Solaris

I am trying to set up a new server. It has 8 HD's in it. I am using 2 for the system disk. IE set one up mirror to the other. I am using the other 6 as data disks. For those I want to concat 3 together, mirror to the other 3 (also concated together of course) and then make various soft partitions on them.

I know I need to run the install disk and set up the system disk (lets call it t0 from now on). Then I will have to run format to partition the other HD I want to miror it to (disk t1). I was thinking run format on the t0 and "save" it to a file then use format -x to format t1 so they will be the same. than I have found this guide to mirror the root HD:Guide to mirroring root / boot disks with solaris volume manager (disksuite) on <b style="color:black;background-color:#ffff66">solaris</b> 10

FOr the data disks I am kind of at a loss: I am thinking format them with all space on slice 1 and a small slice 7 for SVM's DB's. But I am not familiar enough with the meta commands to know how to concat the 3 HD's together, mirror them, or make soft partitions on them.

Can anyone help me with this part?

Is this Solaris 10? I'd use ZFS if it is Solaris 10.

It is Sol 10. There is supposedly some limitation on the Database side of things that limits me to using ufs file systems. If it was up to me I would use zfs too, but I can't.

The man page for metainit has examples for concatenation. Additionally Sun's documentation of SVM has explicit examples for setting up a RAID 10 or 0+1.
Setting up s0 or s1 as the data slice then using s7 for metadb is a good idea and you should stick with that.

Chapter 9 RAID-0 (Stripe and Concatenation) Volumes (Tasks)
Chapter 11 RAID-1 (Mirror) Volumes (Tasks)

Thanks for the links. Lots of good info in there. I understand all of the pieces, it's just how to put them together that I am having trouble with...

Which part of putting them together is giving you trouble?

Actually I think I am getting it down. I will post my proposed process here in a bit. I have been thinking more about trying to go with zfs. I asked again and the DB people seem to think it may be possible after all.

The majority of my experience has been on a Solaris 8 box, so I know very little about zfs. Can anyone fill me in? Recommend some papers on it? Tell me how I would go about doing what I am doing here using it? Any info would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,