> > I'm hoping to be able to switch an existing > > VirtualBox vdi from IDE to SATA (for > > the likely performance boost). But the existing > boot > > archive can't handle that, > > since it only knows about root being on the IDE. > > ZFS boot / root? > > All that is required is to update the physical device > path > in the zpool label on disk. The label is > automatically > updated when the pool gets imported. The following > should work: > > - switch from P-ATA to S-ATA > > - boot from the live cd into single user mode, > zpool import -f rpool > (this updates the bootpath in the zpool's label) > > - reboot from the HDD
Thanks - that's good to know for the details. I'd just finished doing it with the zfs mirror approach though. In the process, I did run into one thing that might have been a problem trying to reuse the existing VDI: SATA seems to leave one less cylinder available for use than IDE; I ended up making the VDI for the SATA a little larger (which presumably becomes available when any smaller mirrors are detached; so it's not wasted). Adding the new VDI and making it into a zfs mirror is pretty straightforward, if slow. The only thing I hadn't anticipated was that it's "installgrub", not "installboot" (most of my prior experience is SPARC...). There's definitely some performance impact - the host CPU graph I have running is visibly staying lower under similar usage now. But I didn't attempt any measurements, so I can't put a number on that (although I think others have suggested that it could result in as much as a reduction of 20% of total host CPU). -- This message posted from opensolaris.org
