[zfs-discuss] Server upgrade

David Dyer-Bennet
2012-02-16T16:42:02Z

On Thu, February 16, 2012 08:54, Edward Ned Harvey
wrote:
>> From: zfs-discuss-bounces at opensolaris.org [mailto:zfs-discuss-
>> bounces at opensolaris.org] On Behalf Of David Dyer-Bennet
>>
>> While I''m not in need of upgrading my server at an emergency
level, I''m
>> starting to think about it -- to be prepared (and an upgrade could be
>> triggered by a failure at this point; my server dates to 2006).
>
> There are only a few options for you to consider.  I don''t know
which ones
> support encryption, or which ones offer an upgrade path from your version
> of
> opensolaris, but I figure you can probably easily evaluate each of the
> options for your own purposes.
>
> No matter which you use, I assume you will be exporting the data pool, and
> later importing it.  But the OS will either need to be wiped and
> reinstalled
> from scratch, or obviously, follow your upgrade path (which has never
> worked
> for me; I invariably end up wiping the OS and reinstalling.  Good thing I
> keep documentation about how I configure my OS.)

This is already getting useful; "which has never worked for me" for
example is the sort of observation I find informative, since I''ve been
seeing your name around here for some time and have the general impression
that you''re not stupid or incompetent.

Yeah, I''ll try to export and import the pool.  AND I''ll have
three current
backups on external drives, at least one out of the house and at least one
in the house :-).  I''m kind of fond of this data, and wouldn''t
like
anything to happen to it (I could recover some of the last decade of
photography from optical disks, with a lot of work, and the online copies
would remain but those aren''t high-res).

> Nexenta, OpenIndiana, Solaris 11 Express (free version only permitted for
> certain uses, no regular updates available), or commercial Solaris.
>
> If you consider paying for solaris - at Oracle, you just pay them for
"An
> OS" and they don''t care which one you use.  Could be oracle
linux,
> solaris,
> or solaris express.  I would recommend solaris 11 express based on
> personal
> experience.  It gets bugfixes and new features sooner than commercial
> solaris.

I was going to say the commercial version wasn''t an option -- but on
consideration, I haven''t done the research to determine that.  So
that''s a
task (how hard can it be to find out how much they want?).

Listing the options is extremely useful, in fact.  Even though I''ve
heard
of all of them, seeing how you group things helps me too.

I''m seriously thinking of going Nexenta, as I think it would let me be
a
little less of a sysadmin.  Solaris 11 express is tempting in its own way
though, if I decide the price is tolerable.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b at dd-b.net; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info