Storage and File Systems Features

The following features are related to storage and file systems management:

• Storage is simplified – Oracle's Sun ZFS Storage Appliance provides a low-cost storage solution and simplified administration with a browser-based management and monitoring tool. The appliance can be used to share data between your Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris 11 systems. As in Solaris 10 releases, data can be shared between your Oracle Solaris 10 and Oracle Solaris 11 systems by using the NFS protocol. In the Oracle Solaris 11 release, you can also share files between systems that are running Oracle Solaris and Windows by using the Server Message Block (SMB) protocol.

• Improved device management – New commands are available and existing commands have been updated to help you locate storage devices by their physical locations.

• ZFS file system is the default file system – ZFS fundamentally changes the way file systems are administered. ZFS includes features and benefits that are not found in any other file system that is available today.

  The following features help you transition either your UFS file system or your ZFS storage pools to systems that are running Oracle Solaris 11:

  • Migrate your UFS data with ZFS shadow migration – The ZFS shadow migration feature is used to migrate data from an existing file system to a new file system. You can either migrate a local file system to a new file system or migrate an NFS file system to a new local file system. For more information, see Transitioning Your Oracle Solaris 10 System to an Oracle Solaris 11 Release.

  • Migrate your Oracle Solaris 10 storage pools – Storage devices that contain ZFS storage pools on your Oracle Solaris 10 systems can be exported, disconnected, if necessary, and imported into your Oracle Solaris 11 systems.

  • Migrate your UFS data – You can remotely mount UFS file systems from an Oracle Solaris 10 system on an Oracle Solaris 11 system. In addition, a ufsdump of your UFS data can be restored into a ZFS file system by using the ufsrestore command.

See Chapter 4, Managing Storage Features and Chapter 5, Managing File Systems.