Using ODS to clone system disks

Using ODS to clone system disks

Some bright wonk usually comes up with an idea like this:

1. Use ODS (Online Disk Suite) or SDS (Solstice Disk Suite) on system A to mirror the disks.
2. Take one disk from system A and insert it in system B.
3. Both system A and system B boot up thinking half their mirrors have failed.
4. Reconfigure system B so that it is internally system B.
5. Rebuild mirrors on both systems.

This (can frequently be a proposition which) works. Assuming these OS disks exclusively hold the MetaDB replicas, both systems will come up in a state which can be generally recoverable by following the instructions Replacing a failed disk. The mistake most people make is that they will pull disk1 from system A and insert it so that it is disk0 on system B. This is a good recipie for hosing this disk, since all the metadevices and metadb info indicates that it is really disk1. Put disk1 into system B so that it is disk1, boot from it (ie at the PROM: boot disk1 or as appropriate), then "recover" from your "failure" as in the link above.