Installing the Recommended Patch Cluster With Zones Parallel Patching
As promised on Friday, I've taken the plunge and tested applying the latest patch cluster to a fresh Solaris 10u5 installation running 10 zones using the new zones parallel patching feature.To speed things up and to try and prevent any problems I performed the following steps:
Jumpstarted the OS (SUNWCuser cluster)
Applied patches 125555-04 and 119254-66 (gives us the parallel functionality)
Created a basic sparse-root zone without any networking
Cloned the zone 9 more times
Create an alternate BE using live upgrade so I had two identical boot environments
Once I had the machine setup, I booted into single user mode (so all zones will be in the "installed" state) and set off the first cluster installation using the default options (ie no parallel application).I then rebooted into single user mode on the alternate boot environment, set num_proc to 10 and applied the patch cluster again.How's this for a significant difference in time: Continue reading ►