Storix Software SBAdmin Solaris System Recovery Guide - Manual (Page 5)

Storix System Backup Administrator 5 Version 8.2 Solaris System Recovery Guide
1. Introduction
The
SBAdmin for Solaris System Recovery Guide is a supplement to the SBAdmin User Guide , providing
details on reinstalling a Solaris system from a SBAdmin System Backup. Note that a System Backup is not
limited to reinstalling the same system from which it was made, but it may also be used to “clone” the original
system onto different systems containing the same or different hardware.
When to Use this Guide
This guide provides instructions for booting and reinstalling a system from a SBAdmin System Backup. This
document should be reviewed after first installing the software to become familiar with this process and its
requirements BEFORE a system recovery is required.
Installation from a System Backup is fairly intuitive, but there is information and steps that must be taken to be
prepared in the event that a system re-installation is required. The System Backup contains all of the backup
data and the information needed to recreate the system and restore the data, but to access the System
Installation Process, boot media must be created. This may be a bootable CDROM, local disk or network boot
image.
This guide will refer to information found in the SBAdmin User Guide . When doing so, the reference term or
section will be shown in Blue Text . If you need to refer to that information in the Administrator User Guide,
highlighted sections ( in bold ) can be found in the Table of Contents , and other terms can be found in the
Index .
Terminology
The system recovery process is straight-forward and provides much instruction and help screens to guide you
through the process. Even when creating and changing devices, filesystems, partition maps, logical volumes,
etc, the information provided should make the process fairly intuitive. There are a few terms you should
understand before beginning the process:
• Boot Loader : This is a program that exists on the boot disk or CDROM that is used to find and
execute the Solaris kernel. It usually will install an initial filesystem in memory, and execute programs
within to load device modules needed to access the root (/) filesystem. The boot loader depends on the
firmware of the system, since the firmware must know how to load and execute the boot loader.
• Firmware : The firmware of a machine is a mini-operating system that is used to detect available boot
devices (disks, CDs or network adapters) and load and execute the “real” operating system. The
following table shows the system firmware supported by SBAdmin:
Firmware Supported Systems Boot Media Types Boot loaders
BIOS Intel-based (32-bit,
AMD64 and EM64T)
Disk, CDROM, network Solaris 9: /boot(pcfs)
Solaris 10: GRUB
Solaris 11: GRUB
OpenBoot Sun SPARC servers Disk, CDROM, network pboot/mboot
The firmware typically reads a boot loader from the boot media, which must be written in a manner that
the firmware understands how to find. The boot loader is an additional program that is designed to read
and execute the Solaris kernel, providing it information needed to configure additional devices, etc.