Solstice DiskSuite 4.2 Installation and Product Notes

Supported configurations with EIDE Drives

Solstice DiskSuite 4.2 running on Solaris 7 (and DiskSuite 4.1 running on Solaris 2.6) supports EIDE drives on Darwin class SPARC machines, including Ultra 5, Ultra 10, and Ultra 30 and x86 machines that have EIDE drives. Solstice DiskSuite sees no difference between EIDE and SCSI drives.

Solstice DiskSuite supports mirroring of EIDE drives only if they are on different channels. The Darwin class machines have two IDE channels, each with a master and a slave. The problem is that if an error occurs on a master drive, the slave drive for that channel will no longer respond to requests. For that reason, you can mirror only disks on different channels. This is a design issue for IDE drives and not a bug introduced by Sun. If you are running on Solaris 2.6, you can install patchID 106407-02 to prevent this problem.

The following table shows the supported configurations and where mirroring is supported on the Darwin class SPARC machines that have EIDE drives.

Table 1-3 Supported Configurations on Darwin Class Machines
  Primary Secondary SCSI
 Category Master Slave Master Slave
 1 D1 None None None D1 mirrored to SCSI
 2 D1 CDROM None None D1 mirrored to SCSI
 3 D1 CDROM D2 None D1 mirrored to SCSI
 4 D1 CDROM D2 None D2 mirrored to SCSI
 5 D1 None D2 None D1 mirrored to SCSI
 6 D1 None D2 None D2 mirrored to SCSI
 7 D1 None D2 None D1 mirrored to D2
 8 D1 None D2 CDROM D1 mirrored to SCSI
 9 D1 D2 None None D1 & D2 mirrored to SCSI
 10 D1 D2 CDROM None D1 & D2 mirrored to SCSI
 11 D1 D2 D3 CDROM D1 & D2 mirrored to SCSI
 12 D1 None D2 D3 D2 & D3 mirrored to SCSI

Some users want to create a server with higher availability by mirroring two EIDE drives. In the previous table, configuration 7 shows that this is possible. However, it is important to realize that DiskSuite recommends three disks for the location of three metadevice state databases. These disks create a quorum that guarantees continuous operation. If the first two disks are EIDE drives, the third should be a SCSI drive.

Solstice DiskSuite supports mirroring of the internal boot drive, however DiskSuite requires that three metadevice state databases be created to ensure a quorum. That means you should have three disks on the system to ensure the safety of your data. It is possible to operate with only two metadevice state databases, but you are at risk if a disk fails.