mirroring drive completely

[news2me]

I want to mirror our production drive but heard somewhere if I want to use the mirroring app that is in Solaris I need a partition dedicated to mirroring. It was said that the partition can be very small in size but still had to be a partition not part of one. Is this true? I f I am using all partitions how can I do this? Does anyone know of an easy way to mirror a HD completely (an exact copy, and bootable)

Thanks

 

[jaSun]

The way I have done it in the past is to partition the new disk exactly like the current one, newfs the newly created partitions on the new disk, bring the system down to single user mode and copy all of the data over one file system at a time. To make the new disk bootable, you will need to run the installboot command.

1. Partition new disk using format

2. newfs each new partition so that it contains a file system

3. Bring the system down to single user mode and try the following command to copy the data:
cd <filesystem to copy from>
find . -print | cpio -pumd > /dev/dsk/c?t?d?s? (c?t?d?s? will be the controller/target/disk/slice of the filesystem that you want to copy the data to) You will need to do this for each file system.

4. installboot /usr/platform/&quot;platform name&quot;/lib/fs/ufs/bootblk /dev/rdsk/c?t?d? (c?t?d? = new disk)

HTH,
Jason

 

[KenCunningham]

As far as the partition dedicated to mirroring you mention is concerned, you'll need partitions of at least 3Mb (5Mb preferred, I think) for the 'State Database Replicas' required. That's not a great overhead, unless of course you wish to use all the partitions available for filesystems!

Hope this helps.

 

[news2me]

thanks guys
I do have another question in regards to this one. when I do step 1 (above) I want to size the partitions different than the original. Whomever sized the slices for the original sized a couple too small and then too big. When I copy the data over the different sized slices the new sizes won't effect how the data is placed and then used, right? (As long as I keep the same slice order?)

Secondly, I have /usr and /usr/openwin. I have used all partitions and don't have an available partition for mirroring. Can I combine these 2 into the same slice or map point?