Peter Tribble wrote: > On 10/3/07, Dave Miner <Dave.Miner at sun.com> wrote: >> Brandorr wrote: >>> If this is the case, we may want to consider alternate options for >>> rollback, as there are applications where one may not want to use ZFS >>> as the root filesystem. (Yes there are some). :) >>> >> Care to be specific about what you think those are? We've been fairly >> explicit all along that ZFS was the only option we were planning to >> support installing to, and that's been met with little negative comment, >> so I'd like to understand what requirements you have in mind. > > Not the first time I've mentioned this, but zfs root doesn't exist even as > an option in a current production release. I expect corporate IT departments > would wish to see a one-version overlap where zfs and ufs were both options; > a caution that's understandable given some negative experiences in the > past with changes to the nature of the root filesystem. Upgrading systems > can't do an in-place switch from ufs to zfs either. >
The ZFS boot project will be making it an option for Solaris 10 in whatever update it shows up, so you will have that overlap. Our assertion is that will be sufficient for the customers you're describing, given the length of the Solaris support cycle and the pace at which those customers tend to move in upgrading. An in-place switch is theoretically possible in the same way that we do DSR (disk space reallocation) in the current installer when you need to change slice sizes. But our research indicates that most of the customers we're talking about here don't actually bother doing upgrades, anyway, so I'm not sure we'll do that work. Dave
