Mike,

Ellis, Mike wrote:
> I like your eaxample... Good way to go if you can't swing the zones over to 
> some other server for import/attach/upgrade. 
> 
> How would you envision backing out of the newbe environment if (after doing 
> the zoneimport +upgrade) you decide you want to back out and boot to the 
> pre-lu root-environment? 

I am not proposing an integrated backout as part of this.  Just as with
a standard upgrade, you can't backout.  However, with zone migration
you have all sorts of tools if you want to backout.  You can clone the
zone before detaching, you can keep a copy of the zone on the original
system or if you used an archive file to migrate the zone, you can keep
a copy of that.  That is also why I am proposing an option you would need
to specify for the update, so that we don't modify the zone until you
are ready.

> (You can't attach -u the luns for downgrade purposes can you? The zones would 
> be seriously out of whack as a result of the attach/upgrade.)

I won't allow a downgrade.

> I guess if there WAS zfs in play, at least you could snapshot before 
> attach-upgrading?

Even without zfs you can clone the zone.  It just takes longer.

> The whole attach+upgrade thing is a little scary anyway, some sort of backout 
> will be needed... 

See my comments above.

> Maybe put the zones in some lu-state before doing the attach+upgrade? Maybe 
> that's the suggested way to do this anyay? (Lu the whole shabang, which will 
> give you clean backout of zones and root-env)

LU is not an alternative here since it works on all of the zones along with
the global zone, not a single new zone that we are trying to attach.  It
is a good solution for handling the whole system but is not a solution
for attaching a single zone.  While I haven't gotten into the implementation
details in this proposal, the way LU works is fundamentally different than
what I am proposing here.

> As mike said, we're going to have zfs play in this space sooner or later, and 
> its snapshot facilities can really help solve some serious issues here.
> 
> Interesting development... Attach+upgrade zones is flirting with "killer-app" 
> status, especially when combined with zfs clones/snapshots.

Thanks,
Jerry

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