Solaris 11 with local zones needs to backup to 5220/5020 appliances through FC

[Tijs]

Hi,

We have a Solaris 11 server with several local zones that contains DB instances.
We have also one 5220 Media server appliance and a 5020 appliance (connected through FC for optimized duplication with eachother)

How can we backup this Solaris 11 server through FC to the appliances?
Do we need to install a SAN media server or just a SAN client on the global zone that can do filesystem backups through FC to the 5220 Media server appliance?

Thank you!

Best regards,

Tijs

[Tijs]

Hi,

The best option is a san client in the local zones, but Symantec says that they need the uscsi command.

SAN Client uses uscsi to direct SCSI commands to the tape drives connected to it. USCSICMD opcode is used with ioctls and this opcode is not supported in non-global zones. The calls fail with “Not owner” error. 

GlobalZone
bash-3.00# ./uscsi
Inquiry command was successful

Non-Global Zone
bash-3.00# ./uscsi
Inquiry command failed with errno = 1, Not owner

SAN Client would work fine if it is run from a global zone, but, that defeats the purpose of using local zones. 

We contacted our SUN contacts and finally heard back from them in May 2009
saying that it is an inherent limitation on Solaris zones and will not be changed.

But I saw now that Solaris 11 supports uscsi in local zones:

http://docs.iws.cs.uni-magdeburg.de/admin/solaris11/html/821-1460/z.config.ov-3.html

Disk Format Support in Non-Global Zones

Disk partitioning and use of the uscsi command are enabled through the zonecfg tool. See device in Resource Type Properties for an example. For more information on the uscsi command, see uscsi(7I).

Delegation is only supported for solaris zones.

Disks must use the sd target as shown by using the prtconf command with the -D option. See prtconf(1M).

So this is supported now in Solaris 11? Is there then still an issue installing and using SAN client in a local zone?

I will test this on a new Solaris 11 server.

regards,

Tijs