Steps to upgrade Solaris OS running multiple VCS groups

[Fugitive]

Can some one give me steps involved in upgrading Solaris 10 update3 to update 7 without affecting the running service groups ?
I have 2 service groups 1 nfssg & orasg running in 2 node cluster with VCS5.1. We will not be able to afford downtime as both service
groups are production . 

[Eric_Gao · Accepted solution]

Patching is mean to apply under single user mode, so the application groups have to be affected, unless you try the live upgrade.  

Even with the live upgrade, a reboot is unavoidable, so the application groups are always affected, but with the sol 10 live upgrade, the outage can be reduced to a period of system reboot.

1. run lucreate to create the second booting environment

2. run luupgrade to apply the patch cluster/ or to upgrade os on the second booting environment

3. activate the second booting environment

4. shutdown application group and VCS

4. reboot the os from second, patched sol10 (update 7), now yo got a patched/upgraded solaris u7.

To bring sol10 update 3 to update7, you can either try a patch cluster, or you can do an OS upgrade.

Also as update 3 is pretty old, to get a stable live upgrade environment,  you might have to install the live upgrade packages from at least u5 before you kick off the lucreate.

Eric