Solaris Live Upgrade Procedure for Patching

      Normally  CPU cluster patching for Solaris OS have taken an hour to complete, it increase the maintenance downtime window. In order to overcome that Solaris having the feature called  "LIVE UPGRADE" .
         The main advantages of Live upgrade is minimizing the downtime and providing the system admin to revert the original OS in case of any patching failure.

       In general, the Live Upgrade is briefly categorized as follows

• Create a new boot environment if you haven't already.
• Patch the new boot environment.
• Boot from the new boot environment.
• Check your results for the changes and see if they are acceptable 

Following are the steps to perform Solaris Live Upgrade for Patching

Step 1: Verify Live Upgrade packages are installed

           #pkgchk -v SUNWlucfg SUNWlur SUNWluu

Step 2: Create a current & new boot environment within the same root pool (rpool)
                #lucreate -c BE_APP01  -n new new_BE_APP01

Step 3: Verify step 2
           #zfs list 
          #lustatus

Step 4: Apply CPU onto the new boot environment 

           #cd 10_Recommend

           #./installpatchset -B new_BE_APP01 --s10patchset

Step 5: Activate the new boot environment
           #luactivate -s new_BE_APP01

Step 6: Reboot the server to boot to the new boot environment

           #shutdown -i 6 -g 0 -y

   Note: Do NOT use any other commands to reboot the server. you must use the above-mentioned command. Be patient, wait at least 5-10mins. if it still does not reboot, kindly type the command "reboot"

Step 7: Verify the status

           #lustatus 

Post Live Upgrade Procedures

• If there are no problems, you can delete the former boot environment to  save disk space by issuing the comman

          #ludelete BE_APP01  

• For furture patching, you only need to create a new boot environment within the same root pool (rpool), by issuing the command.

         #lucreate -n BE_APP01_yyyymmdd