiting response.

    Radek

    ReplyDelete
  6. Anonymous07 May, 2008 14:44

    Hi,
    we would like to put a Sol8 zone in HA with Sun Cluster, but I can't find any info about this in the docs. Is it officially supported? Any suggestions?
    Thanks
    Cheers
    Marco

    ReplyDelete