Status: Disaster Recovery: metadevices & bare-metal

From: Bill R. Williams (brwms@etsu.edu)
Date: Mon Nov 29 2004 - 16:16:35 EST


This is just a status report on my original post:

* I had a couple of suggestions for commercial products.
  (I'm just not really sold on either of the suggested offerings to
  give me what I need.)

* I had several requests for information on any solutions I might
  find. (I'm not the only one worring with this.)

I don't have a SUMMARY ready yet, but responses from the list and my
research has yielded interesting things:

* As of Solaris 9 4/04 you can incorporate the creation of SVM volumes
  via jumpstart. (Thanks, Alex Theodore) Using the 4/04 or later
  jumpstart with a flash archive could be the beginning of "quick
  clone" recovery. Maybe. Anyway, this doesn't help with my current
  situation, I have Solaris 9 4/03.

For those of you who want to play along at home, the trick is to have
a fast, simple, load-and-go bare metal recovery for a system which is
setup with SVM meta-devices. If you are not at Solaris 9 4/04 or
later, the meta-devices are the stumbling block. Since I am not at
the 4/04 level, I can't say if it is the complete cure.
Also, Veritas is not part of my picture; I'm working with what is
provided by SunOS 5.9 Solaris.

At such time as I come up with my plan, I will post a real SUMMARY.

-- 
 ---------------------------------------------
 Bill R. Williams               <brw@etsu.edu>
 ------------------------ ETSU Library Systems
On Fri, Nov 19, 2004 at 05:33:04PM -0500, Bill R. Williams wrote:
> I have been looking around and so far haven't found the answer to
> this:
> 
> I want to have a bare-metal disaster recovery method in place for my
> SunFire V880 and 280R Systems running Solaris 9.  The filesystems are
> meta devices.
> 
> Ideally, I would like something similar to what I have on my Linux
> systems:  A backup-created image that I can boot and with a single
> command recreate the system as it was when the backup was run.
> I just boot the CD-ROM recovery medium (created by mondo/mindi) and
> when it finishes, remove the CD, reboot the system, and it comes up
> running.
> (mondoarchive -- provides me with this "Boot and Go" recovery.)
> 
> A "One Touch" Recovery is not looking promising for Solaris.
> I've been playing with flash archive; it works as advertised.
> What flasharchive does NOT do that I would really like to have is a
> backup which will replicate the disk layout before it proceeds.  To
> further complicate things, my Solaris 9 Systems all have Solaris
> Volume Mananger (SVM) meta disks, and this setup appears to be
> software RAID, or at least acts like it.
> 
> I would really like to hear from any of you experienced Solaris
> SysAdmins who have a "fast turnaround" bare-metal disaster recovery
> method in place.  Especially if you have your disks set up as meta
> devices under SVM.
> 
> I have looked around but haven't found precisely what I want:
> A method whereby I can take a portable backup and recreate/duplicate a
> production system on another matching SunFire.
> 
> ANY hints, tips, check lists, cookbooks, etc. would really be
> welcomed.  I will summarize.
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