Backup root disks

Hi all!

Please I would appreciate some inputs on the following:

I have inherited a SUN BLADE chassis with 6 T6320 server modules, in which there is only 1 root disk in all of them. I need to do a backup of the root disk in case those disk crash. But there is no backup device attached to it. So please can I have some ideas how to solve this problem.

If you have no backup devices directly attached the next best is probably to backup to another Solaris box over NFS. So do you have another Solaris box?

Alternatively, you could backup to a USB device.

What is the root filesystem? UFS or ZFS?

For completeness, what version of Solaris?

I am using

UFS

file system type and solaris 10. Yes I do have another solaris server.

Right then. Create a NFS share from the other box and mount it on this one.

Then use

 
fssnap

command to snapshot the root filesysytem, and then

 
ufsdump

command giving the remote NFS as the target for the dump. Job done.

Remember to delete the snapshot afterwards.
(You could script all this stuff.)

If you need to restore after a crash, boot from cd into single user, manually plumb, set ip address and mask, and 'up' the network interface, mount the remote NFS, 'newfs' your local root filesysytem, and ufsrestore the whole thing.

Obviously I don't know your experience level and the above may be too brief. Any questions just ask.

EXTRA NOTE: When you execute 'fssnap' this will output a special device name for the snapshot. This is the device you put in the ufsdump command line (NOT /dev/dsk/c0t0d0s0 or /). This special device reads the frozen snapshot of the filesysytem.

Yes , I am a newbie, but correct me if I am wrong:

on the other remote server:
create a file system (NFS)

on current server (the one with only 1 root disk):
mount the NFS file system

still on current server:
use

fssnap

as per http://http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archives/4328-Less-Known-Solaris-features-fssnap.html

after that is completed use

ufsdump

to the remote server.

So that will be it.
What now if I need to restore??

Not quite. On the remote server you don't need a new filesystem only to create a directory which (to use Windows terminology) you will 'share'.

Otherwise, yes, you've got it right.

Make sure to read the 'extra note' that I edited onto my previous post.

Restore is as I described.

Ok, I will try and come back to you.