I used to think that the day would never come

SNV90 with ZFS boot is finally here, i've already installed it on a x64-system and tomorrow its is time for my SB1000 to get a new filesystem for root.

Some screenshots from the x64 installation: 1 2 3 4
And here is my SPARC workstation cleanly installed:

$ uname -a
SunOS precursor 5.11 snv_90 sun4u sparc SUNW,Sun-Blade-1000
$ zfs list
NAME                USED  AVAIL  REFER  MOUNTPOINT
rpool              10.9G  56.1G    64K  /rpool
rpool/ROOT         5.87G  56.1G    18K  legacy
rpool/ROOT/snv_90  5.87G  56.1G  5.87G  /
rpool/dump         2.00G  56.1G  2.00G  -
rpool/export         38K  56.1G    20K  /export
rpool/export/home    18K  56.1G    18K  /export/home
rpool/swap            2G  58.1G  2.68M  -

This is now a full ZFS boot configuration unlike the one previously available in OpenSolaris 2008.05, where swap is still located on a separate slice. Now ZFS should be able to enable write cache since the whole disk is used for ZFS. The disk configuration is also much cleaner and simpler. Another nice thing is that you are able to change the size of the swap as easy as `zfs set volsize=96G' rpool/swap` albeit with the need for a reboot or possible add and remove of the swap device before it is effective.

I tested to create a live upgrade boot environment, one command and a few seconds later i had a alternate boot environment ready for upgrades, patches or other changes. lucreate did a snapshot of my current root filesystem and created a entry in GRUB. So besides the installation parts live upgrade also fully understands ZFS filesystems now.

I used to think that the day would never come
I'd see delight in the shade of the morning sun
My morning sun is the drug that brings me near
To the childhood I lost, replaced by fear
I used to think that the day would never come
That my life would depend on the morning sun...

True Fait - New Order