Backing up a Solaris 10 Server with non-global zones

I'm not too sure what you mean by zoning in this instance so would appreciate if you could shed a little light here...

If you specify file systems in the saveset field are you able to back those up okay?

Just checked - there will be "Limited Solaris 10 zones support" (whatever that means) in 7.3.2 (September). Until then you will need to play with this in unsupported way:
- you will need to copy /nsr from global zone to your container
- you will need to copy startup script from global zone to your container
- define savesets

... and that should work - with all possible standard disclaimers. Other approaches are listed here:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/backup_zones.html

Zones are "new" feature in Solaris 10. Check following link:
http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/zones/

As far as I saw from other people, you will need to install client into global zobe first. Then you will need to set it up for each container (I say set it up as it involves coping few things and not installing - you will get the idea). Also, for containers you will need to manually set savesets as All will result in backup of /system/contract only.

I won't go much into the details of setup here as officially containers are not currently supported. Not sure if 7.3.x changed anything or this has been left for forthcoming releases.

Ok. Thanks for your answers.

Although NW may be zone-unaware, from the global zone an All backup will also capture all non-global zones as they are just subdirectories (or partitions)

Assuming there's nothing super special in the non-global zones (DB, etc) this will capture everything

This is what I plan on doing for consolidation of machines which we use rarely but still want available - have them in a non-global zone in a halted state

Did you try this ? Certainly when I tried this with 7.2.2 nothing in the non-global zones gets backed up apart from the top-level directory.

Backing up the Solaris 10 Local Zone does not support the use Saveset of All, and this has been explicitely stated in the Networker documentation.

There is the ability to backup Sol10 Local & Global zones using v7.3.2, but there is also the option to configure your Global zoned clients filesystems as other FStypes and not as ZFS, which means they will function with v7.2.# as well if necessary...

EMC have also advised that Sol10 Zoned clients running v7.3.2 are supported on a networker server runing v7.2.#

But my 1st sentence basically answers your question.

You have to install the networker client and man-package by using the pkgadd -G at the global zone.
Additionally You have to "fake" a /etc/vfstab file, located in each local zone: i.e. once a day (before the backup took place) collect all volumes "mounted" inside a local zone and pipe them "in a propper way" into a file called /etc/vfstab.
Networker Server needs to find this /etc/vfstab on each (unix)Host to verify the "mounted volumes at system startup"
In case You have a system-volume mounted readonly (i.e. "/") You may need to modify the unix-standart directives (create a copy and modify the copy) to avoid it's backup. Otherwise You'll backup a volume which could not be restored -cause of missing write-permissions (in general these volumes should already be backed up with the global zone)

Hth, otherwise reply

Regards Spaceball

As of now..I tried to install one client software on the global zone and one client software on the non-global zone. After that I had to configure two diffferent client networker resources - one to backup the global zone and another to backup the non-global zone. This is what I'm temporarily doing.

Hello,

I have been reviewing this thread, but i am still not sure how to do correctly backup for a global a non-global zones configuration in a Solaris 10 server. Until now, i had been supposed these things (after talking with EMC support), please correct me if they are wrong (I have not checked them yet, but i need to know how it works):
1º) You can install NetWorker client in both of them, global and non-global zones.
2º) If you install in global zones, you can do backup for all non-global zones servers, as you can see the file systems that contains the non-global zones (as it happen with VmWare configuration). You can not put the All clausule in the Save Set attribute, but you can put the save set corresponding the file system for the non-global zone.
If you install in the non-global zone, only this information is visible for the backup (in addition you have to create a NetWorker client definition for each of non-global server). You can recover data that belong to non-global zones (individual items) from global zone backup (not as VMware, where you have to recover the *.vmdk complete)
3º) If you install in global zone, only one client license is needed. If you install in non-global zones, one client license is needed for each zone.
4º) If the non-global zone server have got SAP, Oracle, etc with hot backup through BSM, you have to install NetWorker client in the non-global zone server.

Talking these points with my customer, he tells me that from the global zone server, he can not view the filesystems in which they are the non-global zones. He runs a 'df -k' but only see the global filesystems. Then, How he can do backup for these filesystems from the global zone if the global zone can not view them at OS level?

Anybody knows some kind of documentation where this could be described? I have been looking for it in Release Notes, Administrator guides, etc. but without success.

Thanks in advance. Best Regards!

As far as I remember, and I could be wrong here so I would advise you test it first, you can't have backup of active local zone from global level. Zone support is pretty much limited at the time and in respect to point 4) while I have seen it working - I also saw release notes which says that this is not supported yet.

However, if you got these answers by EMC use the same case to clear those issue (especially the one for module).

Thanks Hrvoje,

I got this information via phone from an EMC specialist, but every thing that EMC told me, at this moment seems so confuse. I have not any documentation about it although in the Compatibilty guide there are references to Solaris zones. At this moment I have got opened a Service Request in order to clarify all these points.

Meanwhile, i will continue looking for it. Thanks anyway.

I first tested to install the networker agent into the global zone and tried to backup
the directories in the non-global zone. The backup completed. On the surface, it looked successful but when during test restoration, I drilled down to the directory that belong to the non-global zone..there was no file found inside there whereas physically there are files in that directory (that belong to the non-global zone).

So I had to change resort to install agent to both global and non-global zone.
I'm still using this method because I can backup and restore data in the non-global zone.