ZFS and Solaris 10 10/08 FAQ

ZFS Enterprise Enhancements

1. What ZFS features are included in Solaris 10 10/08?

   Solaris 10 now provides the ability to boot the Solaris Operating System from a ZFS root file system as well as install the Solaris Operating System to a ZFS root file system. With this release we've Improved the install and boot capabilities of Solaris 10 for x64 and SPARC systems.

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2. What ZFS boot features are included in Solaris 10 10/08?

   Both x86 and SPARC systems use the new style of booting with a boot archive, which is a file system image that contains the files required for booting. While the system is booted for installation, a ramdisk is used for the root file system during the entire installation process, which eliminates the need to be booted from removable media.
    
   You can boot from a ZFS root file system on both SPARC and x86 systems.

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3. Will I still be able to boot from a UFS file system?

   If you do an initial install of the Solaris 10 10/08, you will not be able to boot from a previous UFS file system unless you saved your UFS config on an alternate disk.
    
   If you use Live Upgrade to upgrade your UFS root file system to a ZFS root file system with Solaris 10 10/08, you will be able to boot from your previous UFS file system as a boot environment or from your ZFS root file system. You can choose to boot either one. Iif the active boot environment is ZFS, the system is booted from ZFS. If the active boot environment is UFS, the system is booted from UFS. On SPARC systems, you can display a list of bootable datasets when the boot device contains a ZFS storage pool with bootable ZFS datasets. On x86 systems, you can boot from the bootable environments that are listed in the GRUB menu.

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4. What ZFS install features are included?

   The ability to boot from a ZFS root file system by using the initial install feature or the Live Upgrade feature. The ability to create a ZFS storage pool and designate a bootable ZFS file system from a Jumpstart profile.

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5. What Jumpstart features are provided?

   A profile can be used to set up a ZFS root file system or a UFS root file system. The ability to boot and create UFS file systems is the same as previous Solaris releases.

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6. What Live Upgrade features are included? What Live Upgrade limitations exist?

   An option is provided to identify your ZFS root pool. The standard upgrade option is not available to migrate to a ZFS root file system. The flash archive feature is not available yet for ZFS support. The ZFS root pool must be created with slices instead of whole disks.

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7. What happens to my legacy UFS components?

   All the UFS components including swap and dump areas are preserved during the Live Upgrade process.

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8. How do I use Live Upgrade to convert my UFS file systems to ZFS file systems?

   You must upgrade your system to Solaris 10 10/08. Or, you can use the initial installation to set up a UFS root file system. You then use Live Upgrade to migrate to a ZFS root file system. You must create a ZFS storage pool for your ZFS root pool. Live Upgrade knows nothing about formatting or repartitioning disks.

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9. Can I use Live Upgrade to upgrade my zones?

   Yes, Solaris Live Upgrade can be used to upgrade zones but only specific zones configurations are supported.

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10. What is Delegated Administration?

    In this release, you can delegate fine-grained permissions to perform ZFS administration tasks to non-privileged users. You can use the 'zfs allow' and 'zfs unallow' commands to grant and remove permissions. You can modify the ability to use delegated administration with the pool's delegation property. By default, the delegation property is enabled.

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11. Where can I find more information?

    More information are available on the Features FAQs.

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