What happens if I don't use a backup slice on disk?

[tstormchaser]

I am trying to design a disk format for a new system. We are planning on mirroring the disks. I want to free up one of the partitions on each disk to use for other things. I'm wondering what are the ramifications of not having the backup slice on the disk?

 

[bfitzmai]

Solaris allows up to 7 partitions on a disk. This does not include partition 2 which is the entire drive. There are uses for this partition. I would think Raid 5 applications could use this partition. But,you can not remove or modify the partition 2.

 

[KenCunningham]

Additionally, if you're planning to use Disk Suite (or Solaris Volume Manager as it's now known), remember that you'll need to reserve a (smallish) partition for the state database replicas.

 

[daFranze]

afaik there is no system requirement that s2 is the whole disk; only some utilities assume this (prtvtoc, fmthard, ...)

You can put the statedbs in a slice you use for data (but I never used this), new (?) feature in SDS 4.2.1

Best Regards, Franz
--
Solaris System Manager from Munich, Germany
I used to work for Sun Microsystems Support (EMEA) for 5 years

 

[sebasg]

Don't know about the ramifications, but I've seen SDS working with metadb and data in the slice 2 (not that I was very happy to see that).
If you need to free up partitions temporarily I'd go for the tmp partition (if you have enough RAM).