Oracle ZFS Storage Appliance: How to avoid mis-alignment when using ZFS on LDOM clients (Doc ID 2157669.1)

Last updated on SEPTEMBER 30, 2022

Applies to:

Goal

This document provides the steps required to ensure there is no mis-alignment when LDOMs use ZFS on top of ZFSSA LUNs.

The procedure overview is as follows :

1.  ZFSSA : Create a LUN with a volblocksize of 8KB (default)
2.  Control domain : Make the LUN recognized
3.  Control domain : Use format to configure a simple disk layout
4.  Control domain : Assign the c0txd0s2 partition to an LDOM
5.  LDOM : Login to the LDOM and list the disks via format
6.  LDOM : Retrieve the vdc instance of the device(s) you want to use for a ZFS pool
7.  LDOM : Edit the /platform/sun4v/kernel/drv/vdc.conf
8.  LDOM : Reboot the LDOM
9.  LDOM : Create the pool
10.  LDOM : Create a ZFS filesystem and confirm correct filesystem operation

Misalignment can be expensive in term of extra IOs done on the ZFSSA side. 

Since Solaris 11.1.11.4.0, it becomes a little easier to remove mis-alignment issues when LDOMs use ZFS on top of LUNS exported by a ZFSSA.

The enhancement comes from : ER 15824910 - Add support to configure vdisk physical block size in vdc.conf

Previously, the workaround was to create the zpool on the control domain with the original ssd-config-list entry for ZFSSA in ssd.conf and export zfs volume dataset to the guest domain.

Solution

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