Recently in Solaris Category

Easy:

pascal@pgt02:~# smbios -t SMB_TYPE_BASEBOARD
ID    SIZE TYPE
2     202  SMB_TYPE_BASEBOARD (base board)

  Manufacturer: Sun Microsystems
  Product: Sun Fire X4200 M2                     
  Version: To Be Filled By O.E.M.          
  Serial Number: 1005LCB-0807GB0U08              
  Asset Tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.          
  Location Tag: To Be Filled By O.E.M.          

  Chassis: 3
  Flags: 0x9
        SMB_BBFL_MOTHERBOARD (board is a motherboard)
        SMB_BBFL_REPLACABLE (board is field-replacable)
  Board Type: 0xa (motherboard)

Just in case you need it...

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In many of the entries this blog contains the topic lied on MPxIO configuration for fiberchannel storage links:

http://southbrain.com/south/2008/02/solaris-10-with-mpxio-scsi-vhc.html (for Solaris 10) or

http://southbrain.com/south/2009/09/sun-mpxio-storage-scsi-vhci-so.html (for OpenSolaris)

Now let's have a look into Solaris IP networking redundancy.

Just a note: Sun kernel patch 141445-09 (i86/amd64) and 141444-09 (SPARC) introduces zfs version 15 (zpool upgrade!), and the ::memstat-macro behaviour matches OpenSolaris:

Loading modules: [ unix krtld genunix specfs dtrace cpu.generic cpu_ms.AuthenticAMD.15 uppc pcplusmp ufs mpt ip hook neti sctp arp usba fcp fctl qlc lofs fcip cpc random crypto zfs logindmux ptm nfs ]
> ::memstat
Page Summary                Pages                MB  %Tot
------------     ----------------  ----------------  ----
Kernel                    2082351              8134   25%
ZFS File Data             3616346             14126   43%
Anon                      1125938              4398   13%
Exec and libs               11206                43    0%
Page cache                 961960              3757   11%
Free (cachelist)           286172              1117    3%
Free (freelist)            302471              1181    4%

Total                     8386444             32759
Physical                  8177548             31943


The xvm-3.4-source tree has obviously reached 3.4.2, as there is no more "pre", "rc..." or other suffixes in the version number.

After a svcadm enable milestone/xvm (and a reboot if you don't already booted the Xen Hypervisor) all daemons are coming up, it seems to work.

Windows 2008 R2 in a HVM identifies the BIOS as "3.4.2-xvm" (click on the picture on the right to enlarge it).

With Nevada 128 you'll get zpool/zfs version 22 with new features.

A noticeabe new feature is named "deduplication" which means that identical blocks are only kept once on disk reducing real storage use.

pascal@denver:~# zpool list
NAME    SIZE  ALLOC   FREE    CAP  DEDUP  HEALTH  ALTROOT
rpool   135G  63.7G  71.3G    47%  1.00x  ONLINE  -
xvm     135G  29.3G   106G    21%  8.52x  ONLINE  -

The pool "xvm" has some nearly identical block volumes (zfs zvol) for Xen/xVM use and the result is noticeable.

Don't forget to allocate enough RAM to your Dom0-kernel when using Sun xVM.

In case your OpenSolaris snv_128 kernel does simply hang (replies to icmp echo requests but does not do much more than that...) after destroying a snapshot, a block device or a file system there's a simple solution:

Add RAM to your box resp. increase Dom-0 memory usage. In my case I had 1 GB Dom0 memory which was not sufficient.

With 2GB the pool mounted properly again. ZFS with deduplication needs RAM. Sad that there's no warning message including an abortion of the pool import in that case.

There is snv_126 on the Mercurial repository at opensolaris.org.
xvm-gate 3.4 has also be taken to a new version: Xen 3.4.2-rc1-xvm (from 3.4.2-rc1-pre-xvm).

Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_126 October 2009
bfu'ed from /export/home/pascal/archives-nightly-osol-nd/i386 on 2009-10-23
Sun Microsystems Inc.   SunOS 5.11      snv_118 November 2008

pascal@priscilla:~$ uname -a
SunOS priscilla 5.11 snv_126 i86pc i386 i86xpv

Due to popular demand, here are part two and three about basic fiberchannel configuration & diagnostics in Solaris. So the basic trilogy is ready:

Part 1: Introduction, Basics
Part 2: Configuration SAN & TCP/IP
Part 3: Diagnostics

I hope it helps you.

What's a WWPN? A WWNN? What's an F_port? How my disks appear in Solaris?

As many readers asked me to give an introduction to fiberchannel usage in Solaris I started a little course for you.

Lesson 1 are fundamentals of the fiberchannel protocol - not really much, but only  the really needed addressing and network stuff.

It begins here:

http://southbrain.com/south/tutorials/fiberchannel-solaris-part-1-in.html

In Solaris 11 (SXCE, OpenSolaris) the format of the configuration file "scsi_vhci.conf" has changed. As a starter let's remember how MPxIO for storage works (here Fiberchannel is used as an example, the same applies to multiple iSCSI links, just replace the fc driver layer with ethernet/ip/tcp/iscsi):


This is the example with two distinct fiberchannel ports present (multiport FC adapter or distinct FC adapters).

In the HVM case it is a little bit like this (simplified):

It was just a test, but it worked!

First, a paravirtualized example: Solaris Express CE 121 in a pv DomU:

Just as a side note:

The (now dying) Solaris Express editions are perfectly installable and bootable in a paravirtualized Xen DomU, so it is very easy to install Solaris Express as a onnv build environment on an Open Solaris xVM server. First I created a zfs block device named "sol-nv-b119.zvol" on my zpool "xvm" and then I'll use it as a block device for the "disk":

pascal@schall:~# zfs create -b 128k -V 30G xvm/sol-nv-b119.zvol
pascal@schall:~# virt-install --ram 1024 --disk path=/dev/zvol/dsk/xvm/sol-nv-b119.zvol --paravirt --location=/xvm/ISO/sol-nv-b119-x86-dvd.iso  --name "Solaris_Express"


Starting install...
Retrieving file unix...   100% |=========================| 1.5 MB    00:00
Retrieving file x86.minir 100% |=========================| 103 MB    00:04
Creating domain...                                                 0 B 00:02
Connected to domain 3
Escape character is '^]'
v3.3.2-rc1-xvm-debu chgset 'Wed Aug 26 08:49:47 2009 +0200 18433:443f5f51ca41'
SunOS Release 5.11 Version snv_119 32-bit
Copyright 1983-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
NOTICE: Invalid iBFT table 0x1
Configuring /dev
/

    1.     Solaris Interactive Text (Console session) (default)
    2.     Apply driver updates
    3.     Single user shell

Enter the number of your choice.

After having passed some hours to

• Install OpenSolaris 09.06 ( snv_111)
  
• image-update it to snv_118 (pkg.opensolaris.org/dev/)
• BFU it to snv_121

I am now able to use the Xen Version of OpenSolaris (named Sun xVM) and OpenSolaris as Dom0.

(NB: if you're looking for a DomU install example, here's one:
Installing SLES 11 in a xVM/Xen DomU
and here is another.
Installing Redhat Enterprise Server 5 in a xVM/Xen DomU).

Beginning with Build 121, the xen Version has been taken from 3.1.4 to 3.3.2. Hardware virtualization (HVM) has got some performance gains and paravirtualized machines are much simplier to install.

If you want to try it out, here are the steps to get a working test and play setup:

In the first entry about the difference between block based and file based storage sharing I talked about architectural differences between iSCSI/FiberChannel and NFS/CIFS on the other side.

Now it is time to see how easily any OpenSolaris computer running ZFS can be transformed to a storage server/system.

Keep in mind that the Sun Open Storage Servers exactly do that with a nice GUI and a powerful commandline.

At this time, FiberChannel sharing is not yet accomplished, there is still a lack of a FiberChannel target mode driver. So we'll concentrate on offering iSCSI, NFS and CIFS services for the following examples.