Solaris Zone Root File System on CFS

[joseph_dangelo]

I am curious if anyone has implemented non-global zone root file systems using CVM/CFS? More importantly, have you concurrently booted one zone on multiple cvm cluster nodes?  It is supported as part of 5.1 and the Solaris Virtualization guide for CFSHA.  What seems some unintuitive is the behavior of a single zone active on multiple globals (simultaneously).  It would appear that the network and process information is specific the each instance of the zone but changes made to any files would be across all physical hosts. What are the patching considerations?

Thanks,

Joe

[Gaurav_S]

Hi Joe,

I haven't read the specific release notes yet however I am little suspicious on how can a zone work on two boxes at the same time.. the very first reason is, I didn't noticed any document which would reflect that zone can be worked in parallel cluster (even never saw any environment like that) ..  yes CVM/CFS may support that however zone itself should be aware of parallel locking (for e.g Oralce RAC has its own locking or ODM/GLM) while nothing heard about locking for zones...

CVM is always very sensitive towards number of disks, small mistake on representation of disks to each server may cause issue to the environment.. still getting many thoughts on this , have you seen any doco which says zones supports parallel working ?

Thanks

Gaurav

[joseph_dangelo]

Guarav,

The Solaris Virtualization guide for Storage Foundation guide states that this is a supported configuration. https://sort.symantec.com/public/documents/sfha/5.1sp1/solaris/productguides/pdf/sfha_virtualization...

Check out page 37.  This does in fact work and interestingly enough, each instance of the non-global zone has a completely different process stack from the other systems.  The virtual IP however that is associated with the application is only online on one system at a time.  The Zone is a parallel resource and the application is in a failover service group that subsequently depends on the zone service group. 

CVM/CFS will handle the locking for the data, but I am more interested in how will it the zones will react to things like separate cron tasks and patching between each physical host..

Thanks,

Joe D

[SK_Ram]

Hi,

Can BrandZ zone be configured to work with CFS? The problem here is that the BrandZ is for Solaris 8 and I understand that it's not support in 5.1Sp1. Hence I have downgraded VCS/CFS to 5.0MP3. Now the problem is that after I create CF, I can't seem to boot the Solaris 8 BrandZ zone. Any ideas? Thanks.

[joseph_dangelo · Accepted solution]

Solaris 8 Branded Zones are supported for 5.0 MP3.  Please refer to the following document for more details.

https://sort.symantec.com/public/documents/sfha/5.0mp3/solaris/productguides/pdf/315575.pdf

Page 9

This however has since been deprecated as of 5.1

The real issue you are facing is that support for a Zone root on CFS was not added until 5.1 P1.

ftp://ftp.veritas.com/pub/support/patchcentral/Solaris/5.1/sfha/sfha-sol_sparc-5.1P1-patches.tar.gz_...

Take a look at etrack 1896531 on page 8.  Unfortunately 5.0 MP3 does not support CFS zone roots.

Joe D