Physical P2V migration in Solaris (Solaris 9 to Solaris 10)

Physical P2V migration in Solaris 

P2V migration is the excellent feature of Solaris where you can migrate the physical server as zone into any another Solaris server which has sufficient resources. In exercise shown below I am going to migrate my Solaris 9 server as zone into my Solaris 10 server. In same way to can migrate the Solaris 8 or Solaris 10 server into some other server as Solaris zone.  I have done this activity as my Solaris 9 host was running on ancient hardware and needed to be migrated.

Source Server Details:
Hardware : Fujitsu Primepower Sever
OS : Solaris 9
Hostname : Sol-9

Destination Server Details:
Hardware : T4-4
OS : Solaris 10
Hostname : Sol-10

Before you proceed with P2V migration make sure all the LUNs from your old physical box is mapped to the Destination host. Get 2 new LUN mapped to the destination host out of which one will be used for zone installation and another one will be used to store flar.

Destination Server which I have used here is already having one Solaris 9 running on it. So it already has the necessary pkgs for branded zone.

But if you are doing this migration for first time please make user have installed following pkgs on destination server.

For Solaris 8 Packages     SUNWs8brandr, SUNWs8brandu, SUNWs8brandk
For Solaris 9 Packages     SUNWs9brandr, SUNWs9brandu, SUNWs9brandk

NOTE: The destination system must be running with at least Solaris 10 8/07, and requires the following minimum patch levels:
Kernel patch: 127111-08  which needs
125369-13
125476-02

 A) On physical server Sol-9

1) Flar Creation

We are going to use Flash Archiving tools to create an image of OS and use our flar image to install the zone.

I have many mount points which are coming from under vxvm. I have unmounted all file system before creating the flar image.

Command flarcreate considers only those mount points that present in /etc/vfstab.

I want to create the flar that will only contain the mounts that are necessary for OS to boot up. Keeping this thing mind have umounted all the file system.

Also by default it ignores items that are located in "swap" partitions.

#umount -f -a
#mkdir /flar

#flarcreate -S -n sol9zone -x /flar -R / -c /flar/sol9zone.flar
Full Flash
Checking integrity...
Integrity OK.
Running precreation scripts...
Precreation scripts done.
Creating the archive...
23962103 blocks
1 error(s)
Archive creation complete.

-u ---> sysunconfig 

-a --->attach the flar image

-x ---> file system that needs to be excluded during the creation of flar.

-S ---> skip the disk check

-n ---> name of the flar

-c ----> location of the flar

#flar info /flar/sol9zone.flar
archive_id=1e1fdee9d71e227217c9559811ef6999
files_archived_method=cpio
creation_date=20180224111205
creation_master=sol9zone
content_name=sol9zone
creation_node=sol9zone
creation_hardware_class=sun4us
creation_platform=FJSV,GPUZC-M
creation_processor=sparc
creation_release=5.9
creation_os_name=SunOS
creation_os_version=Generic_112233-11
files_compressed_method=compress
content_architectures=sun4us type=FULL

2) Deporting diskgroup

Once the flar is created make sure you deport/export all the file system from the physical server along with the LUN on which you have created the flar image to destination server.

I have all fs under vxvm so I have deported all dgs

#vxdg deport appdg

B) On destination host Sol-10

 

1) Importing disk group

I have taken flar on LUN and asked the storage team to map the LUN on destination host.

Make sure to import all the dgs from source host to destination host.

#vxdisk scandisks
#vxdg -C import appdg

2) Zone creation

For zone installation I am going to use LUN so in future if I need to move this server as P2V that can be done easily.

Sol-10 # zonecfg -z sol9zone
sol9zone: No such zone configured
Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone.
zonecfg:sol9zone> create -t SUNWsolaris9            <--- -t=template for solaris 9
zonecfg:sol9zone> set zonepath=/zones/sol9zone   <--- ensure to perform mkdir and chmod 700
zonecfg:sol9zone> set autoboot=true
zonecfg:sol9zone> set hostid=eqcmjop
zonecfg:s9-zone> add net
zonecfg:s9-zone:net> set address=192.168.100.100    <--- enter IP address
zonecfg:s9-zone:net> set physical=physical=rtls0    <--- enter interface name
zonecfg:s9-zone:net> set efrouter=192.168.100.1        <--- enter default router
zonecfg:s9-zone:net> end
zonecfg:sol9zone> verify
zonecfg:sol9zone> commit
zonecfg:sol9zone> exit

I have created vxfs volume and mounted on the path /zones/sol9zone. You can also create zfs file system for zone installation.

Make sure you set the hostid of zone that was used by physical server.

NOTE: You will need to add route of the zone in destination server first so you can zone can communicate with its default router.

3) Zone Installation

I have mounted the one LUN on /mnt the LUN and dg I got from physical Sol-9 server.

#zoneadm -z sol9zone install -a /mnt/sol9.flar -u

-u=sysunconfig & -a=archive location

This installation may take several minutes depending on the size of flar. Once the zone appears in installed state, then poweroff the physical server of which flar is created so you can bring your zone into network.

Boot up the zone and check the network connectivity.

#zoneadm -z sol9zone boot
#zlogin sol9zone

4) Adding File Systems

My original Solaris 9 of which I created flar was having 50 mount points that were under the vxvm. These LUNs are already mapped to my destination box on which my zone installed.

I will just mount all the mounted directly as temporary mount point and then will add these mount points in zone config later.

Below are the commands for add the fs temporary to the server.

# mount -F vxfs /dev/vx/dsk/appdg/vol100 /zones/zol9zone/root/kgapp

Below are the commands to add fs permanently on server, so these mounts will remain across reboots.

# zonecfg -z sol9zone
zonecfg:sol9zone> add fs
zonecfg:sol9zone:fs> set type=vxfs
zonecfg:sol9zone:fs> set special=/dev/vx/dsk/appdg/vol100
zonecfg:sol9zone:fs> set raw=/dev/vx/rdsk/appdg/vol100
zonecfg:sol9zone:fs> set dir=/kgapp
zonecfg:sol9zone:fs> end
zonecfg:sol9zone> commit
zonecfg:sol9zone> verify
zonecfg:sol9zone> exit

Make sure these commands are fired from global zone.

Once the mount points are added to you can hand over the zone to Application/DB team to bring up the Application/DB.