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( Mar 24 2005, 10:07:13 PM CET ) Permalink

Dynamic Zone changes

This subject has come up several times in the last two weeks, so it might be a good opportunity to finally start using my blog.

When talking to a colleague about Zones he said: 'I have been looking at Zones and while they are cool, they are also "static". To add an extra file system to a running zone I have to restart the zone.'. Well, as it happens, this is not required. You can dynamically add a file system to a running zone. Here's how:

The current configuration of the running zone looks like this:

# zonecfg -z zone1 info
zonepath: /export/zones/zone1
autoboot: true
pool: large
inherit-pkg-dir:
        dir: /lib
inherit-pkg-dir:
        dir: /platform
inherit-pkg-dir:
        dir: /sbin
inherit-pkg-dir:
        dir: /usr
net:
        address: 129.159.206.38/26
        physical: hme0
rctl:
        name: zone.cpu-shares
        value: (priv=privileged,limit=10,action=none)

Adding a new UFS file system to this zone would entail the following: create a new file system in the global zone, add an fs resource to the zone configuration and restart the zone to re-read the configuration.

global # newfs /dev/md/rdsk/d100
newfs: construct a new file system /dev/md/rdsk/d100: (y/n)? y
Warning: 1280 sector(s) in last cylinder unallocated
/dev/md/rdsk/d100:      1024000 sectors in 712 cylinders of 15 tracks, 96 sectors
        500.0MB in 45 cyl groups (16 c/g, 11.25MB/g, 5440 i/g)
super-block backups (for fsck -F ufs -o b=#) at:
 32, 23168, 46304, 69440, 92576, 115712, 138848, 161984, 185120, 208256,
 806720, 829856, 852992, 876128, 899264, 922400, 945536, 968672, 991808,
 1014944,
global # zonecfg -z zone1
zonecfg:zone1> add fs
zonecfg:zone1:fs> set dir=/u01
zonecfg:zone1:fs> set special=/dev/md/dsk/d100
zonecfg:zone1:fs> set raw=/dev/md/rdsk/d100
zonecfg:zone1:fs> set type=ufs
zonecfg:zone1:fs> end
zonecfg:zone1> exit

At this point we could reboot the zone and have the new file system mounted during zone boot. However, there is no need to restart the zone because the file system can be mounted into the running zone from the global zone. The only thing we have to do now is add the mountpoint in the zone ourselves:

global # mkdir /export/zones/zone1/root/u01
global # mount /dev/md/dsk/d100 /export/zones/zone1/root/u01

Note that there is an extra /root/ component in the path to the file system. Inside the zone we see that the new file system has appeared:

zone1 # df -h
Filesystem             size   used  avail capacity  Mounted on
/                       15G   3.3G    11G    23%    /
/dev                    15G   3.3G    11G    23%    /dev
/lib                    15G   3.3G    11G    23%    /lib
/platform               15G   3.3G    11G    23%    /platform
/sbin                   15G   3.3G    11G    23%    /sbin
/usr                    15G   3.3G    11G    23%    /usr
proc                     0K     0K     0K     0%    /proc
ctfs                     0K     0K     0K     0%    /system/contract
swap                   8.3G   264K   8.3G     1%    /etc/svc/volatile
mnttab                   0K     0K     0K     0%    /etc/mnttab
fd                       0K     0K     0K     0%    /dev/fd
swap                   8.3G     0K   8.3G     0%    /tmp
swap                   8.3G    32K   8.3G     1%    /var/run
/u01                   469M   1.0M   421M     1%    /u01

But wait, there's more. The same 'magic' can be applied to add an extra network interface to a running zone. Instead of adding a net resource to the zone configuration and then rebooting the zone, we add the net resource to the zone configuration (to make the change persistent) and then use ifconfig(1M) from the global zone to add the network interface dynamically.

global # zonecfg -z zone1
zonecfg:zone1> add net
zonecfg:zone1:net> set physical=hme0
zonecfg:zone1:net> set address=192.168.1.13/24
zonecfg:zone1:net> end
zonecfg:zone1> exit
global # ifconfig hme0 addif 192.168.1.13 netmask + broadcast + zone zone1 up
Created new logical interface hme0:3
Setting netmask of hme0:3 to 255.255.255.0

The key point here is the 'zone' option of ifconfig. Running ifconfig -a inside the zone shows that we now have the extra network interface. And without having to reboot the zone!

zone1 # ifconfig -a
lo0:5: flags=2001000849 mtu 8232 index 1
        inet 127.0.0.1 netmask ff000000
hme0:2: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 129.159.206.38 netmask ffffffc0 broadcast 129.159.206.63
hme0:3: flags=1000843 mtu 1500 index 2
        inet 192.168.1.13 netmask ffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255

There are more things that can be changed dynamically such as resource controls and pool binding. I'll leave that for another blog entry.

So: Zones are cool and dynamic!

Solaris

( Mar 10 2005, 09:30:50 AM CET ) Permalink