zfs discuss - Jan 2011 - ZFS root backup/"disaster" recovery, and moving root pool

Hi everyone

 

I am currently testing Solaris 11 Express. I currently have a root pool on a
mirrored pair of small disks, and a data pool consisting of 2 mirrored pairs
of 1.5TB drives.

 

I have enabled auto snapshots on my root pool, and plan to archive the daily
snapshots onto my data pool. I was wondering how easy it would be, in the
case of a root pool failure (i.e. both disks giving up the ghost), to
restore these backups to a new disk? Or even if it would be possible to boot
from the latest snapshot, somehow?

 

In a related topic, how easy is it to move a root pool? I am considering
getting a pair of SSDs to use for ZIL, L2ARC and root pool, but am rather
worried it will be quite a painful process to move the root pool onto them.
The plan is to use 16GB or so for rpool, mirrored, then divide the rest
between L2ARC and a mirrored ZIL, on 64GB SSDs.

 

Cheers in advance

Karl 

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Hi Karl,

I would keep your mirrored root pool separate on the smaller disks as
you have setup now.

You can move your root pool, its easy enough. You can even replace
or attach larger disks to the root pool and detach the smaller disks.

You can''t currently boot from snapshots, you must boot from a BE. Root
pool recovery is generally restoring root pool snapshots so if you store
those remotely, you should be covered. This process is described in the
ZFS Admin Guide or the ZFS troubleshooting wiki.

Combining your root pool with a ZIL and L2ARC on faster disks is not
worth the headaches that can occur when trying to manage all 3 on
the same disk. For example, if you decide to reinstall and accidentally
clobber the contents of the ZIL for your data pool. Don''t share disks
for pool components or across pools to keep management and recovery
simple.

Thanks,

Cindy


On 01/10/11 10:58, Karl Wagner wrote:
> Hi everyone
> 
>  
> 
> I am currently testing Solaris 11 Express. I currently have a root pool 
> on a mirrored pair of small disks, and a data pool consisting of 2 
> mirrored pairs of 1.5TB drives.
> 
>  
> 
> I have enabled auto snapshots on my root pool, and plan to archive the 
> daily snapshots onto my data pool. I was wondering how easy it would be, 
> in the case of a root pool failure (i.e. both disks giving up the 
> ghost), to restore these backups to a new disk? Or even if it would be 
> possible to boot from the latest snapshot, somehow?
> 
>  
> 
> In a related topic, how easy is it to move a root pool? I am considering 
> getting a pair of SSDs to use for ZIL, L2ARC and root pool, but am 
> rather worried it will be quite a painful process to move the root pool 
> onto them. The plan is to use 16GB or so for rpool, mirrored, then 
> divide the rest between L2ARC and a mirrored ZIL, on 64GB SSDs.
> 
>  
> 
> Cheers in advance
> 
> Karl
> 
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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