Porting to new hardware - Solaris 10

[BertieB...@gmail.com]

Same version of Solaris etc. Moving to new hardware.

The application that runs on this server is easy enough to re-install but Im concerned about things like:-

1. Users/passwords/home directories
2. Cron jobs
3. Static routes

Is there ANY way to either export this sort of thing so that I can re-do on new server or is it going to be a manual process only?

I did think about maybe creating a flash archive of the entire system and doing a flash install from DVD for Solaris on the new machine? Not that straightforward though.

[John D Groenveld]

In article <8895fedb-8695-4a83...@googlegroups.com>,

BertieB...@gmail.com <BertieB...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I did think about maybe creating a flash archive of the entire system
>and doing a flash install from DVD for Solaris on the new machine? Not
>that straightforward though.

<URL:http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23823_01/html/E23803/index.html>
Where are you stumbling?

John
groe...@acm.org

[Doug McIntyre]

"BertieB...@gmail.com" <BertieB...@gmail.com> writes:
>Same version of Solaris etc. Moving to new hardware.
>The application that runs on this server is easy enough to re-install but Im concerned about things like:-

>1. Users/passwords/home directories

copy the text entries out of /etc/passwd & /etc/shadow for your users,
leaving system daemon info alone.

tar czpvf /tmp/homebackup.tar.gz /home

Make sure no UID's conflict when you put things back in. There isn't
any way to generate a script to say issue 'useradd' commands.

>2. Cron jobs

You can copy the text files out of /var/spool/cron/crontabs/, but make
sure you put them back in correctly so cron knows about them.

>3. Static routes

cp /etc/defaultrouter


This basic unix stuff is *all* text files. This is how you
traditionally move an old server to a new server. It sounds like you
want more command-line based configuration of server, which is
actually what several cried about with Solaris 11 doing. I like
the more command-line method of configuration, especially with what I
note below..

>Is there ANY way to either export this sort of thing so that I can re-do on new server or is it going to be a manual process only?

One of my workflow methods is to keep an electronic notebook
(currently at evernote), of my major configs of a new server, doing up
the commands I did, or if it is a clone of the first, copy, paste into
new note, adjust IP addresses, services, etc. That I enable/startup.

If I need to remake that server, after install, I basicly copy/paste
the commands back in from my evernote notebook page for that server.
If I renumber/addusers,etc, I tend to doup notes in my evernotebook,
(copy & paste/modify), and then paste them into the server screen.

Granted, this method would be a pain to say configure Apache all the time,
so instead, change tracking happens differently for that.

But for fairly static items like admin logins, IP address info, NIC
LAGs, VLANs, etc. , LUN mounts, share mounts, etc, this works well for me.

[ITguy]

I don't install or run any applications in the global zone to avoid this problem. A local zone is easily moved to another system with little down time.

It's possible to convert an existing Solaris instance to a zone on another machine. See this paper for more details:

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/servers-storage-admin/p2vvirtualizationmigration-170693.pdf

[BertieB...@gmail.com]

Yeh. Thinking zones might be the way forward....

[cindy swearingen]

On Dec 5, 11:01 am, "BertieBigBol...@gmail.com"

I'm curious why using a flash archive is not straightforward for you.

Thanks, Cindy

[John D Groenveld]

In article <7e19cb5d-9c1a-4aad...@vy11g2000pbb.googlegroups.com>,

cindy swearingen <cindy.sw...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Yeh. Thinking zones might be the way forward....
>
>I'm curious why using a flash archive is not straightforward for you.

And p2v is going to require some sort of archive from which to
migrate to a zone.

John
groe...@acm.org

[Ian Collins]

BertieB...@gmail.com wrote:

** Please clean up the mess that awful google interface makes of your
replies! **

P2V has been our standard migration policy for Solaris 10 systems since
the release of Solaris 11.

--
Ian Collins

[BertieB...@gmail.com]

Different architecture on the sun boxes. sun4u going to sun4v.

Means it wont boot after install. You need to do a re-install/update again.

Then you need to re-install patches plus any security (jass) configuration.