According to SF 5.0 MP3 Install Guide, VxVM Upgrade supports the following upgrades:

- Upgrading Storage Foundation only (both encapsulated and unencapsulated root disk)
- Upgrading Solaris OS only (both encapsulated and unencapsulated root disk)
- Upgrading both Solaris OS and Storage Foundation (both encapsulated and unencapsulated root disk)
- Installing any Storage Foundation or Solaris OS patches

This article focuses only on how to install OS patches on encapsulated boot disk using live upgrade.

1.  Perform the OS specific tasks of having appropriate patches and packages for Solaris Live Upgrade. Please refer Solaris Live Upgrade Admin guides for procedure.


2. Copy the  latest vxlu commands  from the Storage Foundation media to the local directory of the system
 

For 5.0 mp3, do:

    # mkdir /var/tmp/vxlu
    # cp /mount_point/storage_foundation/scripts/vxlustart /var/tmp/vxlu/
    # cp /mount_point/storage_foundation/scripts/vxlufinish /var/tmp/vxlu/

For 5.1, do:

    # mkdir /var/tmp/vxlu
    # cp /mount_point/scripts/vxlustart /var/tmp/vxlu/
    # cp /mount_point/scripts/vxlufinish /var/tmp/vxlu/

3. Start vxlustart using the below syntax

   # vxlustart -v -U -u

   Example for Solaris 10 in SF 5.x
***********************************************************
   # /var/tmp/vxlu/vxlustart -v -U -u 5.10

VERITAS Volume Manager VxVM 5.0.
  Live Upgrade is now upgrading from 5.10 to <5.10>

INFO: Upgrade is using CD's. See Solaris (5.10) upgrade guide
        for the required list of CD's.
        If you want to increase the size of the root partition, break and
        restart with -m option.

       Please make a note of the bootpath of the system
       in case of any eventuality, please use the path
       to boot the system


Enter upgrade destination disk name  :  
***********************************************************
When prompted please provide the destination disk path for live upgrade, this has to be an unused disk in the system

Enter upgrade destination disk name  :  c0t1d0s2

Now the script should continue with creating new Boot Environment on the specified destination disk. This task will take a while depending upon the size of FS in bootdg.


4. Verify boot environment using lustatus
   # lustatus

Boot Environment           Is       Active Active    Can    Copy
Name                       Complete Now    On Reboot Delete Status
-------------------------- -------- ------ --------- ------ ----------
source.5131                yes      yes    yes       no     -
dest.5131                  yes      no     no        yes    -

And the new environment will be mounted under /altroot.

/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s0    45384549 10921647 34009057    25%    /altroot.5.10
/dev/dsk/c0t1d0s5    2062186  622018 1378303    32%    /altroot.5.10/var


5. Unmount the new boot environment filesystem using umount.


6. Apply OS patches to the  new boot disk using Solaris Live Upgrade command. Please refer Solaris Live Upgrade Admin guides for command syntax and  required options

Eg:-
    # luupgrade -n -t -s  


7. Remount the alternate root disk creating with Solaris .

# vxlustart -r -u -d

Eg:-  # vxlustart -r -u 5.10 -d c0t1d0s2


8. Finish the upgrade process using
   # vxlufinish -u 5.10

Enter the name of the alternate root diskgroup:

When prompted for the alternate root diskgroup, enter the new disk group name for the alternate boot environment.  

9. Once vxlufinishes, reboot the server using shutdown command and system should boot up using new boot environment.

# shutdown -y -g0 -i6