Summary: SS2000E 9gig and 2.1gig drives

Jeffrey B. Davis (jeff@dfw.net)
Fri, 13 Mar 1998 17:50:23 -0600 (CST)

Original Message
From: Jeffrey B. Davis [SMTP:jeff@dfw.net]
Sent: Friday, March 13, 1998 11:10 AM
Subject: Sparc Center 2000E 2.1gig Disks in Tray
Currenty in the Sparc Center 2000E there are 2 trays of disks,
1 tray with 6 9gig drives, and 1 tray with 2 2.1gig drives.
We are interested in swapping out the 2 2.1gig drives for
some 9 gig drives.
The catch is that the 2.1 gig drives just happen to be
the boot disk (/ /var /usr , ect.), and the 2nd 2.1gig drive
is the "backroot, duplicate of the boot disk").
Have anyone been through this, and if so, what is/was a good way
to handle this situation?
Thanks
Jeff
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Jeffrey B. Davis Net Solutions Creator

Thanks to:
"Coffindaffer, Virginia" <Virginia.Coffindaffer@wang.com>
Seth Rothenberg <SROTHENB@montefiore.org>
"Avrami, Louis" <L.Avrami@dialogic.com>
Aaron Lineberger <aaron@cs.odu.edu>
Eirh-Yu Hsie <hsie@al.noaa.gov>
Sai Ganesamoorthi <sai@sprintparanet.com>

Summaries..
*Make sure you can get the 9gig Drives from SUN.
*Make sure that you can get the new cables/ect for the 9 gig drives
since the 2.1gig drives probably are not WIDE. (possible new
controller or something.. hmm)
*ufsdump/ufsrestore the boot disk to a 9gig drive, and test boot
the machine from there.
*Then once you can boot from a 9gig drive, take out the 2 2.1gig drives,
and put in new 9gig drives (upgrading hardware as necessary).
*Then you have new space, and a new boot device, and problem solved.

Good points people brought up,
* Can we afford the downtime.. hmm
* Can we get the parts. (SS2000E is on its last legs, but one hell of a
stable, sturdy workhorse, compared to the other flavors we run..).
I tend to remember that the last time I ordered a 9gig drive from sun express,
it was mentioned that we are taking the last few. Hmm..

My conclusion..
Forget the internal drives, Get a new SBUS scsi card, add a diskpack/space
about the same price, very short outage, ect.
(ahh, and also TEST/boot from the backroot (2nd 2.1gig drive) to make sure
it is bootable.. possibly create another backroot.. (I suppose bsd term)..)
Thanks,
Jeff

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Jeffrey B. Davis			Net Solutions Creator