Problem with Solaris Upgrade

[sinclair48]

Is there a problem with doing a Solaris upgrade say from 9 to 10? I worked at one company that promoted a straight upgrade. Now I'm at another company that says they basically wipe and load then restore the partitions with the software installed.

Which is the best way to go?

Thanks!

 

[bluedragon2]

I have always started from scratch. I would rather reconfigure any files that need it then to have to trouble shoot any issues that may have resulted from a file changing during the upgrade.

[Blue]Blue[/Blue] [Dragon]

If I wasn't Blue, I would just be a Dragon...

 

[sinclair48]

I guess my question is what if the server is a production server. Is it better to restore the software applications (e.g., database, web server, datafiles, etc) then to just upgrade?

 

[djr111]

I prefer to use Solaris Live Upgrade, it takes the hassle out of restoring and starting from scratch. For me it is time better spent.

 

[AnotherAlan]

If you have SDS configured then I would go for the upgrade.
I've done it numerous times and it works very well.
Upgrade one half of the mirror, check the apps e.t.c. then remirror. Painless.

 

[sinclair48]

Thank you all. Three different answers based upon different perspectives. Does the Live Upgrade require the server to be clustered?

Thanks.

 

[djr111]

no,

live upgrade works on stand alone systems. I works in conjunction of drives setup with SVM or some call it(sds).
or with normal c#t#d#s# numbers.

depending on how you have your drives layed out. most people, even me with some of my hosts, I break the mirror and use live upgrade to against the now non attached drive.

On new systems I build, what I do since most drives are pretty large in size. I allocate to partitions on each disk for live upgrade, slice 0 and slice 3. long story short, initially I build my OS on slice 0, down the road if I want to upgrade to say S10 update6, I upgrade slice3, now I can bounce back from the original boot environment to the new boot environment, AND never loosing redundancy during this whole process. This process also works well with patching.

At Sun's website you can download very good white papers on live upgrade, it is very easy to use and there is a lot of thought put into it so it is pretty hard to mess up,