Solaris Volume Manager

[screwloose]

What is the difference between 'soft partitions' and 'hard partitions' in Solaris 9?

Coming from AIX, the SVM and partitions and disk layout is confusing. Probably, the same as it would be for a Solaris admin learning AIX LVM.

Thanks.

 

[cndcadams]

See my post for your earlier question; Hard mount and softmount are the same except for syntax. Once you create your mirror with submirrors you can make your needed entries to vfstab.
I added example vfstab entries below.


#device device mount FS fsck mount mount
#to mount to fsck point type pass at boot options
#
/proc - /proc proc - no -
fd - /dev/fd fd - no -

/dev/md/dsk/d0 /dev/md/rdsk/d0 / ufs 1 no logging
/dev/md/dsk/d3 /dev/md/rdsk/d3 /var/usr/vice ufs 5 yes -
/dev/md/dsk/d6 /dev/md/rdsk/d6 /u1 ufs 3 yes logging
/dev/md.dsk/d1 - - swap - no -


Thanks Again

CA

 

[daFranze]

@cndcadams
soft- or hardmounts have nothing to do with SVM's softpartitions

@screwloose

softpartitions are new to SVM; a SCSI Disk in Solaris has 7 free definable (and one slice is used by convention as the backup-the-whole-disk-slice) Slices; since Disk Sizes are growing and people want to build up small Filesystems the limit of 7 Slices hurts. Therefore Sun invented the softpartitin, which means you create more than one metadevice in one softpartition
[since I do not have disks larger than 32G I never created a softpartition]

Regards
-- Franz
Sorry I'm not a native spaeker, I'm from Munich, Germany - "Home of the Whopper", oh no, "Home of the Oktoberfest" ;-)
Solaris System Manager; I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years

 

[cndcadams]

Sorry guys, somehow I misread this and thought he was looking to soft and hard mount SVM devices.

CA

 

[daFranze]

EDIT: Therefore Sun invented the softpartitin, which means you create more than one metadevice in one slice, i.e. a hardpartition

Regards
-- Franz
Sorry I'm not a native spaeker, I'm from Munich, Germany - "Home of the Whopper", oh no, "Home of the Oktoberfest" ;-)
Solaris System Manager; I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years

 

[screwloose]

Okay, so basically, the soft partition is for creating multiple partitions within a slice?

Is the management of soft partitions beneficial in any way?

Thanks.

 

[naggiman]

is it beneficial?

Yes, because in a 1 disk system you can have more than the usual number of slices (> 5 on a root disk), and in a 2 disk system they can all be mirrored.

Also, adding space is as easy as

metattach d5 10g # add 5Gb to d5
growfs -M /opt /dev/md/rdsk/d5

I am currently setting up a number of S9 servers with 72 gb disks with s5 having 50Gb of space. Then I add in "unusual" mounts we use for our software into d5 so i can easily add space without having to worry too much about finding the disk capacity first...

Just make sure your disk naming convention is documented. The way i currently work is that d5 is mirrored between d15 and d25, and all soft partions on d5 are d5x, i.e. d50, d51, d52 ....

Duncs

 

[daFranze]

just as naggiman says: yes, if the disk is large enough, it is benefical; I just have 36GB disks in use and have no need, since my FS are even bigger...
It depends always on your environment

Regards
-- Franz
Sorry I'm not a native spaeker, I'm from Munich, Germany - "Home of the Whopper", oh no, "Home of the Oktoberfest" ;-)
Solaris System Manager; I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years